Page 140 of For Real

“Sorry.” I stepped inside and—“Oh God, you’re naked.” Except for a curl of paint over one breast.

“Why, do you have a problem with the female body?”

“N-no…I was just startled.” I still wasn’t entirely sure where to look. If it would be more or less impolite to look at her or away from her. “Do you, um, not believe in clothes?”

“Not when I’m painting in the privacy of my own home, no.” Toby’s mother put down her palette and brush and sighed. “I’ll put on a robe.”

There was something long and silk and vaguely oriental in pattern tossed over a nearby chaise. She picked it up and draped it over her shoulders, which more sort of framed her nakedness than covered it.

I couldn’t help searching for Toby in her face, but I couldn’t find him. Coal was tall and long-limbed, willowy even, whereas he was short, restless, and graceless. She shared his colouring though, pale and dark, except her eyes were sloe-black to his blue, and her hair was darker too, falling almost to her waist in loose, paint-and grey-streaked waves. Truthfully, she was beautiful in all the ways Toby wasn’t, her certainties and carelessnesses implacable somehow.

“So,” she went on, regarding me with only the laziest interest, “you’re the boyfriend.”

I nodded, feeling helplessly gauche, and wondering if I should offer my hand. “Laurence Dalziel.”

“Yes, he said.” She strolled across the loft to the corner kitchen, dragged a carton of milk out of the minifridge, and drank it straight from the container. “He didn’t say, though, that you’re older than me.”

Ah. I glanced away from Toby’s naked mother to the canvases of Toby’s naked mother, and—since there didn’t seem to be any available escape routes—back again. “Uh…yes…I know it’s unorthodox, but I can assure you…” God, I sounded so desperately pompous. “The thing is, I really love him,” I finished piteously.

She dropped the empty carton in the sink. Toby would hate that. “I had Toby when I was fifteen. Who am I to judge his choices?”

“Um, his mother?” I offered.

She gave me a look, proud and fierce and bright-eyed, and all of a sudden I saw Toby there. “Considering you’re fucking my son, I don’t think you get to tell me how to raise him.”

God. I deserved that. “I’m sorry.”

She shrugged. “My parents were bloody strict with me. Wouldn’t let me do or say a damn thing I wanted. No way I was doing that to my own kid. Speaking of which, where did he go, if he’s not with you?”

“I don’t know,” I wailed. “We had a…a…fight, and he ran away, and now he’s not answering his phone.”

“Oh, then he could be anywhere.”

I stared at her. “Doesn’t that worry you?”

“Not really? He’s got a mobile, a credit card, a brain.”

“So,” I asked impatiently, “you have no idea where he might be?”

“Well, neither do you, so stop judging.” She swept back to the canvas she was working on, which took up most of one wall, and gazed at it, her head tilted slightly quizzically to the side—something else that reminded me of Toby.4

After a moment or two, when it became evident she wasn’t going to say anything else, I tried, “Isn’t there someone I could call or something? A friend? A family member?”

She glanced over her shoulder. “I can’t tell if you’re sweet or clingy.”

The worst of it was, neither could I. “It was the first time we’ve argued quite like that.”

“Yeah?”

She sounded profoundly uninterested, but I was terrified and confused, so I told her anyway. “I just wanted to know why he was working at that horrible café instead of…doing something more suited to his talents and abilities.”

“I always assumed he liked it.”

“I…um…I’m not sure he does.”

“Then he should stop.” She picked up her brush again. “Now unless you want to be the man from Porlock, I’d like to finish this.”5

I had no idea what she was talking about, but I recognised dismissal, and my heart shed its last few hopes. “I’m sorry. Um…could you maybe tell him I stopped by? Or…ask him to… I don’t know…”

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