3.10

 Paul frowned. "Is there something wrong?"

No." She couldn't quite believe the contrast between this and the rest of the house. "Quite the opposite. It's pristine. I wasn't expecting this level of cleanliness."

"It's the only house rule me and Barry had, really, was keeping the bathroom clean." Paul patted the edge of the sink unit as if he were particularly proud of it. "What your own room is like is up to you and we kind of took it in turns to clean the communal areas but the bathroom and kitchen had to be as spotless as when you found it."

She looked at him and he shrugged. "He's been gone a fortnight. It's hard to keep up with the kitchen on my own. Between the studio and the pub, it's all I can manage to sleep, eat and bathe. Especially since I walk everywhere."

"Fair enough. I can live with that." She pointed at the lavatory. "Is that the only loo?"

"Yes. You have to ask if anyone needs it before you have a bath. Otherwise it can get a bit awkward, you know?" Me and Barry never bothered because we both went to school. Not the same one, obviously, but once you've seen one, you've seen them all."

"You'd be surprised at how many girls say that as well." She laughed. "But then, I've heard boys say it about girls as well, as if they've ever seen enough to compare them. And I don't mean magazines, though there's an astonishing variety there, too, if you actually study them and aren't just fantasising about sex."

"You look at those sorts of magazines as well?"

"It's all life drawing, if you look at it from an artistic viewpoint. If you want to know the intricacies of the female body, it's impolite the go up to the life model with a magnifying glass and a speculum."

Paul laughed, snorting through his nose until a line of snot came out and landed on his shirt. She looked away as he reached past her to grab a few sheets of toilet paper from the roll next to the toilet to wipe it off. He balled it up and dabbed, then threw the whole wad into the rubbish bin. She'd made a bed for herself with that comment, she knew. She'd have to produce a few representational drawings or paintings to cover up her spontaneous lie. While it was true enough that she drew anatomy close ups from the depictions of them in adult magazines, she didn't generally buy them. Several of the shops in both Laverstone and Wolverhampton had so little security it was possible to collect them off the shelves and just walk out, although she hadn't shoplifted for several years, not since her dad had left. Her mum had told her he'd gone because he'd been so ashamed when, at thirteen, she'd been driven home by a police sergeant who'd 'had a word' with her parents. Whatever word he'd had, and it was one she'd not been privy to, had been enough to get her a week of school, which she'd spent digging up every inch of the the neighbour, Mr Handley's, allotment. In the rain. In winter. And she'd been transferred to a different school afterward, though she hadn't minded that so much because her previous school had been full of twats. And not the kind she liked to draw. "What about you?"

Paul shook his head "I don't draw vaginas, no."

"What do you draw, though. Or sculpt? What's your body of work about?"

"I'm not sure I've got enough pieces to actually call it a body of work." He led the way out of the bathroom and into the last room she hadn't seen inside, other than the mysterious Steve's loft, the living room.

It was a long, thin room, almost as long as the house, if you didn't count the kitchen extension. There was a window at the far end looking in the same direction as the back door and would, presumably, get the evening sun, and a small gas fire mounted on what would be the wall adjoining the nest house to the right. Clustered around this was a two-seater sofa and what would have been a matching armchair, though this had seen enough use to make it almost as threadbare as the bedroom carpet.  In front of the chair was a small table upon which stood a laptop with some sort of design software modelling a complex shape in 3D.