"So Aidan, tell us what inspires you? Your work is very... emotional, unflinching, dark." She cocks her head to the side and studies me hard. The journalist from Descript is attractive. Olive-skinned with large almond eyes, she has a shapely mouth that curls melodically around her French accent.

Shifting in my chair, I stroke a hand over my face feeling uncomfortable and exposed like I always do giving interviews. Like I always do talking about myself.

"My work's inspired a lot by the sort of loneliness you experience as a young child,' I begin. "When the world seems so large and so utterly terrifying — you simply can't imagine being an adult in it. You just can't comprehend that one day you're going to have to navigate your way through it on your own. You think you're always gonna be this small helpless little thing, terrified of everything. Then when you do eventually grow up, you realise that — well, that is in fact the case. You're terrified of everything. I'm fucking terrified, constantly." I give her a smile which she returns, her eyes lingering on my face a moment before she writes something down.

I try and get a look at what it is but all I pick out is 'lonely child.' When she brings her head back up she has a sad look on her face and I know immediately what topic she's about to move onto.

"You lost your mother when you were very young, is that right?" She asks this even though she already knows the answer.

I nod. "I was six. She was killed two streets away from our house. A street we'd walked down a thousand times before. She was holding my hand when it happened." I'd felt her hand go from hot to cold in a few short, life-changing, minutes. I'd felt the life drain out of her onto the cracked pavement, blood pooling around my trainers.

I run a hand through my hair and try and glance at the large clock on the wall above the journalist's head. Eloise would be here in twenty minutes. The thought calms and settles me.

"Goodness, that must have been awful, Aidan. So awful. I'm so terribly sorry." She's shaking her head, lips pursed in empathy. She looks as though she's about to cry. Fuck sake I really hope she isn't. Cuddling crying girls was pretty much a full-time job up to the age of twelve.

"Of course," I nod again, "losing a parent is hard for anyone. At that age I didn't much understand that the way she went wasn't normal. That dying like that shouldn't happen to a young mother — shouldn't happen to anyone. I was very young and I only really remember flashes of her." I remember that day like it was yesterday though. Funny that."The repercussions of it were a lot harder to deal with. Those had the most effect on my life growing up. On my sister's lives."

I glance over at Pat, who's leaning over the kitchen counter on high alert, ready to jump in if it all gets a bit much. If I look likely to hit something or someone. He needn't look so worried. I don't hit women. I don't really hit anyone. The critic from The Independent had been an exception. He'd been an arrogant prick who deserved a lot more than the crack in the jaw I'd given him. To this day I'm still not sure how Pat got him to drop the charges.

"You mean your father? The abuse?" She replies. Instantly I feel my back straighten like a steel rod's been exchanged for my spine.

I narrow my eyes. "There was minimal abuse. Slapping your child every now and again wasn't considered the hanging offence it is now. I played up for attention. He drunk a lot. He was a sad, lonely man. And he died a sad, lonely man." My tone is colder and harsher than she deserves but I can't help it.

To this day I wonder why I feel the need to constantly defend the bastard. I guess it's just that the only people who are allowed to think badly of him are me, Niamh, and Mairead. We lived it. We survived it.

She nods and writes something down again. I wade through the contents of my brain to try and remember her name. I'm terrible at that, at remembering people's names right after they've told me. It's like a disease.

"And after your father died you moved to London, to live with your aunt?"

"Yeah, my mother's sister. She'd married a British Army captain years before and was outcast by the family for it. They had a massive house in Richmond and no children and so she took me in. Both my sisters were older and so chose to stay and finish school in Belfast." I'd escaped at the first chance I got.

"That must have been a world of difference from Belfast? Richmond?"

"Yeah, it was. We were two streets away from Hampton Court Palace," I tell her. "My aunt and uncle lived in the kind of place you see in Richard Curtis films. I always half-expected Keira Knightley to come skipping past my window on her way to a love triangle."

This makes her laugh, a husky warm laugh that settles some of the tension from her earlier "abuse" question. She stares at me a long time, the same look on her face Eloise had given me yesterday, before dropping her eyes and running a hand through her choppy brown hair.

