Harriet opened it out, and found herself looking at what seemed to be a mass of black shading. For a brief instant, she thought it must be a drawing of a bat—or a bird of prey. A carrion crow, perhaps, with wings spread wide, about to swoop.
And then she saw the face emerging from those dark flying draperies. A woman’s face—sullen—angry—driven. A caricature, perhaps, portrayed without subtlety, but, she realised, unmistakably—unforgivably—her face.
A deliberate and calculated insult—signed ‘Roan’ across one corner with such force that it had almost torn the paper.
For a long moment, she stared down at the drawing in silence. Then she forced a smile.
‘Quite a work of art.’ Somehow, she managed to keep her voice light. ‘Everything but the broomstick. And—fastened to the railings, you say? For all the world to see?’
Les nodded unhappily, his ruddy face deepening in colour.
‘Afraid so, miss, but it can’t have been there long. And no one from here will have spotted it.’ he added, as if this was some kind of consolation.
‘I think you mean no one else,’ she said quietly. She folded the paper, and put it carefully in her briefcase.
‘Are you sure you want to do that, miss?’ His voice was uncertain. ‘You wouldn’t like me to put it through the shredder?’
I’d like you to put him—this Roan—through the shredder, Harriet wanted to scream. Followed by Tony, and bloody, bloody Jonathan. And every other man who dares to judge me. Or force me into some mould of their making like Grandfather.
Instead, she shrugged a shoulder, feigning insouciance, although pain and anger were twisting inside her. ‘I intend to treasure it. Who knows? It might be worth a lot of money some day. He may turn out to be a future Hogarth. Besides, isn’t it supposed to be salutary to see ourselves as others do?’
Les’s face was dubious. ‘If you say so, Miss Flint.’
‘However,’ she added, ‘if I send you out to shift any more vagabonds, I give you full permission to ignore my instructions.’
She flashed a last bright, meaningless smile at him, and went out into the street, signalling to a passing taxi.
She gave her home address automatically, and sank back in the corner of the seat, staring unseeingly out of the window, feeling her heart pounding against her ribcage as her anger grew. As the whole day emptied its bitterness into her mind. Culminating in this—this last piece of ignominy perpetrated by a total stranger.
What the hell am I? she asked herself. Punch-bag of the week?
Mouth tightening ominously, she took out her mobile phone and punched in a number.
‘Luigi? Harriet Flint.’ She spoke evenly. ‘The painter. Do you know where he lives? If he has a studio?’
‘Of course. One moment.’
He sounded so pleased that Harriet felt almost sorry. Almost, but not quite.
She wrote the directions on the back of the card he’d given her earlier. When I thought things couldn’t possibly get any worse, she thought, as she tapped on the glass and told the cabdriver about the change of plan.
She would deal with Jonathan and co in her own good time, she thought as she sat back. But this so-called artist would answer now for his attempt to denigrate her.
Because, but for Les, this drawing would have been seen by the entire company on their way out of the building.
And she knew that it would not have been an easy thing to live down. That it was something that would have lingered on in the corporate memory to be sniggered over as long as she was associated with Flint Audley—which basically meant the rest of her working life.
Just as if she didn’t have enough problems already.
She took one last look at the drawing, then closed her fist around it, scrunching it into a ball.
Meanwhile, the cab was slowing. ‘This is it, miss,’ the driver threw over his shoulder. ‘Hildon Yard.’
And home, it seemed, to a flourishing road haulage company, and a row of storage units. Not exactly an artistic environment, she thought, her mouth twisting.
‘Will you wait, please?’ she requested as she paid the driver. ‘I shouldn’t be longer than ten minutes,’ she added quickly, seeing his reluctant expression.
He nodded resignedly. ‘Ten minutes it is,’ he said, reaching for his newspaper. ‘But that’s it.’
Harriet glanced around her, then, after a moment’s hesitation, approached a man in brown overalls moving around the trucks with a clipboard, and a preoccupied expression.
She said, ‘Can you help me, please? I’m looking for number 6a.’
He pointed unsmilingly to an iron staircase in one corner. ‘Up at the top there. That green door.’
Her heels rang on the metal steps as she climbed. Like the clash of armour before battle, she thought, and found she was unexpectedly fighting a very real temptation to forget the whole thing, return to the waiting cab, and go home.
But that was the coward’s way out, she told herself. And that arrogant bastard wasn’t getting away with what he’d tried to do to her.
As she reached the narrow platform at the top, the door opened suddenly, and Harriet took an involuntary step backwards, pressing herself against the guard rail.
A girl’s voice with a smile in it said, ‘See you later,’ and she found herself confronting a pretty girl, immaculate in pastel cut-offs and a white tee shirt, her blonde hair in a long braid, carrying a large canvas bag slung over one shoulder. She checked, with a gasp, when she spotted Harriet.
‘Heavens, you startled me.’ Blue eyes looked her over enquiringly. ‘Was there something you wanted?’
Harriet saw that the hand holding the strap of the canvas bag wore a wedding ring. The possibility that this Roan might be married had not, frankly, occurred to her.
But, even if he was, there was no way someone so irredeemably scruffy could possibly be paired with a such a clearly high-maintenance woman.
Unless the attraction of opposites had come into play, and he was her bit of rough, she thought with distaste.
The girl said more insistently, ‘Can I help you?’
Discovering that she seemed to have momentarily lost the power of speech, Harriet mutely held out the business card that she was still clutching.
‘Oh.’ The girl sounded surprised. ‘Oh—right.’ She turned and called over her shoulder, ‘Darling, you have a visitor.’ She gave Harriet a smile that was friendly and puzzled in equal measures, then clattered her way down the staircase.
Darling…
My God, Harriet thought, wincing. Lady, you have all my sympathy.
At the same time, she was glad the other girl had departed, because what she wanted to say, possibly at the top of her voice, didn’t need an audience. Especially when the evidence suggested she could not count on its support.
She drew a deep, steadying breath, took the screwed-up drawing from her pocket, and walked through the doorway.
Because of its immediate environment, she’d expected the place to be dark inside, and probably dingy. Instead she found herself in a large loft room, brimming with the sunlight that poured through the vast window occupying the greater part of an entire wall, and down from the additional skylights in the roof.
The smell of oil paint was thick and heavy in the air, and on the edge of her half-dazzled vision, stacked round the walls, were canvases—great