The Smoke In The Photograph by Kit Tinsley Page A

for far too long. It was high time the two of them got reacquainted.
    It looked wrong though. There was no sight more depressing to her than an empty easel. She opened up a box containing a few new canvasses and placed a mid-sized one onto the easel. That was so much better, no longer depressing, but a thing of beauty and endless possibilities.
    Next she unpacked her brushes, and oil paints, pallets, rags and pallet knives. She set these up on a folding table next to the easel. Then she just needed to fill a jar with water and one with white spirits. She wondered how much all of this had cost her over the years. More than she cared to confess, even to herself. Her brushes were all the best synthetic brushes that money could buy. A lot of other artists she knew swore by badger hair brushes, but Julia had never been able to bring herself to use them.
    She felt the dizziness return. It felt as though she was slipping away from her own body.    The brushes she held fell to the floor, scattering as they did. Julia turned and considered trying to make it down the stairs to her bedroom. However, she didn’t think she would make it. The room had begun to spin like she was drunk. She felt unsteady and dropped to her knees. She saw the flashing light once more, like a gliding white ball of light just before her eyes. It slowly danced across her field of vision. It headed towards her. Then nothing. Blackness enveloped her and she slipped into unconsciousness.
     
     
    The ceaseless beeps of the heart and blood pressure monitor he was attached to made it very hard for Steven to get to sleep. Actually, if he was honest with himself it was the guilt. Guilt about his affair, but mostly guilt about hitting Julia. How could he have let his anger and fear get the better of him like that? How could he deliberately strike the person he loved most in the world?
    Ariel was to blame. She had left the shoes at the old house. Undoubtedly she had done it on purpose as a way of attempting to force his hand. Steven cursed himself again for ever having met her, for ever starting the affair. At no time had he even insinuated to Ariel that he had any intention of leaving Julia. Unless she had taken his part in the affair as some sort of insinuation that he would.
    The anger he felt earlier, the seething rage that had forced him to hit his wife, had not been aimed at Julia, it had been aimed at Ariel. Things were finally starting to return to normality in his marriage. Yet he could not break off his affair for fear of how Ariel would react.
    He would tell her now, by text. It was the cowardly way, he knew that, but maybe he was a coward; he certainly felt like one. Only a coward would hit his wife, after all.
    His phone was in the little cabinet at the side of his bed. He leant over and retrieved it. This simple action felt like a chore with the residual ache and tightness in his chest. He sat back up in the hospital bed and started composing the text.
     
    I am sorry, but it is over.
     
     
    He stared at the words he had written. It was so cold, so callous. Once again he hated himself. He imagined Ariel reading the text, pictured her sitting there sobbing as the words scorched themselves into her heart. It would be painful, but it would be quick. Perhaps hating him would allow her to move on quicker.
    Or it will anger her, said the coward’s voice in his head.
    This was of course his biggest fear. What if in rejecting her he caused her to seek retribution? He was, after all, already convinced that her leaving her shoes at the previous house had been no accident. Ariel wanted him to get caught out. In her mind, if Julia knew the truth and threw him out, he would come running to her open arms.
    'No,' he said aloud to the voice in his head. 'It has to end, and it has to end now.'
    He searched for Ariel's number in his contact list and assigned it to the text message.
    The temperature in the room appeared to drop ten degrees as his finger hovered over the