Vision: The haunting of Flora Lee

By M J Mars

Following the sudden death of her father in the street, a blind toddler crawls through a shop front trapdoor and is lost in the labyrinth of tunnels and passages beneath London.

Twelve years later, after reports of a wild 'cat girl' prowling the night-time alleyways, a feral teenager is captured in the churchyard of St Giles-in-the-Fields. Seemingly grown up in isolation without family or social contact, she is placed into care but the mysterious girl's past remains a puzzle, and her rehabilitation presents an overwhelming challenge.

In another part of London, the Zoological Society's new Artist in Residence, Flora Lee, is seeing things. She is haunted by the image of a magnificent black panther. The beast stalks her at night; when she's upset or weary, and only when she's alone. She questions her sanity, but Flora tries to dismiss the creature as a mere visual glitch. Her doctor agrees – the big cat is an hallucination, caused by mild damage to her retina, that will pass. But for Flora Lee, as a celebrated painter, any trouble with her eyes is bad news.

At an emotional low ebb, and not inspired by her new position at the zoo, Flora is close to desperation when she encounters Lou – a street kid with an audcaious dream to be an artist. A crazy idea, because Lou is stone blind.
Flora is intrigued and captivated because, with help and encouragement, Lou produces fabulous, visceral paintings by touch alone.

Yet, as Flora's climactic exhibition approaches and thier relationship deepens, Lou's motives appear more menacing and her connection to Flora's imaginary feline stalker becomes a sinister, perhaps deadly, threat.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Squanderfield
• Release date: Jan 31, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224335473

Book preview

VISION

MJL MARS

Squanderfield

Copyright © 2024 MJL Mars

All rights reserved

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Cover design by Mary Hackabout

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Ago

Chapter one

Chapter two

Chapter three

Chapter four

Chapter five

Chapter six

Chapter seven

Chapter eight

Chapter nine

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Aftermath

Ago

An elephant lies still on the pavement. Dropped flat on his back with his legs splayed out and his trunk tossed up and over his head as if he will trumpet. But there is no sound – the elephant is quiet as a mouse. So too – for the moment – are the children; their eyes wide, their mouths open and their little hands tight-stringing prettily coloured, helium-filled balloons the elephant had, just now, been handing them around.

Paramedics arrive at the scene in less than ten minutes – the first on a green and fluorescent-yellow bicycle equipped with medicine-packed panniers. Carefully, they pull off the elephant's head and unzip his belly. They pulse-take, look in his eyes and check his airways. One ears-up close to his ribs before compressing his pallid fleshy chest with the flats of her hands over and over again. But in vain. Douglas Noone, actor and elephant impersonator, is stonecold dead.

Inevitably, the children begin to shout and wail, and more than one cartoon-faced balloon slips little fingers and heads jet stream-wise to reach Chile or New South Wales, or to dangle in a precinct tree for months on end of gradual, melancholy deflation.

Lucy isn't crying; why should she be? She is blind and cannot see what has happened, and nobody thinks to tell her the cause of the commotion. No one should be blamed for that because no one knows Lucy is the elephant's little daughter. Certainly not the mothers of the other children, facing the dilemma of satisfying their own curiosity or removing their tender infants from premature exposure to mortality; nor, apparently, the Saturday manager of Jumbo Burgers who hired Doug Noone to suit-up and cavort about the precinct. Doug wasn't going to let-on he couldn't run to a minder for his four-year-old – not to some spotty youth in a Burton's grudge suit.

Even after the police arrive – the older officer, a sergeant, surprised to recognize the dead man's face from way back in the Catchpole Investigates days – and the elephant is stretchered away, the only attention Lucy receives is shared with all the other under-fives who are offered free pop and sweeties – with every burger purchased – and a reassurance that the elephant is just having a little sleep. The gesture might make the best of a very rum do, but there aren't any takers and the teenage manager returns to his bright plasticy food-stop alone. He lets the girls go to lunch, hoping that by the time they're back it'll be business as usual.

