LITMIR.BIZ

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she thought she might pass out if it wasn’t for Scott’s strong arms holding her upright.

      But how could she explain without giving away a secret that she had sworn to her parents that she would never tell anyone unless she had to?

      Toni closed her eyes and listened to the sound of Scott’s heartbeat. It was strong and clear and it beat for her and only her. She was certain of that now.

      It was so hard to step back from Scott but she could still feel his arms around her as she whispered, ‘I need to show you something. Okay?’

      Sliding away, she took hold of Scott’s hand and with one quick smile she led him into the bedroom and gestured for him to sit on the bed.

      ‘If this is a lingerie display I may have to call Freya and tell her that I’m missing dinner.’

      With a quick chuckle, Toni shook her head. ‘Sorry to disappoint you, but this is more of an art display.’

      Toni knelt down next to her bed and tugged an old battered leather suitcase out from underneath. Taking a long juddery breath, Toni slowly pressed the metal sliders away and felt the lid of the suitcase spring up as the pressure was released.

      Suddenly exhausted, Toni sat on the floor next to the suitcase with her back pressed against the bed and her legs outstretched in front of her.

      Slowly and with shaking hands, she lifted the suitcase lid and sat for a few moments in silence. Staring back at her was the sweet smiling face of the nine-year-old Amy. It was the last portrait that she had ever painted and signed under her own name. Lifting up the thin wooden light canvas, Toni smiled and stroked the edges as a freckle-faced happy girl with long hair and a turned-up nose and missing teeth grinned back at her.

      When she finally found the words Toni was speaking more towards the picture than to Scott but she knew that he was listening.

      ‘Every brush stroke of this painting was a delight. Our annual holiday had been in Cornwall for a couple of weeks the summer after I turned seventeen and we had all gone down to the beach for the afternoon. That was a rare event in itself. My father hated the sun and would much rather have stayed inside working on a commission he had to deliver the following week. It had been going too slowly and he couldn’t seem to concentrate on the work so Mother had suggested that he take the afternoon off.’

      Toni smiled to herself. ‘It turned out to be a wonderful day of happy relaxed laughter and fun and sheer pleasure. Not too hot. Not too windy. Perfect blue skies and golden sandy beach. It was only natural that I should take some photographs of Amy and my parents. I had never intended them to become sketches or paintings. But somehow the moment I lifted the camera and pointed it towards Amy everything changed. I called out her name...Amy turned towards me.’

      Toni flicked both hands in the air. ‘And bam. Just like that, I knew that the photograph would be wonderful. Not just good. But special and amazing. And that feeling was so astonishing and overwhelming that I started to cry.’

      ‘Cry? Why were you crying? Didn’t that make you happy?’

      ‘Yes. Amazingly, wonderfully happy. But it was sad at the same time. All my life I had been focusing and training on one thing—to be a painter and true artist like my parents. And in that moment, looking down that camera lens, I realized that it was all for nothing. Because I had never once felt that way with anything that I had painted. Not once. I could paint professionally any day of the week. And that’s not being immodest. It was the truth. But taking that photograph changed everything.’

      She glanced over her shoulder at Scott and smiled through the tears that were streaming down her face. ‘Until then I was Antonia Baldoni, little daughter of Aldo and Emily Baldoni. Painters. Artists. But that moment made me realize that I could take everything I had learnt and apply it to creating portraits and paintings with more than canvas and paint. I had found my passion. Just like you found yours.

      ‘I was so excited that I was jumping up and down and laughing and crying at the same time and generally making my parents fearful that something terrible had happened. I couldn’t wait to tell them. I thought that they would be so excited that I had found the artist in me.’

      ‘Oh, Toni. I know where this is going. My poor girl.’

      Her head dropped. ‘It came as a bit of a shock to realize that everything I believed about being part of a family of artists until that second was completely wrong. They were not excited for me at all. In fact they were horrified. Speechless with shock and horror. They felt it was a betrayal of my legacy. And then there was my dad’s work...’

      Her hands got busy lining up the edges of sheets of her sketches and notebooks inside the suitcase. She focused on the gold-edged papers so that when Scott shuffled closer she could pretend that a collection of ragged teenage work was far more interesting than the man whose trouser leg was only inches away from her shoulder.

      ‘What about your dad’s work?’

      She pulled out a sketchbook and started casually flicking through it, not ready to look into his face.

      Her fingers paused at one particular drawing and she ran the pad of her forefinger down the edge of the smooth paper she liked to work on.

      ‘Have you ever heard of the studio system? No? The old masters used to train young artists as a way of making some extra income. They all did it. The more famous you were, the more parents were prepared to pay to have their children study with you and work in the studio.’

      She lifted her chin and gestured towards the next room where the art supplies were kept. ‘I remember a time when there were always three or four art students from the local college hanging around, making tea and preparing canvases and now and again my dad would let them make sketches on a sitting with a client. So he could critique their work. Show them how to develop the idea into a painting. Maybe even work on a background for one of his portraits. If they were very good.’

      Tears pricked the corners of her eyes and she wiped them away with the back of her knuckle.

      ‘Fame is a fickle thing, Scott. One day everyone loves your work and the next? You’re history and nobody wants to hire you because the exciting new style is all the fashion and who needs their portrait painted? That’s why cameras were invented.’

      She felt his body lift from the bed as the hard springs squeaked in protest and suddenly Scott was sitting on the floor next to her, his back so tall against the divan.

      His left hand slid sideways and as she glanced down all the weight and strength that Scott possessed seemed to flow through those fingers as they meshed with hers.

      ‘He resented you for leaving him.’

      She nodded. ‘I was his last apprentice. The student who was going to make her mark in the world and show the art establishment just how powerful fine painting could be. I was going to lead the next generation of Baldoni portrait painters proudly forward.’

      Her head dropped and she picked up Amy’s portrait with her left hand. ‘I painted this when I was seventeen. By then I was working every night after school in the studio and doing nearly all of my dad’s canvases. My weekends and every day of the school holidays were spent in that studio.’

      She shook her head and blew out hard. ‘I was his apprentice so it made sense for me to be there for the sittings so that I could paint the backgrounds and clothing on his portraits. He always worked on the fine detail. Afterwards. But as I got older and he got more disillusioned and depressed about how much photography was taking over, I found that he was leaving me to work on the few commissions that were coming in.’

      Scott breathed in through his nose. ‘You were doing the work. Weren’t you? You were painting those amazing portraits and he was passing them off as his work. Oh, Toni.’

      His fingers squeezed hers for one last time then slid away and moved around her waist so that he could draw her to him.

      ‘It didn’t feel like that,’ she replied and rested her head on his shoulder. ‘I loved the work and wanted to learn

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