Authors: Charlotte Oliver
Overwhelmed with adrenalin, horrified and overjoyed that we were having a conversation, I made some affected answer about how much it had made me think, etc.
“Really,” he said in an offhand kind of way, looking back out at the crowd. I had missed my chance. Suddenly I felt frantic.
“Actually,” I yelped, trying to sound giggly and fun, but hearing my voice speak as if it belonged to someone else. “Actually, I think it’s a load of pretentious bollocks.”
“Really?” he said again, eyes resting once more on my face. His mouth danced with quiet amusement. I was onto something. And I was enjoying it.
What’s the worst that could happen?
As I said, he was bound to murder me long before he chopped me up.
“Yeah,” I carried on, “but that’s not what you’re supposed to say, is it? You’re supposed to say, ‘ooooh, wasn’t that a telling representation of the sexualisation of barnyard animals in these postmodern times’, or something like that, and look all knowing and thoughtful,” I beamed, feeling pleased at my repartee. This was most unlike me. When had I become a wag?
Gosh
, I thought as he stared at me, looking slightly shocked but laughing a little,
he’s got a bit of an Alexander Skarsgård thing going on there. I wonder if he’ll ask me for my—
“You should give me your number,” he interrupted.
“Sh-should I?” I stammered, thrown by how closely he was reading my thoughts.
He glanced down and smiled. He wasn’t
quite
gorgeous: but there was something... menacing about him. Something scary. And it was compelling. “I’m a patron here, so I’ve got a vested interest in hearing what you really think,” he said.
I didn’t understand. “A patron? How do you mean?”
“A patron.” (I was still blank.) “You know—I pay for the gallery to stay open? Supporting the artists?”
Then I realised what he meant. He was a patron. An arts patron. A selfless bastion of society, parting with his hard-earned cash for the betterment of us all.
And I’d just told him his life’s work was a pile of crap.
“Oh
no
. . .” I whispered, mortified, unable to meet his eye. “I’m so sorry—”
“Don’t worry. It
is
pretentious. I should know,” he smiled—a deep, dark smile. I wanted to swoon.
Then he asked, “So what do you do?” and my heart leapt absurdly. Was he chatting me up? If he was, Mia was going to be furious!
With an enormous act of will, I forced myself to smile ingenuously. I didn’t really want to tell him what I did for a living. (It was boring. Receptionist at a car dealership. I liked it because I had minimum responsibilities and could surf Ebay for preowned handbags at lunchtime. More on that later.)
So I said: “I’m in public relations.” (My dream job).
“Are you?” he said, mildly interested. “Agency? Or in-house?”
“Oh, I’m freelancing at the moment,” I said airily, trying to hide my panic.
Please don’t let him ask me any more than that.
“Interesting,” he smiled, his glinting eyes narrowing with thought. “I don’t carry my phone much. Just give me your card.”
“My c-card?” I stammered, my enthusiasm having taken a bit of a knock. But obviously if you were a freelance PR person, you’d have a bloody business card. “Oh! I-I’ve got them in another handbag.”
“OK. Never mind. Here’s mine.”
He handed me a small, duck-egg blue rectangle. “Thanks,” I said, shining with happiness.
“I’m actually looking for a PR person at the moment,” he said, once more scanning the crowd absently.
“Oh,” I replied, dejected. So he wasn’t chatting me up after all.
“Give me a ring after the weekend. I think you’d be great for the job.”
“Thanks,” I said, more dejected.
“And I’m Jack, by the way.”
“Ava. Pleased to meet you.”
“Pleased to meet you too. Take care.” He looked away from me immediately, as if I’d disappeared into thin air.
“Bye,” I mumbled, and scurried off.
Once I was a few metres away, I turned back to look at him one more time. It was hard to believe it was real—him, our meeting, his card. It was more like a supernatural visitation. I half-expected his card to disintegrate into fairy dust when I retrieved it from my little clutch handbag to read it.