Watching from the patrol car as the ambulance pulls away, the older policeman's thoughts wander from a favourite episode of Catchpole – the one where Doug Noone as the inspector out-wits a gang of foreign diamond smugglers – to a fascinating documentary he'd seen three nights ago all about elephants' graveyards.

Did you know, he asks his colleague, that elephants are able to recognize the bones of deceased relatives?

The constable sitting beside him did not know, but, being fond of a nature programme himself, he is keen to find out more. Close relatives or extended family? he asks. All bones or just big ones – long leg bones, for example, or the skull, of course? Surely they don't recognize little bits and pieces of bone from the feet? There are 26 bones in each foot – in humans, at least – and elephants have got four.

The officers chat and the patrol car swings off the precinct. They nose on to the high-street and the slow-creeping afternoon traffic parts for them. The young constable continues to voice his doubts as to how the filmmakers could be certain which bones were related to which living elephant. The older man, watching the corpse-bearing ambulance disappearing ahead of them, nods in agreement but thinks about the transitory nature of fame and what pithy observation he will put to his wife after his shift – which is more shocking; the sudden death of a man in his early fifties, or that a man reduced to dressing as an elephant was once a Saturday-night favourite? The little girl standing quietly all on her own has slipped his attention.

Lucy hears every word – Lucy's hearing is as honed, as capable of penetrating the babble around her to extract the very word she needs as any maestro falling upon one single flat-that-should-be-sharp in the climactic mezzo forte of a symphony orchestra. Two, three, four, even five overlying conversations do not throw her, but for heaven's sake – 'infarction', 'defibrillator', 'thrombolytic' – the poor little thing is only four years old. How many four-year-olds know what asystole is?

A girl other than Lucy might tug at the sleeve of a stranger and ask Where is my daddy? but that is not so easy when you have never seen a stranger, when you're not entirely sure what exists beyond the close-up world of yourself and your father. Lucy's mother has been out of the picture since one hour after giving birth. Beautiful actresses with a sparkling career in front of them are not going to be saddled with disabled kids – certainly not ones with those freaky eyes. If she tried to run and find mummy, Lucy would somehow have to negotiate a transatlantic flight and then get herself past the security gates at Sony Picture's Culver City studios. So for the meantime she just waits, expecting that soon enough the elephant will wake up and take the hand she holds slightly raised and slightly in front of her.

For an hour or so, she maps her surroundings in voices, footfalls and buggy-wheel squeaks; hectic and confused at first but soon returning to a steady pace and an even rhythm. When things in the precinct go quiet, or as quiet as it ever gets on a Saturday afternoon halfway between lunchtime and closing, Lucy removes herself from the thoroughfare and tucks herself into the doorway of a closed solicitor's office. She stands here for a while then sits for a great deal longer.

Is it a shameful state of affairs when a blind girl, scarcely more than a toddler, is passed by time and time again, as she sits patiently waiting for her father to come and get her; to scoop her into his strong arms and hurry her back to their cosy little bed-sit; to let her hang on to his legs and ride his big feet as he waltzes around, making a pot of tea and two rounds of cheese on toast? The rushing shoppers are not mind-readers. They must be excused for their private focus, for attending to the demands of their own fractious children. They are weary of shopping and they don't have time to get mixed up in the retrieval of a just orphaned, sightless child. So when they look they don't see, and this sensible elision allows them to bustle by.

Another hour or two then three pass. The sun dips, the shadows creep and the shops shut up. Lucy retreats from the precinct, inching deeper into her doorway. It is by chance – when she is backed-up hard into the corner – that she leans against and flips open a hatchway at doorstep level, but she crawls through nonetheless. Inside, in the pitch dark – which makes no difference to Lucy – there are cobwebs and dust, a meter of some sort, a rusty stopcock and another hatch. Both hatches should be padlocked but neither is; so Lucy pushes through the second.

Chapter one

I set a challenge for myself, Flora says, like a game – that game you play when you're little. The one where try and go for as long as you can without doing a particular thing. Get to the end of the lesson without looking out of the window, or at the clock, or the frieze on the wall, or whatever. That's easy. So you try till first break. Then lunchtime. Then to the end of the day. Except when you're little you've forgotten all about what you shouldn't be doing before you get near to the end of the day. Well, I'm old enough now not to get distracted. I've kept it up – seeing how long I can go. How long I can have nothing to do with anyone connected with Richard. It's been well over a year.