"And now New York. How does that compare?" She asks.

"To Belfast or London?"

"Both I guess?"

"Well, New York is only partially more American than London, and only slightly less dangerous than the Belfast I grew up in." I offer her a smile which she responds to by nibbling softly on her slightly plump bottom lip. I shift, widening my legs a little, encouragingly.

Even though I'm not planning on fucking her, it still makes sense to get her on side. If she's attracted to me then she's more likely to write me a positive piece. That was my rationale anyway. And on a normal day, after this, I'm certain that French mouth of hers could do wonders with my cock — but this isn't a normal day. Not by a fucking long shot. And there's only one mouth I'm even remotely interested in, and it'll be here in less than fifteen minutes.

As the pretty journalist's eyes settle between my legs, I throw a pointed stare at Pat whose response is to hold up five fingers to me.

Just as he does this the sound of the intercom echoing loudly around the large loft startles everyone. She's early. Didn't help that The Circle were late. Pat goes to answer it as I look back at the journalist.

"I'm sorry are you expecting someone?"

"Yes, a client," I tell her. Feels weird calling Eloise that. Except that's all she is to you, mate, my head reminds me, in Pat's voice.

"Ah, I see. Ok, sorry we won't take much longer, just a couple more questions and then we're done. Can I just clarify some details about the exhibition? It's running for four weeks is that right?"

"Yes, until the 8th of next month. At a gallery in Williamsburg. The Weston."

"I saw some reviews this morning actually. Almost all of them were very positive."

"Ah, well, you can't win them all."

She smiles, nodding. "I'm heading there after we're done here. I can't very well write a revealing piece if I haven't seen what all the fuss is about."

"Not much to reveal, to be honest — I'm a pretty uninteresting guy," I say. She frowns in disagreement. "But if there is anything, it will be in those twenty-odd pieces hanging in The Weston."

I'm distracted by the front door. Pat is standing by it and I want to shout for him to go get the lift door for her because it's heavy, but I also want to finish this and get this girl and her grungy bespectacled assistant out of here.

"What do you want people to feel looking at your work? What are you trying to communicate to them?"

I run my hand over my face and then around the back of my neck as I think about that. I think about Eloise's response when I asked her that. I think about how she said she wasn't capable of feeling anything by looking art. Which in fact turned out to be nonsense.

"To be perfectly honest with you, I don't really care what they feel when they're looking at it. As long as they feel something. Apathy is the worst kind of response for an artist. Every kind of art deserves some kind of emotional response from its viewer. I mean, if people put their heart and soul into something, into creating something, then it deserves a fair audience. A fair shot at making you react. Lots of people say they're not really into art and I completely understand why — the construct of it, this whole vibe that it's for rich people with their four degrees and a disposable income. That's intimidating for a lot of people — working-class people especially. So yeah, I don't like to tell people why they should like my art, or any art, or what they should feel while they're looking at art.

And on that note, before you ask, it's the individual who decides what constitutes as art. 'What is art?' Is a question I'm asked frequently and it pisses me off more each time. If people really need a simple answer to that then they should go look it up on Wikipedia, for fuck's sake. Anyway, what was I saying? Yeah, I think if you're a normal human being with the ability for empathy then you will feel something watching a film, or listening to music, or reading a book. Of course, if a particular piece of art isn't for you, then it's not for you. Fair enough. But feel that: feel disgusted, repelled, turned off by it. I don't know but feel something. But then, at the end of the day, I'm just a drunk Irish guy with too much facial hair. What the fuck do I know?"

This might be the most I've ever spoken in an interview. And I can see why I don't do it more often. It's almost impossible to stop talking utter shite once I start — that's also like a disease. It's why I shouldn't talk to people. Pat was right.

The journalist covers her mouth with her hand and laughs girlishly before nodding and writing something else down. Probably something like: 'Is he drunk right now? He does have too much facial hair — I bet he looks better without it. Which unfortunately'm not and which I definitely don't.

