Page 111 of Tears of Gold
“Clearly I haven’t made you enough roast potatoes yet.” She chuckles and the sound rumbles loudly in my ears.
“Roast potatoes. Ooh, I could fancy some.”
Mm. Now she’s mentioned it, I really could.
“Roast potatoes for breakfast it is.”
“I’m going for a shower.”
She nods. “I think that’s a very good idea. Then what are you doing?”
I hesitate. I’m here. I can’t run. I can never run again. If I do, I’ll never get the things I want. “I’m going to work.”
I wait for Damien to say something. “Is it hideous?” I prompt eventually. He’s tilting the pictures I took of my blinded girl from one side to the other.
“Nope.”
“Anything to say?” Shit, I hate this.
“I’ll need to talk to Frances.” He sighs, which I take as the sign of impending doom. Whitlocks are about to sack me.
“It’s okay. I know you guys are used to more conceptual work from me.”
“Faith.” I don’t want to meet his eyes.
“Don’t you dare look at me with pity, Damien.”
“Are you loco, Faith? I’m looking at you like you’re the most amazing person I’ve ever met.” He nods his head to the pictures. “But this, it’s different for you. Your work is raw and fluid; this is structured, controlled.”
“And you hate it.” I start to gather up the pictures.
“No.” He stills my hand. “I love it. But how does it fit in with what you are doing? You are going to be filming for the Tate. How does it work?”
My shoulders lift and then fall with the weight of a hundred-ton brick. “I have no idea. It’s the first thing that’s come to me for ages.”
“You create from your heart. Can you do more of this?”
“Shit, Damien. I don’t bloody know.”
“It’s you though, right?”
“I think so.”
“How else can you tell your story? What else do you have to say?”
As is usual when I think about art projects, my mind goes utterly blank. There is nothing there. I can’t force a damn thing.
I stare at the image of the girl, blinded by her hands, unwilling to see. What comes after seeing? Talking. But I don’t talk. It scares me more than anything.
A tear rolls down my cheek, splattering the glossy paper.
“I don’t know.”
Damien pulls me into a hug. “Find it.” He wipes at the tear mark. “This could be something powerful. Imagine if this was in the Tate. Imagine if thousands of people saw this a year; if thousands of people knew your tale and it inspired them to remove the hands from their own eyes so they could see what went on around them.”
“Damien.” I shake my head. “That’s not a good plan. I am no sort of role model, unless you want to know how to fuck up your life in royal proportions.”
“Babe, you are my role model every damn day. Look at this.” He lifts his shirt, untucking it from his skinny fit trousers. Across his stomach, in a delicate hand I’m vaguely jealous of, is one of my blue glass flowers tattooed in permanent ink. “What else could you achieve?”