She stands stiffly and pulls a frown, hinting at the awkward child she has just evoked. Her gaze is focused on the blade of Dylan's electric screwdriver and the screw twisting loose from its washer, from the soft pine of the packing case. The motor races and the screw exits with a little puff of sawdust. She wonders if she spoke tactlessly. Dylan tightens the collar of his screwdriver and glances up at her. She guesses he's just worked-out why she has switched to ArtFlux to transport and store her paintings: Dylan has never met Richard.

Dylan traps the freed screw under his index finger and pushes it towards a group of others gathered in the centre of the case's lid. If you don't mind me saying, he says, that sounds like cutting off your nose to spite your face.

She winces. It's nothing like that, she says.

Dylan scrapes the screws and washers into his fist. He drops them into a plastic tub several paces away from the packing case and reseals the top. She appreciates this slow precision; his concise, meticulous actions. He considers carefully and moves exactly. He is almost robotic. He's a born technician. It was plain enough 20 years ago –  when she'd met him at  Goldsmiths College – he would never make an artist. A fellow traveller, perhaps, and a sympathetic ear. Even if Dylan couldn't paint he mingled well and he liked to be with painters. And painters liked him – she liked him – but finding him, two decades on, running London's second-largest art logistics business would have come as a surprise to no one in their year. Dylan had always tidied the studios at the end of the school day, even though he never made any mess himself.

Flora looks at her watch. It's late. This is the last of twenty-three paintings and she has been on her feet for hours. Dylan checks around the lid of the case. He looks for splinters of wood or little pieces of grit he has missed. Is he this careful when he's unpacking alone, Flora wonders? When the artist isn't three feet away scrutinizing his good practice? She bets he is. Hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of art pass through his big shed of a warehouse. It wouldn't do to mislay a sharp screw or, God forbid, a Stanley knife blade that's dropped off a lid into an open case. They could damage a delicate paint surface – even pierce a canvas. Flora knows Dylan would be mortified if that happened. He may not be good at making it but he would lay down his life – really – to keep art from harm.

Like Dylan, Flora's ex-husband is no painter. Richard Cato studied History of Art. His ambition that a knowledge of art should make him rich, so he became a dealer. He was Flora's dealer – before they were married and afterwards, but not anymore.

I do hear things – you know, says Dylan. I'm not nosey – but I can't help hearing things. He smiles and with barely a tug the lid lifts off, drawing air out of the case with a faintly human sigh. A beautiful fit; it's a beautifully made case. Exactly what she asks for; skill at an exemplary level – very Flora Lee. And she is sure Dylan appreciates the excellence of her picture crates. They are recognisably a cut above run-of-the-mill and this is, after all, the business he's in. She cares about that sort of thing and she knows Dylan does, too. Crates may not seem important to some of her peers, but the details add up. An ugly box banged together by some ham-fisted chippy wouldn't do. Not for Flora. When her paintings travel the world, the boxes are the first impression a gallery has of her – they may be the only impression airport ground crews and forklift truck drivers ever get. Cases commissioned by Flora Lee need to be perfect – works of art in their own right.

Flora's head dips. Her hand clutches the edge of the case like a mother about to rock her infant in its cradle. Inside, cosseted in dense foam styled to accept the width, height and depth of the stretcher precisely and very neatly, is her painting: Metamorphoses III, the dancing figure of a horned man. It is the last one opened. The last visual inspection. The last condition report to complete before it joins twenty-two other paintings delivered to ArtFlux this morning. A space waits for it on the warehouse's sliding metal racks. The day has been long and draining for Flora. Moving her paintings around is an anxious business. The air-conditioning in the cavernous space is so chilly that she has not removed or even unbuttoned her coat. An hour ago she turned up the collar. When this last one is documented and hung in place it will be a great relief.

Outside is dark. The fluorescent lighting leaves her painting looking raw in execution and fiercely coloured. The image she remembers painting is softer, the palette gentler – this painting hurts. She looks up at the naked tubes and squints. She consoles herself, thankful that Flora Lee paintings don't stay very long in over-lit storerooms.

