Page 98 - The Letter By Ann Newhouse

That Monday I started my first beginner’s class there were nine girls and two boys all aged between 10 and 15 they seemed attentive listening carefully to my introduction. I explained that we would be starting with a simple still life, a vase of flowers, roses to be precise picked from my own garden and that in the following class we would move onto a watercolor painting of a similar subject. The advance class had come prepared with canvases in tow along with a selection of paints and brushes as requested. I was going to start them off with portraits. These students were a little more mature from age 15 to 20 all girls again 10 in total. All in all, it was a successful day and I realized there were quite a few talented young people out there.
It was after 8 by the time I got to the bar I needed a coffee. I knew all was not well by the look on Penny face she came to join me at a secluded table by the large open fire. ‘I need to talk Amber do you mind’, she looked a little distressed.
‘Go ahead’.
‘Paul and Seki got home this morning they have fallen out, I wasn’t expecting them back for a few more days’, she was obviously upset.
‘It seems Seki has run away from her family!’, she began, ‘Paul told me all about it earlier today’.
‘He saw her on a bus in Bahrain as he was about to get off he saw she was sobbing, and he asked if he could help. They talked for a bit and at the next stop they went to little café and she told him her how father was going to marry her off to a friend who was 30 years older than her and he wasn’t a good person. Her father’s business was in trouble and if this man said he would invest heavily in his business if he gave him his daughter for marriage. She was from a very traditional family and disobeying her father wasn’t tolerated, he had previously been abusive too and she was afraid if she