DROWNING

During their first year together, when love was still uncomplicated, Chloe and Miguel took a holiday in the mountains. That time was, Chloe said later, their age of innocence. They stayed in a chalet-cottage and walked through flower-strewn meadows nestled among forested hills. They picnicked beside streams, and Miguel painted every day. He worked on wood and metal as well as canvas. On the hills he collected sheets of thin bark and enchantingly twisted tree roots, often painting on-site, finding messages in smooth flowing whorls of wood.

Sometimes Miguel sketched Chloe dreaming on the cottage deck in the evening twilight or gazing at the mountains. She was so beautiful, he used to say, with her golden flowing hair seeming to stream off on soft breezes towards the peaks and the mountain gods who lived there. It was a carefree time, until the day near the end of their stay which inescapably altered their relationship. Miguel had decided to paint Chloe beside the stream that tumbled down from the hill above their cottage. He used for a canvas “the most beautiful twist of wood in the world, see how alive it is?”

On it he painted Chloe’s face within a garland of foliage suggested by smooth cambium living its own life beneath worn-away bark.

“The mother-tree of this had an interesting life,” said Miguel. The face he