By now, they have a smooth routine. Dylan pops on his cotton gloves. Flora is still wearing hers. Dylan pulls out four loose pieces of foam, giving access to the edges of the stretcher. They take two corners each and lift the painting – the size of a pair of kitchen cupboard doors – out of its cosy nest and transfer it to a felt-topped table behind them. Richard would never have allowed her to touch a painting after it was finished, once it was the property of Richard Cato Fine Art. She sees technicians handling paintings as if they were holy relics all the time, of course, and she's amused to think of the way she slings canvases around the studio on a grumpy day. Yet here, in Dylan's bright cold hanger, this quiet reverence seems exactly right. In transit the most rugged of gestural paintings becomes fragile archaeology, so delicate a sharp breath could blast it apart. She holds her own breath. She and Dylan slip out their fingertips in unison and let the stretcher rest on the soft felt worktop.

There is a standard form – ArtFlux has different, but very similar, forms for painting, sculpture, works on paper and mixed media. Dylan has already added title, date, medium, support, dimensions and the unusual, rather revealing provenance – as with each of this twenty-three painting consignment: Richard Cato Fine Art returned to the artist. He clicks the on switch and repositions his conservator's softlight. He picks up his magnifying visor, hooks it on to his skull and draws the lens down over his eyes. His head sweeps close to the painting, his nose almost touching the paint surface. He scans at even, regular speed left to right, right to left progressing steadily down the picture. Flora bites her thumbnail. She looks away for a moment at the racks of paintings, stacked packing crates and the sculpture immersed in bubble wrap. It would make an eerie film set, she thinks.

You can't tell me anything I don't know about Richard, Flora says. Even before we were married I knew he had a nasty streak. I fell for that macho crap. His ruthlessness appealed to me. It took a little while to realise he was a total cunt.

Dylan raises his head. His eyes are hugely magnified behind his visor. Flora thinks he looks a bit alarmed. He doesn't say anything. He returns his attention to the painting.

Flora isn't familiar with most of the work stored by ArtFlux. None of it is by Richard's artists of course – that is the point. But she has also been away from London a long time, and it shows. She needs to get up to speed. She needs to be fighting-fit again. She can smell young blood mixed in with linseed and turpentine; up and coming talent in their twenties and thirties clamouring at the horizon, raising dust at the periphery of her vision, ready to charge pell-mell and stomp her into the dirt. If they can, they will. She knows it; she's been there.

This dint? she hears Dylan asking. She turns back and his head has stopped toing and froing. It hovers above a single spot. She recognises a tiny depression thrown into sharp relief by the raking light. I threw a palette knife, she says, he dodged.

Dylan nods. Okey-dokey, I'll make a note.

Flora looks away again. "Just put intention of the artist."

Dylan writes it on the form. He looks thoughtful for a moment then adds a word or two more. He downs the biro, releases his scalp from the visor, taps his fingertips together and speaks. Brilliant – otherwise we're all shipshape. Let's get it on to the rack and we're done. He takes his two corners. A good day, Flora, I appreciate your personal input. And we're very happy to have you here. I hope we can continue to look after you in the future.

Flora smiles. I'd be great for business too, she thinks, and takes up her two corners. They lift and steer towards the extended racking. It is lovely to meet up again, Dylan. And I really like what I see here. Super efficient – but personal. Nice.

Dylan blinks. Thank you, Flora. It means a lot to hear that from you.

She grins, a shade strained as she concentrates. "And please call me Florrie, like old times. I'm trying to go back to Florrie – Flor-rah sounds pompous. Richard always insisted on it. They stoop and rest the stretcher against the rack. Dylan reaches for the white cotton tapes that will secure it. She touches his sleeve. Please don't think I'm using you just to avoid Richard, she says. I'm completely independent now. I'm not in a hurry to find myself another dealer. I'm keeping the business side of things under my own control, but I need to know good people are backing me up. People who have no intention of ripping me off. Or worse. I trust you, Dylan, or I wouldn't be here.  But more than that, I know you'll store and ship my paintings and at the end of the day send an invoice – you don't want a piece of my soul, Dylan. I can do without the blood-suckers."