“Jack Rutherford-West,” I breathed. I looked at him again. His name matched him—perfect, lyrical, and just a tiny bit not-of-this-world.
I was quickly pulled from my reverie.
“Where the hell have you
been
?” It was Mia, tugging at me like a three-year-old. “I’ve been at the bar
all on my own
since you left,” she whined. “And what’s that?”
Another effect of Luke’s philanderings was that she’d become a deeply suspicious person. Before, you would have had to have hit Mia over the head with something before she wanted to know what it was.
“A card,” I said.
“Stop being so obtuse,” she hissed, and snatched it out of my hand. She studied it, then gave a short, nasty laugh. “Where’d you get this? Pick it up on the bathroom floor?”
“Honestly, Mia,” I said, as I began to lose my temper with her, “would you mind taking the bitchery down a notch? It’s from him over there.” I jabbed my thumb towards the loos. “Will you keep your voice down, please?”
For some reason, while I was speaking, her mouth dropped open.
“You’re joking,” she whispered, her eyes darting from me to him.
“I’m not,” I said. “Why would you think that?”
Before I knew it, Mia had strong-armed me back to the bar. It seemed that I had accomplished something significant—not that I had the faintest idea what.
“Do you know who you were just talking to?” she demanded, ordering another two glasses of red. The free wine wasn’t finished yet, so it was best to make hay while the sun shone, so to speak.
“Of course I know who I was talking to,” I said. What was wrong with her? Hadn’t she seen the card? “Jack Ruther—”
“No no no no, I mean,
don’t you realise who that is
?”
I folded my arms and gave a sigh of exasperation. “If this is going to be a game of Charades, can I just sit out, please?” I wasn’t in the mood for Mia’s histrionics. What? Was he our old history teacher from junior school? The boy from the video shop, done good? A drag queen still dressed for his day job? (I hoped not.)
Mia rolled her eyes. “I cannot
believe
what a Philistine I have for a sister. That’s Jack Rutherford-West. He’s one of the most powerful patrons in England. He sponsored the Turner Prize last year
.
”
Wasn’t that an art prize? “So what? He already said he was a patron. I knew that.”
“The man’s a
multi-billionaire
.”
That got my attention.
Mia rabbited on, chucking back glass after glass of wine. He was the son of a well-connected minor aristocrat, untitled via some illegitimate ancestor, distantly Italian via another; his family had made their money as art dealers, big-time moneylenders, and currency brokers. Vastly wealthy. Dropped large wads of filthy lucre on edgy, new artists.
I was gobsmacked. “Are you sure?” I managed. Could this be the same person I’d just spoken with? I’d never met a multi-billionaire before—at least not to my knowledge. Had he thought I was common as muck? He must have.
But then why did he offer me a job? I told Mia about that, and she had to steady herself against the bar.
“What are you going to wear? How are we going to de-Philistine you by Monday?” She seemed genuinely shaken as she downed a shot of Jägermeister and handed one to me. “You’d better not be thinking of wearing my Prada shoes.”
We got drunker and drunker. She, out of envy, me, out of pure, unadulterated terror.
So, that was the Great Friday of Meeting Jack.
I spent the rest of the weekend obsessing about: a) whether I was going to ring him; b) what I would say if/when I rang; c) how the hell I was going to wing it as a PR girl if he was stupid enough to hire me.
That Saturday morning, a few short hours after we stumbled home from the gallery long after midnight, I was woken by the terrifying figure of Mia standing over me with a copy of
The Complete History of Art
and a box of aspirin. By Saturday afternoon I had already put together three separate possible outfits for the hypothetical interview. By Sunday, I sort of knew my Raphaels from my Kandinskys.
I went to work dressed to the nines on Monday (Mum’s black wool suit, Mia’s Prada shoes, and a pale pink chiffon camisole thing that I got in Topshop back in the Nineties when everyone was doing Dolce & Gabbana knockoffs) in case I was asked to come in during my lunch break. The girls in the credit department were even bitchier than usual, so I knew that I must have looked fabulous. I’d better have; I’d been forced to promise Mia she could sell my kidneys if I scuffed her shoes.