She glances over her notepad quickly before looking back up at me, "Okay if we can talk about the Morley, briefly. I guess it was a while ago now, about twelve months back? It's the most prestigious art award in Britain, and there was a lot of shock in the industry when you won. I assume you never expected to win, being up against some really big movers like Marcus Wright, Kygo Ashura?" She asks.

It sounds like she never expected me to win either. I'm fucking fed up of talking about how I shouldn't have won. I know Marcus Wright should have won. His sculpture was incredible. A masterpiece. No one has to tell me that he should have won. Marcus Wright probably knows it too. I wonder if they ask him in interviews how he felt when I unexpectedly won his Morley prize.

"Of course I didn't expect to win," I admit as I cast my mind back to that night. The night at the Imperial War Museum when some Welsh actor read my name out from a podium I could barely see through a veil of Guinness and red wine and changed my life forever. "The reaction from the press and some, most, in the art world felt totally proportionate. It was a shock. I was no-one. I'm still no-one. I was a photographer who'd made a few short films. I wasn't trying to make a career out of art." I'm still not. Not really. Not that I'd ever tell Pat that. "A friend persuaded me to exhibit my stuff for a show for unknowns and it caught some headlines. Snowballed from there. Honestly, I think I was the most shocked person in the room. Everyone was speechless. Apart from my Aunt Roisin who was with me that night. Apparently, she knew I was gonna win. Won £400 on it too." I smile at the memory. She looked so fucking proud that night. She didn't say it but I knew she was thinking mum would have been proud too. "But yeah, to everyone but her it was unimaginable to hear my name being read out."

She nods, biting on her pen as she stares at me intensely. I look away from her and back at the door. Maybe it wasn't Eloise.

"Sorry, and just lastly, how did this all start for you? When did you first realise you had this.... wealth of talent? Didn't you say once," she flicks through her notepad again, finds what she's looking for and looks back at me. "That you wandered into an art class one summer when you were eighteen and the rest was history. What happened in that class?" She smiles.

How the fuck do I answer that? I remember saying it. I said it at the Brixton show to a guy from The Telegraph. I said it because it was the truth. That class was a turning point in my life. One of several. Until that moment, leaving Belfast and moving to London to live with Auntie Roisin had been the biggest turning point in my life. Then later it was when I met Patrick and he harassed me into showing my work to people. And way before that, on a gloriously sunny day in July when my mother bled to death in front of my eyes on a cracked concrete pavement, was the beginning of it all.

But that class changed my life. That class gave me something I'd never had before. A vision of perfection.

I'd never seen anything so perfect, so completely untouched by the horrors of the world I knew. I wanted to strive to be worthy of that sort of perfection. As the years had gone on I'd never forgotten it. Or her. It hadn't faded over time or been washed away by bitterness, anger and self-loathing as many of my other memories had. She had become, as Pat had called her, 'a wet dream'. A fantasy.

But she was always much more than that.

Then, as if on cue, she comes walking through the door of the loft. She's wearing a white dress made of what looks like lace. It has three-quarter length sleeves and a round neck, which stops demurely just at the base of her throat. Her hair is pleated across her head like some kind of Viking bride, some loose strands falling about her face. She looks clean and pure — virginal almost. My chest tightens at the sight and the rush of need and want is almost suffocating.

The twisted part of me knows why I told her to wear white. Why in most fantasies where I'd subject her to every sordid desire imaginable, she was wearing pure virginal white. Eloise Airens was something untouched and almost holy to me. As I continue to stare at her my whole body begins to thrum with a weird sort of vibration. Anticipation. A rush of adrenaline straight to the heart.

She looks surprised at being greeted by Pat and not me, and I watch as he holds out his hand and introduces himself, looking a bit dazed as his eyes roam over her face and down over her body. She smiles in that perfectly innocent, yet utterly debilitating way she does, and reaches out to shake his hand.

