Picture Imperfect (13 page)

After a nerve-racking wait, I’m finally walked into the
gallery. It’s now pretty full, with roughly thirty people milling around, all
walking into each other and spilling Champagne and
canape
crumbs onto the floor. I don’t know who any of them are. Rhoda claps her hands
and does a little speech about who I am and what I’ve done. Most people there
are aware of my work anyway, so her speech isn’t very long and the whole thing
is a lot more painless than I’d imagined it would be.

As I walk around the gallery, sipping my drink and
grinning at people I don’t know, I feel a poke in my ribs. I turn around and
it’s Kristin, grinning like an idiot and chain-eating sushi like there was no
tomorrow. I give her a big hug. I sent her a couple of invites, but I wasn’t
sure she’d want to come.

‘So, missy!
You think you can
steal my hair style now you’re a big famous artist!’

‘Do you like it?’

‘I hate to say this, but it really suits you. Have you
lost weight? You look like some bloody supermodel!’

‘I’ve lost a bit, yes. Did you bring anybody?’

I look around, expecting to see one of her adoring
hunks trailing behind her like a lost puppy.

‘Na.
Just split up with, um,
Zlatan
. He was becoming a pain.
Talking
about getting married and settling down.
I told him he’s got the wrong
girl! What about you? I should think you’d have been snapped up by now looking
like bloody Helena Christensen in her short hair period.’

‘I’ve been too busy with work. I think that this is
probably the first social thing I’ve been to since we went out and got hammered
about four months ago.’

‘Yeah, I remember that night. Three bloody cabs in a
row wouldn’t take us!’

She laughs loudly. Some old guy looks at her
disapprovingly and she sneers at him.

‘So how much are these paintings? Can I buy one or are
you out of my range now?’

‘I wouldn’t bother. My agent will only rip you off.’

I hear a small voice from behind me.

‘Hello, Chloe. Well done. Are you going to introduce me
to your friend?’

It’s Clementine from Rhoda’s office. She looks
absolutely stunning, in a tight yellow top and very short black skirt. She has
great legs, I realise.

‘Sure. This is Kristin, who I use to work with. She’s
not South African. Kristin, this is Clementine who works in my agent’s place.’

They shake hands. Clementine’s eyes are out on stalks
as she looks Kristin up and down. I decide it’s time to mingle.

After a while, I get stuck talking to some Finnish art
collector and his wife. They both look like they’re about ninety and are
drinking like fishes. They ask me lots of questions about the paintings and
eventually start talking about where they would hang some of them. As if she’s
got some sort of money antennae, Rhoda appears and starts to give them the hard
sell. Just as I start to drift off elsewhere, Rhoda grabs my arm and pulls me
toward her.

‘Sorry, sweetie.
Before you go
off on your travels again, there’s a guy at the entrance asked me where you
were. Said he’s a friend of yours.
Didn’t want to come in.
Obviously not a freeloader.’

I can’t imagine who it is. Is it Gavin, I wonder? I run
a hand through my hair to spruce up his creation and head towards the front of
the gallery.

My heart almost stops when I see who it is.

‘Hi, Chloe.’

It’s Mark. I can feel my heart thumping in my chest,
but it’s not a pleasurable thumping, it’s an angry thumping.

‘Mark. What are you doing here? I mean, how did you…?’

‘I happened to see an ad in the paper. There can’t be
that many Chloe
Dixons
who are abstract artists, can
there.’

He looks uneasy and out of place. He stares at the
people milling around us and a suspicious expression flits across his face.

‘What do you want, Mark?’

‘Who are all these people? Are they your friends?’

‘No, they’re not. Again – what do you want?’

‘You didn’t have to leave me like that, did you? That
was mean. I had to get the tube back from the airport and then a cab.’

This feels rather unreal. He’s complaining about the
expense I caused him?
After all this time?
Well, at
least I’m glad to see he hasn’t changed. I decide I’m not going to take this
lying down.

‘Mean? If that was mean, what would you call going on a
foreign holiday with a mate and a couple of girls?
Leaving me
on my own because I didn’t have the money for a holiday.’