Dylan threads the first tape over the canvas and pulls it through the wire mesh, tying it behind. She knows he gets exactly what she means; he needn't agree out loud. She supports the lower edge of the stretcher. He ties off the second tape. And I keep the commission, she says more lightly. How do dealers do that? More than half the deal for what? Schmoozing fat patrons? Well, I think I'm equipped to do that for myself, thank you. She lets go and stands clear, allowing Dylan space to adjust the ties. When we were first married, the business taking the lion's share of my sales didn't seem to matter. It was all to the good. As long as I was making sales I couldn't care less. And what I did get seemed like a fortune. But after a while, especially after we moved down to Cornwall, I realised I wasn't a proper partner in the set-up. And worse than that, because I was his wife I didn't even get the respect due to the lousiest of Richard's other clients ...

Dylan sniffs. Miriam?

Bless her, says Flora. "Not even as much respect as Miriam. I was his cash cow, that's all – his personal Goose that laid the Golden Eggs. Day in, day out, I painted and he shipped to collectors. He didn't look at what I'd done. Didn't even look!"

Dylan slips off his gloves. Nothing I hear about Richard surprises me, Flora.

Most of the time, I think he had no idea what I was actually producing. He kept me in the studio while he did the business in London and New York and Moscow and Tokyo. I didn't meet anyone at all. And he never let me show anything! He said he already had his established patrons – in fact, he told me it was better for business that I didn't show because he didn't want touchy collectors getting upset and jealous about my work being available to every Tom, Dick and Harry.

Dylan shakes his head. "That's nonsense. I don't think he wanted you to be seen because he was jealous. It doesn't sound like good business to me – more like a control thing."

Flora throws up her arms. Control! – that's Richard all over! Married to your dealer, Dylan – that's the worst thing an artist could possibly be. Her arms return to her flanks with an exaggerated thwack. Well, apart from just divorced from your dealer.

Dylan trundles the rack back into its retracted position. The dancing horned man disappears into the ranks of other canvas. Not an easy split then? he asks.

You must know! Flora's head swings and her eyes spark. Doesn’t everyone fucking know!

He shrugs but she is well aware of how tongues wag and how the advantage has all been Richard's. He has orchestrated a campaign to discredit her. He has unashamedly deployed his friends, his artists and his buyers as adversaries. Dylan must have heard the terrible things said against her. Before he takes his hand away from the rack, she places her fingers lightly on his forearm. Surely he realises it is all lies. The split was awful. Richard saw to that. Her eyes wax large. But I didn't know the half of what was to come. She lets her lips pout just a little. "Driving me out of house and home and rubbishing my name wasn't enough for him! No one walks – no one escapes Richard Cato so easily – he wasn't having that! And he knew exactly how he could get to me. Not sticks and stones – I'm a big girl; I can cope with all that nonsense. He knew what would really hurt me – he took my paintings! Her fingers tighten. Anything I couldn't pack into a portfolio and throw in the taxi he locked up and declared property of his fucking gallery. She looks into the rafters, screwing her eyes against the bright fluorescents. The sheer hell I've been through, Dylan, to get my own pictures back. She drops her head and meets his gaze again, squeezes his wrist to emphasise her point. She holds on. Hard. Richard wants everything. He wants to take and take, and he wants absolute, unquestioning obedience. As far as he was concerned, everything on Richard Cato Fine Art's books was his and I was no longer even entitled to see it – my own work. I couldn't finish the canvas I'd been working on."

Dylan slides his arm free. He gently rubs his wrist bones. It's a dog-eat-dog business, alright, Flora. It must have been difficult.

She smiles, appreciative of his understanding, his obvious sympathy. "That's when I got disillusioned. When I saw it all as brutal and ugly. The people I thought were my friends, they're all Richard's cronies – his artists, his collectors, his patrons, the writers and journalists and curators he has in his pockets. They stick together. They know which side their bread's buttered. For six months after I fled from home I thought of nothing but getting out; taking the money I had left and starting all over again. Just saying, fuck you all. This time last year I was determined I was finished with painting and the whole loathsome art scene."

