Isabel Wolff - The Very Picture of You

I began to count to ten in my head. ‘The belt will wreck the composition,’ I reiterated quietly. ‘It will draw all the attention away from your face. And it’s not really flattering,’ I added, then instantly regretted it.

Celine’s face had darkened. ‘Are you saying I look fat?’

‘No, no,’ I replied as she studied her reflection in the cheval mirror. ‘You’re very slim. And you’re really attractive,’ I added impotently. ‘Your husband said so and he was right.’

I’d hoped this last remark might mollify her, but to my surprise her expression hardened. ‘I adore this belt. It’s Prada,’ she added, as though I could have cared less whether she’d got it in Primark.

By now I was struggling to maintain my composure. ‘It won’t look… good,’ I tried again. ‘It’ll just be a big block of black.’

‘Well…’ Celine folded her arms. ‘I’m going to wear it and that’s all there is to it.’

I was about to pretend that I needed the loo so that I could take five minutes to calm myself down – or quite possibly cry – when Celine’s mobile phone rang again. She left the room and had another long, intense-sounding conversation which drifted across the landing in snatches.

‘Oui, chéri… je veux te voir aussi… bientôt, chéri.’

By now I’d decided to admit defeat and was just working out how best to minimise the monstrous belt when Celine returned. To my surprise her mood seemed to have lightened. Now she took out a simple linen shift in powder blue, then held it against her.

‘What about this?’

I could have wept with relief. ‘That will look great.’

The next morning, as I waited for Mike Johns to arrive for his sitting I looked at Celine’s portrait – so far no more than a few preliminary marks in yellow ochre. She was the trickiest sitter I’d ever had – obstructive, unreasonable, and entirely lacking in enthusiasm.

Her attitude struck me as bizarre. Most people give themselves up to the sittings, recognising that to be painted is a rather special thing. But for Celine it was clearly something to be endured, not enjoyed. I wondered why this should be.

I once had to paint a successful businessman whose company had commissioned the portrait for their board-room. During the sittings he kept glancing at his watch, as though to let me know that he was an extremely busy and important man whose time was very precious. But when I at last started to paint Celine she told me that she didn’t work, and that now that her son was at boarding school she led a ‘leisured’ sort of life. So her negativity can’t have been because she didn’t have time.

Thank God for Mike Johns, I thought. A big bear of a man, he was always genial, cooperative and expressive – the perfect sitter. As I took out his canvas I was pleased to see that even in the painting’s semi-finished state, his amiability and warmth shone through.

Mike’s portrait had been commissioned by his constituency association to mark his fifteenth anniversary as their MP: he’d been elected very young, at twenty-six. He’d said he wanted to get the painting done well before the run-up to the general election began in earnest: so we’d had two sittings before Christmas, then the third early in the New Year. We’d scheduled another for 22 January but Mike had suddenly cancelled it the night before. In a strangely incoherent e-mail he’d put that he’d be in touch again ‘in due course’, but to my surprise I hadn’t heard from him in the intervening two months, which had surprised me, not least because he lives nearby, just on the other side of Fulham Broadway. Then last week he’d messaged me to ask if we could continue. I was glad, partly because it would mean I’d get the other half of my fee, but also because I liked Mike and enjoyed chatting to him.

We’d arranged for him to come early so that the sitting wouldn’t eat into his working day. At five past eight the bell rang and I ran downstairs.

As I opened the door I had to stifle a gasp. In the nine weeks since I’d last seen him, Mike must have lost nearly three stone.

‘You’re looking trim,’ I said as he stepped inside. ‘Been pounding the treadmill?’ I added, although I already knew, from his noticeably subdued air, that his weight loss must be due to some kind of stress.

‘I have shed a few pounds,’ he replied vaguely. ‘A good thing too,’ he added with a stab at his usual bonhomie, but his strained demeanour gave him away. He was friendly, but there was a sadness about him now – an air of tragedy almost, I realised as I registered the dead look in his eyes. ‘Sorry about the early start,’ he said as we went up to the studio.

‘I don’t mind at all,’ I replied. ‘We can do all the remaining sessions at this time, if you like.’

Mike nodded then took off his jacket and put it on the sofa. He sat in the oak armchair that I use for sittings. ‘Back in the hot seat then,’ he said with forced joviality.

The morning light was sharp so I lowered the blinds on the Velux windows to soften it. As I put Mike’s canvas on the easel I realised that I was going to have to adjust the portrait. His torso was much slimmer, his face and neck thinner, the collar of his shirt visibly gaping. His hands looked less fleshy as he clasped them in his lap. He fiddled with his wedding ring, which was clearly loose.

I scraped a pebble of dried paint off the palette then squeezed some new colour out of the tubes, enjoying, as I always did, the oily scent of the linseed.

‘I forgot to wear the blue jumper,’ Mike said. ‘I’m sorry – it slipped my mind.’

‘Don’t worry.’ I mixed the colour with a palette knife, then selected a fine brush. ‘I’ll be working on your face today, but if you could wear it next time, that would be great.’

Now I looked at Mike, and began to paint; I looked at him again, then painted a little more. And so it went on, just looking and painting, looking and painting.

Mike usually chatted away, but today he was virtually silent. He directed his gaze towards me but avoided eye contact. His mouth and jaw were tight. Aware that I must have noticed the change in him, he suddenly confided that he was ‘a bit strung out’ with all the extra work he was doing in preparation for the general election.

I wondered if he was worried that he might lose his seat, but then remembered reading somewhere that he had a huge majority. I shaded a slight hollow into his left cheek. ‘Have you been away?’ I wondered whether that was why he’d been unable to sit for me lately.

He nodded. ‘I went to Bonn last month on a cross-party trip.’

I cleaned the brush in the pot of turps. ‘What was that for?’

‘We were looking at their tram system. I’m on a transport committee.’

I dipped the brush in the cobalt to make the flesh tone around his jaw a bit greyer. ‘Then please will you do what you can to help cyclists – it’s not easy on two wheels in this city.’

Mike nodded, then glanced away. Then I asked him about his wife, a successful publisher in her late thirties.

He shifted on the chair. ‘Sarah’s fine. She’s incredibly busy though – as usual.’

I thinned the paint with a little turps. ‘I saw a photo of her in the business pages the other day – I can’t remember what the story was, but she looked terribly glamorous.’

‘She’s just bought Delphi Press – to add to her empire,’ Mike added with a slightly bitter smile. Now I remembered him confiding that his wife’s career was all-consuming. I wondered again at the change in him; maybe she’d decided that she didn’t want children, and he did: or maybe they couldn’t have them and it was getting to him. Maybe, God forbid, he was ill.

Suddenly he heaved a sigh so deep, it was almost a groan.