Set Me Free
Set Me Free
By
Jennifer Collin
Evans Trilogy: Book One
Published by Jennifer Collin
Kindle Edition
Copyright © 2013 Jennifer Collin
Cover art © Cameron Eaton
All Rights Reserved
All characters in this publication are
fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely
coincidental.
Dedication
For Audrey and Lola.
Acknowledgements
For their advice and support: thanks to
Laurel Cohn, Kimberley Albrecht, Effie Stanley, Wendy Schmalkuche, Libby
Zavros-Brown and Ros Baxter.
Thanks also to my husband, for his
patience from the beginning, and his enthusiasm at the end.
one
‘Why are
you sniffing me?’ Charlotte Evans asked her sister Emily as she savoured her
downy, pillow-soft hug.
‘Just checking to see if
you’ve washed that man out of your hair,’ answered Emily, squeezing her tight.
‘Ha, ha. Very funny.' Charlotte
stepped back and took in her sister. In her baby blue 1950s polka-dot
shirtwaist dress, she lit up the airport terminal. Her honey-blonde hair was
pulled back in a high ponytail, completing the look of someone just visiting
this decade. Emily was a sight for sore, and exceedingly tired, eyes.
‘And the verdict, smarty
pants?’ she asked.
‘It’s not stale man
smell.’ Emily sniffed the air some more. ‘But there’s definitely something
funky in there.’
Charlotte used the hand
still resting on Emily’s shoulder to give her a good shove. After twenty-two
hours in transit she didn’t need to be told she smelt as revolting as she felt.
Yesterday in Rome, she’d
dressed for comfort before boarding the plane: khaki yoga pants and a faded
black t-shirt. Black ballet flats on her feet. Her hair hung loose; big, bold
auburn curls kissing the very top of her shoulders. The look was fetching;
until hours and hours of sleepless tossing and turning left a tangled bird’s
nest on the back of her head, and her clothes sticking to her in all the wrong
places. Her skin was leaching out the last greasy airline meal she’d eaten at
the unholy hour of 5am, and her grey eyes were half-closed beneath the pressure
of a headache, which was most likely a product of the aforementioned meal.
It was not fair of the
bubble of freshness before her to pass judgement.
Emily ignored her
sister’s scowl. ‘Where’s Mum?’ she asked, looking over Charlotte’s shoulder
towards the hidden customs checkpoint. ‘Please don’t tell me she’s giving the
poor customs official a lecture about oppressive Orwellian bureaucracy
promulgating a culture of over-surveillance.'
The image of their
mother doing just that brought a wry smile to Charlotte’s lips, despite her painfully
pulsing head. Formulating the answer to the question, quickly wiped that smile
away.
‘I’m sorry, Em. She had
to get back to work. She changed her flight in Singapore to take a direct one
to Melbourne.’
Emily’s hands went to
her hips. ‘Are you kidding me?'
Charlotte shook her head
slowly.
It was highly unlikely
anything work-related lured Professor Diane Wallace back to Melbourne, although
she would have them believe the university couldn't possibly survive another
day without her. Charlotte and Emily were well aware a missing English
Literature professor would barely cause a ripple on campus.
‘So she’s happy to fly halfway around the world with you at
the drop of a hat, but she won’t even stop off here to spend a few days with
me? And a couple of months ago she flew to Sydney just to see Andy play at
some dingy suburban pub.' Her hands flew from her hips into the air. ‘Does she
really hate my husband that much?’
‘I’m sure she would have
come if she could have, Em,’ said Charlotte, biting her bottom lip.
‘Huh! You believe that
as much as I do,’ Emily replied.
Charlotte draped her arm
across her sister’s shoulders. ‘Thanks for coming to pick me up,’ she said,
leaning on Emily a little too much. ‘Now, can you please take me home before
anyone I know sees me in this state?’
Outside, the blazing
heat of an early November heat wave assailed them. After the crispness of an
Italian autumn, the humidity of Brisbane was suffocating. It did nothing to
ease Charlotte’s headache.
Emily’s bright
yellow Morris Minor stood out like a beacon in a sea of vehicles at least 40
years younger than it. ‘So how is Geoff anyway?' Charlotte asked as they walked
towards it.
