I realise what’s changed since I took these photographs. The girl on those travels had no-one waiting for her back home. There was a great big gap, over six foot tall, which had never been filled. No father. No brother. There was no man. And no home.
And now there’s Gustav. Even if he is only for Christmas.
He rattles the silver chain, all the way across the room. It rouses me from my reverie. I can’t tell if he’s cross with me for giving too much away. Or is he pleased? His mouth is opening to say something but it’s Crystal who reaches me first and taps her clipboard.
‘Thought you’d like to know, Serena. Twenty-five of your pictures sold so far! Out of a total one hundred. I’m astonished. Well done.’
I thank her. At last I go to him, walking through the crowd, bowing and smiling like a queen as people stop me to congratulate me or ask me more questions about the Venetian series, or the kissing Parisian roof runners.
‘A resounding success, Serena.’ Gustav is momentarily alone beside a small photograph of a pile of pebbles and detritus I took on the beach below the house on the cliffs. He smiles as he pulls me right up to him and attaches the silver chain once again. He doesn’t care who sees. ‘A perfect example of team effort, I’d say. I saw. You conquered. Crystal says they’re falling over each other to get their money out. Your work really is superb.’
‘It’s thanks to what you’ve done for me, Gustav. I’m overwhelmed.’
He frowns down at the silver chain. Winds it round his fingers like a cat’s cradle. His dark hair falls against his eyebrow and I long to brush it aside. ‘That remark has a dying fall to it, as if you’re already saying goodbye. I was hoping just the opposite. I was hoping that you would use that key I gave you and move into the house tonight.’
I’ve wrong-footed him somehow. He’s as surprised as I am by the reaction tonight. I sense it’s given me an advantage, if only a small one.
‘How can we improve on all this, though?’ I hold myself upright, watch his mouth working with his thoughts. ‘How will my moving into your house change anything?’
‘How simply can I put it? It’s what I want, and that should be enough for both of us.’
His eyes snap back onto mine. Unwavering, as if he’s stopped fumbling for an answer. He’s got me where he wants me. So am I the answer?
I frown at him to cover my uncertainty. ‘You mean our contract?’
‘I was hoping we’d gone beyond referring to that. But yes, it’s still in place if ever you’re confused about what’s going on here. Perhaps all this noise and chatter, this private view, is putting us on edge.’ He pulls me closer. ‘I’m talking about last night. Didn’t you enjoy yourself?’
People are pressing round us. ‘You know I did! It was amazing. You tasted me. I tasted you. I would have gone upstairs with you.’ I want everyone to overhear, but I lower my voice obediently. ‘But you dismissed me. So why do you want me to move in?’
‘I don’t have to explain my every move to you.’ He narrows his eyes. ‘But I’m saying my house is the only place I can have you truly to myself.’
A shiver runs down my whole body. I’m suddenly cold in my flimsy dress. The possessiveness in his voice is washing over me, pulling me towards him, weakening me. I’ll do anything he wants. I’ve agreed to. But I have to put up a little more resistance first.
‘I’m happy in Polly’s flat.’
He pulls the silver chain hard so that my hands bang against his chest. ‘I want you with me. I rattle around like a lost soul in there. It was only when you were there last night that I felt at home. That’s what our agreement means. Or at least what it’s started to mean. I’ll go over it again, shall I?’
One or two people are hovering and I try to pull away. ‘No need, Gustav. I understand you.’
‘No, I don’t think you do. I’m helping you professionally. So you must help me personally. We’ve already made a start, and that has made me want you more, Serena. There’s so much I want to do with you, teach you, teach myself. I need you under my roof, where I can find you.’ He tugs on the silver chain. ‘Attached to me.’
‘Not tonight, Gustav. Please? I’m exhausted. Exhilarated, but exhausted. Can you give me a couple of days?’
‘And what if the exhibition is sold out in two days?’
I shake my head. ‘You know it won’t be. And if it is, then I’ll give you those extra days in lieu.’
‘Fair enough.’ He refuses to show me his disappointment. He lets the silver chain go slack.
‘I need to sort my head out, Gustav. And if I come to you, I’ll need to tell Polly and pack up her flat, too.’
He nods silently. Why is there a plunging of disappointment in me at that? Does the perverse creature in me want him to beg, plead, take my hand, say something irresistible? Touch me, there, where he knows I melt? Yes. That’s exactly what the perverse creature wants.
But instead he lifts my hand to his lips, brushes his mouth across it. His eyes are softer now, because I’ve said what he wants me to say. He half closes them as he breathes me in, then he unclips the chain once again and steps back.
‘Two days, Serena. But after that you’re mine.’
We stare at each other. I bite my lip, fiddle with a strand of hair. Why don’t I just give in, let go? The security he offers is wrapped in danger, and that’s why I’m playing hard to get. I welcome the danger, I think. It’s the security I’m worried about. I want to make my own luck. Just when I’ve cut loose, in swoops another jailer to take me prisoner.
He gathers up the silver chain in his bunched fist and turns to speak to some waiting people.
And much later, when the crowd has dispersed and the gallery is locked up, when Gustav has gone without another word to me, and I’m walking away down the Strand towards Polly’s flat, the realisation of tonight’s quick success, the hard figures Crystal quoted earlier, it all hits me like a stone in the chest.
Sell another three-quarters of the display and sooner than blinking my time under Gustav Levi’s wing will be finished.
CHAPTER EIGHT
When you are a child the house in which you grow up is impossibly large and menacing. Endless stairs stretch away to the shadowy rooms upstairs, corridors are too long to run along and get to the table in time before being shouted at for being late. The dark corners teem with unmentionable horrors because you’re never allowed to turn on the light or they’ve removed the light bulbs. The shelves are too high to reach the sweets or books they’ve snatched off you and placed there as a punishment. The doors are locked. The windows stick and won’t open.
I am standing for the last time in the house on the cliffs and it all looks shrivelled and pathetic to me now. Dirty, dark, ugly, and small.
‘A unique location. That’s what the buyers are after. I can’t think why your family didn’t extend the house, or think about running it as a business. This would have made an incredibly profitable bed and breakfast, or a hotel, almost as scenic as Burgh Island. That place is a roaring success, partly because you can only get there by foot, boat or helicopter. You know they filmed Hercule Poirot over there a few years ago? It’s an art deco gem.’
The estate agent can barely contain his glee as he looks around the house of my childhood. The auction has taken place, and the highest bidder has paid well over the odds for it. Easily enough to buy my own flat. A house in the sun. My own gallery, even.
‘They can bulldoze the rotten dump for all I care. In fact, I hope they do. It’s riddled with unhappiness, like woodworm.’
I