The Boy I Love (24 page)

Cautiously Ann persisted, ‘This artist. His name is Paul Harris – he fought during the war, Lawrence told me. That's what he paints – the war. Battle scenes. Dead soldiers.'

He glanced down at her, her head at the level of his heart, her face turned up to his, her cheeks pink from the cold. In a certain light she could look very young, younger than he was.

He would paint her like this; recreate these exact circumstances – close to her, looking down at her as she looked up at him – to capture her vulnerability, her occasional, surprising shyness of him. The portrait would catch only a moment of truthfulness, such a fleeting moment it would hardly be true at all. He put his arms around her, pulling her close so that he wouldn't have to see how anxious she looked.

‘I heard the paintings were controversial.'

She pushed away from him. ‘
Controversial
? What if we can't look?'

He sighed, feeling large and foolish and shallow – the worst of these feelings because he knew he would be able to look, to be critical or envious or dismissive – any of his usual responses – but he would
look
. He couldn't be afraid all the time, or made to feel grief whenever it was expected. He cleared his throat and felt larger and more foolish still. ‘Shall we not go?'

‘I have to go.'

‘Then we'll go together,' he said, remembering that of course she had to be there – Lawrence Hawker was expecting her. He pulled her arm through his again, patting her hand, ashamed of his cowardly resignation. ‘Best foot forward?'

She laughed as though he wasn't quite right in the head. ‘Left right, left right?'

‘Indeed.' He had patted her hand, and now this gesture seemed to him to have struck the wrong note: it was too comradely, too affectionate, he supposed, and it came to him that perhaps affection was all he felt. He had the urge to say that he didn't care to be one among others, just to hear her reaction, but such grandstanding would only be part of that act he seemed intent on performing, and in truth her reaction meant little to him – he had an idea that she was acting a part, too, and there was comfort in this idea: he couldn't hurt her, just as she couldn't hurt him.

All the Beauty of the Sun

Soho 1925.
Two young men meet – for one of them this is love at first sight, for the other only lust and guilt.

In 1925 Paul Harris returns to England from self-imposed exile in Tangiers for an exhibition of his paintings. He leaves behind Patrick, the man he has loved since they met in the trenches in 1918, wanting to explore the kind of life he might have lived had it not been for the war. In Bohemian Soho, he meets Edmund whose passionate love changes Paul's idea of himself. Paul begins to believe that he may have another life to live, free of the guilt and regrets of the past. But the past is not easy to escape, and when Patrick follows Paul to London a decision must be made that will affect all their lives.

ISBN 9781908262011 £7.99

Paper Moon

The passionate love affair between Spitfire pilot Bobby Harris and photographer's model Nina Tate lasts through the turmoil of World War Two, only to be tested when Bobby is disfigured after being shot down. Wanting to hide from the world, Bobby retreats from Bohemian Soho to the empty house his grandfather has left him, a house haunted by the secrets of Bobby's childhood. Here the mysteries of his past are gradually unravelled.

Following on from
The Boy I Love
, Marion Husband's highly acclaimed debut novel, and
All the Beauty of the Sun, Paper Moon
explores the complexities of love and loyalty against a backdrop of a world transformed by war.

ISBN 9781908262745 £7.99

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