Behind the Surface

Shit! I froze mid-step as the keys clattered into the cracked teapot by the front door. Zita was home? Shit, shit, shit! There was literally nowhere to put the last of the heavy boxes I’d hauled up the stairs, so I just dropped it by my feet and wiped my sweaty face on the hem of my t-shirt.

There’s no heat like a scorching London summer heat, but it wasn’t hot enough to stop the sudden chill that came over me. Eleven, twelve, thirteen, I counted her steps and heard the sharp intake of breath.

“What the actual fuck, Tess?”

My best friend’s face was like something out of a horror movie as she surveyed the chaos. Our two-bed flat had never been spacious, but this was next level. It looked like someone had crammed a deranged art installation into my bedroom and turned our cosy living room into an obstacle course. But to be fair, I hadn’t expected her to be home for at least another couple of hours.

Zita never got back before nine. If she wasn’t working overtime, she’d stop off at the gym or grab a drink with someone from the office. But of course, today of all bloody days she’d decided to finish on time and come straight home to... this.

I’d spent all day emptying the art studio out, and it was all here. Piles of papers and sketchbooks on every flat surface. Stacks of boxes overflowing with art supplies everywhere. And canvases. So many canvases leaning against the wall and still more crammed in between the stacked boxes.

"You promised me it wouldn’t come to this!”

“I know,” I said, feeling like an absolute wombat. Plucking Eleanor’s pink bandana from her five-foot easel, I tied it around my head to keep the sweat-damp hair out of my face. “And it wasn’t supposed to, but everything went tits up. The storage unit fell through because of some insurance bollocks and the van guy had another job waiting and I couldn’t just—”

“What?” Zita crossed her arms tightly over her chest and gave me one of her annoying big sisterly glares. “You couldn’t dump it? Leave it on the kerb where it belongs?”

Ouch! I flinched and took a step back. Her attack was sharp, personal, and completely unfair. Like she’d stabbed me right in the muffin top with my own palette knife.

“It’s been six months, Tess. Six months! Eleanor is dead and you have to get on with your life. This is our home, not a shrine. And for the record, the storage people were right. This is a fucking fire hazard.”

"I know,” I sighed. “But you know the studio was everything to me. Losing it… It’s like losing her all over again.”

"I get that," she said, and her voice softened slightly. "I do. But I can't live like this. We have to get a skip and call the girls—see if they’re up for a cleaning party. We'll need some help to figure this out. See what we can sell, donate, or throw away.” Her eyes narrowed as they fell on Eleanor’s favourite painting on the easel. “That one definitely belongs in a skip. It creeps me out.”

I just stood there like a lemon, digging my nails into my sweaty palms as she turned around and disappeared down the hall, slamming her bedroom door behind her.

My breath was all shaky, and the room was moving. I had to lie down for a minute. Not in a dramatic “damsels in distress be fainting” kind of way, though. This was more a case of wanting to hyperventilate into a bag of old paintbrushes and turpentine cloths.

Unfortunately, the bed was already occupied. I’d wedged it into the corner to make room for the easel, and now it had evolved into a mountain of clothes, sketchbooks, and paint tubes. Since glaring at it didn’t make a jot of difference, I collapsed onto the floor, starfished on my back with my legs propped up against the chaos mountain.

I spent a good fifteen minutes like that, just breathing and waiting for the room to stop spinning. When it finally did, I reached up and grabbed my phone and the poor, skip-bound painting off the easel.

“Don’t listen to her,” I whispered, tracing a finger along the ornate frame that had lost most of its gold leaf gilding. “You’re not so creepy.”

And it wasn't, really. What surprised me about it was that Eleanor's usual style was large, vibrant landscapes with hidden details for you to discover. Happy paintings for happy people. This one spoke of deep longing and indescribable sadness. It wasn’t much bigger than a book and it looked… unfinished. A muted landscape with dark shadows looming over a misty field. To the right, a large rock was almost hidden behind a copse of strangely twisted trees.

“Most people would probably walk right past you in a charity shop, but who cares? You’re not for sale, anyway.”

Eleanor loved it. She called it her mirror and never went anywhere without it safely tucked into her bag. It was one of the few possessions her family had managed to take when they fled Warsaw during the war.

“Look behind the surface,” she would mutter in Polish during her final months at home, clutching the mirror to her chest with surprising strength. Spójrz pod powierzchnię. Musisz spojrzeć pod powierzchnię. “Look behind the surface. You have to look behind the surface.”

Zita never understood why it took me so long to put Eleanor in a care home. "It's time to let her go," she said, watching me struggle to look after her. "Think about your future," she said, as if she’d forgotten my past. But she wasn't there in the beginning.

She never knew the terrified five-year-old who arrived in Britain in 1981. It was Christmas and my mother had arranged for me to be “temporarily” sent away. Martial Law had just been announced in Poland and she’d made the hardest decision I imagine a parent can make. But Zita never saw that.

She never saw Eleanor take me in, take me to the studio every day, and teach me English with infinite patience. No, Zita came later. She was my first real friend at school. The one who helped me fit in when everything still felt slightly foreign and wrong.