Maestra: The most shocking thriller you'll read this year

by L. S. Hilton

  Angelica hadn’t bothered to show. She might know nothing about paintings, but her life’s training had clearly included a masterclass on which parties to avoid. Obviously another secret code I hadn’t cracked. How could I have been so pathetically excited? What had I seriously thought was going to happen? Gracious conversation with a glittering crowd, sharing a joke with Jay Jopling before being swept off to dinner at Lucien Freud’s old table at the Wolseley?

  That would never happen to me, because I was just a grunt, wasn’t I? A jumped-up tea lady. I felt humiliated. Even the paps outside had gone on to better things. The ancient supermodel had vanished, too, presumably stowing the fat cheque for turning up under the chicken fillets in her bra, on her way to where the smart people were actually hanging out. God, I was pathetic. I thought I should punish myself by doing the walk home but I was too depressed. What was another twenty on a cab? At least I could tell Dave I’d been somewhere fancy; he liked that sort of thing. But was it always like this? Was London a series of ever-tinier enclosures, like Russian dolls, so that when you thought you had got inside there was just another smooth painted casket, screwed down to keep you out? I was already clawing the stupid dress off me as I paid the driver. The delicate chain snapped and I was so furious I grabbed the split in the leg and tore the fucking thing in half, much to the surprise of an elderly couple who were passing, clutching programmes from the Albert Hall.

  The flat was lying in wait for me, humming with white rage. After I’d scrambled through the hideous maze of cycles and pumps and helmets that permanently blocked the hallway, I saw a box on the kitchen table with a note to ‘Judy’ taped to it. The box contained a fat pink ceramic mug with bunny ears. The note said, ‘Really sorry. I borrowed your cup and accidentally broke it. I got you this instead!’ My roommate had drawn a smiley face, the silly cunt. I looked in the bin. There were the pieces of my cup and saucer, a perfect Villeroy 1929 glaze in absinthe green that I’d gone all the way to Camden Passage to agonise over for two weeks. It had only cost forty quid, but that was not the point. It was just not the point. I thought there might be some Superglue in the drawer of the horrible fake-Victorian buffet, but the handle stuck and I kicked the leg of the fucking thing so hard it just flew off, and the cabinet lurched to one side so that all the shitty china smashed, and then there were a regrettable few minutes which took quite a long time to clean up, after I’d calmed down.

  7

  I woke at five with my head fizzing. I lay naked on my bed, staring at the usual aching ceiling. I’d let the club addle my brain. The camaraderie with the girls and the easy money had put me off my game. I was going to do this right, and that meant getting to the bottom of the Stubbs acquisition. A bad party was nothing. I just had to focus.

  I was at the office early, dying to see Dave, but Laura cornered me and made me spend an impatient morning going through minimum sale prices for Stanley Spencers in order to help some hedge funder fiddle his capital gains tax. CGT was about the only area in which the department was remotely businesslike. I went down to the warehouse at lunch, but Dave was out. I called his mobile and offered to buy him a drink after work, then went across to N. Peal and bought a beautiful pale blue cashmere crew neck that cost almost as much as I had spunked in Harvey Nicks. Somehow spending more money made me feel better about the Tentis debacle. I planned to change for the club in the ladies at the London Library in St James’s Square to give me time to meet Dave in the Bunch of Grapes on Duke Street. When he limped in – he was too proud to use a cane – I got him a pint of London Pride and a tonic water for myself.

  ‘Thanks for the drink, Judith, but my missus will be wondering where I’ve got to.’

  I explained that my notes on the picture seemed to have been lost, and that the Stubbs had been acquired not direct from the couple in Warminster but through a mystery buyer. It did sound a bit lame, but I was so sure there was something wrong. I couldn’t have explained it to Dave, but after my total failure the previous evening it seemed even more important to prove that I was right about the Stubbs.

  ‘I want to have a look at it, Dave. It’s in, right? You’ve got a better eye than me. I don’t believe this overpainting stuff.’

  Dave lowered his voice.

