Chapter 14: Chapter 14
The silence after she spoke was thick, charged. Ally stared at her, the anger in his shoulders softening into something more complex. "What's the theme?" he asked, his voice rough.
"Thresholds." She turned from the window, the morning light catching the sharp line of her cheekbone. "But not the quiet, poetic ones. The violent ones. The ones you get shoved through. The door that's a headline. The door that's a paparazzi's lens. The door that's a contract negotiation." She wrapped her arms around herself. "The Distraction. That's what they called me. So that's the working title."
"Roz." He crossed the room, stopping a foot away. He didn't touch her. "You don't have to own their shit."
"I'm not owning it. I'm dissecting it." A fierce, unfamiliar light was in her eyes. "I'm painting every damn door they try to shove me through. And I'm painting myself on the other side, whole." She finally looked at him, her gaze unwavering. "It's either that or let it flatten me."
His phone buzzed again, skittering on the nightstand. He ignored it. "Okay," he said, the word a surrender and an alliance. "Then we work. Today. Now."
The flat transformed into a war room. Roz called Elara and Maya, her voice clinical, briefing them. Within the hour, they arrived, armed with coffee and a furious, protective energy. They'd seen the article.
"This is bollocks, absolute bollocks," Maya fumed, throwing her bag down. "Who are these 'sources'? Imaginary friends?"
"Doesn't matter," Roz said, already pulling out her sketchbook, her hands steady. "What matters is I have eight weeks. I need to build a body of work. I need a statement."
Elara studied her. "You're different."
"I'm pissed off."
"Good. Use it."
Ally moved through the space like a ghost, making more coffee, ordering food, fielding calls from his agent, Hamish. His side of the conversation was terse. "No comment…. She’s an artist, not a spectator…. Handle it, Ham. That’s your job." He’d hang up, glance at Roz hunched over the table, her pencil flying, and a look of pained pride would cross his face.
By midday, the large living room wall was covered in Roz’s rapid sketches and scrawled notes. Not delicate studies of light on oak. These were jagged, aggressive compositions. A doorframe splintered by a camera flash. A traditional cottage door, like his parents’, but with tabloid headlines bleeding through the keyhole. A stadium tunnel—the kind Ally ran through—but dark, the exit a blinding, overwhelming rectangle of noise and light.
Ally stood before that one, a muscle in his jaw twitching. “That’s accurate,” he said quietly.
“It’s a threshold of performance,” she said, not looking up from a new sketch. “Of being consumed.”
He pointed to another, a sketch of a simple door with a peephole, but viewed from the outside. The viewer was the one being watched. “This one?”
“The feeling of being examined. Of having your private life turned into public currency.”
Maya whistled low. “It’s bleak, Roz. Powerful, but bleak.”
“It’s honest,” Elara countered. “It’s the world she just got shoved into.”
The afternoon bled into evening. Ally had to leave for a late training session—a mandatory physio appointment he couldn’t skip. The goodbye was awkward, conducted under the watchful eyes of her friends.
“I’ll be back by nine,” he said, his hand hovering near her cheek before he thought better of it and let it drop.
“Just go. Do your job.” She gave him a small, tight smile. “I’m doing mine.”
Training was a purge. He threw himself into the drills, the impact of tackle bags, the burn in his lungs. His teammates were careful around him. A few clapped him on the back, offered a muttered “ignore the wankers,” but most avoided the topic. It was there, though. In the glances. He was no longer just Ally. He was Ally-plus-headline.
Hamish was waiting for him in the car park afterwards, leaning against his sleek Audi. “We need to talk.”
“I need to get home.”
“This is about home.” Hamish, a compact man with the relentless energy of a terrier, fell into step beside him. “The club’s concerned. Not about the girl. About the noise. Your contract is about stability, marketability. This… gossip detracts.”
Ally stopped, turning on him. “She has a name. Roslyn. And she’s not ‘noise.’ She’s my girlfriend. This is my life.”
