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When I return to our compartment, it has been converted into its daytime arrangement. Katherine is by the window, totally engrossed in her editing task. I dig out my sketchbook and settle on the banquette sofa by the door.

Inspired by the wooden inlay of flowers on the wall, I sketch a more realistic version of the same bouquet.

I long to paint in bright colours how they feel rather than how they appear.

Every time I look up, Katherine is scribbling furiously across the page that her husband has given her.

When the pencil stops, she goes completely still except for her mouth.

It moves as if speaking. Her eyes are closed, and it is clear she is somewhere far, far away.

Suddenly she opens her eyes and sees me staring. ‘Sorry, I have been terribly rude.’

‘Not at all.’ I was the rude one, staring.

‘I have, but this is almost done and then I would love to see some of your work.’

I swallow and fight the urge to hide my sketchbook. But it isn’t right to feel this way. I’m an artist. I need to overcome this feeling of exposure each time someone studies my work. Especially if I want to sell my art.

‘Of course,’ I say, loosening my grip on the pencil.

‘Good. I’ll just return this to my husband.’ She carefully folds the paper and puts on her jacket, then leaves the compartment.

How would it feel being edited? Over time I have become used to more experienced artists adding the odd line, or suggesting the addition of a colour, but nothing that would stop the work from being mine.

Maybe poetry is different. I wouldn’t know.

I recall a few poems my mother loved by Robert Frost, but I have never studied them.

I simply enjoy the feelings they bring forth in me.

I imagine most casual viewers of art are the same.

But I could be completely wrong. People experience art and poetry in all sorts of ways.

I flip through my sketchbook to take my mind off Katherine and her husband.

It is not something I need to spend time thinking about.

As soon as we leave the train in Venice our paths will never cross again, and the only reminder of her will be the few sketches I made of her this morning when I couldn’t sleep.

My mouth dries. She can’t see those. What on earth would she think?

But as I reach those pages, she walks back through the door. There is no time to rip them out.

She holds out her hand and I close the book and give it to her. How can I explain? What will her reaction be?

She settles by the window and begins on the first page, which contain sketches of the poorer side of Paris. I wanted to capture it all. Seeing it from this distance, it looks chaotic, even messy. But Katherine’s fingers trace the various vignettes of life.

‘Paris fascinated you,’ she says without taking her eyes from my drawings. Each page is flipped and studied. She strokes the work as if trying to absorb it through her fingertips.

The scenes change to the prostitutes of the night.

These are mostly done in watercolours and are very fluid.

My time there opened my eyes. I knew of these things but to see them was different.

At first I was shocked, but after chatting haltingly with some of the women, I looked at their roles with new eyes. They didn’t judge anyone, including me.

‘You are talented.’ She looks up from the book. ‘You enjoyed the underbelly of the city.’

I smile. ‘I guess I did.’

‘Is this the sort of thing you painted in St Ives?’

I pause. ‘Yes, and no.’

‘That’s not really an answer.’

‘If I’m painting people, I’m drawn to those who occupy, as you say, the underbelly, but in Cornwall I’m equally pulled to the landscape.’

She glances at the page and then back to me. ‘Do you ever combine them?’

‘Rarely do you see the people I’m interested in painting standing on a stunning cliff admiring the view.’

‘That’s a shame.’ She returns her attention to the book, and I’m jealous of it.

Every page is devoured with her glance. Each brush stroke or pencil mark is noted.

I almost forget my worry of her finding herself portrayed, but then she reaches the sketches.

She looks up at me, then returns her focus to them.

Her fingers caress her birthmark. I can barely breathe.

The compartment is suddenly too warm, and I’m trapped.

My fascination is exposed, hanging in the air between us.

‘It’s always interesting to see how you are viewed by others,’ she says so quietly I almost miss it. ‘You have drawn me differently to your ladies of the night, and yet there is something . . . something that has carried over.’

I blush and hope she doesn’t see my desire. She wouldn’t understand. I don’t either. Despite wanting to be normal, I am captivated by her.

My breath returns when she reaches my drawings of the train carriages and the compartment. These are more like journal entries recording my trip. No interpretation, only what I see. Not photographs, but not far from them.

‘I would love to see some of your finished work.’ She closes the book.

‘I’ve shipped the work I did in Paris back to Cornwall.’

‘To a dealer?’

‘Definitely not.’

‘Why not?’

It is a valid question. I’m an artist, and selling my work is part of that, but aside from a few small paintings done for visitors, I haven’t offered my work further afield. ‘I . . .’ I stop and look at my hands.

‘Yes?’

‘I haven’t worked out what my style is yet, so everything is scattered, and to launch my career I would need to have a body of cohesive work.’

‘That makes sense, but I wonder . . .’ she touches the cover of the sketchbook, ‘if it’s more than that.’

I push myself back into the cushions and cross my arms. She is too insightful.

‘You will have to share your work to fully become the artist you are and to embrace the glory of your skill.’

