‘What a great way to start! Let’s see if we can’t shift a few more before the evening’s out.’ Gustav leads me back towards the window, ostentatiously holding his hand up for silence. I’m still dazed by this early success. I can see the silver chain winking in the sharp lights cast by the spots, but I don’t know if anyone else can tell that I’m chained to him.
‘Ladies and gentlemen!’
Gustav claps his hands and achieves instant, glass-tinkling silence in the room. He tugs at the chain so that I am even closer.
‘I want to introduce you to Serena Folkes, a previously undiscovered talent who has, to say the least, been hiding her light under a bushel.’
There’s a murmur of amusement around the room.
‘It would be politically incorrect of me to admit, out loud, that it was her unusual fey beauty that piqued my interest when I bumped into her on Halloween night, so I won’t go on about how gorgeous she is. A living, breathing installation in her own right!’
There’s another murmur, and one or two press lift their big cameras and take pictures of me.
‘Actually it was the subject she was stalking and working on that interested me, but then she left two of her cameras in my, ah, safekeeping for a night and I took the liberty of having a scroll through the other images still stored there. I realised that she was telling the truth when she told me she was a young professional starting out. A burgeoning talent, coupled with a fierce determination. But then, when I managed to persuade her to let me showcase her work and we’d signed the paperwork, I never dreamed what else she had tucked in her arsenal.’
He sweeps his arm around the walls, winking at the veiled obscenity, then everyone turns obediently to examine once again what I have put on show.
‘I reckon I’ve stumbled on a gold mine here. I think you’ll all agree that she marries stunning natural lighting and composition with sheer beauty and originality of subject. Her pictures all have the look of work that has been painstakingly developed in a dark room. And within the apparently subtle and delicate framework I think you’ll be as astonished as I was when I unearthed frame after frame of these erotic images of people who thought they were alone, unseen. Those lovers. Those sunbathers. And the pièce de résistance, those nuns.’
A titillated titter ripples round the room.
‘I’m sure you’ll agree that this young woman, not twenty-one yet, doesn’t hold back. I hope the way we’ve laid out the exhibition has led you on, that you’ve all been taken in by the apparent innocence of some of her work, particularly the Venetian convent pictures. She took these illicitly and they are breathtaking in their voyeuristic content.’
The murmuring hushes slightly. Several people push out of the crowd to look at the pictures he’s pointing at, which they haven’t seen before. I prickle with pride when I see the women raise their hands to their flushing cheeks when they see the content. The men shift their legs apart like cowboys, shove their hands in their pockets.
Is that a gun, or are you just turned on by my pictures?
‘Perhaps instead of Halloween we should have called it Flagellation.’
Everyone is staring back at Gustav now. Those who aren’t ogling my Venetian series. He really holds an audience, like one of those sham preachers who brainwash their congregation with sheer charisma. ‘Anyway, I give you Serena Folkes. The girl with a great future.’
Gustav raises his glass to me, a strange new tenderness burning in his eyes. I raise my glass in return and smile, watch and wait for the answering smile, and there it is, transforming his face to stern beauty, and filling me with hot pride. I won’t let him down. These influential people, celebrities, well known faces from the arts and fashion pages, even some academics and, best of all, two famous society photographers, have all come at his bidding because they trust his judgement. And now they’re here to judge me.
I feel my wrist tugging slightly as he unchains it and moves away but I remain where I am by the window. I catch faint noises across the city. Something flapping on the roof of a building opposite. Leathery wings taking flight, the blood-curdling shriek of an animal hunted down, its neck snapped with one tidy bite. Probably foxes, vermin slinking about among London’s rubbish bins, killing mice. Do foxes lurk near the river?
The flapping sound is a jubilant Union Jack left over from the Olympic summer, flying above the National Theatre. I’m so keyed up I swear I can hear applause from the audience.
And in here, the low heartbeat of drum, double bass and breathy sax from the speakers.
Venice is like that silver chain, tugging me back to its watery secrets. I remember that night so well. Wandering through that maze of calles, so thoroughly lost, catching sight of this young nun scurrying out of nowhere. I dashed forward to ask her for directions but she was in such a rush that it turned into a mad chase. Eventually I followed her through a little gate in a long crumbling wall and when she vanished up a big stone flight of stairs I realised I was locked in for the night.
I tiptoed around the silent convent clumsily disguised in an oversized grey habit, but I couldn’t get out, and then I found her again, her and her sisters, all preparing for sleep in their tiny, doorless cells. At first they were praying and then they took out these little whips and started hitting themselves on their bare skin, and that’s what’s on display now. My camera caught the technique my little nun used, a quick flick of the wrist to bring the tails down on her flesh. The sharp tipping of her head after each blow, the licking of her lips, the slow belly dance of secret pleasure.
‘Say something,’ murmurs Crystal. ‘They’re all looking at you, see? They expect you to talk them through it.’
‘Gustav didn’t warn me about this!’ I hiss back, starting to sweat even in my flimsy dress. ‘I’m hopeless at public speaking.’
Crystal hands me another full glass and starts to move through the crowd, who are starting to shift slightly. ‘Who else is going to explain these very naughty pictures?’
‘Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.’ My voice is high and girlish, but when I look across their heads to find Gustav, I clear my throat and start again. ‘Perhaps in fact we should have called this entire exhibition Voyeurism.’
I pause there, and the effect is fantastic. Everyone laughs warmly, glasses lifted to cover laughing mouths, but they are all focused on me now.
‘Because that’s essentially what photography is. Voyeurism. Watching. In fact that’s what Gustav Levi called me when he caught me photographing these little witches on Halloween night. A voyeur. And I don’t think he meant it in a good way.’
There’s warmer laughter, glasses waved jovially at Gustav, who raises his glass in return but keeps his eyes on mine. Is he expecting me to slip up?
‘But I hope this exhibition shows my type of voyeurism in a positive rather than salacious way. Or at least constructive, artistic. Even arousing. If that’s not looking for excuses.’ I walk slowly along the wall towards the Venetian series to the accompaniment of more friendly laughter.
One guest holding a mini tape recorder puts his hand up. ‘I don’t know if you’re taking Q and As?’
‘Of course.’ Wow. Where did this smooth professionalism come from? ‘I want everyone to understand my work.’
‘So I’m interested in your influences. They’re obviously very varied.’ The journalist taps his pen against his mouth. ‘But I know everyone’s dying for you to talk us in particular through these convent ones. These Venetian nuns in their cells?’
‘Ah, yes. To be honest I was stunned myself when I walked into the gallery this morning.’ I arrive at the series, firstly of the arched cloisters, then the chapel, then the