Sleep Sister: A page-turning novel of psychological suspense by Laura Elliot Page A

wondered if he was mad. Mad in a harmless way that translated itself into crazy paintings of cats, destructive, dangerous cats, sometimes so distorted that they resembled nothing she could recognise, apart from their eyes – familiar eyes that she saw every time she stared in the mirror.
    In his first completed painting – which he called ‘Cat-apult’ – a cat figure with a grotesquely large head and elongated body hurtled through stars; a flaming comet hell-bent on destruction. In his Cater-pillar painting, he painted the bank in Oldport, recognisable by the ornate pillars at the entrance. A cat with blazing eyes arched against one of the pillars, an almost playful pose until it became obvious that the building was buckling beneath the force of the animal’s fury.
    ‘Have you ever wanted to destroy something and obliterate it from the face of the earth?’ he asked when he was doing ‘Cat-walk’.
    ‘Yes,’ she said and, just for an instant, the past rushed back and threatened to overwhelm her. She focused on the painting he was holding up for her inspection. A monstrous misshapen cat that looked more like a bulldozer, it crouched in the centre of a green shady space that would soon become a building site. Beth’s eyes were the headlights, glowing vengefully.
    Afterwards, away from the studio, she was uneasy, aware that she was being manipulated. He painted such emotion into her eyes, as if they were indeed the mirrors of her soul. She felt like a vessel, his voice pouring into her, opening her up with words that touched her fears, the anger she tried to suppress. The loneliness that swept over her when she allowed herself to remember. Yet she went back each Saturday, drawn by the growing intimacy between them, the sense of being part of something they were both creating. There were layers to his paintings that were not always apparent. She suspected the completed collection would contain a lot more of herself than she, or even he, realised.
    At the end of each session he drove her home in a red low-slung two-seater that always attracted attention when he drove too fast through Oldport. Flared denims sat low on his hips, his sallow skin showing between the hip band and his paint-streaked T-shirt. His hair hung to his shoulders, scraggy, uncombed. A true artist at work.
    ‘Artist, my arse!’ hooted Connie, soon after the painting sessions began. ‘That brat couldn’t whitewash a wall if I stood over him with a whip. If he touches one hair on your pretty head I’ll tear his heart out. There’s no need to look so shocked, Beth Tyrell. All that painting nonsense and the two of you alone up there in his bedroom for hours on end – it’ll come to no good.’
    ‘It’s his studio, Connie.’
    ‘Oh, so that’s what he’s calling it now?’
    ‘Yes, Connie. I’ve never been inside his bedroom.’
    ‘Well, there’s many a girl in Della Designs can’t say the same thing,’ warned Connie. ‘Not to mention my poor Marina with her broken heart. Drinking, dancing and double-dating – that’s all that fellow wants from life.’
    She wondered what Connie would say if she knew about the hash. Peter said it was a winding-down smoke and Beth wouldn’t be so uptight all the time if she shared an occasional joint with him. It annoyed her that he saw her like that, especially when he painted her in so many different images, none of them human, some not even animate.
    ‘You mind what I’m saying, Beth Tyrell,’ Connie warned. ‘Peter Wallace has a tongue that would charm snakes from a basket. But easy words are soon forgotten.’
    Forgotten by whom, Beth wondered. She never forgot anything he said to her. Every casual compliment was branded on her mind. Words as airy as thistledown, blown carelessly in her direction, floating light, without substance.
    Della Wallace also disapproved of their Saturday sessions. She usually found some excuse to enter the studio, cold with Beth for encouraging her son, sarcastic