He's staring at her too hard like he can't quite believe she's real and in front of him. I can't blame him. I'd talked about her to him enough over the years for her presence now not to seem surreal. I'm certain until this moment he probably thought that she was a figment of my imagination. A product of too much booze and too many late nights.

I want to tell him to close his fucking mouth and stop staring at her like that before she starts thinking he's some sort of weirdo pervert. They exchange a few words I can't hear from here before she turns her head and catches my eye and smiles warmly. I smile back, holding her eyes for as long as is socially acceptable given that we aren't alone. Suddenly I know how to answer the question the journalist just asked me.

"That class was life-changing," I say. "I knew my life. Knew it inside out. Knew who I was, what it had made me. I knew all of the ways in which it could turn out and all of the people I could become. Then, one day I saw something different. I saw a goal. The sheer peace I got from focusing that hard on something, on striving for that kind of perfection. I didn't know that sort of determination and desire to achieve something existed. I'd never felt anything like it." I nod. She probably thinks I'm talking about being an artist. That the goal I was striving for was to perfect my talent. But she's wrong. The goal I was striving for was staring at me from across the room dressed in a virginal white lace dress.

Cold sudden fear grips me then. What if I still can't make anything? What if I still can't capture her right? What if she is the only thing I can't capture right? But as I look back at her my body relaxes, as does my mind. Nah... I'd practised this for years. In my head. On my own. I'd always said that if I had my chance at a do-over with her then I wasn't going to fuck it up. No, this time I'd create a fucking masterpiece. Even if it killed me.

"What a beautifully articulate way of putting it," Mandy — her name blasts into my loud mind — says with a soft shake of her head. She sounds surprised. Surprised that I could articulate? Surprised that I had a goal? She scribbles something down before closing her notepad and looking up at me. "Well, I think that's all we need, Aidan. Except, we were hoping we could get a few shots of you. Just to go with the article?" She smiles hopefully. The guy who has barely moved for the last forty minutes jumps up and stands to attention.

I roll my eyes and shake my head, "Yeah, I'm gonna have to pass. Photo-shoots aren't really my thing, ironic huh?" I smile.

At that moment Pat comes over, hands out, clearly still ready to stop me from hitting someone. Eloise twists around on the stool to watch us, her pale hands clasped demurely in her lap.

"Patrick did mention that you might take a little persuading," Mandy's gaze is clearly flirtatious but she needn't bother — it isn't going to happen. This, or that. "He said it was in no way guaranteed but.... it really would be great if you could make an exception for us. We're a very... visual sort of publication, Aidan, I'm sure you can appreciate? Images are so important to our readers. Probably as important as they are to your fans."

"I don't think fans are the right collective term for the people who tolerate my shows..." I mutter, scratching my head.

"Just give us two minutes yeah, sweetheart?" Says Patrick as he pulls me away from her and the photographer towards Eloise, whose expression brightens further as I approach.

"Sorry, I'm early," she apologises. "I had no idea you were busy — I offered to go and come back but Patrick said you wouldn't mind me sitting here?"

I smile. "Course I don't, they're just leaving anyway."

"Yep, just as soon as they get a photo of him to run with his story," Pat says.

I turn to scowl at him. "Which isn't going to happen. Get them out of here. I have stuff to do."

He gives me a loaded look. "Then give them one photo and they're gone?" When I say nothing he turns his attention on Eloise. "Mrs Alford, any chance you could tell Aidan how great he'd look in a well-lit photo for a stylish art magazine. I have a feeling he might listen to you."

I narrow my eyes on Pat, my mouth flattening into a line. That devious cunt. So this was his fucking game?

Eloise looks uncomfortable all of a sudden, her eyes roaming my face and down as she tucks an invisible strand of hair behind her ear. "Um, well, it's not really my business I don't think." She shifts on her chair and looks up at me, apologetically.

"But I mean he'd look good in a photo wouldn't he? Don't you think it would be a good idea for him to sell himself a little more?"