‘I wouldn’t know,’
Emily replied. ‘He’s working so much lately I hardly see him.’
Charlotte threw
her backpack on to the back seat of the car Emily affectionately dubbed ‘the
Monster’. They eased themselves down onto the vinyl bench seat and shut the
heavy doors behind them with a resounding thunk, thunk.
‘That sucks. Is
there an end in sight?’
‘I hope so. He
can’t tell me anything about the case, so I’m no longer asking.’
Emily steered them
into the early morning traffic, heading towards Charlotte’s West End apartment.
Watching the cars moving around her with jet-lagged withdrawal, Charlotte was
for once nonchalant about Emily’s tendency to swerve recklessly between lanes. The
traffic roared around them through the open windows. There was no air
conditioning to cocoon them in the Monster.
‘So tell me about
the trip?’ Emily asked, oblivious to the aggressive honk of an outraged horn as
she cut off a shiny new BMW.
‘It was great,’
Charlotte sighed. ‘Well, Rome was awful; stinky and noisy and crowded. But
Tuscany was amazing and we went to this little strip of the northwest coast
called Cinque Terra. There are five or so little villages built into the side
of the mountains overlooking the Mediterranean. At the foot of the mountains
are these little beaches of stones. No sand, not a grain, just all of these
beautifully rounded stones about this big.’ She made a circle with her thumb
and forefinger. ‘The villages were straight out of a storybook.’
Overtired and slightly
strung out, Charlotte was rambling.
‘There’s a train
line that runs between the villages and one day Mum and I caught it from where
we were staying down to the next village to explore. After lunch, I sent her
back on the train with all of my stuff so I could hike back along this mountain
track. As I passed through this little village perched on top of a cliff, I
realised I had nothing on me: no money, no passport. It was so liberating!
Here I was on the other side of the world with nothing but the clothes on my
back. I didn’t feel alarmed at all, just completely free. Nothing tied me to my
real life; I could have been anyone in the world.’
Keeping her eyes
on the road, Emily shuddered. ‘I’m not sure I like that story. Please tell me
you don’t make a habit of doing that in foreign countries.’
‘Oh, Em. You’re so
uptight. You ought to live a little.’
‘Hey! I’m not
uptight! I’m an artist. How can I possibly be uptight?’
Charlotte snorted.
‘You’re the most disciplined artist in the world. Believe me, you're uptight.’
‘You just think
that because I’ve never been overseas.’
‘No, I think that
because the thought of being unencumbered and totally free gives you the heebie-jeebies.’
‘Well, I’m glad to
have you back in one piece anyway.’
Charlotte’s addled
brain cooperatively skipped on to the next topic. ‘How are things on Boundary
Street?’ she asked. ‘How’s the gallery? Has it been busy?' While she'd barely
spared it a thought while she was away, now she was home, it was time to get
back to work. The Evans Gallery needed to make some sales in order to pay next
month’s rent. Her backup funds, intended to cover the slow periods, had taken a
hit, thanks to the unplanned European vacation.
‘It’s been quiet,’
Emily said.
‘No different than
usual then. It’s always quiet after one of your sell-out shows.’
Charlotte couldn’t
have left the country under any other circumstance: a sold out Emily Evans
exhibition on the walls and Emily herself manning the desk.
‘Have you managed
to pin down M Talbot? Is he ready for Friday?’ Charlotte asked. She’d also arranged
her trip to ensure she was home in time to finalise the new exhibit scheduled
to open at the end of the week. M Talbot was another of her regulars. He usually
drew a small crowd of family and friends and his sales were reasonably reliable.
‘I think you’re
going to have to chase him. He hasn’t been returning my calls.'
‘Great. Also no
different than usual. How much have you spent on promoting him?’
‘I did it on the
cheap, just as you asked. Flyers in the key suburbs and a social media
campaign.'
‘Thanks. I’ll hunt
him down today if I can. He does this every time but usually comes through in
the end. Bloody emerging artists.'
‘Hey, I’m still
one of those. An uptight one at that.’
‘Actually, it’s
because you're uptight that you can’t really consider yourself ‘emerging’ any
more, Em. You're prolific and reliable. Not to mention stupidly talented. You’ve
worked hard to get where you are. Given your shows have been selling out consistently
for almost two years, I think you've already emerged, honey.’
