Heart Stopper Read online

  EXTRACT of FALLING COLOURS (#1 in The Vision Painter Series)

  CHAPTER ONE

  The client shifted in his chair, the creak loud in the room and Kiran tried to hide her worry; she wasn’t sure she could afford a new chair. He tapped the pen against his teeth and stared at her. His expression was blank. She sighed inside. Why did people come to her before they had worked out what they wanted? They had one session. Only one. Those were the rules. But that session could last the day if, like this client, they didn’t bloody well think it through before taking up her time.

  But then clients weren’t exactly camped outside her door. And she was supposed to be the caring, sharing, healing Indian type. She wondered if he had absorbed the payment details. They usually did. While they were at the session. They were thrilled to discover that they couldn’t pay. Not with money. And not immediately. They had to wait for the vision to materialize and then paint in their gratitude to her. She was beginning to think that Ireland was either full of very forgetful people or bad painters.

  The client was finally scratching his pen across her Vision Painting Application Form. She’d been bored and had used a graphics package to design a text logo and a few empty boxes. She couldn’t use images; she wasn’t allowed to influence their visions, not by words, deeds, images. Most times, as she gazed at the forms after the clients left, she wished she could change the images as she painted, adjust a little hope here, add a dream there. But the punishment for breaking any one of the myriad rules was the failure of the visualization. And who was she to design a life; hers was not a pretty picture.

  His stubby fingers gripping the pen produced a floral script that remained neat and within the lines. His forehead glistened as he wrote. Kiran was glad the heating was off. It was still technically summer in Connemara in August but the house could get cold if she didn’t leave the boiler on. She wondered whether she had enough kerosene in the tank; another worry that she would have to put off until the winter.

  He had finished applying for his dreams and the chair squealed loudly this time, the soft leather seat fluffing itself back out with an indignant puff when he raised himself out of it. He handed her the form and smiled and her heart burned at the hope in his eyes. The energy would come and she would paint him a powerful picture; she prayed he had made the right choices.

  Kiran saw him to the front door and watched as he climbed into a grey middle-aged car. The car crunched over the gravel driveway as he struggled to get the seatbelt around his torso. She smiled and waved back as he tooted the horn and waved at the rear-view mirror.

  She wandered back into the office that doubled as a studio. The shine off her well-used desk was dulled by stacks of papers but they were bills, not completed Vision Painting Application Forms. A screen cordoned off half of the room that included the area in front of the large bay windows which was reserved for her easel, a battered pine table, a second-hand armchair, and a bookcase that held her paint supplies.

  She examined the form. Great! Again! How the hell was she supposed to paint ‘mortgage debt forgiveness’ and ‘happiness’? They were concepts, people, not visions. All he’d had to do was figure out what would make him happy and write that down. Well, at least she had some physical features to paint. He wanted to be tall, with broad shoulders, a slim tapered waist and the profile of a Roman God. Lovely, now she’d have to research what Roman Gods looked like, she had a vague feeling they just had prominent noses. Or was that Greek Gods?

  He had of course written down the word ‘money’, but again, there wasn’t all that much space on a canvas and she couldn’t draw out each banknote. She’d solved that problem before by drawing out 500 euro notes in stacks but she was getting fed up of the effort and since they didn’t have the courtesy to get back to her, probably now too rich she assumed, she didn’t know if was only the top notes that materialized.

  Kiran pulled out a blank canvas from a stack of 1m x 1m canvases lying in the corner of the room. Another rule. She wondered if her father had made up some of the rules or whether they had actually been passed down to him as he insisted. The last time her parents had visited from their retirement home in Kerala he had explained, again, that the rules were out of his control. That things worked better in India because people remember to paint in the gratitude. That the vision painters there lived comfortable lives. And, of course the usual scolding, why had she chosen to stay on in Ireland where there were no vision painters. Only a few worked in the UK, not even enough for an Association or Union. Here in Ireland, for some reason, people seemed to think she was an Art Therapist.