“Your life is a brand,” Hamish said, not unkindly, but with brutal pragmatism. “And right now, there’s a narrative of distraction. We need to counter it. A few managed appearances. You, focused, at training. Maybe a joint, controlled interview later, down the line, when her exhibition is on. Show a united, supportive front.”
“You want to use her. To manage the story.”
“I want to protect your investment. Both of you.” Hamish sighed. “Look, Alistair. I like her. She’s sharp. But this world eats sharp things for breakfast. You either control the narrative, or it controls you.”
The words echoed Roz’s own from the morning. I’m dissecting it. Ally felt a surge of defiance. “She’s controlling her narrative. She’s painting it. You want a united front? Wait for her show. That’ll be the front.”
He left Hamish standing there.
When he let himself back into the flat, it was dark except for the glow of a single lamp. The wall of sketches was a chaotic shadow-play. Roz was asleep on the sofa, a blanket pulled to her chin, an open sketchbook on her chest. Elara and Maya were gone. A note on the table read: We fed her. Don’t let her burn out. – M & E.
He carefully slid the sketchbook from her grasp. On the open page was a new drawing, less jagged than the others. It was a detailed study of a greenhouse window, fogged with condensation. Through the blur, you could just make out the shapes of trophies inside. It was quiet. It was a secret. At the bottom, she’d written: The Private Door.
His throat tightened. He put the book down, switched off the lamp, and sat in the armchair opposite her, watching her sleep in the city-lit dim. The bruise on his ribs ached. The public noise was a drumbeat in his skull. But here, in this quiet, there was a different truth. It was fragile, and it was under siege, but it was theirs.
He must have dozed off. The vibration of his phone on the floor woke him. A number he didn’t recognize. He silenced it. It buzzed again immediately. Same number. Cursing, he grabbed it and stepped into the hallway.
“Alistair MacLeod?” A woman’s voice, crisp, English.
“Who is this?”
“Catherine Vance, The Chronicle.” A pause, deliberate. “I’m following up on our piece about you and Ms. McLeod. I’d like to offer her the right of reply. We’re doing a feature on women in the arts, and given the sudden interest in her work, we thought—”
Ally ended the call. He blocked the number. His hands were trembling. It was just after midnight.
The private door was cracking open, and the world was forcing its way in. He leaned his head against the cool wall, the reality of Hamish’s words sinking in with a cold, heavy finality. This wasn’t going away. It was just beginning.
He heard a rustle. Roz was sitting up on the sofa, silhouetted against the window.
“Who was that?” Her voice was clear, awake.
“A journalist. Wanted to offer you the ‘right of reply.’”
She was silent for a long moment. Then she said, “Give me the phone.”
“What? No. Roz, don’t engage.”
“I’m not going to talk to her.” She held out her hand. “Give it.”
Wary, he handed it over. She found the recent sketch on his screen—a photo he’d taken of her earlier, absorbed in her work, hair falling across her face. Without hesitation, she set it as his new lock screen wallpaper.
“There,” she said, handing the phone back. “My reply.”
He looked at the image. It was just her. Unposed, unaware, in the thick of creating the very thing the world was reducing to gossip. It was a quiet, profound act of defiance.
“They’ll keep calling,” he said.
“Let them.” She lay back down, turning her face away. “I’ve got a door to paint. Actually, I’ve got fifteen.”
He lay beside her on the sofa, pulling her back against his chest, holding her as if the pressure of his arms could form a barricade. He thought of the headlines, the clatter of cameras that would inevitably come, the weight of his contract, the fragile beauty of her greenhouse sketch.
“It’s going to get harder,” he whispered into her hair.
Her hand found his where it rested against her stomach. She laced her fingers with his, her grip surprisingly strong.
“I know,” she said to the dark room. “But the door only works one way. You can’t go back through it.”
