It wasn’t a dream. Mona knew that for certain. Nor was she insane. Nor had Malcolm drugged her. She didn’t know the source of Malcolm’s magic and she could not begin to guess the purpose of his tricks or the prestige, but she knew what she’d seen and felt was real, as real as anything had ever been in her life and likely ever would be.

She woke alone in the bed at the gallery. Her insides were sore from Malcolm’s hand, but her breasts felt normal. Her sleep had been dreamless. There was a lightness to her step once again, as the dark cloud over her had lifted.

The happiness didn’t fade even as the long days and lonely nights passed. She was certain she would see Malcolm again and sure enough, the day came when she found a book of paintings on her desk and Malcolm waiting for her in the back room. A few weeks passed and he came to her again. Their nights together were passionate and fulfilling but no longer terrifying. He conjured no monsters, dragged her into no hells. She sensed he’d been testing her in some way and finally she had passed. Malcolm came to her in April and twice in May. The first of June arrived and she woke up fearful. The first time he’d come to her had been in late June of last year. It was almost over, whatever this game was.

He’d made her three promises when they’d made their deal: He promised to pay her enough in art to save the gallery. He promised to tell her the provenance of the paintings.

And he promised he would leave her.

She refused to think of the final promise. Surely the terms of the agreement had changed. She’d told him she loved him, told him she wanted to have his baby, and he’d told her that he would allow that someday. She held onto those words, treasuring them like a talisman. And she needed that talisman once the banks started calling again. She had nearly a dozen valuable and important sketches and etchings she could sell once she had provenance, she assured them. All she needed now was Malcolm’s name and the story he hadn’t yet told her.

By the middle of June, the city was sweating again. Even when it rained, the sidewalks steamed in the heat. Mona rarely left the shady coolness of her gallery for her apartment. She’d never lain with Malcolm there, so it felt like a foreign country to her, whereas The Red was her home.

On a Sunday morning she woke up to a city burning in the heat and she fled straight to the gallery hours before it opened. In her office she found a book lying on her desk, marked with the red velvet ribbon. Mona laughed, her heart bubbling, when she saw the painting he had marked in the book. Manet again. How fitting to return to Manet one year after their first night together. The painting was famous, more famous even than Olympia. Known as Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe—"The Luncheon on the Grass”—it was the painting her mother jokingly called "The Other Naked Lunch.”

Two men, fully dressed, reclined on the grass, having what seemed to be an intense conversation. Sitting next to the men and staring directly at the viewer was a woman, entirely naked. The men paid no attention to her nor to the woman behind them bathing in a stream. Mona wondered if the painting was Manet’s commentary on the art establishment, more interested in talk than the world around them. The woman was nature in the raw and the men wanted nothing to do with her. It didn’t surprise her in the least that Malcolm would want to recreate such a painting and rectify what he undoubtedly considered a moral failing on the part of the men.

Curious, Mona walked to the back room door and peeked inside. Malcolm had wasted no time preparing for the assignation. Instead of wooden floors, she found lush green grass under her feet. Instead of a ceiling, she saw a hazy blue sky. And instead of walls, she saw a silver stream through the trees. The day was halcyon. It looked like someone’s memory of a perfect day. She gazed around her and saw that nothing remained of the back room but the door, freestanding, like a portal to another world. Now she understood that in some mysterious way it was. Another world of Malcolm’s creation.

Somewhere close by people talked. She heard their voices, low but unmistakably male. Mona undressed, dropping her silk skirt and blouse onto the grass. She walked barefoot and naked toward the sound of the men. She spied them before they spied her, sitting beside their picnic blanket in their black suits as they exchanged friendly fire over something silly and political. Malcolm she recognized at once. The other man seemed familiar, but she knew her mind was tricking her. She’d never seen him before. She hid herself behind the tree and studied him. He had dark reddish-brown hair in a modern Brutus cut. His eyes were dark, but not black like Malcolm’s. They were midnight blue instead—she was sure of it even from a distance. Midnight blue eyes and a midnight smile as he spoke. He seemed the sort of man who made all his business deals in a bedroom, not a boardroom. He had a strong nose, strong chin, and strong jaw beneath his beard, and looked a little younger than Malcolm—thirty-five, maybe. Everything about him exuded quiet strength. He was desperately handsome, and in that alone he reminded her of Malcolm. He wore a ring on his left ring finger, but it wasn’t a wedding ring. It looked like an antique signet ring of sorts, large, ornately engraved, and silver.

