She grimaces. ‘He loves telling people. I’ve been going through a lot of the stuff for our catalogue. His car collection is worth about a million, and the art is worth more. There’s a Gainsborough in the drawing room, and in the library, he’s got a cigar case that belonged to Isambard Kingdom Brunel. He tried to buy the Banksy that got shredded, but he got outbid.’
‘Why does he live here?’ I’m not knocking the West Country, but couldn’t this guy lord it in London or LA? I’m sure everyone has a sculpture room in La La Land, along with a gym and a chakra-realigning pod.
‘He’s Bristol born and bred. Divides his time between here and the UAE. I’m starting to think he might be an arms dealer. Which is why I’m really not happy about you being here.’
‘I’m just your assistant, here to help you with your cataloguing. You said the kitchen was downstairs?’
I take a quick peek in the drawing room – perfect for my purposes – then jog back down the sweeping staircase. The kitchen is underneath the ballroom and is almost as big, industrial-shiny, with all sorts of anterooms for storing wine and doing laundry and stuffing swans. While Susie follows me round exclaiming and complaining, I do what I need to do, and when the doorbell rings just after five, I’m ready.
‘Could you get that please?’
‘Who the hell is it? We’ve got visitors now? Jesus Christ!’
‘It’s an artist called Art Andra, and it’s only for half an hour, and then we’ll be out of your lair.’
She takes me by the shoulders and looks into my eyes. ‘What are you up to? Just tell me.’
For a second I meet her gaze. ‘Not yet. But I will. You’ve just got to trust me. I know what I’m doing.’
She stares at me searchingly, before releasing my shoulders. ‘OK. But you owe me, big time.’
‘OK.’ I watch her walk away, my best friend, who knows everything – not quite everything – and will do this mad thing for me, on my say-so, on my day-of-days, and I think: yes, I do owe her. More than a basement of supercars or a ballroom of sculptures. And I’ll pay her back, another day, just like I did for Petroc. I catch sight of myself in the gilt mirror above the fireplace and zhuzh my crazy hair. My eyes have a light in them; it’s the martial light of Lucas Andra, my visitor’s demonic son. I’m going to need it.
26
The Clover Susie knows doesn’t haggle. She doesn’t negotiate, doesn’t push, doesn’t quibble. She pays full price, tips poor service, accepts her lower-than-market-value salary meekly, is grateful. Sometimes I hate her. She’s so darn spineless, she makes my blood boil.
I keep thinking back to moments when I let my natural cowardice get the better of me, allowing myself to be ignored, slighted, overlooked, rebuked. My innate fear of rocking the boat condemned me to a life spent tiptoeing around, polite smile plastered on, apologizing and throwing my cloak on the floor for everyone. Mostly my mother, admittedly, but it’s a habit that bled out and infected every part of my existence, until I’d effectively erased myself.
‘Don’t make such a fuss!’ Rose always said, when, as a little girl, I scraped my knee, or was scared of the dark, or got lost in Woolworths and the staff had to do an announcement. Her vision of the perfect child was one who was neither seen nor heard, blending into the soft furnishings until we were as accommodating and forgiving as one of her many plump velvet cushions. It became ingrained, that urge to please, to acquiesce, to make everyone else comfortable, even if I was being sat on. Maz dealt with it in a different way, tuning her, and then most of the world, out, but I slogged away, keeping the plates spinning, doing my best to stay serene, a good girl. A husband, two kids, a career, nice house, an (almost) size ten body that functions, shiny hair.
And I’m so fucking tired of it.
I get that I’m lucky to have it all, and know that others have it so much worse. And it’s not that I don’t want those things any more. It’s just that to get them, keep them, maintain them, was and is so much effort. Sometimes I feel like I could give up work and just spend every second of every day dealing with the humdrum minutiae of life – pruning plants and sorting Tupperware cupboards and recycling pens and filling in forms and ordering compost bags on Amazon and buying birthday presents and changing duvet covers and de-ticking the cat and fixing the loose tile in the bathroom and touching up my roots and queueing at the pharmacy and making sure Ethan does his homework and going for a run and prepping dinner and throwing away the rotting vegetables in the fridge and remembering to put wine in for later and dammit I forgot to charge my toothbrush.
And that’s just the ‘fun’ stuff. Then there’s smear tests, and checking your boobs for tumours, and pulling hair from the plughole of the shower, and rinsing the fat-clogged filter in the dishwasher and hosing shit off a child’s welly, and listening to a friend tell you about her mum who has Alzheimer’s and worrying about when that might be your turn, and smiling when the man tells you to smile and hating yourself, and reading about how your children will perish on a fiery earth, and knowing that when you sit down to dinner there are wars raging and people who can’t afford food, parents who can’t feed their kids, and you’re so lucky, you should just sit for a while to think about how goddamned lucky you are, but you just don’t have time, because the washing cycle finished and there’s another load to do.
