Poppyland by Raffaella Barker

a statue or receiving the freedom of the city or anything.’
    Jerome’s eyebrows look like caterpillars, curled at the ends with small knots of perplexity. He smiles, showing big canine teeth and moves the chewing gum in his mouth.
    â€˜So what are you kicking off on now, babe?’ He strokes my hair. ‘Did Denmark inspire you? I’ve got a boardroom which needs a new Grace Hart painting. Something big, with a sexy woman in it and a lot of yellow. I know you don’t paint to order, but would you have time to show me an etching or two?’ He isteasing me, and I smile and say something noncommittal, but the truth is I really don’t want him to be here. I know I can be overprotective of my work in the studio. I feel exposed when someone comes to see the work here; it’s easier to take slides to show people or to put the work up in a neutral space. It doesn’t matter whether it’s my boyfriend or a collector, I don’t want to talk about the processes of doing it, I like presenting a finished painting as just that. It shouldn’t be necessary to have people inspecting the way I go about it.
    Jerome knows I am annoyed, and he thinks he knows why. He thinks I am helpless without him, but that is not how it is. Do I really know him? He says he loves me, though I wonder if he means the same as I do by that. He likes to control what I do and how I do it, and the love is always conditional on my fitting in with what he thinks is the right way for me to be. For a long time I was flattered that anyone could be bothered to have an interest in the right way for me to be, and Jerome made a big deal about possessing me. He says he was sure from the moment he met me that he wanted me.
    I didn’t take him in that night at the gallery in Copenhagen. I was tired and fractured by the loss of Mum, and I was bowled over by the guy who came up from the sea, Ryder. But a month or so later Jerome called me up and took me out in New York and I loved the way he made everything easy, and how he never lost his cool. Most of my boyfriends were my age and struggling to find themselves and earn aliving. I loved the fact that Jerome was older; I was flattered, and I wanted something steady to hold on to in America. I love his kindness and, mostly, I am grateful for how he handles me. But being grateful and being handled isn’t a balanced relationship, and I want Jerome to let me be his equal. We have shared more intimacy than I have had with any other human being, and yet I don’t want him at the studio, and I am defensive, though he has done nothing wrong. I see him, and it is as though I am outside my body, and the man I am looking at is a stranger. I cannot imagine walking side by side with him through life. With him it is about marching ahead, dragging me after him when I want to go somewhere else.
    â€˜OK, never mind the boardroom. Let’s forget work and concentrate on you and me.’
    I should never have let him come. It was an impulse of desire to share something with him, something important to me, inflated by his absence and my own. As I concentrate hard on washing up the cups in the sink, not looking at him, I realise that the trouble is that I don’t want to let him in at all. Jerome in his blue shirt, his cufflinks gleaming, his every movement slick and expensive, is making me nervous when usually I feel safe with him.
    He is by the window. ‘You’re very quiet,’ he says gently.
    Nodding, I wipe my eyes. He is in control again now, he knows how to deal with this. ‘Grace, honey, if you want your work under wraps and a broken kettle, you stick to your guns,’ he says lightly. ‘I wasjust checking in case you’d like me to go around the corner to pick up a new one for you.’
    â€˜What?’ Pretending not to hear is easier than arguing. I pour the water that has finally boiled into the jug and carry it, with the washed-up cups, dripping, over to