  ‘You don’t really mean Rupert would be flogging a fake?’

  ‘Of course I don’t. I think he might have made a mistake and I don’t want anyone to look bad, that’s all. If helping them not look bad makes me look good, then that suits me fine. But it wouldn’t be the first time someone made an attribution error, would it? You know that. Please? Ten minutes and you can tell me I’m an idiot and I’ll never mention it again.’

  ‘Judith, there’s the experts for this. I’d need, I dunno, tools.’

  ‘Dave. You care about the real thing, right? You think what we sell should be the real thing? Regimental honour and all that?’

  ‘We should really get permission.’

  ‘I work there, you work there. We have passes – I could just be looking at the “works”, like bloody Laura is always saying.’

  ‘Ten minutes?’

  ‘Max. Come on.’ I made my voice softer. ‘We’re mates, yes?’

  ‘Oh, go on then.’

  Most of the staff had left, so Dave took us in using his code for the back entrance. We had to use torches in the storage room, which was kept dim to protect the artworks. Dave went straight to the correct crate and lifted the picture out. I pointed out where I had remembered the Newmarket sign being placed, and where I thought the signature had been moved.

  ‘Judith, I can’t say. It really looks alright to me.’

  ‘But there was a sign, just here. How new is that varnish?’

  Our heads were close together as we peered at the canvas, both our fingertips hovering over the emptied space.

  ‘If it was cleaned,’ Dave said, engaged now, ‘there might be a trace on the underpainting. We need to get it under the right light.’

  ‘Well, can we move it?’

  ‘Where did you say the signature was?’

  ‘Yes, where was it?’ Rupert. They say that fat people can often move with surprising stealth. I laughed stupidly.

  ‘Rupert. Hi, sorry, we were just –’

  ‘Please explain what you are doing. You are a junior, you have no permission to be here.’ Actually it wasn’t that big a deal. I’d popped down after hours many times. Usually because Rupert had asked me to. He turned to Dave, his voice softer.

  ‘What are you two up to, eh? Isn’t it time you were getting home, Dave?’

  Dave looked mortified and mumbled a good evening. I hated the way he called Rupert ‘sir’. Rupert stayed affable, politely undramatic until he limped off up the stairs, then considered me for a long moment. In the bluish light he looked like a strangely bloated El Greco. I knew he wasn’t going to make a scene. Power is so much more effective when it’s quiet.

  ‘Judith, I’ve been meaning to speak to you for a while. I don’t really think you fit in here, do you? I wanted to give you a chance, but I’ve had several complaints in the department about your attitude. Your comments at the Stubbs meeting were inappropriate and frankly impertinent.’

  ‘I just thought – that is, I was trying – I wasn’t sure –. ’ I was babbling like a guilty schoolgirl, furious with myself but unable to stop.

  ‘I think it would be better if you get your things and leave now, don’t you?’ he added calmly.

  ‘You’re – firing me?’

  ‘If you want to put it like that, yes. I am.’

  I was bewildered. Instead of protesting, instead of defending myself, I just started to cry. Absurd. All the frustrated tears I had kept down chose that moment to bubble up like a geyser, reducing me despite myself to the role of pleading woman. Even as I felt those hot, furious tears massing in my eyes, I knew that Rupert was hiding something. Even that the stupid party invitation had been meant as a sop to keep me quiet. Yet this wasn’t how it was meant to be, was it? I was tryi
ng to do the right thing, the good thing.

  ‘Rupert, please. I wasn’t doing anything wrong. If I could just explain?’

  ‘I have no interest in your explanations.’

  He ignored me as we made our way back to the department. I walked in front of him through the narrow corridors, feeling like a prisoner. He stood with his arms folded as I gathered the bits and pieces from my desk and scooped them into my briefcase. My dress and heels for the club were stuffed at the bottom. I couldn’t bear to see them.

  ‘Are you ready?’

  I nodded dumbly.

  ‘I need your pass, please. I don’t think there’s any need to ask Security to see you out.’

