The magic of champagne

The four portraits of four siblings that Catriona had painted from their photographs over four months were framed, hung and lit and ready for a viewing by the loving parents. That so much creative endeavour should succeed or fail at a glance made me terribly glad I wasn’t a painter. At the appointed hour of six o’clock, I was still in bed upstairs, but listening out, as anxious as she was. Then I heard the parents’ optimistic tattoo on the front door.

We needn’t have worried. I heard them spot their children hanging on the rock face, then their overjoyed exclamations at the interpretations and likenesses. She’d captured their two sons and two mile-and-a-quarters’ various characters brilliantly, they said. Glad and relieved for Catriona, I rose and gingerly descended the creaking wooden stairs, my cotton pyjama bottoms flapping around my spindle shanks, to plant a congratulatory smacker on her smiling lips.