Mona stepped into the clearing where the two men sat chatting. Malcolm glanced her way and waved her over, patting the blanket at his side. She sat, slightly self-conscious of her nakedness even as she knew the other man with the signet ring was nothing more than a figment of Malcolm’s imagination. He wasn’t real any more than the little pastel nymphs or the men who’d bid on her at the slave auction. He was no more real than the Roman prison guard who’d searched her body, no more real than the priestesses who served the Minotaur.

Malcolm placed his hand on her thigh as she stretched out on the blanket.

"It’s got to go,” Malcolm was saying to the other man. "It’s outdated, outmoded. It’s a relic.”

"Of course it’s a relic,” the man with the midnight eyes said. "I’m not arguing that point.”

"What is your point?” Malcolm asked.

"My point is…people love their relics. Don’t they?” the midnight man asked, turning to Mona.

"You’re asking me?” she said.

"You run an art gallery, don’t you?” he asked.

"She does,” Malcolm said.

"Then you know better than either of us that people love relics,” the midnight man said. "What painting would sell for more money—a bad painting that’s four hundred years old, or a good painting that was finished yesterday?”

"The four-hundred-year old painting,” she said. "Almost always.”

"See?” the midnight man said. "My point is proven. The monarchy remains intact.”

"You’re trying to end the monarchy?” she asked Malcolm. "A strange quest for an Englishman.”

"He’s a strange Englishman,” the midnight man said.

"It’s a relic of a benighted age,” Malcolm said.

"So is everything valuable that you detest,” the midnight man said. "Including marriage.”

"I surrender,” Malcolm said.

Mona laughed at them. They seemed to be dear old friends, though Malcolm had yet to introduce her to his friend.

"Let’s talk of something more pleasant than my two least favorite M words,” Malcolm said. "Let us talk of my favorite M word.”

"Which is?” Mona asked.

Malcolm leaned over and kissed her softly on the lips.

"Mona,” he said.

"A much better topic of conversation indeed,” the midnight man said. Mona looked at him and found him at her other side. She stiffened when he leaned in to kiss her as well. She assumed he was there to be an audience to her and Malcolm’s lovemaking. It seemed he was to participate as well. Malcolm had never let anyone else have sex with her in these fantasies he conjured for her. Would that change today?

"Trust me, love,” Malcolm said, and it was all she needed to hear. The man with the midnight eyes smiled at her and Mona found herself returning the smile, her naked body blushing crimson. It was all a fantasy anyway, wasn’t it? He was a figment of Malcolm’s imagination, a figment who would be gone the moment she returned to the outside world.

The midnight man kissed her mouth, a kiss both tender and cruel. He held her chin in his hand so that she couldn’t move away from his lips (not that she wanted to). His tongue probed the inside of her mouth as if she were something the man had purchased sight unseen and wanted to see if he’d gotten his money’s worth. She grew warm as he kissed her, warm and then hot. He pushed her gently but forcefully onto her back and kept kissing her. As he kissed her, Malcolm fondled her. She would know his touch blindfolded in the dark. He fondled her breasts while she and the midnight man kissed deeply, his beard tickling her chin and cheeks. Malcolm rolled her nipples around his fingers until they hardened painfully, and when they were too sensitive she thought she would scream, he took one in his mouth and suckled it. She moaned into the midnight man’s mouth and he chuckled at her ardor.

"Beautiful whore,” the midnight man said. "I may have to keep you.”

He laughed again softly before kissing her again roughly. If it were possible, and she doubted it was, the man seemed even more arrogant than Malcolm. She was starting to like him. His tongue touched hers and she felt something electric pass between them. It made her heart jump and her stomach tremble. Or perhaps that was merely from Malcolm’s touch on her naked body as he trailed a hand from her breasts to her thighs and up again.

Malcolm pressed her legs apart and lay between her thighs. She tried to break the kiss when Malcolm opened her labia and licked her, but the midnight man didn’t allow it. He forced her to keep kissing him even as Malcolm lapped at her clitoris. The kiss turned into the sweetest form of torture as Malcolm played with her vagina, rubbing along the front wall and pushing his fingertips gently into her most shivering and sensitive places. To kiss and come at the same time was nearly impossible, but the two men seemed intent on forcing her to do it.

The man with the midnight eyes took her breast in his hand and squeezed it while he deepened the kiss even further, delving into her mouth with his tongue as if to eat her every moan. He tasted like he’d been drinking honeyed wine and eating freshly plucked pears—an intoxicating, delicious mix, like sangria. She opened her mouth wider to him as Malcolm pried her tight pussy open with his thumb and forefinger. She moaned into her new lover’s mouth and she felt him trying not to smile.

