When Martino moves off to the next student, Leo hooks his pinkie around mine and tows me to the back of the room.
‘Look at this.’ He slides his phone towards me.
There’s a portrait on the screen; a delicate, drippy watercolour with whole stretches of white space left bare. The features are only hinted at: a blur of cheekbone, the suggestion of an eye, colour bleeding downthe page. It feels unfinished, fragile … yet somehow powerful.
I touch a finger to the screen. ‘I love it. Not yours though, right?’
‘Nope. Take a guess.’
I groan into his shoulder. ‘Oh, don’t you start interrogating me. I didn’t study art history, remember?’
‘You’re the only one who’s bothered about that, Nessie. Anyway, it was a trick question. You’d never guess. Because … it’s my mum’s.’
He zooms out to show me a younger Veronica standing in front of the painting, maybe university-aged, already stylish, already in monochrome.
‘You googled her?’
‘Yeah. I found this buried on page ten of the results. I was about to give up.’
Buried like her art, I think.
It’s different to Martino’s formal commissions, or Leo’s reinvented classics. It’s nothing like my myth-inspired digital work, either. But that’s the beauty of it – how much space it leaves, how much it lets you feel without spelling everything out.
‘Wow,’ I whisper. ‘I wonder what this school would be like if your dad wasn’t running it behind the scenes.’
Leo and I grab fried mozzarella sandwiches from a takeaway instead of going back to the palazzo for dinner. The wrapping’s already see-through with oil, but our hands find each other between bites, and we don’t even care when our greasy fingers tangle together.
‘Ready for a real tour of Venice?’ He steers me into a lowsottoportego, a shadowy passage beneath a row of palazzos. It takes my eyes a moment to adjust and then I see it – a Tintoretto-style Madonna with chunky headphones, dancing like she’s at a silent disco. Her colours have disappeared almost entirely into the brick.
‘I remember when you posted this one!’ I gasp. ‘It’s faded a lot though.’
‘I thought it would be more protected from the salt air under here, but …’ He shrugs. ‘That’s street art.’
We keep walking, Leo showing me more pieces he’s shared on the app, until he comes to a halt in the middle of a bridge. I glance around, unsure what I’msupposed to be looking at.
Leo nudges me and gestures to his feet.
I clutch his arm. ‘No! Is this the Sketchy and Rebel bridge?’ I lean out as if to peer under it, but he tugs me back, laughing, and keeps me close.
‘That’s its official name now, obviously. I’ll walk across it every day after you leave.’
Reality sinks in. We only have a few more days together.
‘Hey.’ He nuzzles my neck. ‘We’ve already nailed long-distance, remember?’
He pulls up our Art Exchange DMs and loops his arms around me, the screen held out in front of us.
We fill in the blanks as we scroll, laughing at the times we were sitting right across from each other without knowing it.
I point to one of my messages:Help! I’m already seeing fairy-tale people everywhere.
‘I was talking about you and your mum!’ I tip my head back against his chest and sigh. ‘I was so hopeful good things were ahead when I first got here, but it hasn’t exactly worked out that way.’
‘Wow. Bit harsh, Nessie.’
I twist round to press a quick, conciliatory peck to his mouth. ‘Thishas worked out. But if my sister’s friend finds out I’m not in Florence, I’ll be in hugetrouble. Veronica and Silvia will find out, and I won’t get my certificate. Nothing to help me become an artist … or a scientist. My parents will be gutted and Griselda …’ I groan into his neck. ‘She’ll be unbearable.’
Leo tries to reassure me, but we both know there’s nothing he can say.