My skill, at least at this point, is more that of an apprentice than a master, but I can’t say that when she has been so kind about my work.

‘Now, I must go and wish my husband bon chance , as we are nearing Milan.’ She smiles. ‘Why don’t you come and say farewell to the charming Signor Rossi?’

I don’t know how she endures her husband.

He is handsome in a conventional way, so that aspect is understandable, but it is his personality that makes me angry.

He brings out the harpy in me and I wish I had the right words to put him in his place, for he has clearly put Katherine in hers.

She is different when he is around, and I much prefer the Katherine who is beside me now.

By the time we reach him she will be altered, almost like she becomes an entirely new person.

How can anyone be that much of a chameleon and live with themself?

We sway with the train’s motion through the dining carriage and walk towards the front.

The engine slows and outside the scenery has changed from rural to industrial.

Even so, there are residential pockets, with bright geraniums adorning every balcony.

They are strangely joyous amongst the warehouses.

The two men are standing by the window opposite their cabin. Signor Rossi smiles in greeting, but Forster frowns.

‘Katherine, you are five minutes late, and you know how I despise tardiness.’

‘Sorry, Simon.’ She lowers her eyes demurely.

‘Here’s your passport and other papers. Don’t lose them.’

I open my mouth, then shut it. She is not a child.

‘At least you are in time for Serafino to tell you his thoughts on my latest poem.’ He holds out a sheet of paper. It is freshly written. I glance at Katherine. Her face is blank.

‘Simply brilliant.’ Rossi waves his hand.

‘The imagery and use of words. Genius. You are lucky to have such a talented husband. You must continue to do everything to keep him so creative, so passionate.’ He pauses.

‘Yes, that is what powers the poem, the restrained passion bubbling below the surface.’ He brings his gathered fingers to his mouth and kisses them.

‘I look forward to reading more of his work. I feel . . . invigorated, and longing for love.’

Forster hands me the page to read. In clear black ink the words of the poem flash at me.

It is about the last flight of the day before finding a roost high above the ground.

The mingling of two birds, alone and safe for this moment in time.

The wings touch, the beaks nuzzle . . . I see it all, and not just the words.

Longing, love and . . . lust. How can such a man, an insensitive man, write with this finely tuned feeling?

I look up from the page, seeking Katherine.

She glances out of the window and only turns to look at me as the train slows further.

‘What do you think, Miss Kernow?’ Forster asks.

I draw in a deep breath and decide to judge the words and not the man who wrote them. ‘Exquisite.’

‘Even a simple painter sees the worth of my work.’

‘Darling,’ Katherine says quietly. ‘Miss Kernow is an accomplished artist.’

He waves his hand in dismissal and engages Rossi in conversation. The train comes to a stop at the station and he and Katherine step off.

‘It has been a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss Kernow. I hope our paths cross again in the future.’ Rossi takes my hand and bows over it very formally before he too steps off the train. Out of the window I see Katherine kiss Forster’s cheek. Her expression is unreadable.

Unsettled is how I feel in this moment. Something I can’t name or place is gnawing at me.

Restless, I head back to our compartment without waiting for Katherine.

On the way, I pass Marlene Dietrich with barely a glance.

Once there, I open my sketchbook and draw the most frightening caricature of that buffoon of a man.

Why does she put up with him? Surely she doesn’t have to stay with him?

Is it only because he is a genius with words?

As I scratch the words The pompous poet under the figure, Katherine walks through the door. She looks at the sketch on my lap.

‘You’ve captured him.’ She picks up her bag and places her documents in it, then leaves again before I can say anything.

Have I offended her? The sketch is a way for me to put my thoughts and feelings somewhere outside of me.

I have encountered many men like Forster.

Some who are tolerated, even lauded for their genius.

He must be one of them. That must be why she stays with him.

But Katherine is different, though I can’t define how. I stand and look around for the notebook I saw her write in last night. I long to understand her. I find it in her hatbox, under the table by the window.

There are notes, phrases, lists, images, and searing moments of exquisite emotion. In the front of the book there is a poem, ‘The Artist’, by Amy Lowell:

Why do you subdue yourself in golds and purples?

Why do you dim yourself with folded silks?

Do you not see that I can buy brocades in any draper’s shop,

And that I am choked in the twilight of all these colors.

How pale you would be, and startling—

How quiet;

But your curves would spring upward

Like a clear jet of flung water,

You would quiver like a shot-up spray of water,

You would waver, and relapse, and tremble.

And I too should tremble,

Watching.

Murex-dyes and tinsel—

And yet I think I could bear your beauty unshaded.

Is Katherine a student of poetry? Is this how they met?

Hearing footsteps in the corridor, I put the notebook back and return to sketching.

Where has she gone? It is only hours before we arrive.

I must pack. It will be good to reach Venice and breathe different air.

It might help, as nothing on this journey makes sense.

Maybe my mother felt the same way at the start of hers.