Mona sensed Malcolm moving. She couldn’t see what he was doing as the kiss prevented her from raising her head. But she felt it, felt him put the thick tip of his cock into her. She tried lifting her hips, eager for more of him, but he held her down on the ground. He brought his mouth onto her left breast again and sucked. The midnight man kissed her along her jawline, nibbled her earlobe and finally took her right breast into his mouth. Never in her life had two different men sucked her at the same time. Her head fell back and she arched on the ground. Yes…this was it, bliss beyond words. These two hot sucking mouths and her body their property and possession. The man with the midnight eyes took her breast in his hand and squeezed it. He plucked at the nipple. He tugged it and twisted it, not viciously but not gently, and the sensation pieced her chest all the way to her back. The man with the midnight eyes stared at her breast while he fondled and sucked her. He seemed to find her mesmerizing, almost as if he were as surprised to be here doing this deed as she was. Who was he? He seemed far more substantial than the shades and shadows of people Malcolm had conjured in his other fantasies. He breathed the word "lovely” before kissing her nipple again. She twined her fingers into his rust-colored hair. She found him impossibly beautiful. Malcolm had done well with this fantasy man. Perhaps Malcolm had read her mind and found her ideal lover. She wouldn’t put it past him.

She turned her head and saw Malcolm looking at her, her nipple deep in his mouth. She touched his face with her fingertips and smiled lovingly at him. He raised his head, smiled back at her, and then thrust his cock into her so hard she saw crimson stars in front of her eyes.

"Devil…” she said, and Malcolm chuckled fiendishly.

The man with the midnight eyes put his mouth at her ear. "He’s terrible, isn’t he?” he whispered. "But do you want to know something?”

"Tell me,” she said.

"I’m worse.”

She saw in his eyes he meant it, but where was the fun in taking him at his word?

"Prove it,” she said.

Those dark blue eyes of his widened in surprise and his pupils dilated with desire. "I must be dreaming,” he said.

"Why is that?” she asked.

"Because you’re my dream girl.”

He lowered his head to her mouth again before she could say another word. He groped her breast while kissing her, while Malcolm fucked her wet cunt. The organ inside her was rapture. Malcolm had her legs up on his shoulders to send the broad and firm tip sliding into the deepest parts of her.

"You should be like this all the time,” the midnight man said against her lips. "Naked with a cock stuck in you. You wear it well.”

"Do I?” she asked, hardly knowing what she said as she was so lost in the moment.

"Your breasts are rose red and your nipples are wine. I can’t wait to find out what shade of red your cunt is.”

"It’ll be red and white when I’m done with her,” Malcolm said. "A candy cane.”

"Or the flag of Sweden,” Mona said. "Or is it Denmark?”

"I’ll leave you blue bruises and it’ll be the flag of America, England, and France,” Malcolm said. "And I will salute them all.”

"No.” The midnight man shook his head, caressed her lips. "A Wingthorn rose. White flowers, but the thorns are blood red and large as the petals. Beautiful and dangerous as I imagine getting in your cunt is.”

"You’ll be ensnared too,” Malcolm said. "But you won’t want to ever get out again.”

Mona laughed, drunk on happiness, drunk on lust.

"Come and get in here, lad,” Malcolm said. "You’ll see what I mean.”

Malcolm pulled out of her and lowered her legs to the blanket again. He stretched out on his side next to her. The man with midnight eyes took Malcolm’s place between her legs. It pleased her to spread her thighs and display herself to him. With both hands he fanned her labia open, splaying her wide for his perusal and inspection.

"Apple red,” he said, nodding his approval. "The color that tempted both Adam and Eve. Do you taste as sweet as you look?” he asked, but didn’t wait for her answer. He dipped his head and licked her inner lips, swirling his tongue in circles all over her. He poked his tongue into the open orifice once before raising up again. "Even sweeter than I thought. Sweet and tart. Consider me a fallen man.”

He pulled off his jacket and tossed it aside. Then he opened his trousers and brought out his prick, already fully erect. Mona’s breathing quickened at the sight of it, dark red and straining in his hand. A beautiful male organ, it was long and thick as his wrist, and her craving for it grew as he stroked it.

