The Keeper

The Painting

On a grey December day, Martha whiled away the time before the train back to London by wandering through the old streets of Truro. She glanced in a gallery that she'd been in many times and her heart stopped. There was a painting there like nothing she had seen before. She went in and walked over to the back wall to look at it more closely. It was a beautiful piece, abstract but clearly a garden full of living green and light and splashes of colour. She stared at it, trying to fathom why it was giving her goosebumps. She must have been standing there for longer than she thought because the gallery owner came and tapped her on the shoulder.

"I'm sorry, miss, but I'm closing up."

A small red sticker beside the painting declared it sold, but there was nothing to say who the painting was by or even what it was called.

"Who painted this?" asked Martha.

"Well, that's the funny thing. I don't know. The artist calls himself 'Barn Owl'. Actually, I'm not even sure the artist is a him. It was a condition of sale that we don't know his or her real name, or the name of the agent. There isn't even a signature on it, but it's lovely, isn't it? I could've sold it five times over."

Martha glanced at her watch, thanked the gallery owner, and ran for the train. She'd never seen Dean's completed paintings, but the line and colour of the painting was distinctive. It reminded her of the work he had done in class when demonstrating techniques and media. She sat on the train and the feelings she had tried to suppress came back to her as if the decades had never happened. A love lost. A love never realised, but real. These were feelings she had never had for Carl, no matter how hard she had tried. She had to do everything in her power to find Dean now.

She returned to the Truro gallery the following weekend with her camera at hand, but the painting was gone, leaving only an after-image in her brain like sun spots in her eyes. She went back to London to search again, scouring the libraries and spending time online on Friends Reunited, art discussion boards and anywhere she thought she might find a trace of Dean. It was hard to ask people to look for someone who had been so careful to cover his tracks. She had no photos of him and no one recognised him from drawings she had done twenty-something years before. She quizzed the gallery owner, but the person who bought the painting had paid in cash when they picked it up and there were no prints or cards for Martha to show anyone.