Chapter 57
Tara’s first thought, when the Peter Morgan show ended, was that maybe the media pressure on her and Sabri would lessen now that all seven recipients had been named.
And then she was ashamed of her selfishness.
Sabri and her family had it far worse than she did.
Her second was that she should make contact with the two new guys as soon as possible.
Easier said than done. Trevor Winter, the security guard, had no online presence that she could pin down.
The name was simply too common. She had more luck with Craig Lewis, the fire safety consultant.
A website popped up almost immediately and seemed highly probable.
She left a quick message, even risking her phone number.
Then she lowered the lights in the main room and left it for her studio.
She was raking tonight, a task that required full concentration.
The piece, one she’d been planning and prepping for weeks, was a wall-mounted representation of an ocean sunset, intended for her eldest son’s birthday.
Earlier that week, she’d finished most of the groundwork and now the glass panel, with colours already fused to show the blue and green ocean, the multi-hued sky and the bright orange glow of the sun, was sitting inside the kiln, surrounded by a cordierite dam, getting hotter by the second.
Outside, the rain that had been threatening all day was thundering down, clattering on the deck outside and on the roof above her head.
Tara shivered, realising for the first time how exposed the studio was.
Since the media had started hanging around the house, she’d made a habit of closing all the blinds once the light faded.
She rarely worked in the evening, though, and so she and Justin had never bothered putting blinds in this room.
Through the rain-smeared windows and the relentless downpour she could barely make out the glow of the solar lights in the dell.
Beyond them, nothing but blackness for miles.
Anyone out there would have a perfect view of her.
Enough. Turning her back on the wild night, she checked the temperature of the kiln.
It was close to the required nine hundred degrees centigrade; time to get tooled up.
From a cupboard she pulled her protective clothes: steel-capped boots, an all-encompassing leather apron, foundry gloves and a full headshield.
Dressed like a welder, she locked the door of the studio, a habit she’d got into when the boys were still at home, and one she’d never managed to break.
She took a moment to steady herself. Raking without full concentration risked burning the house down.
The kiln temperature gauge now showed nine hundred degrees centigrade.
She was good to go. With the raker, a long, poker-like tool, in one hand, she lifted the kiln lid and braced herself against the wall of heat.
Raking had to be done fast. She had forty-five seconds before the glass cooled too much to make further work possible.
She started with the sea, dragging the raking tool from one side of the blue glass to the other, creating undulating horizontal lines that would resemble waves on the finished piece.
She drew three lines, then a fourth, but already the glass was getting claggier.
Closing the lid, she put the raker safely in its holder and pulled off her headshield and gloves, ready to wait the hour needed for the kiln to get back up to temperature.
Pulling out a stool, she stared out at the night.
A sudden flash. One of the garden’s security lights had been activated.
Getting up and approaching the window, she peered out through the rain streaks.
Making his way along the gravel path through the trees, climbing up towards the house, now a few metres below the statue of the diving girl, was the tall figure of a well-built man.