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“You shouldn’t be nervous,” Finn says quietly. Now she has to look at him, her eyes finding his instantly. “If anyone can convince her, it’s you.”
She makes a scathing sound at the back of her throat. “You don’t know her.”
“I don’t have to. I know you.”
She hesitates, not sure what to do with that, given it’s so obviously sincere. She opens her mouth, closes it. Then nods. “Thank you.”
He smiles and she looks away, thankful for the excuse of concentrating on her bauble.
Freya, Kristen, and Susan all come back from the toilets together, Susan’s arm looped through Kristen’s.
“What did we miss?” Susan asks brightly, taking the seat that Kristen slides out for her.
“Lillian Hart likes compliments,” Hattie says immediately.
Susan nods, pursing her lips. “Good to know.”
Freya throws down her paintbrush almost the moment she sits down. “I can’t do it,” she moans, accompanying the action with a stamp of her foot. At what age does the foot stamp become unacceptable, Mel wonders? Nine, ten? Definitely by your late twenties—that’s for sure.
“Yes, you can,” Kristen says patiently. “You’re doing it.”
“It doesn’t look like I want it to.”
“Well, it just takes practice—that’s all. I still think it’s beautiful.”
“It’s better than mine, Freya-bean,” Mark pipes up, holding up his bauble, which does, admittedly, look terrible. Mel thinks the green blobs are supposed to be Christmas trees, but it’s kind of hard to be sure.
Freya folds her arms, and points with her eyes to Mel’s bauble. “I want mine to look like that.”
Finn grins at Freya. “Don’t we all, Freya. But Mel is an artist. Isn’t that right, pumpkin?”
Mark rolls his eyes. “You could at least keep the nicknames seasonally appropriate.”
Mel shakes her head. “Besides, I’m not an artist.” But he’s called her that before—was the first one to announce that as her title, in a way that made her feel more proud than she’d let on. Although these days she is very much more practical businesswoman than tortured artist.
“She makes jewelry for a job,” Finn tells Freya, whose eyes widen, like she can’t imagine anything like it.
“You get paid to make jewelry?”
“Ah…sort of.”
Freya nods slowly. “I want to do that.” Then she scowls down at her bauble, as if it’s the destruction of all her future dreams. Mel does her best not to laugh, can see Mark doing the same.
“It’s hard when things go wrong,” she says to Freya. “I can be a bit of a perfectionist too sometimes.”
Freya’s scowl is still in place when she looks up at Mel, though her eyes have turned a little quizzical.
“A perfectionist is someone who needs things to be perfect,” Kristen says.
“How about I help you with yours?” Mel says. “We can do it together.” She coaxes Freya back into picking up a paintbrush, notices the way Kristen is watching, and feels a bit self-conscious. What if that’s against some kind of rule—are you supposed to let children figure it out themselves when they throw a tantrum like this? She wouldn’t have a clue.
There’s quiet as they all put the finishing touches on their baubles, Mel sacrificing the perfect blue hue in favor of helping Freya with her stars.
“Ta-da!” Hattie announces, holding up her bauble. It’s a mass of color—green and red and gold and silver.
“It’s…lovely.” Susan says. She stems a laugh as she looks at Mark’s. “My children, such undiscovered painters.”
“I was thinking abstract,” Hattie says with a shrug.
