Page 72 of How to Get Even

The kid nodded sagely as if he understood. For all Chase knew, he did. For all Chase knew, Joseph probably had it more together thanhedid.

They sat beside each other for the next half an hour, as Joseph filled pages with colour, getting more and more confident and happy as he did until Mr Tawney announced they were all going to the park for their packed lunches.

He caught the nod of thanks Mr Tawney threw his way for taking time with Joseph, but shrugged it off. As Bella and one of the teachers gathered up the pictures the children had drawn, he thumbed the edge of the page he’d filled with felt-tip pen scribbles, slid it from the table and slipped it into the bin before heading back up to the office. He felt Bella’s eyes on him the whole way.

* * *

Bella, Maurice, Ali, Ye-Joon and one of the parent helpers spent the lunch time putting the drawings into frames and hanging them on the walls of the gallery, in between grabbing bites of sandwiches that she’d ordered in from a deli across the street.

Each child had at least one piece on the wall and once finished, they all stood back and oohed and aahhhed over the adorable pictures. But as Bella looked at the walls, there was something niggling at the back of her mind and she couldn’t put her finger on it.

‘What is it?’ Maurice asked, noticing her distraction.

She wasn’t sure. The walls were filled and the bright pops of felt-tip pen looked perfect against the stark white back drop. Innocence and an energy that pulsed from the room but…

She looked to where Chase stood watching her with a knowing smile.

‘You know what’s wrong with it,’ she accused.

‘There’s nothing wrong with it.’ Ali rushed to their defence, while the others looked around the gallery trying to see what she wasn’t quite seeing yet.

He nodded, but didn’t tell her.

‘This has to be perfect,’ Bella nearly whined, genuinely wanting the kids to like it, toloveseeing their own work on the walls, completely forgetting that this had anything to do with his reputation or the article.

She’d seen how much effort the children had put into something so simple, just because they could. Because they’d been encouraged to play and be silly. Not to be means tested or assessed, but to put a little bit of themselves on a piece of paper and for it to go up on the… up on the…

‘Oh,’ she exclaimed, finally getting what was bothering her. ‘We’ve done it all wrong. They all have to come off.’

Ali and Maurice went to stop her, but when she looked back to Chase, he smiled, more with his eyes than mouth, and gestured for her to do what he’d known was needed all along.

The others were confused until she took the nearest picture from off the hook she’d hung it on and lowered it by almost two feet. All of the pieces had been hung at adult eye level and would have left the kids peering up to see their work. It was something that had taken her a while to realise, but Chase had known nearly immediately, his awareness ofhowpeople accessed art so much stronger than others.

They all scrambled to rehang the pictures before the kids got back from the park and their parents arrived. Maurice had procured some red velvet curtains that were absolutely perfect, and draped them across the small entrance to the gallery so that the class and their parents could gather for the ‘grand unveiling’ that Mr Tawney had advertised.

Bella welcomed them all back and Mr Tawney picked the girl who had decided that ladies could be bosses as well as girls, to cut the gold ribbon they’d tied across the velvet curtain and the children poured into the gallery with their parents.

And she had never seen anything more lovely. The look of delight across the children’s faces as they saw their pictures hanging on the wall. Bella didn’t know if they’d noticed the way that the pictures were hung at the perfect height for them, and then realised that was the point. They shouldn’thaveto notice.

Children held the hands of parents, of each other, of teachers, moving around the room in beautiful chaos, so unlike the way that adults moved progressively painting by painting around a quiet gallery.

Today, Nayak was full of gasps of delight and conversation thatwasn’thushed, it was full of colour and brightness and noise and everything Bella wanted to see in a gallery again already.

She smiled as she looked around the room, until she noticed the little boy that Chase had been working with earlier standing alone looking unsure. She was about to cross the room when the boy looked up, a look of happiness passing over his features and he ran smack-bang into Chase’s legs.

‘Look,’ the boy said, his face angled up at Chase.

‘I did,’ Chase said, smiling, understanding the little boy immediately.

But the child still grabbed Chase’s hand and drew him half way across the gallery, almost as if he were dragging a stuffed toy behind him. Bella watched half fascinated as the boy pointed at his drawing. Chase and the boy came to stand opposite the small frame that encased his drawing, both wearing almost identical expressions of seriousness on their faces as they ‘looked’.

‘If I had ovaries, I think they’d have just exploded,’ Mr Tawney said, suddenly appearing at her side.

She let out a huff of surprised laughter, but knew exactly what he was talking about.

‘I’m afraid that you might not be his type,’ she offered regretfully.

‘Oh, he’s not mine either,’ Mr Tawney confided, casting a longing glance over Bella’s shoulder to where Maurice was studiously ignoring them. ‘I was thinking for you.’

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