  I handed it over, mute.

  ‘Off you go then, Judith.’

  I thought of Colonel Morris. I thought of the skivvying I had done for Rupert, fetching his suits from the tailor, picking up his laundered shirts, phone calls I had fielded when he’d skived off, pissed after lunch, extra hours I’d spent in the library and the archives, trying to prove that I was better, that I was smarter, that I could run faster, that I could take more and do better. I had been humble and diligent. I had never allowed it to show that I felt slighted and excluded. I had never let any of them – Laura, Oliver, Rupert – see that I even noticed the differences between us. My Oxbridge degree was a better degree than any of theirs. I had actually believed that with time and hard work I could make it, that I could get up there amongst them. I’d never pretended to myself that Rupert respected or valued me. But I had believed I had been useful, and that I was worth something. Pathetic.

  ‘I suppose you’ll be giving my job to Angelica?’ I hated the way it sounded, whining, bitter.

  ‘That’s not your concern. Please leave now.’

  I looked him in the face, knowing that my own was grubby with tears. I thought about how it would feel waking up in the flat and not getting up to go to Prince Street. The cool lobby, the reassuring grain of the banister under my hand. This had been my chance. I might not have got much beyond the gate, yet, but I was in, I was part of the world that I belonged to and every day I had thought I was climbing a little higher. I thought about how I would have to send out my CV and where that would get me. I had fucked it up. I had lost control, I had let myself want too much, been over eager, thoughtless, stupid, stupid. I had let myself stop being angry enough, had been tripping around like Pollyanna thinking that goodwill was everything and we could put the show on right here in the sodding barn. Rage had always been my friend, and I had neglected it. Rage had kept my back straight, rage had seen me through the fights and the slights. Rage had propelled me from my no-mark comprehensive to university; it had been my strength and my solace. For a moment I felt the white heat of it deep in my body and had a flash of Rupert’s bloodied face sagging over his computer. Come, Rage beckoned, just for once. Come on. My tatty briefcase had brass hinges on the corners; I imagined swinging it at his temple, but I wouldn’t need it. I could feel the ache in the sinew of my arms, in my teeth. I wanted to savage his throat like a dog. He watched me, and for a tiny second I saw a flicker of alarm in his eyes. That was all I needed.

  ‘You know, Rupert,’ I said, casually, ‘you’re a cunt. A fat-arsed, overprivileged, talentless, bent cunt.’

  ‘Get out.’

  I didn’t know which of us I despised more.

  *

  To make up, I took Rage drinking. Good company, Rage, matching me glass for glass. By the time James arrived at the club I was halfway down a second bottle of Bolly with another client and this time I was swallowing. I didn’t bother saying goodbye, just left the john looking surprised and plumped myself down next to James while Carlo did the business with the Cristal.

  ‘I think I might drink some of this tonight, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Rough day?’

  I nodded. This wasn’t going to be a happy drunk. I felt cold and cruel and reckless. I raised my bowl in a dry little toast. Sure, I found him obscene, but we were drinking in the last chance saloon, Rage and I.

  ‘James. Let’s cut to the chase. How much would you be willing to pay to fuck me?’

  He looked bewildered, then rather disgusted.

  ‘I don’t need to pay for sex.’

  ‘Why? Is it less important to you than money?’

  ‘Lauren, what’s the matter?’

  If this had been a movie, it would have been a montage moment. A swirl of memories, plucky little Judith getting her degree, Judith plodding home late from work, sitting up over her catalogues, a tear sliding poignantly down Judith’s cheek as Rupert fired her, the wide-eyed recognition that here she was in a sleazy basement believing that this filthy old punter was her only hope. That Judith would have got up and politely walked away into her fabulous future because she didn’t need to compromise her integrity for anything. Yes, well. I was all over new fucking beginnings. This felt like my only hope. If this was what I was born to do, then I would do it properly. Me and Rage, we were going places.

  I let the tears I had been suppressing for hours well prettily to the brims of my eyelids, that wet hyacinth effect, a little tremble and bite on the lower lip. I lifted up my face to him.

