The Evil Seed Read Free Page A

miracle to get Cat to keep still
for even a minute. But it wasn’t real work; it had been six months since she
had painted anything worthwhile, and it was time to begin in earnest again.
Last year she had had quite a successful exhibition at Kettle’s Yard which had
resulted in a nice fat contract to illustrate a series of children’s folk
tales, but since then, the ideas seemed to have run temporarily dry and it didn’t
look as if she was going to have very much to exhibit this year. Well, that was
how things went, thought Alice. Her pictures — the good ones — took time and
thought, and the ideas either came or they didn’t. There was no point worrying
about all that now; it would only slow things down even more. She glanced at
the three official-looking envelopes tacked to her notice-board (even at a
distance, she could read the flowery ‘Red Rose’ logo across one of them), and
sighed. That was where the money came from, she thought drily. The magazines.
The teen romances. They were the reason she wasn’t still sharing a flat with
two other students at the rough end of Mill Road and claiming income support. A
sudden wave of fierce resentment washed over her at the thought, and she stood
up abruptly to face the window. Was this what she was reduced to doing?
Illustrations for pulp romances? She deserved so much better than that. Celtic
Tales had been her first really exciting project since her ‘Spirit of
Adventure’ exhibition at Kettle’s Yard, and after that … Alice shrugged.
Forget it, she told herself. There was no point sitting indoors feeling
resentful.
    She pulled on a
sweatshirt over her jeans, then slipped on a pair of old, scuffed trainers. She
tacked the half-finished sketch on to the notice-board, ran her fingers through
her short brown hair in lieu of a comb, and, thus ready to face the world,
stepped out into the sunny street. The warmth and the combined scents of
wallflowers and magnolia hit her with a sudden wave of well-being, and she took
a deep breath of the pleasant air.
    It occurred to her that
it had been some time since she had walked into Cambridge. Strange, thought
Alice. When she and Joe had been students there, they had always liked the town
centre with its shops and little galleries and its cobbled streets under the linden
trees. Still, that was all a long time ago. Better not to think of Joe. Better
not to remember him too clearly, not to imagine him standing beside her,
squinting into the shop windows with his hands in his pockets.
    Better not to remember
him at all.
    Suddenly, she felt
depressed. It was thinking about Joe, she told herself. That and the heat and
the Cambridge crowds with their cameras and their college scarves and their
brittle camaraderie.
    Her favourite tea-shop
was just round the corner, and there she found a window-seat, began to order
Earl Grey, and ended up, unaccountably, ordering hot chocolate with cream and a
large slice of fudge cake instead. Something in Alice responded well to
chocolate.
    The Copper Kettle was a
good place. As a student, Alice had spent hours there, drinking Earl Grey or
hot chocolate with cream, watching the flow of people in a pleasant, timeless
daydream. Sitting in the same window watching the same street with the smell of
chocolate and old leather in the smoky air, Alice looked down King’s Parade,
the Senate House reflecting the sunlight from its clean white stones, King’s
warm golden façade, and to her far left, the red brick walls of St Catherine’s
glowing behind its tall railings. The light in Cambridge was different to anywhere
else Alice had ever seen; warm, sleepy, golden light, shifting like a Dali
landscape over the floating spires, the sleeping gardens. Such a beautiful
town, thought Alice, a town of illusions, ghosts and dreams. Even the students
seemed vacant, somehow, for all their animated talk, as if in spite of
everything they knew themselves to be transient, nothing but the dreams of
those old and