She smiles and looks down at her hands. "Well, I'd certainly have found it helpful knowing what he looked like the other night," she laughs, a faint blush creeping across her cheeks. Why hasn't she answered his question about whether I'd look good in a photo? "But certainly at the magazine, we'd never dream of running a piece about someone without an accompanying promo photo. It's just how we did it." She glances over my shoulder at the two people who I have a feeling are setting up a camera right about now. "But this is a completely different thing entirely. I think if you have issues being in front of the camera then that's understandable. You're more at home on the other side." She offers a soft shrug.

"Oh, he doesn't have issues being in front of a camera. He just likes to be mysterious. Alluring. Pretentious," Pat smirks. I'm literally going to punch his fucking head in when I get him alone.

"Excuse us a minute," I say to her before pulling him a few steps away.

"One. Fucking. Photo. I get the final say on which one they run and if I don't like any then they don't run any. I could not give a fuck about the article. And you'll pay for this you conniving cunt."

"Yeah yeah, whatever," he laughs as he goes over to give Mandy from Descript the good news. When I turn back to Eloise, she's watching me with a strange far off look on her face. I wonder where she just went. When I cross back toward her she sits up straight, eyes uncertain.

"Sorry, did I say the wrong thing?"

"Stop apologising,' I warn and she smiles a little wider. It makes the tension lift from me almost immediately. 'And no, you didn't say the wrong thing — he did."

"That's your agent?"

"More like publicist/secretary/financial advisor/pain in my arse."

"Ah," she nods, "well every respectable artist worth their salt should have one of those."

"Look, would you mind waiting upstairs in the studio until I get this over with?" The thought of being watched as I have my photo taken makes me feel ten kinds of sick. I never want her to see me squirming or uncomfortable or out of my comfort zone. Not like she did in the cafe that day. Never again.

She slides down off the stool and lifts her bag from the counter. "Of course not. I totally get it. How do I get up there?" She gazes past me into the loft, then back at me, confused.

"Straight down to the far end and to the left," I point, "You'll see the stairs going up. I won't be too long. Sorry about this."

"Oh, was that an apology?" She smiles, playful. I grin. "It's my fault for coming early." She waves a small wave at Pat as she passes, glancing curiously at the set up of the white screen and light. As I cross back over to where he's standing, I throw Pat a heavy, threatening growl before going to meet Mandy by the window.

"Thanks for doing this, Aidan — really honoured you would trust us with this," she says.

"Yeah, well, best make it a good one."

"I don't think that'll be a problem somehow," she says with a slight tilt of her mouth.

"Ok, dude," the young guy with glasses says to me. "Was gonna use the screen for light but the light is actually great in here so I think we'll just have you stand in front of it. Sorta like a blank canvas and you're the art." He points, gesturing for me to stand in front of the white screen he's erected adjacent to the window. I'd have put the screen at a slightly sharper angle and I'd shoot from lower down but that's just me. And since I want them out of here as soon as possible I'm not about to give this nineteen-year-old a photography lesson.

With a sigh and a curse under my breath, I do as I'm told and move to stand in front of the white screen, shoving my hands deep in my pockets and feeling more and more like a tool with every passing second.

"Great dude, okay just spread your legs a little, relax your shoulders. I don't mind the moody look at all dude that's great, perfect. Give me some shots straight down the camera and then just relax. Look around. Move a bit. I'd rather catch you natural, dude. Perfect." He drones on and on and I run out of things to do with my hands. I'm also gonna crack him one if he tells me to relax or calls me dude again. I begin rolling my sleeves up and he continues clicking away. I throw a glare at Pat who's fiddling with his phone but must sense the weight of my stare because he looks upwards and gives me a thumbs up. Manipulative prick.

"Ok, we're done," I say a few moments later. The boy with the camera looks marginally put out at being told what to do by me and glances at Mandy for some direction. She nods at him before turning back to me with a bright smile.

"I think we got some really great ones. I'll email them over to Patrick in the next day or so and you guys can choose which one you want to run with," She says brightly. "In terms of the publication date, we're looking at the 19th — issue 87 — which is a week on Friday, so still plenty of time to get the word out about your show."

