Kathleen Tessaro 3-Book Collection: The Flirt, The Debutante, The Perfume Collector

‘It’s to do with my new job.’

‘Which is?’ He pulled out, nearly slamming into a red Fiat. He thrust his head out the window. ‘Wanker!’

Rose had avoided telling her father the details of her new profession, mostly because she wasn’t sure if she could explain how she’d entered it and because she was absolutely certain she couldn’t tell him what it entailed. ‘Well, Dad, I’m an artist.’

Mick laughed. ‘Really? You? But you can’t even draw, can you?’

‘Honestly, Dad! No one draws any more. Everyone knows that!’

‘So what do you do? And I’m warning you right now, if it involves taking your clothes off, you’re in big trouble!’

‘I’m a contemporary artist. It’s all about defamiliarization.’

‘And what’s that when it’s at home?’ Mick leant on his horn. ‘Pick a lane, pal!’

Simon had spent the best part of an afternoon trying to explain it to her. At the time she’d been tempted to write notes on the back of her hand. But in the end she settled for memorizing a few key phrases. ‘It’s when you take familiar objects and put them in a different context so that the viewer is forced to see them in a new way.’

‘Right.’ Mick ducked into a bus lane, speeding past a long line of traffic. ‘So, like if I put a cheese grater into, I don’t know, the Albert Hall, suddenly it’s art?’

He was trying to make her feel stupid.

It was working.

‘Could be,’ she said sullenly.

‘What do you mean, could be? Either it is or it isn’t!’

‘Well, it all depends on who you are, Dad. It’s not just about the art – it’s about the artist. I mean, if Picasso draws on a napkin at dinner it’s definitely art but if Rory has a go, it’s just a ruined napkin, see?’

‘So how did you get to be so special?’

This was the nagging question that had disturbed her ever since that fateful day in Chester Square. She’d gone over it again and again in her mind. Why was everyone so excited? Could it have been her handwriting? Or the way she’d balanced the cards? The worst part was, now they were all expecting her to do it again. The opening of the exhibition was looming and she had nothing else to offer them. And deep in her heart, Rose had to agree with her father on the cheese-grater-in-the-Albert-Hall affair: at the end of the day, it was still a cheese grater to her.

‘I don’t know. Actually, Dad,’ she confided, ‘I’m in a bit of a pickle.’

Mick turned. ‘Do they want money? Never do anything where you have to give money up front to get started.’

‘No, Dad, it’s not that. It’s just I’ve done this thing, this installation …’

‘Did you follow the instructions?’

‘No, that’s what they call the art, they call it an installation. I’m supposed to have another one for today and …’ she hugged Rory closer for courage, ‘and I can’t do it, Dad! I don’t know how.’

‘Well,’ he nipped down a one-way street, ‘how did you do the first one?’

‘It was an accident really. And I’ve tried coming up with another idea but it’s … it’s so hard, Dad! I’m completely stuck!’

While Rory was at nursery, Rose had spent the best part of the morning trying to be inspired.

She sat at the kitchen table.

And thought.

Hard.

About art.

Nothing came.

She made a cup of tea instead.

Drinking it, she concentrated on her favourite paintings. There was one her aunt had in her living room of a hay cart next to a river. That was nice. Peaceful. Maybe a bit too brown for her liking. Then she remembered nature was meant to be inspiring.

So she spent a long time staring out of the window of her flat at the small patch of scraggly lawn in between the council blocks. She never let Rory play on it because the man downstairs took his bulldog there. All she saw was filth.

She concentrated harder.

But still, it was all dog poo to her.

Finally she tried her hand at drawing. Simon Grey claimed it didn’t matter. He’d reeled off the names of half a dozen supposedly well-known artists who couldn’t scribble a circle let alone render a reasonable likeness. But Rose didn’t believe him. First she tried to draw Rory. After all, she was with him all day long; she ought to know what he looked like. But he came out all stiff and round, and his eyes too close together. He looked like an angry stuffed toy.

She might have more luck with Victoria Beckham. Opening a copy of Hello!, she chose a photograph of her standing outside the Ritz in Paris in an evening dress. That went a bit better. But still her head was far too big, the dress too long; she looked like a mermaid, except Rose got stuck on the feet and had to draw them both in side view. This gave it an Egyptian feel.

The whole morning was depressing. Rose felt inadequate, irritable and small. The more she tried to think of something original or interesting, the duller and more mundane she felt.

‘Well, can’t help you there, luv. Why don’t you get a proper job?’ her father suggested. ‘Be a hairdresser or something. People always need their hair cut.’

Rose’s father had been trying to get her to be a hairdresser since she was three. ‘Dad, I don’t want to be a hairdresser! I’ve never wanted to be a hairdresser! Just because Mum wanted to be a bloody hair—’

‘Oi!’ he interrupted. ‘Don’t speak ill of the dead!’

‘She’s not dead, Dad. She lives in Brighton.’

‘Same difference.’ He ran through a red light. ‘Anyway, you’ll have to own up sooner or later. If you haven’t got the gift, then that’s that. Nothing to be ashamed of. Not everyone’s a Damien Hirst, after all.’

Rose stared at him in amazement. ‘How do you know about Damien Hirst?’

Mick laughed, pulling into Brook Street. ‘You could always put a cheese grater in the Albert Hall, kid! Just remember, I want a little credit on that one! Now, where is this place?’

Rose sighed. He wasn’t taking her seriously.

Then again, why would he?

It was so typical of her life; just when she thought she was going to get somewhere, be somebody, she fucked it all up. Always. It was like that at school when she was doing so well, studying for O levels, and then fell in love with Rory’s dad, a DJ at a big club in the West End. For three whole weeks they were mad about each other; she actually thought he was going to propose. But the next thing she knew, she was pregnant, her father furious, and he’d buggered off to hit the club circuit in Ibiza with some girl named Doreen. There was no point continuing with her studies; her fate was sealed.

In school they’d studied Hamlet; the teacher banged on and on about him having a fatal flaw. That was her all over. No matter what she did, how hard she tried to alter her destiny, her default setting was failure. And now here she was again; she would have to explain to Simon and Olivia that her worst fears were true: she wasn’t a natural talent, only a fraud. And her budding career as an artist would be over before it had even begun.

A few minutes later, Mick parked on a double-yellow line in front of the gallery, jumped out and opened the back of the van. Rory woke up crying and as Rose tried to soothe him, she spotted a parking warden heading their way.