Page 47 of More Than I Can Bear

“No.” My hand wrapped around the shoe, my fingers grazing hers. “I just… I space out when I draw.” I paused and then forced myself to smile. “Don’t you?”

“God, yes,” she replied, tossing her hair back over her shoulder before looking out the wall of windows. “My teachers used to go mad at me all the time. ‘Freya is a dreamer.’” She mimicked her teacher’s intonations. “‘Freya has potential, but can’t focus.’”

“But that’s not it, is it?” I was talking a lot, more than I expected to, but now we’d got onto this topic, I couldn’t seem to stop. “It’s notlackof focus—”

“It’s too much.” Her lips twitched and then that smile was back, twice as bright and I wanted to screw my existing drawing up and start all over again. “I’ve got all the focus in the world on the things that matter.”

She offered me the shoe again and I took the time to look at it, pulling it closer and taking in the drawings. Lots of stylised pine trees ran along the soul, now just white pencil outlines and in amongst them was him. A dark shaggy shape with strange eyes that seemed to glower from the darkness. I took in the long claws, the thick pelt, the small ears.

“It’s me?” I said in wonder.

“Well, yeah. If I do shoes for people, I try to get some of their personality in the characters.”

“So this is how you see me?” I took in the character and his broad, hulking shoulders, the long wisps of fur. “Big and scary?”

“Big?” There was an air of challenge in her eyes. “Yes. Scary? I’m still working that bit out. Powerful, that’s what I was thinking when I was drawing. Powerful and mysterious, that’s what I was going for.”

Powerful and mysterious, I could work with that. Better than weird and stalkery, which was how I felt sometimes around her. I tore my drawing off my pad and slid it across the coffee table towards her.

“That’s how I see you.”

She stared at it for several seconds, making me feel all the anxiety she had no doubt felt when she’d shown me the shoe. Every time anyone created something, they put a part of themselves out into the world, ready to be critiqued. The bear and I held our breaths, waiting for her response. He didn’t understand art, but he did understand her, catching the way her scent sweetened by the second.

“You’ve drawn me before,” she said, finally looking up.

And I will again, I vowed to myself.Over and over until I can draw every detail of you from memory.

“And you’re very good, but…”

“But…?” I went to smile and failed, my mouth forming a grimace instead.

“I don’t really look like that, do I?” Her fingers followed the curve of her cheek and my eyes traced the line of her actual one, flicking back and forth from the drawing to her, looking for the inaccuracies, but not finding them.

“Like what?” I asked.

“Beautiful.”

My breath came out in a huge rush and I dropped down onto my knees, not moving closer, just sitting on the other side of the coffee table.

“This is just a pen,” I said, holding up my biro. “It’s not much of a drawing tool as is, and then there’s limits to my skills.”

“Limits, pfft…” she spluttered. “My drawing teacher would’ve loved to have you in his classes rather than me.”

“Why?” I glanced between our two artworks, the styles so very different, but being absorbed in creating was something we had in common.

“This is very well done. You have amazing technical skills,” she said.

“But I can’t do stuff like this.” I traced the shadowy figure on the shoe, careful not to smudge the lines. “I can only record what is, like a camera or something. I can’t interpret, I can’t communicate…” I let out a huff of frustration and that’s when her hand covered mine. My throat felt thick, swollen, but I forged on. “I can’t represent ideas like you can.”

“Try.”

She pushed the other shoe and the pencil across the coffee table towards me and then took my drawing, picking up a lead pencil to work on it. Suddenly my heart was in my mouth, something I didn’t normally experience when it came to drawing. I looked at her design, unable to think of anything that could be added to it. She’d created this whole scene with tiny creatures lurking in the trees along with me.

Which gave me an idea.

I grabbed the other shoe from the table, drawing her attention for just a second, but her focus was drawn back to the paper, leaving me to work.

I drew two trees on the side of the shoe, having to pull out my phone and use photos as a reference to get them right, but between them I drew her. Partially hidden by the foliage, but not because she was hiding, because she was emerging. With this canvas, this size, I couldn’t get all of the details down, which instantly frustrated me and made me admire Freya’s efforts all the more. When I was done, I found her watching me closely. She pushed the drawing back to me, but I felt strangely reluctant to hand over the shoe.

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