She jumped up and went over to Tom who, with his headphones on, had been oblivious to the sound. She prised one away from his ear and he looked up at her, irritated. ‘Mum!’
‘Your sugar’s high, darling,’ she said. ‘Have you been eating chocolate or ice cream or something?’
‘Just Haribos,’ he mumbled. ‘Oh, yeah, and a caramel Magnum.’
‘Just Haribos? You know how much sugar is in them?’ she said. ‘And the ice cream?’
He shrugged. ‘Whatever.’ He looked back down at the game he was playing.
‘You need to give yourself a jab,’ she insisted.
‘OK, I will.’
‘Now!’
He glared at her, but then, trying not to disturb Jinx, reluctantly dug in his pocket for his insulin pen and clicked out a measure. She felt sorry for him. Tom was a kind person, and life had dealt him a crap hand by giving him this disease at such a young age. She used to binge on all the sweet treats he now craved and knew how she’d have felt if she’d been denied them.
As she settled back down on the sofa, she noticed again a smell that had bothered her earlier. She sniffed hard. ‘Harry, can you smell something burning?’
‘The barbecue, darling.’
She frowned. ‘It’s not a barbecue smell.’
Like a fish momentarily surfacing from the ocean depths, Tom raised his head and sniffed, then returned to the safety of the depths.
Without looking away from the television, as the Indian batsman hit a ball dangerously high in the air, Harry sniffed, too. The South African fielder dropped the easy catch, and the ball rolled towards the boundary. He sniffed again. Freya was right. There was a different, acrid smell, one he recognized instantly as the smell of burning paint.
He looked around, puzzled. Was it a light fitting or some other electrical problem? It was getting stronger. Coming from inside the conservatory.
Then, yelling, ‘Shit, shit, shit!’ he ran to the painting, the one he’d bought at the car boot sale and had left face out towards the glass side of the room. The south-west-facing side.
A thin, grey stream of smoke was curling up from that side.
He grabbed the frame, lifted it up, blowing frantically at the centre of the old crone’s face, where the smoke was rising from a bulging blister.
Freya, who had followed him, watched him in horror as he ran through into the kitchen with the painting and over to the sink where he grabbed the spray mixer tap off its cradle, squeezed the lever and directed the fierce jet at the woman’s face. After a few seconds the smoke subsided and stopped, as water ran down the picture.
Leaving it perched on the draining board, he went back into the hallway, momentarily baffled. After some moments Freya, looking at the window with the direct sunlight streaming in, and then at the shelf above the low sill where they lined up pots of cacti and a few other ornaments, realized what had happened.
She lifted up the offending article, a clear glass globe paperweight. ‘This is what caused it.’
‘Oh God, yes, it is!’ he said, smiling with relief. ‘Do any of your kids at school ever use a magnifying glass to refract the sun’s rays and burn holes in pieces of paper? We used to do that all the time at school, in summer.’
She shook her head. ‘No, we don’t, things have tightened up since we were at school, sadly!’
‘What, you don’t teach them basic physics?’
‘Yeah, but we leave out the bit about how to burn the school down.’
‘When I was in the boy scouts, we used to do that to light camp fires. And we did it to piss off teachers! Don’t you remember old Mr Leask?’
‘The geography teacher?’
‘Yep! No one liked him. We used to take magnifying glasses into his lessons and then, when he was sitting up at his desk, we’d try to set his things on fire by all focusing our magnifying glasses on his jacket!’
‘I didn’t realize I’d married a monster.’
He grinned. ‘It would really annoy him and make him yell at us!’
Harry had been expecting her to smile at this, but she didn’t. Instead, she was looking at him with a horrified expression. ‘I can’t believe you did that,’ she said. ‘You could have hurt him.’
Harry shrugged. ‘Yep, well, we were just stupid kids, we didn’t think about consequences.’
Freya nodded thoughtfully. ‘Actually, remember my old friend Rachel?’
‘Vaguely.’
‘She spent a couple of years in Israel, living with a family. She told me they used to draw the curtains in the daytime to prevent the bright sun rays from refracting through glass objects and causing a fire.’
‘That’s exactly what’s just happened.’
‘Jesus, Harry, this is scary. Can you imagine if we’d been out today? The house could have burned down.’
He put the paperweight down on the island unit, shrugged again and went back to the kitchen. He checked the picture wasn’t still burning before dabbing it dry with a tea towel. And stared at the blistered centre of the woman’s face. He poked the blackened bulge tentatively with his forefinger, checking it wasn’t still hot, and flakes of it fell away. He knocked away the rest of the fist-sized bulge, then stood still in amazement.
‘Oh my God,’ he said. ‘Look at this. Look, look! There’s something underneath. Another painting!’
11
Sunday, 22 September
‘What do you mean?’ Freya said, standing a short distance back. ‘Something underneath? Like a palimpsest?’
Harry was beaming with excitement. ‘A what?’
‘A palimpsest – it’s when you have a piece of paper – or parchment – with writing on, that’s overwritten something else that was there before. But where if you look closely, you can see the original text beneath – or an impression of it.’
‘Exactly – but in this case in paint. Look at the centre of the woman’s face.’
She stared hard. At the jagged, roughly circular gap inside the blackened edges, at the space where most of the face had been. Replacing it was an exquisitely detailed painting of part of a tree, part of a woman’s arm, and what looked like sunlit water beyond. After some moments she said, ‘You’re right, there is something underneath. Very definitely.’
‘What if it’s a long-lost old master?’
She gave him a reproachful look. ‘Really? In a car boot sale?’
‘It does happen, we’ve seen it on Antiques Roadshow, right?’
‘We’ve also seen on Fake or Fortune? where people have bought what they thought was an old master, and which turned out to be a fake,’ she said. ‘Someone probably painted over it because it was a rubbish picture.’
He carried the painting out into the darkness of the hallway, laid it against the bottom of the staircase, safely away from light, then hurried upstairs to his den, grabbed his laptop and went back down into the conservatory. He sat on the sofa, flipped open the lid and began tapping the keys.
‘What are you doing?’ Freya asked.
‘Googling,’ he replied. ‘I’m looking up solvents that could dissolve a surface painting.’
‘To reveal whatever’s underneath?’
‘Exactly.’
She looked at him dubiously. ‘My love, you’re a house builder, not a picture expert. You don’t want to risk damaging what’s underneath – on the one in a million chance there is something of value. If you’re not careful you’ll dissolve what’s underneath, too. You’d be better off looking up picture restorers. Talk to a professional. Maybe you should take it to an expert, to see what they think.’