  ‘James, I’m sorry. That was vulgar of me. It’s just this place – I can’t bear to think you would think I was – like that. I was testing you. You see, you’re so wonderful, and I – I –’

  Even his gargantuan ego might balk at the word love, so I had a little sob instead. Another one, Jesus. He gave me his handkerchief, which was large and white and smelled cleanly of Persil. I remembered my mum, on one of her good days, giving me a bath and wrapping me in a clean white towel that smelled just the same, and after that the sobs became real. So then we had a chat and I told him I was frightened, that I had lost my job (as a receptionist in a gallery) and when he proposed that I might like to get away for a weekend I pretended I’d never been to the South of France, and wouldn’t that be heaven, but we’d better take my friend too, to show I wasn’t really that sort of girl. Or not entirely. I did a bit of whispering about how he might persuade me otherwise. In truth, it was the possibility of having to share a bed with him that made me want someone else along. Plus if he felt like a threesome it was better to come equipped. It wasn’t hard to hint that the persuasion might involve, say, £3,000, just to help me along until I could find work. So when he left there was a thousand on the table, to cover two tickets to Nice, and I lurched over to Mercedes and told her we were going to the Riviera.

  ‘Christ, Jude,’ she said admiringly, ‘what’ve you got up there? Crack?’

  8

  I’d used some of James’s fifties to get together some gear for the trip. A tan braided leather weekend bag and matching tote from a little shop in Marylebone that could pass for Bottega Veneta, a black Eres tie-side bikini, Tom Ford sunglasses, a Vuitton Sprouse scarf in turquoise and beige. When we landed at Nice airport, I was pleased to see that the accessories meant I looked like many of the other women coming in for the weekend: super-groomed but not too effortful. Mercedes (we said we’d try to use club names so as not to slip up) was uncharacteristically restrained in simple jeans and a white shirt. James was waiting for us in the café next to the arrivals lounge. I took a deep breath as I saw the unselfconscious sprawl of his bulk, the patches of sweat on his pale pink shirt. Sure he was fat, but did he have to be such a slob? There was something conceited about it, as though his money meant he could afford to disregard the effect he had on other people – which of course it did. I took a deep breath. I had a sudden weird longing to be back in my horrible flat. I’d spent so many hours there, planning, dreaming, safe in the fantasy that the future was going to happen. But this was it. This was the future. Or at least, in the absence of a better plan, the next few months. I could do this, I told myself. More than ever now, I had to do this. It was just about control.

  A young Moroccan-looking man in a dark jacket with ‘Hôtel du Cap’ on the breast loaded our bags into a long black car. Jam
es heaved himself into the front and the car immediately sagged like an old bed on his side. I couldn’t look at Mercedes.

  ‘S’il vous plaît, Mesdemoiselles.’

  I slipped through the door he held for me and sat back on ivory leather seats. The car was cool, the windows tinted, the engine had a low purring hum. This was what it felt like, then. James was fiddling with his phone so I didn’t need to try to make conversation. When we arrived at the hotel, Mercedes squeezed my hand excitedly.

  ‘It’s gorgeous, James,’ she breathed, giving me a nudge.

  ‘Really lovely,’ I added enthusiastically.

  We waited discreetly in the black marble-tiled hallway while James checked in. One of the receptionists asked us for our passports, and I told her quickly in French, with a calm smile, that they had gone up with the bags and we could bring them down later. I didn’t want James to have any chance of seeing our real names; it would spoil the mood.

  ‘Your French is dead good!’ said Mercedes, surprised.

  I shrugged.

  ‘We’d probably best not let James know that.’

  We were shown to a suite on the second floor. Two bedrooms opened off a huge drawing room with white sofas and a vast arrangement of calla lilies. Double doors opened onto a balcony over a long lawn that dropped down to the famous pool I had seen in so many magazines. Beyond that, to the right in the direction of Cannes, a pod of giant boats swarmed the old port. Big seemed to be a theme.