The Lady in the Blue Frame

The woman in Portrait No. 14 had been watching the same door for ninety-three years.

On Tuesday, she asked Nora whether the sea was still there.

“As far as I know,” Nora said.

“Could you check?”

Nora was cleaning the frame. She glanced towards the security camera.

“Preferably without telling the director,” the woman added.

Painted people could move between pictures, provided the frames touched. Everybody at the museum knew this. It was why the portraits hung eighteen inches apart, and why the nineteenth-century admiral was currently stranded inside a painting of pears.

Nora brought a postcard on Wednesday.

The woman examined its bright beach, its blue-and-white changing huts, its three distant swimmers.

“Too crowded.”

On Thursday, Nora tried a rocky cove.

“Those steps would finish my knees.”

“You haven’t used your knees since 1933.”

“Exactly.”

Friday’s postcard showed a harbour café. Six empty chairs faced the water. There was a little yellow boat.

The woman leaned forward.

Nora bought a cheap wooden frame.

At closing time, she stood on her stepladder and pressed one corner against the blue frame. The woman gathered her long skirt, climbed over the painted windowsill and disappeared behind the café awning.

A moment later, she emerged wearing an apron.

“What are you doing?”

“They’re short of staff. I said I’d cover until six.”

Nora tucked the postcard into her bag.

Behind her, the museum guard cleared his throat.

She froze.

He looked at the empty portrait, then at her bag.

“She’s gone, then?”

“I can explain.”

“She’s been asking me about bus routes since Easter.”

He reached into his jacket and produced a tiny framed photograph of a garden.

“For the admiral,” he said. “He’s tired of pears.”

On Saturday, the director ordered an urgent investigation into Portrait No. 14. Nora spent the morning measuring the frame and looking troubled.

At lunch, she opened her desk drawer.

In the harbour café, the woman sat beside the yellow boat with her shoes off. A glass stood on the table before her.

Nora tapped the frame.

“Was it worth the trouble?”

The woman lifted her glass.

“Come back after lunch,” she said. “I’ve only just stopped working.”