Outside, an engine revved unnecessarily loud on the empty street. A siren wailed in the distance. The city was restless, never truly sleeping. It was waiting. Ally closed his eyes, memorizing the feel of her breathing, the rhythm of her heart against his palm. This was the calm before. He knew what came next. The storm was no longer on the horizon. It was at the gate, and it had their names on it.
The storm arrived not with a thunderclap, but with the sterile ping of an email. It landed in Roz’s inbox just after dawn, as she sipped bitter coffee and stared at the chaotic wall of sketches. The subject line was simple: “Urgent Inquiry – The Distraction.”
It was from a tabloid’s features editor, requesting an interview about her “meteoric rise” and her “perspective on modern celebrity.” The tone was slick, pretending to offer a platform while its hooks were clearly baited. She read it three times, her knuckles whitening around the mug.
“Another one?” Ally’s voice was sleep-roughened from the sofa. He’d insisted she take the bed, a silent negotiation they’d had with their eyes.
“They’re calling the show ‘The Distraction’ already. They’ve decided the narrative.” Her voice was flat. “Meteoric rise. As if I launched from a catapult they built.”
He was beside her in two strides, reading over her shoulder. His warmth at her back was a contrast to the screen’s cold glow. “Delete it. Don’t even answer.”
“Ignoring it doesn’t make it go away. It just means they’ll write it without me.” She closed the laptop with a definitive click. The silence that followed was different from the productive quiet of the day before. This was a listening silence, waiting for the next breach.
It came from his phone. Hamish, on speaker. “The club’s PR team wants a statement. A simple one. You’re focused on rugby, you support the arts, private life is private. Bland but effective.”
“And if I don’t?” Ally’s gaze was fixed on the closed laptop.
“Then the vacuum gets filled. Look, I’ve had three calls this morning. One magazine wants to do a ‘day in the life’ – they’ll follow you to training, they’ll want a shot of the happy couple at home. Another wants Roz’s ‘Cinderella story’. It’s a circus, and the tickets are selling fast.”
Roz stood up abruptly, her chair scraping. She walked to the window, her back rigid. The city below was waking up, oblivious. She felt like a specimen under a bell jar, the air getting thin.
“No,” Ally said into the phone. “No statements. No access. Nothing.”
“Alistair—”
“Tell them I’m in a maul. And I’ve lost my mouthguard.” He ended the call. The attempted joke fell into the quiet room and died. He went to her, but didn’t touch her. “We need to get out of here. Just for a few hours.”
They drove north, leaving the city’s grasping skyline behind. He didn’t tell her where they were going. The tension in the car was a living thing, curled on the backseat. She watched the landscape change, the fields growing wider, the sky opening up.
He finally pulled into the car park of a vast, modern art gallery, a low-slung concrete building set against the hills. “The Stevenson,” he said. “No one will look for us here.”
Inside, the air was cool and still. They wandered through rooms of abstract sculptures and vast, moody landscapes. It was a balm. Her shoulders began to unlock, her breathing deepened. They stopped before a massive canvas, just swathes of conflicting color and texture.
“What do you see?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper.
“A fight. But a beautiful one. Like watching a perfect tackle from a distance. All chaos and geometry.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “What do you see?”
“A door,” she said, after a moment. “For someone braver than me.”
He took her hand then, his fingers lacing through hers, a simple, solid connection. They walked like that through the empty rooms, past security guards who glanced at Ally twice but said nothing. In a quiet corridor between exhibits, she stopped. She leaned her forehead against the cool concrete wall.
“Ally,” she said, her voice muffled. “Will you look after me?”
He stilled. The question hung in the sterile air, so small and raw it cracked something open in his chest.
She turned, her eyes wide and suddenly damp with a panic she couldn’t suppress. “Hey, where did that come from? I don’t know. It’s just… this. All of this. I don’t have a lot of people in my life, Ally.”
He cupped her face, his thumbs brushing the fragile skin beneath her eyes. He saw the girl who painted quiet doors in the rain, terrified of the noise she’d summoned. He saw the artist who’d sketched a bloody, brilliant rebuke. He saw her.
