Jane Actually

her left eyebrow.
    Melody’s patience was evaporating as she tried to explain the concept. “You can feel free to do what you want because you can just make an idealized portrait … excuse me, are you listening to me?”
    “Maybe something like this?” Barb asked, after she had finally found the file she sought and double clicked it. The window that opened caught the attention of Melody, Mary and Jane.
    “Oh my God, that’s perfect,” Mary said, and then felt guilty because it was Jane’s decision and shouldn’t try to influence her.
    “The nose is … prominent,” Melody said.
    You should talk,
Mary thought. But Jane said, “No, it is the Austen nose, Melody.”
    “It’s still a little big,” Melody countered.
    “Then how about this one?” Barb asked. She opened another file and the same image appeared, except for a slightly less prominent nose.
    “Now that’s more like it,” Melody said. “I like that.”
    “But when did you do this?” Jane asked.
    “Yes, why didn’t you show us these before?” Melody demanded.
    “Well, A, that’s not what you asked for. You wanted to reproduce what Jane Austen looked like when alive. And B, my boss said I shouldn’t show you work I did on my own time.”
    “You did these on your own time?” Jane asked.
    “Yeah, as soon as I heard you’d been found, I mean identified. I’ve been a fan since high school, ever since
Pride and Prejudice
,” she said, the last with some defiance.
    Melody, Mary and Jane looked at this pierced, tattooed, fierce young woman professing her love for Jane. Apparently the incongruity was not lost on Barb.
    “I know I don’t look like a fan, but I fell in love with Elizabeth and Darcy all the same, Miss Austen. Then I read all your books, but I probably still like
P&P
the best.”
    “But what prompted you to create these?”
    “It was that horrible portrait of you they discovered, the pencil sketch with the cat. 1 I thought you looked awful and nothing like Cassandra’s portrait, which I actually sort of like. Everyone was going on about the new portrait and I thought I could do better. I’d always imagined what you looked like, especially when you were my age. I tried to base it on your family resemblance—that’s the one with the nose—but I didn’t like that one so I modified it to what I wanted you to look like.” She broke eye contact and looked down, “How’d I do?”
    “It’s lovely,” Jane said. “I can’t honestly say that’s exactly what I looked like, but I certainly wish I had.”
    “You look like Emma,” Melody said.
    “Beg pardon?” Jane asked. “Do you mean by this I look like Gwyneth Paltrow?”
    “No, don’t be facetious, Jane. No I mean you look like fun. You’ve got that look I always imagined Emma would have, an expectation that the world would offer you amusement and you were looking forward to it.”
    Jane paused before answering. “I think that at this age … I still did expect that of the world, before we moved to Bath and before my father died.”
    None of the women said anything after that until Mary said privately to Jane through her own terminal, “Well that was a downer, Jane. You might want to lighten the mood.”
    Jane could not reply to Mary directly for fear that Melody’s terminal might translate her response. Instead she said to them all: “I think your portrait is perfect Barb, with the exception that you have shown me outdoors and I would not be without a cap or bonnet. I suggest a light cap, no more than a wisp for modesty.”
    “And do you think we can make her eye colour a little more hazel?” Melody asked.
    “Oh, that is important Melody,” Jane agreed.
    “And do you not think that as she seems to be sitting out of doors with not even a shawl that she looks like she might be a little cold,” Barb asked with a querulous voice that Melody and Mary appreciated.
    “Hush, Mr Woodhouse 2 ,” Jane said to Barb, who smiled, pleased that her reference had not been lost. Then Barb turned back to her computer and muttered under her breath: “Clients, sheesh.”
    1 In 2011, Paula Byrne, who would later write
The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things,
announced that she had what might be a heretofore unknown pencil sketch of Jane Austen. The nose of the face in the sketch was prominent. Opinion is divided as to the authenticity of the sketch.
    2 Mr Woodhouse is the hypochondriacal father of the titular character in
Emma.
He fears the cold and assumes