Page 38 of The Paris Trip

He didn’t respond but bared his teeth, making a low noise under his breath as he sketched.

‘What was that?’ She stared, incredulous. ‘Did you just growl at me?’

‘Hush… I’m… working…’ Thrusting his pencil between his teeth, Leo groped for a piece of putty on his cluttered work desk. ‘Didn’t quite get your… arm… right.’ Frowning with concentration, he used the putty to erase something on the paper before tossing it back onto his desk. The eraser bounced, landing with a clatter in an open box of paint tubes. He didn’t even glance in that direction, focused on the sketchpad. ‘Can’t have you… looking like…’ He began sketching again without completing his sentence.

Still fighting the desire to scratch her nose, Maeve frowned. ‘Like what?’

‘Stop frowning.’

‘But like what?’ she repeated, trying not to frown.

‘Hmm?’

‘You said… You can’t have me looking like… Only you didn’t finish what you were going to say.’

‘Sorry?’ He narrowed his eyes on her, then kept working. ‘Oh, yes… I didn’t want you looking like you have three arms. Or one arm twice the width of the other one, perhaps.’

Now she was incensed. ‘What?’

‘Sit still, please. Just a little longer.’

She glared at him. ‘You do know what you’re doing, I take it?’

At that, his gaze rose to her face and fixed there. His look was arrested. Had he finally heard what she was saying? ‘Yes, yes,’ he hissed.

‘Yes, you know what you’re doing?’ Her nose was itching intolerably. ‘Or yes, something else?’

‘Whatever you’re thinking right now,’ he muttered. ‘That angry glare. Hold it, would you?’

‘Are you serious?’

Leo grimaced. ‘No!’ The cry was anguished and from the heart, alarming her.

‘You’re not serious?’

‘No… You changed expression. Weren’t you listening to me? I said, don’t move. I said, keep glaring at me.’ He dashed furious lines across the paper. ‘Whatever you were thinking before, think it again. Think it harder.’

‘But I don’t know what I was thinking.’

He swore in French, baring his teeth again. She recognised the swear word and it was not a very pleasant one.

‘Excuse me?’ She fixed him with a cold stare.

‘Yes, yes. That’s perfect.’ His eyes lit up with excitement and he began sketching almost violently. ‘This time, hold it. Keep hating me… Yes! More hate! I love it!’

She exhaled crossly. ‘You are a very strange person, Monsieur Rémy.’

‘No talking. Just glaring, thank you.’

‘Oh, for goodness sake…’ But she lapsed into silence. Was the man crazy?

Maybe this was what all artists were like though when they were working, she thought, watching him with reluctant fascination. Shouty, sweary and a bit weird. She’d often wondered about that, being utterly uncreative herself and therefore entranced by the idea of someone being an artist, able to make art out of nothing. Dabbing paint onto a blank canvas or creating something out of a heap of odds and ends.

Lost in that thought, she raised a hand at last and absentmindedly scratched the maddening itch on her nose.

‘Argh!’ Leo threw down his sketchpad and tore at his hair.

‘Oops.'

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