The Visitor by Katherine Stansfield

door, trying not to make a sound. Everyone except Jack. He hangs back, closer to the steps. He doesn’t meet her eye but curls his hands into fists. She climbs the steps then pushes her way towards the window. James and Timothy move to let her through, too caught up in hushed sniggering. Sarah has her face close to the glass and her hands on each temple to block out the light. Nicholas is doing the same. There’s a scrap of sailcloth hanging across the window inside the loft but it has half fallen down and has tears in so if she angles her face she can see into the room.
    At first it’s difficult to see anything and she wonders what all the fuss is about. There’s only white that might be sailcloth. Then she sees that the white is in squares and arranged tidily. Canvases, empty ones. Next to her, Sarah gasps and draws back from the window. Her mouth hangs open and her dark eyes are wide. She puts her hand over her mouth and goes to the other end of the platform, by Jack. Pearl moves to where Sarah was looking, where the sailcloth has fallen. The only sound is gently breaking waves on the other side of the loft.
    She can see someone’s back, a brown jacket. The figure turns round: it’s Mr Michaels. She ducks. When she dares to look again he’s only picked up some paint; he didn’t see her. He moves forward, towards something, but she can’t see what as he’s blocking her view. Then he disappears beyond the window and she sees Alice sitting on a chair without a stitch on.
    Alice is very still, almost as if she doesn’t know Mr Michaels is there. Her thin hair is combed out and sits on her shoulders very prettily, somehow looking more reddish than it usually does. Her cheeks have lost their sallowness and have a flush instead. There’s a stove in the corner of the room. Pearl thinks how kind Mr Michaels is to keep Alice warm and then remembers that it’s sinful. Alice doesn’t have any clothes on and he’s looking right at her, all over her. He stands before a big canvas and adds paint to the image of Alice already there, putting shadows across her chest and shoulders. Pearl looks at the real Alice and sees that there are shadows there, because she’s so thin, but she’s not thin all over. Her stomach is very round. She’s having a baby.
    There’s a flash of green movement on the other side of the loft. Pearl angles her head to see better and the green turns out to be Miss Charles’ dress. She’s standing by her own canvas, painting Alice too, so there are three Alices in the loft. No, more than that. Beyond Miss Charles, at the far end of the loft, are many other pictures of Alice. Alice standing, Alice holding a dogfish, Alice in a tin bath. All these Alices look at Pearl in a way the real Alice doesn’t: right in the eye.
    â€˜I’m going to tell,’ Sarah Dray whispers. Her mouth is set firm but her hands are trembling a little.
    Nicholas looks away from the glass for the first time. ‘No,’ he says. ‘You mustn’t.’
    Jack takes a step forward, as if protecting Sarah from Nicholas’ words. ‘I’m going to tell, too. It’s wicked.’
    Timothy and James give great whoops and jump down the steps as if some signal’s been given that it’s all right to make noise now, that the spell is broken. Jack and Sarah follow them and all four run in the direction of the palace. Pearl wants to stop them but she can’t move her feet.
    It’s only Nicholas and Pearl left on the platform. ‘Come on, they’ll have heard us,’ he says. They go down the steps and into the alley that leads to the seafront. It smells of fish and muck, like the archway under the harbour wall but not as bad. As she thinks this she realises that’s where she wants to be. She wants to hide, to get away from the sail loft and the sharp taste in her mouth when she thinks of Alice, and of Sarah Dray going