Read Online The Missing One by Lucy Atkins - Free Book Online

He’s very elderly. He gets awfully confused. And he doesn’t hear too good. But you drop by if you’re visiting the area. I’d love for him to have a visitor! When are you visiting?’
    I swig some more wine. ‘I’m coming this week,’ I say. A wave of nausea surges through my belly.
    â€˜Well, how wonderful!’ she says. ‘So, what day would you like to come by? I’ll put it on the calendar.’
    *
    I put down the phone. It’s like the blood is pumping faster through my brain, bringing blooms of colour instead of this heavy grey. It’s mad, but I could do it. I could go. It doesn’t matter if he’s a relative. I could just go – to Canada. Vancouver is as good as anywhere. And I have to get away. That’s clear. I have to go somewhere.
    Suddenly, I think about the postcards. Many of them came from a gallery in Canada. I try to remember the name of it – the Susannah something gallery.
    I google
Susannah, Art Gallery, Canada
.
    The Susannah Gillespie Gallery
    I recognize the name instantly. It’s in a place called Spring Tide Island, off the coast of British Columbia – reachable, surely, from Vancouver.
    I skim the gallery home page. There is some blurb about the artists and various buttons to other pages. I click on
Interviews with Susannah Gillespie
. There is a magazine article from a year ago. I tuck the tartan blanket tighter round my shoulders and, with the wine glass in one hand, I read.
    OUR ISLAND TREASURE
    By Zadie Hagan, Arts Reporter
    When I visit Susannah Gillespie’s Spring Tide home, I’m struck first by the eclecticism of the art – there arepaintings, ceramics, carvings,
objets d’art
in vastly different styles – a mix that is testimony to a lifetime of travel, curiosity and creativity. This should come as no surprise, since Gillespie travels widely throughout Europe, South America and North America, looking for new talent and giving lectures. She is truly a cosmopolitan Spring Tider!
    A native of Nanaimo, Gillespie, 62, first came across Spring Tide Island in the late 1970s, she tells me, after a stint teaching in California. ‘I was escaping,’ she admits. ‘My heart was broken. I was looking for a retreat.’
    â€˜The moment I stepped off the boat I knew I’d found home,’ she continues. Her Isabella Rock home, perched precariously overlooking the sea, was built in the late 1960s by Ian Lao, now one of Vancouver’s best-known architects. Set on the westerly most tip of Spring Tide, the home is fully exposed to the elements. It is also an integral part of the landscape. And nestled behind the house is a custom-built pottery studio, which Gillespie added in the late eighties. Here, she also has a special room dedicated to yoga. But she will not show me round. ‘My studio is out of bounds,’ she tells me. ‘Nobody goes in there but me.’ She also keeps a small cabin, hidden away in the archipelago, though she will not discuss the exact location. ‘Everyone,’ she says, ‘needs a bolt hole.’
    The Susannah Gillespie Gallery, established twelve years ago, has become a Mecca for art-lovers who flood over from Vancouver in the summertime. Her exhibitions are characterized by a devotion to the art of BritishColumbia, but she also selects works from around the globe. She is friends with famous artists such as Dale Chihuly in Seattle. And she has the Midas touch! Those lucky artists who exhibit at the gallery are almost always snapped up by big-time collectors.
    Gillespie, whose husband died two years ago, is the picture of serenity, sitting cross-legged on her couch with her two golden retrievers. How does a busy woman achieve this Buddha-like calm? Her answer is surprising. ‘Yoga helps,’ she says, ‘but we all have our demons. Most of us spend our lives trying to distract ourselves from them. We build businesses, houses,