“The people you do have,” he said, his voice low and fiercely certain, “love you very much, sweetheart.”
It wasn’t a platitude. It was a fact, etched in the lines of his face. He kissed her, there in the anonymous hallway, a kiss that was a seal, a promise, a quiet defiance of every headline waiting to be written.
When they pulled apart, she managed a shaky breath. “Okay.”
“Okay.” He kept an arm around her as they walked back to the car. The drive back to Edinburgh was quieter, but the silence now was shared, a fortified thing.
The flat felt different when they returned. The wall of sketches wasn’t an accusation anymore; it was a battle plan. Roz walked straight to it, pulled down the first sketch—the splintered doorframe—and pinned a fresh sheet of paper over it.
“Right,” she said, picking up a charcoal stick. “Enough hiding.”
She worked with a new, frightening focus. Ally made calls in the other room, his voice a steady, negotiating drone. He ordered a large canvas stretcher, rolls of primed canvas, tubes of paint in colours with names like ‘Payne’s Grey’ and ‘Venetian Red’. The practicalities were a bulwark.
Two days later, the proposal was emailed to Mairi Campbell. It was blunt, accompanied by five developed sketches. The title: Threshold: A Distraction in Fifteen Parts. The artist’s statement was a single line from Roz: This is what it looks like when the private becomes a viewing gallery.
The reply came within the hour: Appropriate. Uncompromising. Proceed. The gallery is yours.
That night, they cleared the largest wall in the living room, moving furniture with a reckless, energized clatter. Ally assembled the giant stretcher, his rugby-trained muscles navigating the unfamiliar tools with concentrated finesse. Roz unrolled the first canvas, a pristine, daunting white expanse six feet by four.
She stood before it, a tiny figure against all that potential. The charcoal stick felt like a weapon in her hand. She glanced at Ally, who gave her a single, slow nod.
She drew the first line. It was not the delicate tracing of woodgrain. It was a violent, sweeping arc that cut the white space in two. It was the line of a camera’s flash, the line of a boundary crossed. It was the threshold.
She worked for an hour, lost in the making, the charcoal dust coating her hands and arms like gunpowder residue. Ally watched from the kitchen island, not speaking, just being the witness. When she finally stepped back, breathing heavily, the first skeletal composition was there. It was brutal. It was perfect.
Her phone buzzed. An unknown number. She ignored it. It buzzed again. And again.
Ally picked it up this time. He listened, his face hardening into a mask. “She has no comment.” A pause. “I said, no comment.” He held the phone out. “It’s for you. It’s your father.”
The world tilted. Roz stared at the device as if it were a live snake. She hadn’t heard from her uncle—her father’s brother—in over a year. Not since the last strained Christmas call. She took the phone, her charcoal-dusted fingers leaving smudges on the screen.
“Roz?” The voice was familiar, but the tone was all wrong. It was wheedling, bright with false cheer. “I saw the article! My famous niece! Why didn’t you tell us you were dating a rugby star?”
She closed her eyes. The private door wasn’t just being watched. It was being kicked in by ghosts.
The voice on the phone was a shard of a past she’d carefully boxed and stored away. “Uncle Paul.” The words felt strange in her mouth. Ally was watching her, every muscle in his body coiled and alert.
“We’re all so chuffed for you, darling! Your dad would’ve been—well, you know.” His jovial tone was a thin veneer over something calculating. “Listen, I’m in Glasgow next week. We should have a proper catch-up. Bring your famous fella!”
Her knuckles were white around the phone. The charcoal dust on her skin felt like grime. She saw it clearly—the “proper catch-up” in a pub, the photos snapped on a friend’s phone, another headline: Rugby Star’s Missus Reunites with Estranged Family. She was just a series of angles to everyone.