  They’d been sitting in the Roisin Dubh, her unfulfilled potential laying heavy on the table between them, and he had patted her hand and they both knew the rules meant no vision painter could paint for another. So they didn’t talk about her dreams. Which she couldn’t paint either. Onto any canvas. This was the only rule that, if broken, led to the immediate loss of the vision painter’s talent. Her father was halfway through his spiel on the mythic qualities of the latest tubes of paint that he was developing with an American manufacturer, the cream and black Guinness sliding in between the white hairs on his upper lip, when she’d sighed and told him to cut the Indian Swami shite. Fair play, he had stopped with a grin, and had left some of the test tubes of colour for her when they left.

  Kiran set up the studio, turning on the heat and the lights even though the sunlight streaked in through the glass. While she painted, nothing else existed, and when she finished the room would be dark and cold if she didn’t prepare it.

  She placed the blank canvas on the easel and laid out the tubes of paint on the pine table beside it. She unfolded a white cotton sheet, stained with the dreams of her previous clients, and arranged it on the floor; lifting the easel and resting it back down so that any stray paint would not mark the old oak wood floors. She caressed the paints onto the palette and lined the brushes in readiness.

  Kiran curled up in the armchair and stared at the form, stroking the paper, absorbing every word, imagining pictures of his vision. For the next few hours she would be immersed in his dreams and she needed to empty her mind of her thoughts, to empty her heart of her desires, to focus solely on this person who had come to her, to justify his faith. When she was ready, she moved to the easel and picked up her favourite brush.

  When she came out of the trance, the life she had breathed on to the canvas hummed behind her. She crawled onto the armchair and tried to regain her own.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  The sunlight wandered through the window and settled on her face and, despite her exhaustion, Kiran smiled as she blinked her eyes open. She remained in the depths of the armchair allowing the heat to seep through her skin. She was drained and while it took a few days to fully recover from each painting session she had to be at the restaurant the next day for the afternoon shift.

  The doorbell pounded in her brain and Kiran put her fingers in her ears and buried her head further into the armchair. The noise didn’t stop so she rolled herself onto the floor and crawled to the front door. The caller had now stopped pressing on the ringer. Instead, a shaft of daylight slanted a line through the gloom of the hall as fingers propped open the letter-flap. Kiran knelt and looked out the flap. The light was sharp but the eyes that stared back at her were sharper. The angle of the light revealed the surface of a planet, a tan and shadow striated volcano that shrank into the encircling bands of gold as the pupils dilated. Kiran realized she was on her knees in her hallway staring through the letter-flap at a beautiful woman. And she hadn’t even combed her hair yet. She jerked to her feet and ran her fingers through her hair, cursing her luck.

  The flap sprung back with a metal clang. Kiran took a deep breath, placed a smile on her face, and opened the door. She stood staring at the woman standing there. She needed to say something; it didn’t look good for her to be wordless in front of her clients no matter how cute they were. How insipid a word for a vision painter to find in her vocabulary? Cute! Th
is woman was a fire walking around in human form.

  Oh no, how long had she been staring? The woman was looking at her, a glimpse of a smile lurking on her lips which was where Kiran’s eyes were now drawn. Kiran closed her eyes. That was better. She was a Professional. The capital letter was important. Great, this Professional was standing in her hallway with her eyes closed, her hair falling in black shades with the occasional tuft freewheeling away from the crowd, her face devoid of decoration, looking like she had spent the night on the floor after a mad session at the world’s liveliest nightclub. And she had that inane grin still welded on her face.

  Kiran opened her eyes as the woman spoke.

  “Hello, I saw your card at the restaurant. I hope you don’t mind me turning up like this. I couldn’t get through on the phone number and I didn’t want to put it off in case I backed out.”

  The timbre of her voice was the perfect shade of autumn. Her hair rustled with red and gold, dropping leaves onto her shoulders.

  Kiran cleared her throat. Her voice still emerged as a croak. “It’s no problem. Come in. Sorry, I just finished a painting and that always lays me out for a while.” And I wouldn’t normally take on a client the next day but Mother, may I?