Charlotte’s
considered Emily a far superior talent to the vast majority of her peers. She
was brilliant. She painted like she was running out of time, churning through
the canvases. What poured out of her was considered bleak by some, but poignant
by most. She favoured urban landscapes, washed in sombre shades of grey or
brown. All of her works featured something small, colourful and full of
promise, though difficult to find. The promise juxtaposed the desolation of the
setting. A kitten playing with a ball of brightly coloured wool in a littered
alleyway or a parakeet in the branches of a dying tree.
‘Well, I may have
already reached my peak. I’ve had painter’s block for the last three weeks.’
‘It’ll come back. It
always does. What you need is some drama in your life. What about an overseas
holiday?’
Emily gave her a
look as she parked the Morris outside Charlotte’s apartment. ‘Or, I could take
Geoff down to Melbourne to visit Mum,’ she said.
They climbed the
rickety external stairs of Charlotte’s fibrous-cement apartment building to the
second and top-most floor. The complex was in need of a coat of paint, preferably
something more modern than the shade of faded lemon currently casing it. It was
old, and moaned and groaned and creaked with that age, but the rent was
irresistibly cheap and the other tenants inoffensive.
‘I can see it now,
a whole series of an old crone lording over a cowering man. Not sure where you
would put your little parcel of promise though,’ said Charlotte.
She unlocked her
front door to the stale smell of rooms in desperate need of fresh air. A short
hall led to a compact 1960s kitchen, and she felt a warm rush as she took in
her little apartment: the vintage canisters and crockery in the kitchen; the
large, modern red leather couch, and her lovely Art Deco dining suite with its four
matching bucket-shaped chairs.
Dropping her
backpack on the black and white checkered kitchen linoleum she crossed to the
French doors at the back of the apartment. She threw them open to let the air
in, eyeing the dying plants on the small balcony.
‘Shower,’ she said,
whizzing past Emily en route to the bathroom. ‘And then coffee.’
‘Do you want me to
make some?’ Emily asked after her.
Charlotte paused. ‘No,
I want Ben’s. I’ve got to stay awake until tonight. I need the good stuff. Espresso.’
From the bathroom,
she added, ‘I’m going to spend the day in the gallery, so I don’t crash out
here. Can you come with?’
‘For a coffee,’
Emily called back. ‘Then I’ve got a blockage to work through. You never know
what being scorned by Mum this morning might have cleared.'
Half an hour later
Charlotte was clean, though once again on the outskirts of the lucidity she’d
been drifting in and out of all morning. The greasy feeling was gone, and she now
smelled delicious, but as she searched through her disappointing wardrobe, she was
unable to make a choice. A regular, but not a wise shopper, she had a wardrobe
full of clothes and nothing to wear.
Hearing her
whimper, Emily came to her rescue.
‘Here,’ she said, pulling
a bright red A-line skirt out of the somewhat musty free-standing 1930s wardrobe
and handing it to her sister.
‘And here.' She
offered a delicate, very feminine sleeveless black top to match.
‘And where are
your new shoes?’ she asked, strolling back out to the kitchen and commencing a
search through Charlotte’s backpack.
‘What makes you
think I have new shoes?’ Charlotte asked as she pulled her top over her head.
Triumphantly
holding aloft a new pair of black Italian leather sandals, Emily declared, ‘Because
you always get new shoes. Two things match your count of ex-boyfriends, my dear
sister: the number of departure stamps in your passport, and your collection of
international shoes.’
Charlotte snatched
her new sandals off her sister and slipped them on her feet. She checked
herself one last time in the mirror and hardly recognised herself. ‘My God, I
look human,’ she said, pushing back an errant curl. ‘Now let’s get some coffee
so I can feel human too.’
Five minutes later
she was on Boundary Street, sipping a latte at Bean Drinkin’, soothing her feet
where the sandal straps had rubbed her heels and grinning like an idiot at her
best friend while he took a break from his espresso machine to catch up with
her.
The coffee had an
instant effect on her headache. As it abated, Charlotte pulled affectionately
at Ben’s tawny ponytail, and he slapped her hand away playfully. He and Emily
were trying to extricate the details of any sordid Italian affairs out of her.