BECAUSE UNCLE PAUL IS PRIVATE LISTEN I'M RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF SOMETHING RIGHT NOW. I'LL PHONE YOU BACK IN A FEW DAYS.
She ended the call and dropped the phone onto the sofa as if it had grown teeth. The silence it left was deafening. Ally didn’t ask. He just waited, his presence a solid anchor in the middle of the room’s sudden sway.
“He saw the article,” she finally said, her voice hollow. “He called me ‘darling.’ He never calls me darling.” She let out a shaky breath that was almost a laugh. “He wants to meet my famous fella.”
Ally crossed the room in three strides. He didn’t hug her, just took her charcoal-blackened hands in his, his grip warm and firm. “What do you need?”
She looked at their joined hands, then at the violent, beautiful line she’d drawn on the canvas. That was real. This was real. The voice on the phone was just noise from the other side of a door she’d already closed. “I need to not have this conversation.”
“Then we won’t.” He said it with a finality that made her believe, for a moment, that he could simply command the world to leave her be.
ALLY LOOKED AT HER ARE YOU HUNGRY I'M STARVING. LET'S MAKE DINNER I'VE EVERYTHING FOR A YAKI SOBA.
The domesticity of it was a lifeline. “You have noodles?”
“I have everything. Noodles, cabbage, chicken, that sauce you like. The works.” He released her hands, already moving towards the kitchen. “Come on. You can chop. It’s therapeutic. Pretend the carrots are journalists.”
A genuine smile, small and surprised, touched her lips. She followed him, the specter of the call receding under the fluorescent kitchen light. He pulled vegetables from the fridge, packets from the cupboard, lining them up on the counter with a coach’s efficiency.
She washed the charcoal from her hands, the black swirling down the drain. She picked up a knife and a red pepper, beginning to slice it into neat, precise strips. The action was simple, meditative. The sharp thwack of the blade on the board was a better rhythm than her heart had been.
“He wasn’t there, you know,” she said, not looking up from the pepper. “After the accident. Sent flowers. A cheque. That was it.”
Ally paused, his hand on a jar of sesame oil. He didn’t offer pity. He just listened, the space between them filled only by the sound of her cutting.
“My mum always said he was ‘private.’ What she meant was he was selfish.” The pepper was done. She started on an onion, her eyes beginning to sting. “And now he’s not private anymore. Because I’m not.”
Ally lit the gas under the large wok. A blue flame roared to life. “Then he doesn’t get to be part of this.” He poured in oil, the air shimmering with heat. “This is private. This is ours.”
He tossed in the chicken, and the sizzle was loud and immediate, a burst of sound and scent that filled the kitchen. He moved with a confident grace, stirring, adding vegetables from her board. The noise was a shield. The rich, salty smell of the sauce as it hit the hot wok was a promise of something normal.
Roz watched him, this man who faced down giants on a field, now wholly focused on not burning their dinner. The tension in her spine began to unknot, one vertebra at a time.
“It’s just family,” she said, almost to herself.
“Yeah.” He tossed the noodles into the fragrant chaos. “Family’s complicated. Sometimes it’s your mum knowing exactly when to put the kettle on. Sometimes it’s your sister ambushing you in the driveway.” He shot her a sideways glance, a faint smile on his face. “And sometimes it’s a voice on the phcome here he said he lifter one that feels like a shakedown.”
He divided the steaming, glistening mound between two bowls and handed her one. They ate leaning against the counter, the wok still ticking with heat behind them. It was too hot, but delicious, the flavors bold and direct.
“This is really good,” she mumbled around a mouthful.
“Told you I had everything.” He nudged her foot with his. “Including a highly advanced understanding of packet sauce.”
She laughed, the sound startling her. It felt like victory. The unfinished canvas waited in the next room, a silent, demanding promise. The phone, dark and silent on the sofa, was a threat waiting to recharge. But here, now, with the taste of soy and ginger and the simple, profound act of being fed, she was inside a different kind of door. It was warm, and it was lit, and for this moment, it was locked.