"Open yourself for me,” the man with the midnight eyes ordered. She spread her labia for him as he had, using her hands to expose the hole. He mounted her, placing the cock at her entrance and holding it in place with his hand. With one purposeful thrust, he penetrated her to her core and proceeded to fuck her without further preamble. He grasped her by the thigh and wrapped her leg around his back, then dug into her with vigorous strokes. He was over her and under her at the same time, having tilted her pelvis up so far he could slip his knees under her hips to better impale her. Mona tried to touch him but he grabbed her by the wrists and imprisoned her against the blanket. He gave no quarter, this man with midnight blue eyes, brooked no dissent. There was no question of respite or mercy. She existed solely to take his cock and like it, and the second part was optional.

Mona released short sharp breaths as the man rammed her with his iron cock. Her inner muscles tightened and twisted, grasping at the shaft, lavishing it with wetness and attention and adoration. She could barely stand the building pressure. Malcolm added to her torment by lightly pulling back on the hood of her clitoris, exposing the swollen knot of tissue beneath. It pulsed against Malcolm’s fingers, pulsed in time to the powerful thrusts that split her down the seams with each thrust. Inhuman sounds emanated from her lips. Her belly tightened. Her thighs tightened. Seeing Malcolm’s fingers on her clitoris, the midnight man’s organ disappearing into her, and her heavy swollen breasts rising and falling with each rough thrust was too much for Mona. She saw too much, felt too much, was taking far too much to survive it. And just when she couldn’t take anymore, they gave her more.

They gave her more.

The man with the midnight eyes lifted her in his arms, clasping her to his chest even as his penis remained inside her. She wrapped her arms around him, holding him as tightly as he held her. He rolled onto his back, and as soon as she found herself on top of him, Mona began to ride him. She put her hands on his chest and arched her back, displaying her breasts for him, offering them to him for sucking and touching. She screwed her hips in a circle, grinding on the organ inside her. Without warning, the man underneath her bucked his hips and lifted her. He caught her before she collapsed onto his chest, caught her and held her against him again. She fought the arms that held her. She needed to move, to reach her climax. It was killing her not to come. The man was ten times stronger than she, however, and kept her trapped against his chest. He slid his hands up and down her back as she panted like an animal in heat. He took her bottom in his hands and spread her at the cleft. Mona gasped when she felt something cool and wet against her anus, but she knew the fingers that touched her. Malcolm’s fingers penetrated her second hole slowly. She sighed at this loveliest of violations. He oiled her again, oiled her thoroughly. First he used only one finger, but when her anus opened up to him he pushed in a second. Soon she was able to take three of his fingers. He worked those three fingers into her until she took them with ease. He fucked her with them as the man underneath started to move again inside her. In tandem they fucked her, sliding in together and out in unison. When they both left her holes she could have wept from the aching emptiness, but in a flash they were entering her again and she sighed with happiness, unbearable happiness.

The man underneath her locked his legs together and Malcolm rose up, covering her back to take her from behind. The fingers were gone soon and quickly replaced with Malcolm’s cock. She knew this act was inevitable and while she wanted it, she also feared it. Malcolm read her tension and soothed her with a series of kisses across her naked shoulders.

"Open up for me,” he whispered and she spread her thighs as wide as she could. Movement became impossible and unnecessary when both men were fully within her. She was pinned into place by their pricks. Mona buried her head into the crook of the midnight man’s strong neck and lay there taking it all in as the two men used her holes in tandem.

It was an obscenity, this act, being fucked by two men at once in both her holes. She felt the two organs separated only by a wall of sensitive tissue that quivered between them, spasmed and flinched. Staked by these twin spears she could do nothing but remain motionless and receive. She dug her fingers into the fine linen fabric of the midnight man’s shirt and clung to him as if for life. His breathing was ragged, desperate, hungry and music to her ears. Soft moans lived and died in his throat. She’d never heard sounds so erotic. She looked at him and saw his eyes were closed and his lips were parted and she couldn’t stop herself from kissing that mouth that still tasted of everything red and tempting.

"If you were for sale I would pawn my soul to buy you,” the midnight man said into her ear. "I would buy you and keep you a naked slave chained to my bed. I would show off your cunt to every man who crossed the threshold of my house so they could see my prized possession and envy me. I would fuck beautiful women in front of you and send them home right after, still dripping with my seed, so you would know that I could have any girl I wanted but you were the only one I wanted to keep. I would tie you to the dining room table and drink my wine out of you. I would let my dearest friends bend you over the billiard table and fuck your pussy and ass while I sat in my favorite club chair, sipping Scotch and watching you writhe for my entertainment. Then later when I’m fucking you in our bed, you can tell me in exquisite detail how much you prefer my cock to theirs. And if you’re a very good little girl, I would share you like this, a cock in both holes—and if and when you’re an angel to me, I’ll let you take a cock in all three. You’re a magnificent whore and I’d love to wrap you around my cock every day for the rest of your life.”