I really don’t want to get into this. I’ve been fairly
successful about putting the whole thing out of my mind. All the work I’ve been
doing helped, but now it looks as if all that effort might be unravelling. I
clench my teeth together to supress the tears of rage that threaten to fill my
eyes. Mark looks me up and down like he’s seeing me for the first time. It’s a
leering look and I don’t think I like it very much. I think he spotted the
suspenders through the dress.

‘It was only a week.
Five days,
really.
I didn’t think you’d be so upset.’

I try to think of all the things that my friends had
said about Mark at the time. I can’t remember many of the arguments against him
now, though I do remember that there were quite a lot of them.

‘Can you imagine how you would have felt if I’d gone on
holiday with a girl and a couple of men? You’d have been livid. You’d have gone
on about it for the rest of time.’

I glance behind me. I can see Rhoda giving me a curious
stare. Of course, she has no idea what Mark looks like, so she wouldn’t know
who it was I was talking to.

‘That’s a nice dress you’ve got on. Expensive, was it?’

‘What the hell’s my dress got to do with anything?’

‘Those shoes are new, aren’t they?’

‘My shoes are none of your business.’

What a silly thing to say!

‘Look. I know you were probably upset…’

‘Probably?
It burned a bloody
hole in me, Mark! I couldn’t believe you would do such a thing.
That you could hurt me so much.
That you were so selfish! I
hated you. I hoped your plane would crash.’

‘You look great, Chloe.
Really
beautiful.
If it was the two girls that was the thing that was upsetting
you, there was never anything going on. That was never the plan. They were just
friends of Danny’s. I didn’t fancy either of them.’

He looks pleased with this statement.
Smug, even.

‘That was never the plan? You didn’t fancy either of
them? And what would have happened if you had fancied either of them? Can you
imagine what was going through my mind when you were away? All the pain you
inflicted? I felt totally betrayed by you.’

‘We just got pissed every night.
Swum
in the sea in the day.
The girls went off on their own most of the time.
We just had a couple of meals together, that’s all. I got quite a tan, if you
want to know. Listen – wasn’t it my right to have a holiday?’

‘Sure. Sure it was your right, if you were a single
guy. But you weren’t. You were in a relationship with me! We lived together,
for god’s sake. If that’s what’s going on in your life, if you’ve got
commitments, you don’t go off on holiday as if you’re nineteen and single. It
was a mean thing to do, Mark.
A mean, mean thing.’

He looks bashful. It used to be cute, but it damn well
isn’t now. It’s slimy. He keeps looking me and up down all the time, which I’m
now starting to find extremely annoying. It’s as if he thinks I’m dressed up
like this for him. He stretches a hand out to touch my arm, but I pull away to
avoid it.

‘Well, that’s partly why I decided to find you.
To come here.
Honestly, you look really gorgeous. I just
thought, maybe we could make another go of it now you’re earning more money. It
seems such a waste to have put such an investment into a relationship and to
not get any dividends from it.’

‘What?!
What did you say? What
d’you
think this is? Am I some bloody offshore
company you’ve invested money in or something? I can’t believe I’m hearing
this.’

I’m raising my voice. People are looking.

‘Well, in a way, yes. Yes you are.’ He looks at his
shoes. ‘OK. I’ll be honest with you. Just to show good faith. There was a girl
while we were away. It wasn’t either of Danny’s friends. Just a girl I met on
the beach one day. Her name was Felicity. She was from Durham. It was just the
one night. She wasn’t that clever, really. She wasn’t as good-looking as you.
Not anywhere near. It wouldn’t have continued when we got back here. It was
just a physical thing. You were so far away.’ He starts to get more assured, a
nasty edge in his voice. ‘In a way, it was your fault. You didn’t keep up with
me. Financially, I mean. If we’d been able to have holidays like that together,
I’d never have been in that situation. It never would have happened. I would
never have gone. But I’ll forgive you for that. Let’s just start again, like
we’re meeting now, for the first time. Let’s put all that behind us. We can
make it work this time.’

He tries to touch me again. I move away again.

