The Debutante

‘Someone asked me to do some work for them. A trompe l’oeil in a quite amazing flat overlooking the park. I found I had a certain aptitude for it. Also, there’s considerably more scope for economic success. After all,’ she took a bite, ‘if you hang a copy of Sunflowers on your wall, everyone knows you’ve got a fake. But if you choose something more elusive, unknown…’

‘Very clever. Was that Constantine’s idea?’

His astuteness caught her off guard. She shifted. ‘Well, the commission did come through a client of his.’

‘He’s always been, shall we say…enterprising.’ He took another sip. ‘And what about your own work?’

‘This is my work.’

‘Of course. I just meant your own subject matter.’

Again, she felt wrong-footed. ‘I get paid very well. And there’s nothing particularly worthy about starving to death in a garret.’

He said nothing. But his expression was amused.

‘This is more sustainable.’

‘Well, yes. We must do what’s sustainable.’

‘Have you always been a valuer?’ she asked again, crisply.

He looked up, grinning. ‘No. My father had an antiques business in Islington. I trained as an auctioneer at Sotheby’s one wayward year after university before I came up with the brilliant idea of becoming an architect. Then, unfortunately, my father became ill. Parkinson’s. And I took over the business.’ He paused. ‘I should’ve sold it and moved on; just been brutal and done it that same year. Instead, I got stuck.’

‘In what way?’

‘Pretending to be my dad, I suppose.’

‘You don’t like it?’

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘A job’s a job, right? And –’ he flashed her a smile – ‘at least it was sustainable. For a while, anyway. I was forced to sell a couple of years later.’

‘How is your father now?’

‘The truth is, it’s hard to tell. One day he’s quite bad and the next he seems like his old self. My mother is thinking of moving him to a nursing home. They live in Leicestershire now and I don’t see them as often as I’d like.’

‘And you never finished your training?’

He stabbed at a bit of salad. ‘I was married by then. To a girl who came into the shop to buy a mirror.’

‘I see. Did you sell her one?’

‘No, she couldn’t afford any. But I made her cups of tea and she used to stop in quite often on the pretext of finding one. In the end I gave her a really quite beautiful Edwardian overmantel.’ He smiled to himself, remembering. ‘I searched high and low for something decent I could afford to part with. I tried to act like I was going to give it away anyway. I don’t think she was fooled.’

‘But she married you. So it worked.’

‘Yes, it worked. I got the girl.’

‘But you sold the shop anyway.’

‘Turns out you need quite a lot of ambition to run your own business. After my wife’s death, I let it go.’ His eyes met hers. ‘She was killed in a car accident, two years ago.’

He said it simply; quickly. She wondered if he’d practised how to get it over with the least amount of emotion possible.

‘I’m so sorry.’

Cool air rushed around them.

‘Yes. Thank you.’

They ate in silence.

‘It’s strange, isn’t it?’ Jack put his fork down. ‘That’s what everyone says – “I’m so sorry.” And I say “Thank you”, like I was buying a pint of milk in a shop. It’s somehow…wrong, inadequate, that it should be reduced to that. And in the end, the whole thing gets reduced down to a single sentence. “That was the year my wife died.”’

She nodded. ‘The whole thing’s an absolute cunt.’

He looked at her in surprise. ‘Yes, well…that’s one way of putting it.’

‘I didn’t mean to offend you.’

‘It makes a change from people apologising.’

‘When my father died, I dreaded speaking to anyone I hadn’t seen in a while; going through the whole dance of clichés. It made me angry. At them, which of course was stupid.’

‘Were you close?’

‘He wasn’t exactly warm and fuzzy. But I don’t think it makes a difference. Mostly what I missed was the idea that one day it might be different. When he died the relationship became written in stone. It was too late to change it, even if I wanted to. Or could. And I was left, wandering around saying “Thank you” to a bunch of people who didn’t really want to talk about it and had no idea of what to say anyway.’

‘Yes,’ Jack conceded, taking another drink of wine, ‘it is a cunt.’

They watched a flock of house martins swoop in and out of the high hedges on the south side of the garden.

‘And what about you?’ He leaned back. ‘Married? Divorced? Widowed?’

She looked up sharply.

‘Or shall we leave all that?’

She stared at him a long time. ‘I’m…I was involved with someone.’

‘You have a boyfriend?’

‘It wasn’t quite so clearly defined.’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘You seem a little vague, Miss Albion.’

‘That’s my intention, Mr Coates.’

‘Do you instinctively balk at being defined, or simply in matters of the heart?’