The words were too much for Mona. Her vagina contracted so hard she cried out. Her stomach muscles rippled. Electric currents shot up her spine to the back of her neck. Her thighs quivered and she shook without moving. The climax with two organs deep in her was devastating. She’d never recover from it. It went on forever and when it stopped she thought she’d died for a moment.

"I knew you two would get along,” Malcolm said as he continued to mercilessly plumb the depths of her.

Mona rested her head on the midnight man’s chest and felt the low rumble of his laughter. The two men continued to use her without her active participation. Her holes were wet and open. What more did they require from her but acquiescence? Malcolm’s hands scored her naked back and she shivered like a cat being scratched just the right way. The midnight man pumped into her, lifting her by his cock with each thrust. They were building toward the crisis, holding back, then pushing forward together. Her whole being was concentrated now in her pelvis, in the two holes they were using and nothing else. She lay limp on the midnight man’s body and waited for them to finish with her. The sooner they finished, the sooner it would all begin again.

Malcolm’s hand gripped the back of her neck, not hard but possessively. His thrusts slowed and deepened. He was almost there. She could tell it from the sounds he made—the guttural moans had turned to long low breaths. The grip on her neck tightened. Malcolm came into her, his hot spurts filling her bowels, while underneath her the midnight man lifted his hips off the ground and released into her at the same time. She froze, held her breath, felt their releases in both her orifices. Obscene, being used like this, but she accepted it, relished it, loved it. She loved it. Shamelessly, blissfully, and utterly loved it.

Malcolm pulled out first, and Mona sat up with the midnight man still inside her.

"Beautiful,” he said as she arched her back and shook out her hair. "Why are you only a dream?”

"I’m not,” she said.

He raised his head and whispered into her ear, "I wish I could believe that.” She only laughed. Mona knew just how he felt. He rolled them over onto her back and slid out of her. She closed her eyes and stretched out in the dappled sunlight streaming through the tree canopy overhead. The stream babbled and bubbled in the near distance. Her thighs were slick with semen and she couldn’t stop smiling.

"Are you happy?” Malcolm asked. She opened her eyes and nodded.

"And messy,” she said, spreading her legs to show him how wet they’d made her.

"Oh dear. We’ll have to do something about that, won’t we?” Malcolm asked. He turned to the man with the midnight eyes. "What do you think?”

"I think…” the midnight man began. "I think…you’re too slow, old man!”

At that, the midnight man stripped and ran naked to the water.

"Lads,” Malcolm said, shaking his head. "They never do grow up.”

"Never,” Mona said. Malcolm stripped naked as quickly as the midnight man and she had no choice but to chase after them as to the stream. She ran freely, fearlessly, knowing this world was safe for her. Her feet would strike no stones. No snakes were hidden in the grass.

She reached the stream and stood atop a large flat rock at the water’s edge. The midnight man had caught the bathing woman in his arms. He ripped the wet and clinging muslin fabric off her body. She laughed and squirmed happily in his grasp and put up no fight whatsoever to flee his attentions. Malcolm stood on the rock next to her and dove into the water, his long lean body as agile and muscled as a man half his age. She sat on the rock and let her legs dangle into the water as Malcolm swam back to her. He stood at the stream’s edge, submerged from the waist down, and she let him lift her into the water. The water was warm as bathwater and she eagerly wrapped her legs around Malcolm’s back and her arms around his shoulders. He pushed his cock into her. It went in easily as she was still so open from earlier. She sighed and rested her head on Malcolm’s strong shoulder.

They didn’t speak and didn’t kiss. They merely rested together in the water, their bodies intimately intertwined. She half dozed, half watched as Malcolm’s friend coupled with the bathing woman in the shallow waters. He had her bent backward over a smooth log of driftwood while he fondled her ample breasts. He pinched and pulled the nipples, sucked the tender pink tips, all the while the woman moaned in her pleasure.

"Who is he?” Mona asked.

"A dear friend.”

"Is he real?”

"As real as I am.”

"Are you real?”

"You ask many questions for a woman who cares so little for the answers.”

"I’m afraid of losing you,” she said. "That’s all.”