I’ve hardly mentioned where I was working at the time—I suppose I’ve tried to block it out. It was a two-bit used Rover dealership on the main drag of Ickenham, and Victor, the manager, was a horror in a polyester three-piece suit. The only consolation was Sharon. She’d been on reception for a year when I joined, after making a mess of the first year of college and realising that I would not be following in my sister’s footsteps after all.
Of course, the very moment I arrived at work, Sharon would get the full rundown of Friday night. It’d been my Saturday off that week, and I’d been
dying
to tell her all weekend. I’d already texted her, but the best part was always getting into the detail.
“Hiya,” I breathed, sidling in three minutes late. Victor would be apoplectic if he saw me come in a second after eight. Luckily, I could see the back of his little balding head as he sat in his office. Shaz knew better than to acknowledge my presence too enthusiastically: it would only draw attention to my tardiness.
“
What happened
?” she whispered, keeping her mouth almost completely immobile. (Victor hated to hear us talking about our personal lives. Once, when he was still in that honeymoon phase of thinking I was the perfect employee, he’d told me that he couldn’t stand to hear “the girls at front” talking about their “harlotry an’ gaddin’ about”. He was a Yorkshireman, and not in a good way.)
“Something amazing.”
She already knew that, of course, but it was delightful to go through the motions of surprise. “Ooh,” she breathed, turning her full attention to me.
“
Not now,
” I hissed, seeing Victor approaching. We both put on our receptionist smiles and grinned idiotically at him.
“Ladies,” he said severely, his moustache twitching in annoyance. He’d heard the excited tone in Sharon’s voice and knew we were having fun on his watch. The jig was up.
“Morning, Mr Townsend,” we chorused.
“You look handsome today,” said Sharon teasingly. “You’ve got a lunch date, haven’t ya?” She was a cunning woman, was Shaz. Knew just how to throw them off the scent.
Victor blushed violet and harrumphed with pleasure. He had a bit of a Madonna/whore complex: Sharon confused the hell out of him with her low-cut tops and apparent sweetness. “I do actually,” he grizzled shyly. “It’s the wife’s birthday.”
“Well, isn’t that nice?” said Sharon in a twinkly way. “And where are you taking her?”
“Well, I, well, just down the pub,” he said uncertainly. “She’s a woman of simple tastes, my Maureen.”
Sharon tutted at him. “Really, Mr. Townsend, you should have told us,” she said disapprovingly, as he hung on her every word. Poor thing was starved of attention. “You’ve not even got her flowers, now, have you?” He shook his head miserably, looking like a little boy who’d disappointed his mother. “Ava knows the loveliest florist on the High Street, don’t you, Ava?”
Sharon had been trying for years to train me up in the art of boss-charming, but I was really no good at it. “Y-yes, a lovely, lovely florist,” I said. Sharon was trying to steer him away from the front in such a way that he would not return for some time. She wanted me to play along, but I wasn’t quick enough on my feet.
“It’s called The Rose Posy, I
think
,” she said in a worried tone. “Mr Townsend, you may need to use that interweb to find it; we don’t seem to have a White Pages handy.” (In fact, she was using a pile of them as a footstool, but that was only because Victor thought that ergonomics was something to do with the stock market.) “I heard you did a course on it? That Wide World Web-a-ma-jig?”
“Why, yes,” he said, blushing even deeper with pride.
She beamed at him. “Well, taking on that kind of subject matter, you’re an example to us all, make no mistake. You’d better get going now,” she said urgently, “you don’t want to be rushed when you’re choosing her bouquet.”
“Yes!” he said, infused with sudden determination, and he practically teleported himself back into his office. I looked at Sharon in awe.
“Just a small public service, love,” she said humbly. “That poor woman deserves it. And I bloody need to hear this story of yours.”