Ever since she was little, Ivy Pearson had imagined escaping Fox Bay, the tiny coastal town where she had spent her entire life. She had pictured a grand farewell. A tearful, cinematic departure at the train station. Her mum, begging her to stay, to reconsider leaving them for art school. Her little sister Liv, wailing, promising that she’d keep her side of the bedroom tidy if only Ivy would stay. Her best friend Raye, clinging to her, telling Ivy that life without her would be dull and boring. Teachers apologising for misunderstanding her creative genius. The cool kids admitting they had always secretly been jealous of her.
Because this wasit. This was Ivy’s goodbye to Fox Bay with all its quirks and bizarre traditions and anyone who didn’t understand her artistic genius. She was going to Cornwall Art College in Truro, where she could finally start her new life as a painter and, she thought hopefully, as muse to an artist as brooding and introspective as herself.
In the event, her send-off committee had consisted only of her mum and Liv, waving cheerfully and asking her to text whenshe arrived. Raye had already left for her textiles course in Glasgow. No one had cried and no one had begged her to stay. It had all been considerably less dramatic than Ivy had thought.
And Ivycertainlyhadn’t imagined returning to Fox Bay with her tail between her legs less than three months later.
When she had set off for art school, Ivy hadn’t exactly considered where she would spend the holidays. Perhaps one of her cool new friends would ask her to stay in their New York apartment or she would have been given an internship at a gallery in Paris. None of that had materialised. The many galleries she wrote to never replied. Three months in, her social life at college was best described as a disaster. And she had nowhere else to go but home.
So here she was, still in her ratty rainbow-striped cardigan, her long, red hair still wavy and unmanageable, still driving her mum’s old Fiat 500, still winding her way through the streets of a town she had spent years dreaming of leaving.
Cornwall Art College had not been exactly what Ivy had imagined. Yes, the buildings were beautiful, smart and modern. Yes, there were impossibly cool people with blunt fringes who discussed art theory over their sandwiches. Yes, the teachers wore long scarves and were terrifyingly intelligent. And yes, after years of feeling like a fish out of water, Ivy was finally among people as creative as herself. But for some reason, nothing about art college was clicking the way she had thought it would.
Part of the issue, Ivy thought as she bemoaned the lack of a functioning heater in the car, was that she hadn’t been able toafford to live in the college halls. Instead, her mum had found her a room that was miles from the college on the top floor of an elderly couple’s house. It meant Ivy never seemed to be invited to the cool parties, where, presumably, intense artistic conversations were happening over red wine. And she’d failed to become anyone’s muse.
Correction. Shehadbeen someone’s muse, for a few short weeks. Raff from London, with cheekbones and a leather jacket, had asked her for coffee on the first day and they had instantly bonded over their love of Neo-Expressionism. For a few blissful weeks, it had been all Ivy had imagined – intense, 3 a.m. conversations about the meaning of life and whether it would have been better to be an artist in 1920s Paris or 1960s New York. But then Raff had dumped her at a toga party with the immortal line, ‘I just don’t think you’re my muse, Ivy,’ right before disappearing off into the sunset (or rather into the student union bar) with another first-year called Aurélie who –oui– was French and had transferred to Truro from the Beaux-Arts. She even wore aberet. How could Ivy Pearson, resolutely ordinary, from just up the road in Fox Bay, possibly compete?
To cap it all off, Ivy thought, as she forced the car into gear up the hill between her mum’s flat and the centre of town, passing the post office with its traditional hideous winter snowscape, her art was a flop. Unlike her adoring Sixth Form art teacher, Miss Wheeldon, her new tutors didn’t seem to think much of it at all. She was beginning to wonder if venturing out of the small pond of Fox Bay might have been a massive mistake.
In Fox Bay, at least Ivy had stood out. In a sea of tanned surfer kids, she and her best friend Raye were the striking, artistic types, with their love of indie music and ripped jeans. At college, it seemed thateveryonesaw themselves as striking, artistic types. Ivy was just one of many. Her heavy fringe and paint-spattered DM boots were practically a uniform at art college. And, far from being blown away by her work, her fellow students seemed almost … underwhelmed.
‘I just don’t reallygetit,’ drawled a tall, elegant girl called Imogen, when Ivy had presented her piece to the class, halfway through term. ‘It’s not speaking to me, you know, authentically?’
‘Yeah,’ said Raff, his arm slung round Aurélie. ‘I feel like your concepts are confused, Ivy. Maybe you need to be less rigid in your approach.’
Less rigid?What did that mean? Ivy understood that being an artist meant dealing with critics. But it seemed that no matter how hard she worked, her work was somehow lacking. As the first term drew to a close, as crit after crit had ended badly and the winter break loomed, she’d felt uneasy; that she wasn’t making the most of the opportunity she had wanted since she was little. Shehadto succeed. Art college was everything she had ever dreamed of. Her big chance. She couldn’t fail at the first hurdle – could she?
Her final tutorial of the term had taken place in the large first-year studio that smelled of turpentine. The end of term meant the submission of their first long-form project, a major piece of coursework. Everyone else had spread their work acrossthe long tables or hooked up projectors to display audio-visual work.
Ivy had known before she walked in that her project wasn’t great. Sheepishly, she had fiddled with the sketches and mumbled behind her curtain of red hair aboutpermanenceandephemerality. The unimpressed silence that greeted her explanation said it all really.
‘Stay behind, will you, Ivy?’ her tutor Jess had said casually as the other students packed up to go. Jess had glossy black curls and wore jumpsuits with bold prints. She used phrases like ‘let’s try digging deeper into your practice’. She also didn’t suffer fools or floundering students. Ivy was starting to suspect she was one.
Ivy sat while the last students had left the room. Then she watched and cringed while Jess had slowly flicked through the half-empty pages of her sketchbook, frowning.
‘So,’ Jess said gently at last, closing the book, and turning her piercing green eyes on Ivy. ‘This final project. It’s worth thirty per cent of your overall grade you know.’
‘Yeah,’ said Ivy uncomfortably.
‘Remind me of the thesis here, will you?’ Jess tapped Ivy’s sketchbook with one black-painted nail.
Ivy scrambled for the words she had used earlier. ‘I was thinking about … exploring the relationship between impermanence and the – the ephemerality of self.’ Even as she said it, she wanted to cry. What did that evenmean?
Jess nodded thoughtfully. ‘Right. Impermanence. Ephemerality. Aren’t they kind of the same thing?’
Ivy swallowed. ‘Um. Yes?’
There was another silence and then Jess had leaned forward. ‘Listen, Ivy. I know the first term at college can feel overwhelming. Especially with commuting and living off-campus. I’m very sympathetic to that, believe me. But this project is important. You know that, right? It’s your summative work for the first term. You can see how hard everyone else has worked. Ithasto be signed off when you get back after break. It is crucial to your overall mark for the year.’
Ivy nodded mutely.
‘And to be blunt,’ Jess continued, ‘right now, I don’t see aproject. I don’t seeanything.’
Harsh, Ivy thought. But, she had to admit, possibly fair.
‘You’ve got the technical skill, of course,’ Jess went on. ‘There’s no doubt about that. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t. Your line work is excellent, really extraordinary – some of the best I’ve seen. But this course isn’t about being good at drawing. It’s about putting yourself out there, allowing yourself to be vulnerable.’ She tapped the sketchbook again. ‘At the moment, something isn’t working.’
Ivy bit her lip. The worst thing was that Jess wasn’t being unkind; she was being honest.
