Altered Images by Maxine Barry Page A

recently been made smaller. She hadn’t read about Keating’s meticulous attention to detail for nothing.
    She lugged the painting downstairs and propped it up in the kitchen, careful to wash her dirty hands in the sink before giving the canvas a microscopic scrutiny. Canvases came in all sorts and types. There were the linen ones made from flax, that she favoured at the School. She would always degrease those, use a pumice stone on them, then add other layers of primer herself. Mounting and stretching was another time-consuming business too. Non-artists were always surprised by the amount of work that had to be done before an artist even picked up a paintbrush. But she wouldn’t have to worry about any of that with this canvas, of course. It was perfect as it was: the right age, size, and type. It was just what Forbes-Wright would have used for his original painting of the Old Mill.
    She’d have to be careful how she cleaned Ariadne’s picture off, though. Not even a minute trace of it must be left. She quickly wrapped the canvas in an old sheet from under the stairs, and, not wanting to give her father the satisfaction of knowing what she’d done, washed up her cup and put it away, leaving no trace of her visit behind her.
    She was by now used to lugging ungainly equipment about, so the journey back on the train presented her with no difficulties.
    Once back in Oxford, she took the canvas straight to her workspace at the Ruskin, and paid another visit to the tiny library. Although she knew well enough how she herself would set about cleaning the canvas for repainting, what she really needed to know was how Forbes-Wright would have cleaned a canvas in his day. She wasn’t sure if even Lorcan Greene would be able to tell whether or not modern chemicals had seeped into a canvas, but she was taking no chances.
    Without quite knowing why, or how, it had become utterly important to her that she create a forgery that the great Lorcan Green could not detect. It was as if, on some primitive level, he’d challenged her so outrageously that she was determined to beat him, come what may. She was also uncomfortably aware, on some soul-deep level, that the challenge he’d issued had nothing to do with painting, and everything to do with the way her heart beat faster whenever he was around. But since there was nothing she could do about being attracted to him—all right, hopelessly, devastatingly attracted to him—there
was
something she could do about competing with him on his home ground . . . art. And, more specifically, the forging of art.
    And so she spent the rest of the afternoon learning about how a Victorian would have set about preparing a canvas. And first thing the next morning, she began the task with vim and relish, humming softly beneath under her breath as she worked. There was something about helping her father out of a jam, and putting one over on the superior Lorcan Greene at the same time, that made her feel downright cheerful!
    *          *          *
    Lorcan awoke that morning pleasantly aware of the sunshine outside. It was Friday, and he was in Oxford.
    As his friend Inspector Richard Braine had predicted, he’d found somewhere to lay his head—renting a spacious, two-storey house on Five Mile Drive, a cherry-tree-lined avenue in prestigious North Oxford.
    He shaved and dressed in a pair of dark-cream slacks, a hand-tooled leather belt that an ex-girlfriend had brought him back from Spain and, in deference to the heat-haze building up outside, a dazzlingly white, cool silk shirt. He was the epitome of an elegant, classically good-looking Englishman about to enjoy a summer’s day.
    As he drove his faithful Aston Martin down the Banbury Road towards the centre of town, he fully intended to check out the Botanical Gardens. So when he found himself making his way to the Ruskin instead, he smiled ruefully,