Chapter 4

"He’s a murderer," Lois said. "Mr Marek ending up with both those jobs is more than a coincidence. He’s clearly done away with Mr Billings and Miss Featherdale for his own career gain."

"Fotheringay."

"Whatever. You need to start investigating the Strange Disappearance of Ethel Fotheringay." Lois made it sound like the title of a detective novel.

Sera vaguely remembered someone mentioning that the missing art teacher’s name was Elsie but didn’t bother to correct Lois. "I can think of any number of reasons why he might have ended up with more than one art teaching job. Going down to the job centre and applying for all art teaching jobs for starters."

They were sitting at a table under a tree. It was lunchtime and the weather was fortunately mellow that day. Deep gold autumn sunlight and a clear, icy blue sky. Sera imagined the colours that would be used to paint it, mentally mixing up a palette.

Joel was sketching a coat onto the paper bag his sandwich had been in. "I hardly think teaching us lot would be described as career gain. I wonder why he’s really here. He’s an actual artist, isn’t he?"

"Apparently so." Sera wondered how Joel knew. She hadn’t mentioned Jasper’s revelation to them, not wanting to give them the idea that she was overly interested in their art teacher. Because she found herself frequently wondering about him despite a determined attempt to keep him out of her head.

"I heard one of the other staff mentioning it. Also you needn’t worry about Billy because he is actually on sabbatical. He’s doing something in Florence," Joel said.

"Unless it’s a massive conspiracy and they’re all in on it," Lois said. "Seriously though, what kind of an artist is Sera’s Mr Marek?"

"He’s not my Mr Marek!" Sera protested.

Lois twisted a magenta strand of hair that she had isolated from the other colours. "He glares at you. I suspect that means he’s interested. After all he’s seen you in the buff, hasn’t he? He probably keeps thinking about it. It must be a bit kinky, him now seeing you in your school uniform."

"He glares at me because he hates me," Sera said. "He also thinks I’m useless. He had to practically redraw my last sketch from scratch."

Joel, dissatisfied with his design, crumpled it up. "I can’t comment on him seeing you in the buff, as I haven’t personally had that privilege, but he’s glaring at you because you’re getting to him. Us men are simple creatures. If he merely hated you, he’d find it very easy to ignore you."

Sera picked up the crumpled paper bag and unfolded it. She smoothed it out and gave the design a critical eye. "This is good, you shouldn’t just throw it away. I’d wear it."

"In that case it’s a total failure then since it was supposed to be a man’s coat," Joel told her.

"Let me have a look." Lois grabbed it. "It looks unisex to me. Anyway, back to our new art teacher, I wonder what kind of artist he is? Is he famous?"

Joel shrugged. "I’ll see if I can find out."

Sera silently hoped he would find out more information about Mr Marek. She was more curious than she wanted to admit about him. "His first name’s Tarquin. His father’s Hungarian and he - Mr Marek, that is - has exhibited at the Royal Academy."

Lois shot Joel a smug grin at this. "You have been doing your homework," she said to Sera.

"Not me, one of the other people from the evening class found it out. They think there’s a bit of a mystery about him," Sera told her.

"If there is, we’ll have to solve it. Come on, we’re going to be late for class."

Sera was working on a sketch of Joel while they waited for Mr Marek to arrive for their next lesson. She had drawn both Joel and Lois a dozen or more times before. So she knew the shape of Joel’s eye and the twist of his lips almost by heart.

Lois looked over. "You are getting good," she said. "And fast."

Speed was one of Sera’s goals given her future plans so she was happy to hear this.

"People might even pay for them, if you made them flattering enough," Lois said.

This was also one of Sera’s distant, dearest hopes. "What would you pay for it?" she asked Lois.

"I wouldn’t pay anything for it because you’re my mate and I’d get it for free. But if I wasn’t, I don’t know, maybe five quid? Ten quid, even."

It wasn’t exactly Sotheby’s price level but it was a start. Given that Sera could sketch a reasonable likeness in about five minutes, and have a more complete picture done in ten, if people lined up back-to-back that would be sixty pounds an hour. She started to fantasise about actually doing this, and wondering where she would find clients when a shadow fell over her.

Her pencil froze as the paper was slipped away and held up by Mr Marek, who scrutinised it.

"Did you do this?"

"It’s all mine," Sera told him.

For several seconds he gazed at the paper, his expression unreadable.

His next question took her by surprise. "Why do you leave the faces blank in evening class?"

Sera was disconcerted. "I wanted to do a portraiture class, but…"

"So why choose life drawing?"

Why would he never let her finish? "Because there wasn’t one. I thought life drawing would be the next best thing, and so…"

Mr Marek raised his eyebrows. "So I’m only second best?"

Sera felt her face flame and stared down at the table to hide it. "No. I’m finding the class really productive. I just thought I should concentrate on the figure because I haven’t done that before." She moved her eyes back up to meet his and saw a mocking glint in them. He was amused, not angry.

"If you want to paint portraits, by all means focus on that. I think learning to draw the entire human form would be useful to you as an artist, but you should do what you need to do." He put the sketch back down, and as he left - before Sera could react - he said: "You have considerable talent." His eyes lingered on her for a moment before he left.

Sera was stunned and strangely shaky. As she started to get her other pencils ready for the morning’s exercise, her fingers were shaking. She could tell that Lois and Joel were giving her curious glances but she needed time to process this.

He had said she was talented. He had called her an artist.

Given she had assumed he hated her, this seemed like rare praise.

"Well, well," Joel muttered and Sera kicked him.

"There’s no well well."

"Well, well, well."

Lois was giggling. "You’re the colour of a beetroot. Anyone would think you had a crush on him."

Sera was mortified. "No way. I was just surprised that he didn’t shout at me."

"I’d say he wants to do more than shout at you, the way he looks at you."

It was highly unlikely, as much as Sera would have liked it to be true. They all got on with that day’s exercise.

Sera noticed that Mr Marek spent a lot of time helping Janette, a girl on the other table, who wore hearing aids and also had very thick glasses. Despite this she was quite talented at art, particularly abstract works with lots of bold colour. Mr Billings had tended to ignore her as he liked figurative art and Janette struggled with fine details. Sera was glad to see her finally getting some teaching attention.

"So are we going clubbing this weekend?" Lois whispered.

"Definitely." Hitting the town and getting wasted would be a good way to keep Sera’s mind off things.

"What about you, Joel?"

Joel pretended to shudder. "A night of watching you two dance around your handbags? I don’t think so. They’ve got a guest DJ at Orion, so I’m going there." Orion was unofficially the only gay club in town.

"We don’t carry handbags as you well know, and you ought to talk about embarrassing dancing. One drink and you’re the shame of the town." Lois quickly buttoned her lip as she saw the art teacher glaring at them. At least I’m not the only one incurring his wrath, Sera thought.

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