"Great," I tell her. Why are they still here?

After I say my goodbyes and Pat shows them both out he comes back to where I'm standing with my arms folded, scowling at him. He smiles that smug wanker smile that makes me wonder why I brought him with me to New York and why I'm still friends with him.

"Think you're funny, don't you?"

"No. But I do think you'd do anything to make that beautifully unavailable married woman upstairs find you more appealing and less of a moody angry bastard."

I frown harder and move to the fridge to lift two bottles of water out of it. "Why are you still here?"

"Maybe I should stick around, you know as a chaperone?"

His expression is heavy with warning. A warning I ignore as I shut the fridge door.

"She's not what I imagined."

I sigh. "What did you imagine, Pat?"

"Not sure. But she seems far sweeter and classier than the women you normally fuck and never call."

When I turn to glare at him he's smiling. It's not his smug prick smile though. It's his sad, pitiful, sorry-you're-such-a-mess-mate smile. "So you're really going to do this, then?" He asks.

It's a rhetorical question but I decide to answer it anyway.

"Make a piece of art for her, yes. I am."

He nods. "And at exactly what point are you going to stop lying to yourself that that's what this is about?"

I take a step back towards him and lower my voice. "Pat, she's gonna expect a piece of art at the end of it — so that's how I know that's what this is about."

"Right. So this isn't anything to do with your being in love with her for your entire adult life? It's not about your need to be fixed by her?" He leaves the questions hanging in the air for a few moments. I don't answer them. "This isn't going to fix you, Aidan. She isn't going to fix you. You know why?"

"Not a fucking clue, Pat..." I let out a breath and roll my eyes.

"Because you don't need to be fixed, Aidan. That's why. Because you're not your fucking dad. You're never gonna be your dad. Some horrible sad shit happened to you and your whole outlook on life has been carved out of it but you're not this broken, fucked up mess of a person you think you are. Not even close, mate."

"Your own voice really is the sound you like most in the world isn't it?" I scowl at him.

He sighs and shakes his head. "Well, don't say I didn't warn you. And having met her, I think maybe you should have listened all the more Aidan because this really could ruin you mate. If you do this, then you really could end up the fucked up mess you're desperate to be."

"Okay, you've warned me," I nod. "I've listened. Now close the door on the way out. And no more fucking photoshoots — don't do that again."

"Fine, whatever," he mutters turning for the door. "Oh and tell Mrs Alford I'll be in touch with her to discuss the advance."

I stare after him for a moment before turning and heading towards the stairs, taking them two at a time up to the studio space above. As I hit the final stair up to the studio I freeze, my heart staggering to a complete stop.

She's sitting on the inside of the large window with her knees pulled up to her chest, her reading glasses on, and her head deep into a weathered-looking book. I'm literally staring at Eloise Airens in that café all those years ago. On slightly unstable legs, I walk towards the image that looks so much like a memory.

As she senses my approach, she turns her head and smiles at me. That fucking smile. The one that made me question my staunch atheism.

It's in that moment that everything starts to solidify and crystalise, sharp and clear. The truth of Patrick's words finally hit me, sinking in with the cold, heavy realisation that they're entirely fucking accurate. When this was over, whatever this was or whatever this was going to be, she would go back to her husband; her rich, successful, unbroken husband. And when that happened it would ruin me. I'd be fucked beyond repair. More fucked than I'd ever thought possible.  I'd likely never recover.

"Ready?" She asks, sitting up, excitedly.

I watch transfixed as she closes her book and slides it back into the front section of her bag. For no reason other than curiosity I want to know what that book that's falling apart is.

"Yep. Let's do this," I say with a slow nod as I hand her the bottle of water.

"So, where do you want me?" She says, before a faint trace of blush spreads across her cheeks. When she drops her eyes from mine I know why. If I didn't know better I'd say she just had impure thoughts about me. But I did know better. Didn't I?

I smile. "Well first, I need you to do something for me,"

When she looks back up at me, she looks eager. "Of course, anything," she nods.

"I need you to take off your dress."