Three Years Old

Chapter Twenty-Four

Hey guys, here's the first chapter of the day! I plan to write another one this afternoon, as I didn't upload yesterday. Sorry it's a bit short :S (also, anyone who watches Gossip Girl, pleeeeaassee message me, I'm desperate to talk about it with someone but none of my friends who watch it have got around to it yet and ahsaigagjaligjas IT WAS MINDBLOWING.)

Enjoy :)

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     After a wonderful lunch with both of Blake’s parents and Edith, we set off to do the half an hour journey to our storage space. It wasn’t really half an hour away, but since we were forced to drive so that we could transport our work back, it took that long. It was just a small room in a big building providing spaces of all different sizes for anyone to rent out. We’d gone for one of the smallest, as we could compact all our artwork pretty well by sliding it in sideways and over the years since we’d moved from Liverpool to London we had gradually filled it up more and more.

     The room was reached through a long corridor, with identical doors going up and down each side. Each one was the same distance away from the others, as all the rooms in this area were of the same size and had a number on it. As we walked down the deserted corridor, I pulled out my keychain from my pocket.

     ‘What’s our number again?’ Blake asked me. I glanced down at the key that had a little tab attached with a slip of paper in it and a number scribbled on the paper.

     ‘Um, either forty-three or forty-eight,’ I muttered. ‘I can’t tell.’

     ‘Give it here,’ she said, holding out her hand. I passed her the keys and she peered at the tab for a second. ‘I’m pretty sure that’s an eight.’

     I looked at the door we were just passing, it was number thirty-nine. ‘It’s one of the ones near here.’ We kept on walking until we found it, and Blake jiggled the key around in the lock for a few seconds. It opened with a small click, into the room, but was stopped by something behind it.

     ‘Crap,’ Blake cursed. ‘We put so much stuff in that we can’t even open the door properly? I don’t remember doing that.’

     I winced slightly. ‘Oh yeah. That’s my fault,’ I admitted. ‘Last time I came here I was by myself and I had to put like two paintings in, but they wouldn’t fit very easily, so I kind of just shoved them in without checking that we could still open it.’

     She let out a half laugh, half sigh at me. ‘Right, I’m sliding in sideways,’ she told me, letting go of the handle, and giving the door one last push to check that it was as open as it was going to get. Then she turned on her side, and started trying to get her slim body through. She turned her head as well and took a breath in, placing her hands on her boobs to make them as flat as possible. Suddenly she stumbled through, and I heard a crash from the other side.

     ‘You okay?’ I called out.

     ‘Yes, fine,’ she replied. ‘I just didn’t expect to come through so quickly.’ I waited, hearing some shifting and she began to feed a canvas through the gap in the door. ‘I’m just gonna get enough out that we can open the door,’ came her voice again.

      I took the end of the painting and pulled on it, bringing it all the way out into the corridor. It was a really big one, a blown up print of a photo Blake had taken in Liverpool one night during university, when there’d been a storm. It was of dark buildings reaching up to the sky like shadows, with the ominous grey clouds pressing down, and a flash of lightning in one corner.

     ‘I love this one!’ I cried to her. ‘It would be a pity to sell it.’

     ‘Well, that’s the beauty of my photos,’ she called, her voice sounding far away. ‘I’ll still have the digital version for us. The only thing is though, when we’ve sold it once, we can’t just have it reprinted and sell it again, because we’re claiming that our work in one of a kind.’

     ‘Yeah, I guess you’re right,’ I said. ‘But in some ways that’s good, it means that we always have to be doing new stuff. I don’t want us to get lazy. The point of this gallery is for us to make a profit from the work we’re doing, not to stop doing that work.’ I manoeuvred the canvas to the side slightly, and leant it against the wall.

     ‘Here’s another one,’ she told me, a corner of a slightly smaller painting appearing. I took one glance at it and recognised it as something I’d done for university.

     ‘Okay, well I don’t know about you, but the majority of my uni work, I’m happy to sell,’ I told her. ‘I mean, it’s good stuff because I was trying hard, but it was all set and it wasn’t necessarily something I wanted to do. I’m just not very emotionally attached to it.’

     The door opened now and revealed Blake, standing in front of a massive pile of paintings, folders with sketches in, and a few sculptures. ‘Yeah, I feel the same,’ she agreed.

     I stared, shocked at how much there was in our small room. ‘Jesus, when did we do all this work?’ I asked in astonishment. ‘There’s way more than I remembered.’

     Blake turned back to it and nodded. ‘I know, it’s seems impossible that we did all of it.’

     ‘We’re not going to be able to take everything, are we?’ I pointed out.

     I couldn’t see her face, but I could tell she was shaking her head. ‘No, we’re not.’ We carried on staring at the pile for a few seconds.

     ‘So how are we gonna do this?’ I asked her. She turned around and took a couple of steps forward to lean in the doorway, then gave me a shrug.

     ‘Well, we’re going to have to go through all of it,’ she muttered. ‘It’ll take a while, but I guess it will be worth it in the end.’

     ‘Should I take these two and put them in the car already?’ I suggested. ‘We won’t be able to carry the ones we want down all at once, so we should start now.’

     Blake smiled and nodded at me. ‘Yeah, and I’ll get to work trying to sift through all of this.’  I moved over to where I’d leant the two paintings and grabbed them by the top, holding onto the edge of the canvas.

     Carrying them was a little struggle, but I managed, lifting them just off the ground and beginning to walk. ‘Beth?’ I heard Blake call, when I was only a few metres away. I spun around on the spot and looked back, just in time to see Blake poke her head out of the doorway at me.

     ‘This is gonna be great,’ she said.