What Gran Said

Gran did not say anything useful at tea. She talked about the garden and whether the roses needed cutting back and asked Owen about school in the way adults did when they were buying time. He answered her questions and drank his tea and waited.

Eventually she said: "How long have you been watching it?"

"Three days," Owen said. "It moves a little every day. Getting closer to the edge of the bench. And I think." He paused. "I think it might be getting slightly bigger. Like it is closer to the front of the painting than it was."

Gran wrapped both hands around her mug. The kitchen was warm and bright and absolutely ordinary and outside the window the real garden was dark.

"Your great-grandfather painted it in 1962," she said. "He told me there was no figure in it when he finished. He said he went to bed and came down in the morning and there it was, sitting on the bench. He thought he had added it himself and forgotten."

"But?" Owen said.

"But it moved," Gran said. "He noticed after a week. And he told me about it before he died and said that in all the years he had the painting it had done one thing, always the same thing. It got closer."

The kitchen clock ticked. Outside something rustled in the hedge. Owen's tea had gone cold.

"Closer to what?" he said.

Gran looked at him over the rim of her mug. "To the edge," she said. "He thought if it ever reached the edge of the painting it would." She stopped.

"It would what?" Owen said.

"He did not know," Gran said. "It never reached the edge while he had it. He was very careful never to let it."

"How did he stop it?"

Gran was quiet for a moment. "He turned it to face the wall," she said. "For a few days. When he turned it back the figure had moved away from the edge again. Back to the bench. Back to the middle."

Owen thought about this.

"Why did you keep it?" he asked.

Gran looked at the table. "Because he asked me to," she said. "And because as long as I know where it is I know what it is doing. It is easier to watch something if you keep it close." She looked up at him. "How close is it to the edge now?"

"I do not know exactly," Owen said. "Closer than when we arrived."

"Then we should turn it around," Gran said. She set her mug down and stood up with the decision of someone who has done this before. "Tonight."