  Kiran turned back into the house and led the way to the office studio. She snatched the bustling canvas off the easel and hid it away with the paints and palettes. Her previous client might as well have been draped in a toga, he looked so Roman. She pointed to the chair and sank into her own behind the antique desk. She’d get them coffee and clean up while her new client was writing.

  “Do you know much about what this involves? Have you ever been to a Vision Painter before?”

  The woman shook her head. Kiran dragged her eyes away from the flames curling around the straight lines of jaw and neck. It was harder to look into those eyes so she stared at the trees that peeked in through the windows peering back at her around the woman’s silhouette, their leaves comparing and admiring as Kiran had done.

  “Okay. I’ll explain the process and the rules and if you’re comfortable to do it, we can start whenever you’re ready.”

  The woman nodded.

  “I need you to think about what you want in your life. Try to be as exact as possible. You can write this vision out in words, or draw it if you want. I can only paint what you describe. I’m not allowed to add or take away anything. What I paint will materialize in the timeframe you specify. There is no monetary fee.”

  Kiran smiled at the look of surprise on the woman’s face.

  “The payment, if you can call it that, comes later. When what I paint materializes for you, you can paint something onto your canvas for me. Or if you don’t have paints, just use a pen or pencil and draw it in.”

  Kiran broke a rule. She couldn’t help it; she had to see more of this woman.

  She said, “You can come in over the next few weeks and perfect your vision if you want. What’s your name, by the way?”

  “Ashley.”

  “Okay, Ashley. I’ll give you a form now and I’ll go and get us something to drink.”

  She handed Ashley a form and went to the door. She couldn’t do it. She turned back and she could feel the heat of red in her cheeks.

  “Actually, Ashley, we’re only allowed one session. It can be as long as you like but once you give me the completed form and leave, that’s it as far as that visualization is concerned.”

  Kiran was glad blushes weren’t obvious on her brown skin, that her cheeks just turned a shade darker. As Ashley quirked an eyebrow, Kiran felt like sinking through the wooden floor, of blending into the pools of blue and gold in the silk rug. Again, a crimson tinged twitch of those lips. Kiran hurried to the kitchen. Ashley was getting coffee; that was all Kiran could manage and she was not waiting around to ask what the woman wanted to drink.

  She cleaned herself up but didn’t put on any makeup. That would be too obvious. Professional, she reminded herself. Still capitalized. She wandered back into the office with their coffees and settled down to wait and drown in looking; she hoped this client would take the whole day and night and maybe the next morning too. After which, Kiran had her shift at the restaurant. Obviously none of her clients had figured out how to paint in ‘mortgage debt forgiveness’ for her either.

  Ashley seemed to be struggling. Writing down words then rubbing the pen back over them, obscuring the squiggles. She looked up at Kiran every few minutes and the red was obvious on her cheeks.

  Kiran said in a gentle voice, “I won’t judge anything you ask for. No one else will see the form.”

  Ashley went redder. “It’s not that. Well, it is a bit. I thought I had a clear idea when I came in and now it is… well… it isn’t as clear at all now.”

  Kiran got the feeling this woman wasn’t used to being confused. Then Ashley took in a deep breath and seemed to make up her mind. She stood up and placed the form on the desk.

  “I’m sorry to have taken up your time for nothing.”

  Kiran had had a few clients that backed out at the last moment but she hadn’t expected this one to stall. Ashley gathered herself and was gone within minutes, taking the colours with her, leaving grey.

  Kiran picked up the form and examined it but there were just obscured scrawls on the paper.

  If you enjoyed this extract, you can find Falling Colours on Amazon

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Author’s Note

  Critical Acclaim for Heart Stopper

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  EPILOGUE

  About the Author

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  EXTRACT of FALLING COLOURS (#1 in The Vision Painter Series)

  CHAPTER ONE

  Table of Contents

  Table of Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

 
; EPILOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE