She was also thrilled that he was being so industrious, although she was peeved that he wouldn’t allow her a sneak preview of what he had done.
‘Not until it’s properly hung,’ he insisted.
Instead, she threw herself into the organisation of the preview party. Sebastian frankly didn’t give a toss who came, and so he was quite happy for her to take over the guest list, the catering, the flowers . . .
He drew the line when she started fretting about his outfit.
‘Why are you women so obsessed with clothes?’ he demanded. ‘I’ll probably just wear jeans, as usual.’
‘You can’t just wear jeans. You’re the artist.’
‘Exactly,’ said Sebastian. ‘I can wear what I like.’
Catkin wound her arm around his neck.
‘If I choose you something,’ she purred, ‘will you wear it?’ Sebastian eyed her thoughtfully.
‘If it makes you happy,’ he finally concurred, and she clapped.
Ozwald Boateng, she decided. Or maybe something with a bit more edge. Galliano . . .
The week before the exhibition, Charlotte decided to visit the doctor. Her eczema had really flared up over the past few weeks, thanks to all the strippers and thinners she’d been using and the fact she couldn’t be bothered to wear gloves. Even though she liberally applied aqueous cream every night her hands were cracked and red and raw, and in some places looked in danger of becoming septic.
By chance she found she was booked in with Penny, who immediately prescribed her some steroid cream and told her off, mildly, for letting it get so bad.
‘Are you going to Sebastian’s exhibition?’ she asked, as Charlotte folded up her prescription.
Charlotte nodded. ‘How about you?’
‘Maybe,’ said Penny, doubtfully.
‘Oh, do,’ said Charlotte. ‘Sebastian would be disappointed if you didn’t.’
‘I doubt it.’
‘No, really,’ Charlotte insisted. ‘I think we’re his only mates. He can’t stand that pretentious air-kissing brigade. Oh, go on,’ she urged. ‘I won’t know anyone else otherwise.’
Penny shrugged and laughed. ‘If I can find something to wear,’ she promised.
As soon as Charlotte had gone, Penny typed up her notes on the computer, then frowned. The records stated that she was registered as Charlotte Briggs, yet Penny was certain she’d always introduced herself as Charlotte Dixon. She looked back through her notes, then spotted something that caught her interest. Fertility treatment? Why was Charlotte having fertility treatment? As far as she knew, she wasn’t married. Not that you needed to be married to have fertility treatment, of course, but it was more usual.
Penny scrolled back even further, looking for clues. She felt a little bit guilty, snooping like this. But Charlotte obviously had a secret. Was it breaking the Hippocratic oath, to snoop through her past like this?
Penny reassured herself that any good doctor would familiarise themselves with a new patient’s history, but deep down she knew she was just prying.
Well. According to the records she was married, with unexplained infertility. And she was called Charlotte Briggs now, not Dixon. Dixon was her maiden name.
Penny sat back in her chair, frowning. The name Charlotte Briggs was bothering her. It rang a bell, somehow. She typed the name into her search engine. She was surprised when a whole page of newspaper articles came up. She leaned forward to read them, clicking through all the articles carefully, astounded at the pictures of a glamorous Charlotte with her hair long, standing next to what must be her husband. Penny read on hungrily.
Bloody hell. Charlotte had always looked as if butter wouldn’t melt. But there she was, in black and white for all to see, apparently embroiled in a hugely distasteful fraud case. Her husband had run off with the profits from a charity ball, and lost the lot on an insider deal that went wrong. He was now inside.
There was a picture of them dressed up for the ball, Charlotte in a figure-hugging black dress, her hair pinned up, her husband next to her in black tie. With them was the man whose son had died of leukaemia, whose hospice the ball had been raising money for. The money Ed Briggs had embezzled. In the photo, they looked like a dazzlingly successful and wealthy couple. Charlotte looked a million miles from the girl she was down here, who was rarely seen in anything but jeans and was usually splattered in paint.
No wonder she had done a runner from London. No doubt she had been shunned by all her friends, sacked from her job, excommunicated from her social circle. Penny wondered if she had colluded with her husband in the scam. The articles in the paper indicated not, and her gut feeling told her it wasn’t the sort of thing Charlotte would be party to. But then you never knew with people. She, after all, had had no idea her husband was shagging his registrar until he’d announced he was leaving.
Penny rather hastily shut down her browser, feeling as if she was poking her nose into Charlotte’s private life. Which of course she was. And she had to admit she was rather shocked. She was dying to know more, but she could hardly ask Charlotte about it. For a moment, she felt a visceral desire to share her discovery with somebody else. There was nothing more pleasurable than imparting scandal, after all. Yet tempting though it was to spill the beans, Penny wasn’t a natural gossipmonger, and somehow she didn’t want to betray Charlotte. She’d never done her any harm, after all. And she’d obviously been through a lot. The revelations certainly shed light on what a girl like her was doing holed up in Withybrook.
Brooding slightly on what she had discovered, she called up her next patient’s notes before buzzing them in.
Thirteen
The Rhombus Gallery was so-called because it was shaped like a squashed diamond, each of its four walls the same length. It had a high pointed glass roof, like the spire of a cathedral, which let the sunshine flood in, and the natural light made it a favourite with artists. The walls were matt chalky white, and the floor black elm, and most of the people who entered its hallowed interior matched themselves to the monochrome colour scheme.
Tonight it was heaving with artists, actresses, authors, models, rock stars, glitterati, literati, media whores and pundits. They were all gathered in the spacious reception hall, waiting to be ushered through into the inner sanctum where Sebastian Turner’s latest exhibition would be revealed to them in all its glory.
To oil the social wheels, waitresses in black hot-pants and high-necked sleeveless tops were handing round gin and tonics muddled with crushed blackberries and crème de Mure, which made most of the guests insensible within minutes. To soak it up, platters of exquisite sushi were passed round, as well as cups of beetroot gazpacho and Devon Ruby Red steak tartare. There was no point in serving anything resembling a carbohydrate to this crowd.
Catkin wore a deep-yellow silk dress held up by a thick gold chain round her neck and a deadly pair of YSL sandals, her trademark bob shorter and sharper than ever. To her delight, Sebastian had slipped into the suit she had chosen for him without demur, though he had refused to wear a shirt underneath and insisted on rolling up the sleeves. He was right, of course. He looked charmingly dissolute. The artist in control of his own destiny.
At nine o’clock, when people were starting to go cross-eyed from alcohol, he gave a short speech in front of the ceiling-high stainless-steel doors that led to the gallery.
‘Every now and again someone comes along in your life who gives you a fresh way of looking at things. They inspire you. They make you want to create. They give you vision. Confidence. And sometimes they do this without even knowing it. This person has given me the courage to paint what I believe in and to be honest to myself, when the pressure to create something just for effect and impact is overwhelming. I hope you think the results are as beautiful as I do.’
With a small nod of the head, he indicated to the security guards to open the doors. The crowds swarmed in.
On each of the four white walls were hung three canvasses. A dozen altogether. Six foot squar
e, each bore an exquisite oil painting of a woman. A girl with a curly blonde crop and wide, green eyes. In one, she was curled up on a huge sofa. In another, she was clasping a glass of red wine, in another engrossed in a battered copy of Madame Bovary. In one she was asleep, her head resting on her arms. Two depicted her devouring a plate of fruit, her fingers tearing at the flesh of a juicy orange. In the final painting she was simply smiling, looking straight at the observer, her eyes alive with promise.
From a distance, it seemed as though the artist had barely touched the canvas. But up close, it was evident that he had painstakingly built up layer upon layer of paint to get the depth and the texture, working and reworking with his brush to achieve a thick crust of palest pink and creamy white and gold, interspersed with smudges of grey. Sinuous strokes laid their contours across the canvas, snaking their way over the girl’s hips, breasts, neck, mouth . . . And in the midst of each, except in the paintings where she was sleeping, two verdant eyes gleamed out. On close inspection, the irises contained tiny dots of green and gold, applied with the finest brush so they glittered like jewels, hypnotising the viewer.
The work was exquisite. The work of a master. The work of a man who understood a woman’s body, and who wanted nothing more than to relay her beauty to his audience. Even though she was fully clothed in all the paintings, it was if she was laid bare. They were sensual, almost erotic, but not lascivious in any way. The curve of her lips, the delicate bone on her ankle, the shadows at the base of her collarbone - the detail was so perfect it was almost as if she was going to slide off the canvas and walk among the guests.
Sebastian held his breath for the reaction. You could usually tell within the first thirty seconds whether an exhibition was going to be well received. There was an initial silence as the spectators drank in painting after painting. Then the sound of a slow hand clap started across the room, joined by another, and then another, until the gallery was filled with thunderous applause, interspersed with cheering and wolf-whistles.
Sebastian smiled. He never usually gave a toss what anyone thought of his work. But this time, he was proud of what he had done.
Charlotte stood in a corner of the room, horrified. Thank goodness her hair had grown since the paintings had been done. She’d had it blow-dried sleek and straight, with a long wispy fringe. Her black cocktail dress was a million miles from the scruffy clothes she’d been depicted in. And she was wearing quite a lot of make-up, over-compensating for the fact that she’d hardly worn any for months. She didn’t look at all like the fresh-faced, curly-haired creature replicated all around her. The guests were all so self-absorbed and excited, they didn’t notice her anyway - she’d have had to walk round the room naked to have got any attention.
How could this have happened? This was her worst nightmare, to be on public display for all to see when she had been so careful to hide herself away. And what the hell was Sebastian thinking of? These pictures implied that there was something between them. They were so intimate and personal. She’d had absolutely no idea that he had been observing her so closely. Apart from the day when he had sketched her in her house, he had never been more than . . . well, just friendly, she had thought. Affectionate at a push. There had never been any suggestion from him of a deeper relationship between them. But these pictures told another story. How could she deny it, looking at what stared back at her from the four walls? No one could walk away from this exhibition without thinking they had been embroiled in some affair.
She pushed through the crowds, keeping her head down. She was going to run outside and get a taxi. As she made her way back through the huge double doors into the reception area, she saw a figure in a yellow dress, running down a corridor.
Catkin.
Her heart leaped into her mouth. She hesitated for a moment by the exit. What on earth was Catkin going to think?
Penny stood at the back of the room, clutching the blackberry cocktail which had now started curdling in her stomach.
Had she really spent three hundred pounds on a dark red silk dress for this? To have Charlotte bloody Dixon-slash-Briggs shoved in her face? To have the whole world know that this was who Sebastian Turner put on a pedestal, adored and adulated, when Penny was the one he had fucked on Christmas Day? She felt incredibly bitter as she remembered him begging her to forgive him for his behaviour, how he couldn’t betray his beloved wife. And all the time he was banging some gangster’s moll. Penny was sure Sebastian didn’t know Charlotte’s true identity, or her dark secret. The saccharine-sweet portraits of her made her look the picture of bloody innocence, as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. They made Penny feel sick.
Why had Sebastian asked her to come to the exhibition? Was it just to humiliate her? Or to prove that she meant nothing, whereas Charlotte - Charlotte! Not Catkin, as he had protested - meant everything? Whatever had she done to him to deserve such cruel treatment? Did he have no feelings for anyone else on the planet except himself?
All around her, the press were going wild. Critics were scribbling; flashes were going off left, right and centre. Adjectives and epithets were being bandied around - ‘luminous’, ‘incandescent’, ‘coruscating’ - and references were being made - Renoir, Degas, Fragonard, Ingres. And the question on everyone’s lips: ‘Who is this girl?’ No one seemed to have any idea.
Penny did it before she could stop herself. She pushed her way out of the room, her fists clenched at her side. She found a likely journalist phoning in his copy from the reception area. She had no idea which paper he was from, nor did she care. Once the first one knew, the others would soon follow. It would be splashed all over the Sunday papers. Just like before, thought Penny spitefully. History repeating itself.
‘If you want to know who she is,’ she murmured sotto voce, ‘her name is Charlotte Dixon. Also known as Mrs Charlotte Briggs, whose husband is currently inside doing time for fraud. I’m sure you’ll have all the details on file.’
The journalist looked at her, surprised. ‘You sure?’
Penny nodded. ‘Absolutely.’
He lifted his phone and gave her a nod of appreciation. ‘Cheers, love.’
‘It’s a pleasure,’ she replied, and with the utmost dignity, she walked out of the gallery, down the steps, and hailed a taxi back to the station.
Catkin stood in the pink marble of the ladies’ bathroom and threw her glass at the wall. How the fuck could Sebastian have humiliated her like this? He couldn’t, if he had tried, have done anything worse to undermine her. How could she have been so taken in by him? She’d been so filled with hope when he had finally got it together for this exhibition. She’d thought they were working as a team at last, working towards her dream, that he’d banished his demons. Instead, he had unleashed them. She was going to be a laughing stock. The whole world was going to know that her husband had a two-bit painter and decorator on the side.
His very thoughts about this girl were entirely apparent. They were the most sensual paintings that anyone could ever see. The simple tasks were more erotic than something more blatant. They literally took your breath away with their beauty. She knew it was the best work he had ever done. The collection told an incredible story that no one could fail to relate to. That the artist was head over heels with his subject was totally undeniable. Every brushstroke was a loving caress. They were masterpieces.
It took a lot to shake Catkin. But as she stood in the middle of the ladies’ room, she began to gasp for breath, panic overwhelming her. She had no idea what to think. She had no idea what to do.
The door opened. Although she knew she should flee into the nearest cubicle and try to regain her composure, she couldn’t move. She found herself rooted to the spot. The glass lay shattered on the floor at her feet. She sank to her knees, sobbing.
‘Catkin . . .’
She looked up, her shoulders heaving. Straight into the anxious face of her nemesis. If she could have spat, she would have. But she was crying too hard to summon up the saliva.
‘Get out,’ she snarled. ‘Get out!’
If she’d had another glass, she would have thrown it at her.
Charlotte looked at the shards surrounding Catkin, and went to get some paper towels out of the dispenser.
‘We better get this cleaned up. Or you’ll cut yourself.’
‘Don’t be such a fucking Girl Guide,’ spat Catkin. ‘We all know the truth now.’
‘Listen,’ said Charlotte. ‘I don’t know what it’s about any more than you do. As far as I’m concerned, Sebastian is a friend. That’s all. I absolutely promise you, I absolutely swear, that nothing has ever happened between us. The most intimate thing we have ever done is share a Tunnock’s bar.’
Catkin looked at her askance and Charlotte smiled ruefully.
‘Hand on heart, this is a total shock. It’s completely freaked me out. I don’t know what he’s playing at, but as far as I’m concerned the most important thing is that you know there was nothing going on between us.’
Marriage and Other Games Page 26