Page 52 of The Light Between Worlds

He squeezes my shoulder and leaves the kitchen. Once I’m sure he’s gone, I drop into my chair.

Evelyn’s empty seat across from me is a reproach.

Oh, Evelyn. Come home to us. Be alright. We’ve had our bedtime story with woods and magic, and now I want my happily ever after.

The kettle boils, singing shrilly from the range behind me. I make a cup of tea and I drink it, because I’m not sure what else to do.

Jamie goes out on some sort of Scotland Yard–related business. I offer to go with him, but he says not yet, not when I’ve only just arrived. I don’t argue. I’m glad to be alone, and Mum and Dad show no sign of emerging from their room.

Drawing a bath, I sit on the edge of the tub and stare into the hot water, stirred by ripples from the dripping tap. I don’t want toclimb in. I don’t want to let water touch me ever again, and that’s why I’m doing this now, while an image of the River Went is still fresh in my mind. I learned a long time ago that the best way to overcome fear is to hold its source close.

So I sink into the bath, and the water folds around me like welcoming arms. It laps over my ears, making the sounds of the house softer and indistinct. I stay in as long as I can, trying to steady my nerves, but still scramble out, gasping, without washing my hair.

Then I get dressed, touch up my makeup, and leave, because if the bath was dreadful the silence of the house is worse. I take a bus to Trafalgar Square and hoist myself up between the paws of one of the great bronze lions guarding the base of Nelson’s Column. The light is thick and syrupy, threaded through with traffic sounds, and flocks of pigeons take flight and land like anxious clouds. I pull my coat tight—having damp hair doesn’t help with the cold.

The National Gallery’s imposing portico rises before me. Columns soar up to the roof, higher and thicker than any tree that ever grew in the Woodlands. I remember what the Gallery was like during the war. We visited once in summer, when school was out and we were let home to London for a week as a rare treat. With its lunchtime concerts and temporary exhibitions, the Gallery was the one place where you could go to forget the bombs and the blackouts and the air raids. It was the one place where I could forget how lost Evelyn and I still were, struggling to sort out how to come home when no one knew we’d ever gone away.

I want to forget now, so I climb down from my perch and hurry up the steps. Inside, I take a guide from a bored girl at the front counter, who’s as blond-haired and pink-lipped as a china doll.

“Only an hour till closing,” she yawns. “Don’t take your time.”

It’s been years since I was last at the Gallery, and some of the bomb-damaged rooms are still shut for repairs. I leaf through the guide until I find what I’m searching for, then move purposefully through the rooms, not allowing the pictures hanging on every wall to distract me from my goal.

I find her with the rest of the Rembrandts, in a room that’s nearly deserted. There she is, linen hem pulled up to her thighs, about to move further into the river that already laps around her legs. Stepping up to her, I tilt my head to one side, looking for answers in her inscrutable face. Once upon a time, I thought I knew what she was thinking and feeling. She was a comfort and a guiding star, but now I mistrust that serene smile, those pale limbs exposed to the deceptively calm water.

I stand looking at her for so long, trying to divine the truth of her expression and her posture, that the room’s only other visitor joins me.

My companion is an older woman, with steel-grey hair and paper-white skin that shows the veins beneath it. She has a stern air, and doesn’t look at me but at the painting my attention is fixed on.

“What do you think of Rembrandt’sWoman Bathing in a Stream?” the stranger asks.

I cross my arms. “Once I thought she was beautiful, and confident. I thought she was someone I wanted to be. But I don’t trust her anymore. What if it’s all just for show? Look at her face—she’s smiling, but is she really happy? It’s impossible to tell.”

The woman next to me keeps her eyes fixed on the painting, but her thin mouth curves into a smile. “Do you know what makes apainting not just a picture, but a masterpiece?”

I could give a textbook answer, after years of studying art on my own time and a term of art history in America, but I have a feeling that’s not what this woman is looking for. “Why don’t you tell me?”

She steps forward and narrows her eyes, inspecting the bather critically. “It’s that you don’t just see what the artist painted. You look at his work, and you can’t help but see a bit of yourself, as well. A bit of truth.”

I’m not satisfied with that. “But I don’t know what her truth is anymore.”

The older woman turns her head to glance over one shoulder at me. “That’s a truth in itself, realizing that there’s more to others than meets the eye. At any rate, your bather’s coming down for a cleaning this week. Perhaps in a month or two, once she’s freshened up, she’ll have more to tell you.”

“Oh, please be careful with her,” I blurt out before I can check myself.

The woman turns entirely, so we’re facing each other for the first time. She fixes me with the same critical stare she’d given the Rembrandt. “If she unsettles you, why does it matter?”

I bite my lip and look past her, to the bather’s lovely face. “Because all things should be treated with care, not just the ones I understand. I may not like her as much as I did when I thought her straightforward, but she still deserves respect. Things that mean something always do.”

There’s guilt in my stomach and sweat on my palms, and I can’t meet this stranger’s eyes. But to my surprise, the woman holds out a small card.

“I’m Presswick,” she says. “I oversee the Gallery’s Conservation Department, and happen to be looking for a general assistant. If you’re at all interested, I think we could be of service to each other. Take my card and think it over.”

“I’ll need some time,” I answer carefully, though the idea of spending days sorting myself out in my parents’ house with all of Evelyn’s empty spaces haunting me is a terrible one. “There are family matters I’m in the city attending to. How soon do you want an answer?”

Presswick smiles, her stern face softening just a little. “Take as long as you like, Miss—”

“Hapwell. Philippa Hapwell.”