‘So let me get this straight. You bonked someone called
Felicity while you were on your holiday and this was fundamentally my fault
because my earning power wasn’t as good as yours was at the time.’

‘Basically, yes.’

‘But you’ll forgive me.’

‘Yes.’

I was never a tomboy when I was in school. I liked
girly things. I had many friends who had brothers that they used to play rough
and tumble games with and who could hold their own in a fight. I was never one
of those. But I guess I always had it in me, despite the lack of practice. And
right now, I can feel anger coursing through every part of my body. The sort of
anger that makes you
clench
your fists together.
The sort of anger that needs immediate release.

Mark never saw the punch coming, so he didn’t put his
hands up to protect his face. He dropped to the floor as if he was a string
puppet that had just had all its strings cut simultaneously. He wasn’t
unconscious, but he was pretty close. His hands covered his nose as he moaned
and writhed on the floor. There was silence for a few seconds, and then
everyone went back to chatting and eating, as if nothing had happened. That’s
cool arty folk for you.

Just at that moment, Gavin and his friend walk in.
Gavin takes a look at Mark’s prostrate figure and looks at me. ‘I didn’t mean
it literally about the dominatrix thing, dear.’

The rest of the evening went pretty well. Several
people expressed an interest in buying, which delighted Rhoda, though she
confided in me that she wasn’t really that surprised, as my work was really
very, very good.

After it had all finished and everything was being
tidied up, Rhoda sauntered over to me, glass of Champagne in hand.

‘Can I just have a little word, sweetie?’

I feared this was coming. Some security guys who I
didn’t even realise were there took Mark to the A&E department of St Mary’s
Hospital. I guessed that Rhoda was none too pleased with the sight of her
latest art star whacking someone in the face in full view of all those gentle gallery
folk. Maybe this was it. Maybe I was just too much trouble. Maybe I’ve blown
it.

‘About that little incident earlier on…’

‘I’m sorry, Rhoda. It wasn’t planned or anything. I
just lost it. I couldn’t, I didn’t…’

‘Yes, yes, yes. All I was going to say was: you have to
look after your hands. They are your tools and you don’t do things that will
damage your tools. You could easily have broken a bone in your hand doing that
and then where would we have been?’

‘So you’re not going to…’

‘I take it that was
him
?’

‘Yes.’

‘The he deserved it, the silly bugger. They always turn
up, people like that, always when you’re making it. Believe me, he’d have read
up on you.
Researched you.
Come on. That Persian place
I told you about is just around the corner. I feel like a ginormous mezze. I’m
absolutely starving.’

‘Me, too.
And
thirsty.’

She pecks me on the cheek, pats me on the shoulder and
we walk out of the gallery into the cool night air.

If you enjoyed
Picture Imperfect, you might also enjoy Yes Chef, No Chef also published by
Endeavour Press.

Yes Chef No Chef

Katie looked at her new black cocktail dress hanging on
the wardrobe door and shivered with excitement - she couldn’t wait for the
party tonight at The Savoy. It seemed forever since she’d spent any quality
time with Tim and hugging herself with anticipation she did a little pirouette
to reach the stool in front of her dressing table. Dreamily she thought of how
the champagne would flow and how they’d dance the night away wrapped in each
other’s arms - surely this would help to get them back on track, she mused,
glancing at the bedside clock and praying he wasn’t going to be too late.

Her mobile rang and when she saw his name on the screen
she snatched it up. “Where are you?”

With a note of wariness in his voice, he said, “I’m
still at the restaurant.”
 

 
“But you rang at
five o’clock to say you were on your way, and the taxi will be here soon.”
Katie exclaimed.

Tim sighed with exasperation as though he was talking
to a child, “I know, darling, and I’m so sorry but Jim phoned in sick at the
last minute and I’m going to have to stay and cover service for him, and…”

“What!” she yelled into the mobile, imagining him
holding it away from his ear and pursing his lips with irritation. She could
hear the clatter of pans from the kitchen and an electric whisk whirling, and
then a girl’s voice calling for him which made her
want
to scream in frustration. “Shit, you can’t do this, Tim. Not tonight of all
nights?”