There’s just too much going on. Keeping everything ticking over without breaking down is a full-time job. And I have a full-time job. ‘A woman’s work is never done!’ my mother twinkles inanely, but that doesn’t begin to cover it. Makes it sound like you’re ticking off a list, one by one, and things keep getting added to the list. But the reality is more than that. It’s more like the vault in Harry Potter where he’s looking for the goblet, but everything he touches multiplies, until they’re all suffocated. More like that. I’m suffocating in cursed goblets, trying to rise above it with a smile. I guess I need to stop touching stuff, stop smiling.
And I will. But first I want to burn the whole thing down.
27
Susie leads Art Andra into the drawing room, where I’m sitting on a chaise longue with my knees together like the Duchess of Cambridge. As he approaches, rolling his shoulders, I can tell he’s already slightly intimidated, working hard to hide it. Shock and awe, that’s what I was going for. I get to my feet more gracefully than is natural to me, and shake his hand.
‘Mr Andra, so good of you to come. This is Suzanne, my assistant. Please, take a seat.’
While I was setting everything up, I practised my accent under my breath, and really think I’ve got it down now. Hearing it, though, causes Susie’s eyes to widen, only to narrow again as she’s introduced.
‘Champagne?’ I gesture towards the bottle set on the table between us, along with two glasses. I’m doing a David Lyon-James. Susie was apoplectic when she saw me nick it from the owner’s wine fridge, but there were loads in there, and he’ll never notice, particularly as it’s only Moët, the arms dealer’s equivalent of tap water. Pouring us both a glass, I check out Art Andra. I couldn’t see him properly on the floor of the gallery, but it turns out he’s a fairly unprepossessing figure anyway – quite short in stature, with close-cropped dark hair revealing his pierced ears. He’s wearing rolled-up black trousers, a neck chain like Connell in Normal People, and one of those ampersand T-shirts. His says ‘Claude & Camille & Alfred & Auguste & Edgar’. What a wag.
As we lean forwards to clink, we’re briefly interrupted by Bigwig lazily hopping across the Persian rug between us. I had to let him out my bag as I wanted him to have a run-around, but Suzanne my assistant is on hand with wipes.
I gently caress his back as he lollops past. ‘My emotional support animal,’ I explain. ‘Essential to my wellbeing in these times of turmoil.’
Art dips his head sagely. I feel we’re already bonding. ‘Can I start by saying I’m a huge admirer of yours.’ I raise my glass to him. ‘Six Weeks is a miraculous piece.’ That’s the title of the big posseting baby figure, which was the only thing I really liked in the exhibition.
He looks disgruntled. ‘That’s one of my earliest works,’ he says. ‘I’ve been experimenting with form since then.’
‘Ah, well, I’m glad to learn that I have been a fan since the very beginning. Your latest exhibition is a tour de force.’ Picking up my phone, I show him the Instagram selfie in the shell, my shelfie, making sure that he notes my following, which is now up to 90K. Then I put the mobile face down on the table in front of us and continue sorrowfully: ‘Of course, you are here to witness my profound and heartfelt apology for the damage I caused, and I can offer that to you now, wholeheartedly, along with a confession.’
He takes a sip of champagne, looking intrigued, as is Susie, whose eyes are on stalks.
‘Alas, I suffer from a very unusual and strange complaint which causes me to behave in an inappropriate way around artworks that I find particularly moving. I realize this sounds bizarre, and admit I am at a loss—’
‘Stendhal syndrome,’ he butts in, his face transfigured. He’s delighted. It’s like taking candy from a giant posseting baby.
‘I beg your pardon?’
He leans forward eagerly. ‘It’s a recognized psychosomatic condition. Also called Florence syndrome, after the city.’ Obviously, you puffed-up twat. ‘It causes the sufferer to react hysterically when in the presence of great beauty or antiquity.’
I raise my hands to my cheeks and take a shuddering breath. ‘I am also this way in the Roman Baths . . . Is it possible that you have diagnosed my affliction?’
Art Andra sits back, taking a triumphant gulp of his champagne.
‘Suzanne, this makes sense of so much. Remember when we were at the Rijksmuseum?’ Susie nods, very slowly, saying nothing. I point at the Gainsborough. ‘It took me six months to look at this without feeling nauseous. Mr Andra, I cannot thank you enough. Please, come with me.’
He puts down his glass and follows me out, towards the ballroom, Susie trailing behind us like a harassed PR girl.
