Find the clues in the story to enter our Damien Hirst competition
So it was time. A quiet clinic, arriving at 5am, before too many photographers were about. A bag filled with expensive cosmetics and magazines and not much else. I thought she might be bored, want to learn something new, so I gave her Gombrich's Story of Art to take with her and she laughed and said "you've got a one-track mind, you have", but took it anyway.
I didn't hear anything. I didn't expect to. She'd told me that when you went to these places they took your phone away.
"They think you'll be a bad influence on me, Art Gallery Man."
The first day was just so quiet. I walked around my little flat staring at the sofa, the table, the recycling bin, the easel, and the whole place felt so big and empty without her drama and excitement, without the potential that she would telephone or send someone around demanding my presence. I started to sketch. A few pencil sketches, from photographs, of the shape of her eyes and nose.
And the next day was quiet, and the day after that, and I wondered how she was and whether they could help, at that clinic. And my doorbell rang.
I answered. It was Vic. Laughing, although she was alone and nothing at all was funny. She threw open her arms when she saw me:
"I'm cured!" she said, "welcome me home, I'm cured!"
"Cured?"
She pushed past me, closed the door, and suddenly she was lunging at me, pinning me to the wall, nuzzling at my neck, kissing my ears and my lips, and my forehead. She was so warm in my arms, hot like a furnace.
"What's the matter?" she pulled back, "you've always wanted me haven't you Daniel?"
She smelled faintly of her perfume: chocolate and spice. But faintly also of antiseptic, of hospitals and chemicals. I pushed her away, gently.
"Not like this, Vic. Not like this."
"Not like what?" She smiled, trying to be brave, trying to pretend she didn't understand.
But in the next moment, biting her lip, she backed away from me and, staring, sank to the floor.