Dylan shakes his head. No, not you. Flora.

Yes, me. She imagines that comes as a big shock to him. Such fraught words from so consummate an artist; a woman recognised for her strength of conviction. Don't worry, she says, relaxing into the swoop of her coat, "I lasted a few weeks sitting on my arse moping and I was absolutely sure; sure I couldn't not paint. So here I am, all on my own. Still painting but determined to leave all the shit behind. And that's why I'm playing my game, Dylan – not seeing any of those people, staying away from them as long as I possibly can. Every week that goes by, every month, I get more of myself back. She leans in, face to face. I get tougher."

Dylan stares and blinks. After a moment she retreats and he asks How did you get the paintings back?

"Ha! I fought, Dylan. I fought. She nods emphatically, once, twice, three times. As part of the divorce settlement I got every single canvas. It was a war of attrition – you'd not believe the rigmarole: Sotheby's stuck a finger in the wind and gave us an estimate. Our lawyers agreed a price. I bought my own paintings – full market price. Richard took his 60% and paid me my 40%. My team sued for half his 60%. His team sued for half my 40%. Fuck-king mad. Groucho Marx should have been my brief!"

But you got your paintings.

I wasn't going to blink first. Richard thought he couldn't lose. Richard never loses. But I've got my 23 paintings. And a bit more than half my money back. And I know Richard is as pissed off as ever he's been in his whole selfish life. And that makes me very happy.

Dylan laughs. Flora joins in, pleased he's enjoyed the recounting of her courage and tenacity. All done, he says.That's me for today. I just need to hand over to the nightwatch. Do you fancy a swift drink, Flora? We can finish the business stuff in more comfort ... or at least in the warm.

She thinks for a moment. Okay, she says, but just the one: Big Day tomorrow.

Chapter two

The pub is across the road from the warehouse, a sole survivor of the Blitz or Sixties town planners. After one drink she renews her excuses. Dylan is a sweet man but their relationship is going to remain strictly business. She leaves him with a kiss on the cheek and the reassurance he is essential to her plans. She hurries out. A few paces down the street her mouth bows into a smile. How can she help it? She snatches a look back towards the pub. He hasn't left immediately after her. That's as she thought. He'll wait a while. He'll go up to the bar for one more and the landlord will leer at him. Wow, who was that? Don't I know...? he'll ask. Then Dylan will enjoy telling him, Flora Lee, OBE, the famous artist, he'll say. An old friend – a really good friend. The landlord will raise an eyebrow and stop mopping at the bar with his cloth. Never, he'll say,she's not one of those scruffy-arsed painters of yours? A low whistle. I thought she was someone off the telly.

Good for Dylan, Flora thinks. Let him bask in his moment of reflected glory. He's sincere. He's honest. And there's no awkwardness between them. If she had stayed he would have made a pass, of course. This way Dylan doesn't lose face: he can reiterate his favoured status to the landlord and enjoy imagining the outcome of an evening when Flora doesn't have to hurry off.

The truth is, she has got a big day tomorrow, but things have not changed in twenty years: Dylan can imagine what he likes; he is not a whisker nearer to her bed. Flora Lee sleeps with beautiful people. The most beautiful. There are no exceptions. Beauty is her thing. Beauty rests at her core. It could only be contaminated by intimacy with someone like Dylan.

She is drawn to talent and success of course (and it pleases her to believe they often go hand-in-hand with exceptional looks) but achievement cannot match beauty. The poorest ignorant peasant is set apart from the mass of humanity if they have beauty. Before she was married to Richard Cato, Flora's own striking appearance allowed her ultimate choice in sexual partners, and now she is again a free agent she has returned to the selective habits of her youth. Her passions are short. Whether intense or frivolous, she does not prolong affaires. Fresh responses are what she craves. – and the reassurance that there are exquisite experiences in a dull hostile world. Lovers are not kept long enough for Flora to understand what miserable thoughts defile a stunning body, what jealousies and bitterness will crease that flawless face. Little more than 12 months after the split, 15 years of faithful marriage seem utterly impossible, a timeline from a parallel, alien universe – that episode of Star Trek where Mr Spock sports a fetching devil beard.

