Jessie Burton - The Muse

‘Oh, Teresa. What do you know about love?’

Teresa’s brief time in the house with the Schlosses had taught her more about love and its problems than Olive could ever imagine. But she had also known, long before the arrival of the Schloss family and their overflowing hearts, that whilst everything has a consequence, nothing can simply be put down to fate. Teresa had always made her choice — to see, and stay silent. All her life before Olive, she had kept her own counsel.

But Olive, and her paintings, and her parents, had changed that stance. They had opened Teresa up, made her vulnerable to the worlds of other people. And once again, Olive was forcing her hand. Perhaps there was no good to be had in staying silent any longer. Perhaps it was time for Olive to truly see, and to free herself for ever.

‘A shepherd’s hut,’ Teresa said.

‘What?’

‘Go and look for a shepherd’s hut. You will find him there.’

Olive looked at her in astonishment. ‘I don’t believe you.’

‘You’ll find him. Ask my brother what it means to be in love.’

Teresa watched her depart, and began to sweep away the other girl’s severed hair with a mix of dread and elation. She wasn’t sure exactly what Olive would find, but she had a fair idea. She noted the back of Olive’s newly bared head with something bordering pride. When the reckoning came — and it was certainly going to come now — Teresa knew that they would question her character. At least they would see that she had not left a mark on her mistress. It was not possible to mend Olive’s heart, but at least the girl’s head was finally clear.

The plane engines over Malaga had grown quieter as Olive pounded down the hill from the finca, in the direction of the cottage. No one seemed to notice as she tiptoed out of the house. It did not occur to her there might have been no one left in the house to hear.

At dusk Arazuelo was a ghost village. The main square was empty, the shutters of the bar on the corner were up; the church was its blackened shell; the butcher was closed; the school and the offices around it blanked of life. Olive patted her pockets, feeling in one the torch she’d grabbed from the kitchen, and in the other, the cold bulk of the pistol Isaac had left with them.

She could barely allow the hope that he might still be near. Teresa, it appeared, was a locked box of secrets, until you found the right combination. Whilst everything outside her seemed quiet, Olive’s thoughts cascaded with a force she found hard to control. If she could find him and bring him back, everything would be all right. Panting, she tried to regain her breath as she scanned the woods beyond, the line of the trees inkier and inkier as the last natural light disappeared into a smoky sky.

Into the growing darkness Olive ran, switching on the torch. Don’t use a torch , Teresa had told her. You don’t know who else is out there.

I’m not afraid , Olive had replied — but now, out in the hills, she couldn’t see a thing without it, and her adrenalin was coursing. She barely knew where she was going, but she supposed it couldn’t be far. Towards the foothills, she would find him; she would, she would. You think he’s gone north? Teresa had said. He hasn’t gone north.

If you hate him so much, why didn’t you tell the civil guard all this? Olive had asked; but she knew the answer to that already. Teresa had revealed nothing about Isaac — not to protect her brother, but to keep Olive near.

I’ll be waiting , Teresa had called out, as she fled the attic. No one had ever said such a thing to Olive before.

The first thing she saw was the sardine tin, glinting in the grass. It had clearly blown from inside the hut, and now rested several metres from where Olive stood. She switched off the torch and watched the shepherd’s hut. A faint light was showing between a hewn-out window hole and a piece of flapping oilskin. Olive crept nearer. She could hear a voice, a low murmur — Isaac’s voice. Teresa had not been lying to her. Her heart rose with joy to know he was here, and she ran forward.

Then she heard a woman’s laugh. She recognized it. She thought she was going to choke. Her throat tightened, her tongue felt too big at the back of her mouth.

A noise, a deep sigh, another and another from inside the shepherd’s hut, and finally Olive understood what Teresa had meant, what she had squirmed to say, resisting the outright truth, sending her here so she could see it for herself. She understood it, even as she couldn’t bear to. And there it came again — regular, deep, and unbearable; an expression of pure pleasure. As the universe above Olive’s head deepened in its darkness, she fixed her fingers on the pistol and pushed open the door.

Sarah screamed, pushing back against the wall. ‘ No dispares! ’ shouted Isaac. Don’t shoot!

Olive lifted the lantern that was on the floor. Isaac and her mother were both naked, their limbs still intertwined. Sarah twisted her body away in a panic, and Olive saw the dome of her stomach clearly risen with a child.

‘Olive,’ said her mother, dumb with shock. ‘What’s happened to your hair?’

They stared at each other. Seconds passed that felt like hours. ‘Does Daddy know?’ Olive eventually said, her voice a husk, the sound robotic. ‘Does Daddy know?’

Sarah scrambled to sit up, clutching Isaac’s coat to her chest, reaching for her trousers. ‘Liv. Livvi. Put the gun down.’

Olive kept the barrel up in the direction of her mother. ‘Does he know?’

‘He doesn’t know,’ said Sarah, gasping. ‘Put that down, for Christ’s sake.’

‘Is it yours?’ Olive asked Isaac. ‘Is the baby yours?’

‘It’s not his,’ Sarah interrupted. ‘It’s not.’

Isaac got to his feet. ‘Olive,’ he said gently. ‘Put the gun down. No one needs to be hurt.’

Olive felt a roaring in her ears. ‘Why?’ she said. ‘Why?’ The question soared into the night.

‘Ssssh!’ Isaac hissed. ‘Keep quiet.’

‘You hypocrite. All that talk about going north, fighting for your country, and you’re less than a mile away, with her—’ Olive put her hand on her mouth, fighting back a sob.

‘Livvi,’ said Sarah.

‘Don’t you Livvi me. Don’t fool yourself it could ever be love with her, Isaac. Is it yours? Is that baby yours?’

The look that passed between Sarah and Isaac was almost worse to Olive than discovering them. The intimacy of it, the fluency; complicity.

‘How long have you— What was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I—’

Isaac began to come towards her. ‘Calm down, Olive. Please. I can explain—’

As he approached, Olive fired a shot through the thatch of the roof. ‘ Mierda! ’ he shouted. ‘Shit! Do you want to get us killed? Now every gang out there will know that someone is here.’

Sarah let out a low moan and began scrabbling around in the dark for the rest of her clothes. ‘I have to go. I have to go,’ she kept repeating. ‘He’ll be back.’

‘You snake,’ said Olive.

Sarah looked up at her. ‘I’m no snake.’

‘I’d say you are. I never want to speak to you again.’

‘How did you know I was here?’ asked Isaac.

‘How else do you think?’

Sarah groaned. Olive closed her eyes, to blot out the scene before her.

‘How long has Teresa known about this?’ whispered Sarah.

‘I don’t know,’ said Olive, and it was the truth. Had Teresa’s silence until now been out of protection, or something else — the power of knowing what Olive did not? Had they all been laughing at her, so in love with her Boris Mon-Amour? Better to have kept Isaac a figure in a book, a man in her imagination, than the monster she had created in real life. She could hear one of the last things Teresa had said to her, up in the attic: Ask my brother what it means to be in love.