"You’ll always have me with you, if you wish,” he said.

"You know I wish it.”

"Then it will be so.”

She needed no other consolation. Those were the words she’d wanted for weeks. Under the stream’s surface, Malcolm was fucking her again, using the weightlessness of the water to lift her up by the waist and slide her down onto him. As he took her, she watched the bathing woman and the midnight man. He’d pulled her to the very edge of the stream where the water was only a few inches deep and put her on her hands and knees. Mona watched as the midnight man mounted her from behind, his hands gripping her waist to steady himself. It was mesmerizing, watching him take her. Mona watched the muscles of his thighs and buttocks contract and flex with his thrusts. She watched his thick red cock pushing into her body with the steady rhythm of a piston. A beautiful man, broad-shouldered and lean but with muscle enough to do real damage if he wanted. She could have watched him all day.

"Mona…” Malcolm whispered her name into her ear. He was coming, she could tell from the tautness of his body and how hard he held her to him. When it was over he tilted her back and let her float on the surface of the stream, her candy apple hair an icon’s halo around her head. Malcolm gently played with her naked breasts as she lay on the water with her legs still wrapped around his waist. There was nothing she wouldn’t allow him to do to her body and she told him that.

"I’m glad to hear it,” he said as he tugged lightly on her nipples. "I fully intend to use your body.”

"For what?” she asked, not that it mattered. It was all the same to her. If Malcolm was doing the using, her body was his plaything.

"I told you. To keep a promise I made.”

"When will you keep it?” She smiled up at the bare sun overhead. This was heaven. This was bliss. This was everything she’d been too afraid to dream but would have dreamed if she’d dared.

Malcolm cradled her head in his hand and lifted her out of the water, bringing her face to face with him. He kissed her on the mouth, a deep velvety kiss. Their tongues met and mingled as the water lapped and licked her skin. At the stream’s shore, the midnight man was still copulating with the beautiful black-haired woman who now lay on her back, her ankles in the air as the midnight man pummeled her with brutal thrusts. With one hard push, Malcolm penetrated Mona again, right into the core of her and when she gasped from the sudden intrusion, he smiled and answered her question.

"I shall start to keep it…now.”

Mona’s eyes flew open. She lay on the bed in the back room and though she was all alone, her body shook with an orgasm. Her fingers slid inside her wetness, that tight inner ring of muscles spasming around her own hand.

When it passed, she rolled onto her side into the fetal position. Malcolm had never left her like this before, never this suddenly, never while she was awake. It scared her. But she saw a white envelope on the pillow next to her and sat up in excitement. Perhaps he hadn’t left her alone after all.

In her haste to open the envelope, she cut her finger on the fine paper and soon the white was dotted with red. She didn’t care. She cared only for the words she devoured, the words written in Malcolm’s loping handwriting.

The bed knobs? What on earth did he mean by "open the bed knobs”? And what on earth did he mean by keep him forever? Surely that was his responsibility, not hers. The tone of the note unnerved her greatly. Something about it seemed final. Something about it seemed like a goodbye.

Mona stood and stared at the bed knobs. The one closest to her at the foot of the bed was nothing more than a brass ball. She put her hand on the knob and turned it. At first it didn’t want to give, but then she felt it twist the tiniest bit. With both hands she turned the knob again. The old bed didn’t want to let the knob go, but eventually she managed to take the knob off. She looked inside the post and found that while it was hollow as she would have expected, it was not empty.

Something was inside it. Something rolled up and wrapped in yellowing linen. Carefully she extracted the linen tube from inside the bedpost. She took the linen wrapping off and discovered a rolled canvas beneath it. Mona shook as she unfurled the canvas, going slowly as she could to avoid doing any damage to the painting that had been hidden in her bed for God only knew how long. At first she saw nothing but black. Then a bit of red on either side. A pocket with a gold chain. Then buttons followed by a white collar. Then a face she knew better than her own, a devilishly handsome face, not smiling at the mouth but a little in the eyes, the eyes that were so black one couldn’t tell where the pupil ended and the iris began.

Malcolm in a black three-piece suit. That was the painting. At the bottom of the canvas was a name of a portrait painter she recognized at once, because they’d had an exhibition of his portraits of women at The Red Gallery five years ago. A man famous for his paintings of England’s high society. A man who had been dead since the 1950s.

Mona turned the painting over.

It couldn’t be. No. It couldn’t.

And yet, there it was, written in pencil on the back of the canvas.

Portrait in oil, 1938.