ArtFlux's warehouse is not so far from the new flat Flora has occupied as a convenient pied-à-terre and, though she barely knows the way, she is going to walk. Taxis are a second home when she's not actually painting. Now she's back in London there are so many meetings and appointments, and a rule of nature always places the next person she needs to see at the opposite end of town. A stroll will do her good. She needs to concentrate her thoughts. The Big Day has been playing on her mind. She really should get her head straight.

Flora approaches a cluster of big metal sheds that sprawls out to hide the warehouse and pub from the main road. The business signs are in garish colours and extruded fonts; the sort used by high street print shops but never by graphic designers. They conjure up light engineering, distribution depots and suppliers of parts to the trade. Poor sods; the drudgery, Flora thinks, the awful tedium. It is 8 o'clock, dark and chilly and edging towards drizzle. Everyone has gone home. They're nine-to-fivers, or maybe they're at the eight-till-four end of things; blokes who arrive nursing bad heads and queasy tummies before it's properly light and leave for the boozer before the afternoon is properly into its stride. Flora has never worked fixed hours. She doubts if she ever could, even if that lifestyle does seem enviably simple. Flora is driven. People who ask if she hankers after eight-hour days, weekends off and six weeks annual leave, do not understand what driven means. What would she do on holiday? Sit on the beach? Go for walks in the hills? Painting – few people realise – isn't only physically exhausting it requires 100% of the brain engaged 24/7. She can't just switch off. And she has always been a grafter. It takes more than mere blood, sweat and tears to realize her pictures. Flora may not have squeezed a tube or lifted a paintbrush for months, but she cannot escape the curse of her creative mind, not even for a moment. It wants all the time, it never stops demanding – her hungry brain. She could laugh out loud when others assume her life is one long round of glamorous opening parties – and people are so very, very mistaken about the money. Whether the market is buoyant, like now, or flat as a pancake doesn't ever enter her head. It isn't about the money. She really couldn't give a tossabout the money. If it meant she never made another penny, she will hold on to her artistic integrity. The cynicism that has shabbied the business in recent years will not rub off on her. Let her contemporaries cash-in and sell-out; Flora works with absolute conviction – what else does she have? If ever she stopped believing in the power of her work to inspire, to touch people deep down inside themselves, she might as well be desked-up and selling plumbing supplies at one of these builders' merchants.

Often she paints through a whole day, a whole night and all of the following day, then sleeps a couple of days without waking. She might not go to bed at all, but curl up for a kip on the models' couch in her studio instead. Richard didn't care if she came to bed, not for the last few years of their marriage at least, and there wasn't anyone else around at middle-of-nowhere Foweybridge to take notice of her habits. But now things will be different. She has her new 'post' and, in all probability, things are set to change. Tomorrow she stops being that floating thing artist and becomes anchored by the suffix in residence. For the first time since leaving art school, she might find herself needing to fit in with regular hours and conventions, the comings and goings of someone else's institution. The way they do things. God help her, the rules. Can she catnap at lunchtime and work all night? She doesn't know yet. Just how she'll get on in the year to come – react to this unfamiliar reigning-in – is a worry. Half her instinct keeps yelling she's made the biggest mistake of her career. The other half whispers, a little gingerly, Flora, it's just what you need.

She'll go along with that. After all, she's suffered it's natural that someone like Flora should want to run fast and free, kick over the traces and scatter anything in her way, when what would be good for her is a little care and nurturing – people looking out for her until she's properly back up on her feet again. She is, she suspects, much more fragile than she lets on, or chooses to believe herself.

Beyond the big sheds it's eerily quiet, and a speck of doubt that this is the right way to go is growing and beginning to nag at her. There's no telling one dark shed from another, but that orangey glow above the straggling sycamores has to be street lamps, doesn't it? So that must be the main road, right? Between here and there is a patch of scrubby wasteland that Flora needs to cross and what she'd taken for a path is only indistinct sections of old asphalt broken