Purple portrait and grey rose on a side torso

The Crown Ballroom finally let me touch the wall. Mr Eckersley wanted the new singer's face above the bandstand, and after three weeks of sketches he gave me the back wall instead, which is twice the size and no one can say I was given the easy job. I mixed the violet myself from gentian and a pinch of lamp black, because the bulbs in that place turn everything the colour of a bruise and I wanted her to look right under them.

She sat for me on Tuesday afternoons when the floor was empty. She never talked much, only hummed the same two bars of something by Ambrose, and I painted what the hum sounded like: quick sweeps, a smear where the hair should be, lines that trail off into nothing. Eckersley says it looks unfinished. I told him that is the point. A face you know by heart is always half-smudged anyway.

The rose I did last, down in the corner by the coat hooks, in grey wash, because the violet was too loud for a flower. It took four nights. Every evening I came back and the petals had softened a little more, as if the damp off the Irwell had got into the plaster and was working on them while I slept.

On Saturday the band played under her face for the first time and the whole room went quiet, then started dancing again. Nobody looked at the rose. I think that is right. Some things are only there to hold the other things up.

Yours in turpentine, Tom