Jessie Burton - The Muse

‘Olive,’ said Sarah, more in control now she was fully dressed. ‘I know it’s not always been easy—’

‘Oh, God. No, I don’t want to hear it.’

‘I never meant to hurt you.’

‘And yet you always do.’

Sarah got to her feet and faced her daughter. ‘Do you think you’re the only one who’s lonely? The only one who suffers?’

‘I don’t care about your loneliness. You’re married. To my father.’

‘And do you think it’s easy, being married to him?’

‘Shut up. Shut up. ’

Isaac was in the corner, hastily putting on his clothes, his face darting between the women with an expression of misery.

‘Isaac isn’t yours, Olive, no more than he’s mine,’ Sarah said.

‘He is mine — we’ve — what are you going to tell Daddy? He won’t take you back.’

Sarah laughed. ‘I never knew you were so old-fashioned.’

‘Old-fashioned?’

‘You know his paintings don’t pay for all this, Liv. The finca, our travel, our lives. It’s not a question of “taking me back”. One day, Olive, you’ll understand what a mess everyone makes of their life. I don’t know a single couple who hasn’t had their problems. Marriage is long , you know—’

‘Stop. I don’t care. When did you first seduce Isaac?’

‘Darling, it was the other way round. In fact, not long after Daddy bought Isaac’s first painting.’

‘Just get out,’ said Olive.

Sarah started to walk out of the hut with all the insouciance of leaving a Mayfair restaurant, but she faltered at the dark. ‘I can’t see anything,’ she said.

‘I’m sure you know the way by now. Watch out for wolves.’

‘I’ll go with you,’ said Isaac.

‘You’re not going anywhere,’ said Olive, lifting the pistol in his direction.

‘Olive, you’re being so bloody foolish,’ said Sarah.

‘Just go .’

‘I’ll see you soon,’ Sarah said to Isaac. ‘Olive, come back when you’ve calmed down.’

Isaac and Olive watched as she disappeared into the night. ‘You shouldn’t have let her go alone like that,’ Isaac said.

‘I wouldn’t have shot her, you know. Or you.’ Olive lowered the gun and switched on the torch. In the bright white light, he looked wary. ‘For God’s sake, Isaac. Have you any idea what happened to your sister?’

‘What happened?’

‘No, I don’t suppose my mother bothered to tell you. How Teresa paid the price for your heroics.’

‘Do not hide things, Olive. I do not like it.’

‘That’s rich, coming from you.’

‘What have they done to her?’

The panic on his face was genuine, so she relented, telling him about Jorge and Gregorio, the hacking of Teresa’s hair, the castor oil, the midnight wanderings through the finca corridors.

His face crumpled in pain. ‘But why have you no hair?’ he asked.

‘To make her feel better. Less alone.’

Isaac looked beyond the torch’s orbit, out into the darkness. ‘So she told you I was here.’

‘Yes.’

‘Did she tell you about the child?’

‘No. Just that you’d be here.’

‘Did she mention Sarah?’

‘No. I asked her what she knew about love, that’s all.’

They were silent for a moment.

‘She is the cause of so much trouble,’ he said.

‘Yes. But at least now I see you for what you are. I suppose that was her intention.’

‘Do you truly think my sister has always had your best interests at heart?’ Isaac said. ‘She is a cat, always landing on her feet.’

‘You overestimate her power. You haven’t seen her. And anyway, she hasn’t hurt me. You have.’

‘Perhaps that’s true. And I am sorry for it. But you just see an idea of me that suits you. You never stop trying to create me. Your mother — how do you say? Clear-sighted. She sees me as I am. She does not want me to change.’

‘Yet. But probably she doesn’t have the imagination. And she’s ill.’

‘Is boredom an illness? She is not ill. It just suits you all to say she is. Even her.’

‘You took advantage.’

‘I did? Olive, I never promised you anything. I never told you I loved you. You heard and saw what you wanted.’

‘You slept with me, Isaac. Several times.’

‘Yes. And I said yes to the paintings too. We all make mistakes.’

‘What are you trying to say? The more I painted, the less you liked me?’

He looked away. ‘I’m trying to say that your mother — it is a different thing. It is a separate thing.’

‘It isn’t separate, Isaac. Her behaviour affects us all, just as my father’s does — and as mine does, I suppose. Did you stay here for her?’

He hesitated. Olive closed her eyes, as if in pain. ‘You think you’re the first,’ she said. ‘She only slept with you to punish me.’

He laughed, putting his hands up to his head. ‘You really are an artist, aren’t you? You think it’s all about you, and you never stop looking for pain. It isn’t about you, Olive. You have nothing to do with this.’

‘I’m going. Good luck, isn’t that what you said?’

Olive turned to the darkness, in the direction her mother had descended.

‘What will you do?’ he asked.

‘I’ll go back to England. You were right. I’ll find somewhere to live. Leave my parents to it. See if the art school will take me.’

‘That is a good plan.’

‘We’ll see. Here.’ Olive handed the pistol to Isaac. ‘You might need this more than me.’

‘And Tere?’ he asked, tucking it into the back of his belt. ‘Will you take her with you?’

Olive sighed. ‘I don’t know, Isaac. She doesn’t have any papers.’

‘She has had a hard time.’

‘A minute ago you were saying how much trouble she was.’

‘She is only sixteen.’

Olive couldn’t hide her surprise. ‘She said she was eighteen.’

‘Well, there you are. But if Jorge decides — if my father—’

‘You don’t need to tell me. I was there when it happened. When you were up here.’

He put out his hand. Olive looked down at it. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘I’m glad I painted you with a green face.’

She had meant it as a joke; she had not really meant that he was naive, or sick. It was just an assertion that she was the artist, that she would paint him in the colours that she saw fit. She wanted Isaac to see that she was grown up enough to deal with this, even though she did not feel it. He would always be the man who had changed her life. But as she had gone to take his hand and hold it, and tell him this, Isaac crumpled at her feet.

It seemed unreal to her at first, as she stared down in horror, her torch darting over the blood that was gushing out of Isaac’s head, the red cascading into his eyes. And then she heard what she’d missed the first time; the muted pop of a gun firing in their direction. Two more shots ricocheted around the hills, their reports cracking the air, thinning to nothingness above the woods. She started to run.

Jorge, who had heard Olive’s pistol being fired half an hour earlier, had come up to the hills to see if he could find its source, and had been watching them from a distance. He couldn’t believe his luck; Isaac Robles in hiding, and his bald sister, handing him over another firearm. And the stupid girl had kept her torch on, so after shooting Isaac, he could follow her easily enough, the torchlight juddering all over the place as she stumbled down the hill.

Jorge fired three more times, watching as the torch tumbled, coming to rest like a small white moon upon the ground. He waited. Nothing moved. So close was the quality of silence that followed, so sickening that mute after-note of execution, that it seemed as if the fields were turning in on themselves, and the earth was giving way.