Authors: Karen Swan
‘So should you.’
‘I’m better here. Normal’s good.’
‘Freds, I’m serious – are you eating?’
‘You’re kidding, right? Every time I get back to the flat, there’s another pot of chilli in the fridge or a pie in the oven or the ironing’s been done. It’s like
I’ve got elves.’
Flora chuckled, grateful for both her mother’s fussiness and this hint of her brother’s old humour. He’d never had to try too hard to make people smile, laugh, like him. If she
had breezed through life thus far, popular and well liked, Freddie had blasted through, universally loved. People were drawn to him – old, young, male, female – and she was so proud to
call him her brother; to have a blood claim on someone like him felt special and rare.
There was a natural pause and she inhaled deeply, gathering courage. ‘Freddie, look, I know you said you don’t want anyone outside the family knowing but . . . I really think you
should speak to Aggie. She
is
family. You guys were together for six years. You broke up a month ago. You can’t pretend—’
‘I’m not pretending anything! But she’s not in my life any more,’ Freddie said, his voice suddenly brittle and hard. ‘I don’t want her getting involved with
this. She’s better off . . . she’s better off staying out of it.’
‘But she still loves you. I know she does.’
‘She’s moved on.’ His voice was flat.
‘Because she’s been on a few dates? Don’t be daft! She wanted to marry you, Freds. The week before you guys broke up, she told me she thought you were going to
propose.’
There was a long silence.
‘She still loves you,’ she said, emboldened. ‘I just know that if you told her, she’d be there for you. It’ll be so much worse if she hears it from someone else. I
mean, what if she reads it in the papers? Wouldn’t you be—’
‘Enough!’ His voice was a general’s roar, stunning her into silence. Freddie never raised his voice. He was Mr Mild. ‘We’re not talking about her any more, do you
understand? I don’t want to hear her name. No exceptions. It’s over. And if you call her, if you tell her anything, I swear I’ll never speak to you again either.’
Flora couldn’t reply. She’d never heard him so angry, she’d never encountered this rage in him before.
His voice cracked. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Flora, but that’s just how it has to be. Look, I’ll call you soon, OK?’
And he hung up, leaving her alone in the City of Dreams, trapped in a nightmare.
‘You look beautiful.’
Noah’s eyes, bluer than she’d recalled, gazed at her across the table. She smiled her thanks but didn’t believe a word of it. Reception had called up to her room only minutes
after Freddie had hung up on her and – shocked, frustrated, despairing – she hadn’t had time for her colour to go down.
Not that she cared about how she looked.
All she’d wanted to do was have a hot shower, curl up in a towel and go to sleep for a week but she couldn’t; she was here, working again, a fake smile plastered on her face and she
felt rushed, stretched, spasmodic, feral. She didn’t quite trust herself; she wasn’t sure she could be relied upon to make small talk all night, to care about art when her family life
was in ruins, to eat with a stranger when she needed the company of friends.
She closed her eyes momentarily, wishing she was back in Paris. Ines would know what to do.
Noah was still staring at her when she opened her eyes again and she took another sip of wine. ‘Sorry.’
‘Tired?’
‘A little.’
‘I know how you feel. I have to travel a lot in my line of work too.’ His hand hovered at the base of his glass. ‘Listen, if you’d rather not do this—’
‘No. Not at all,’ she said quickly, remembering herself. Even the company of a stranger was better than being alone in that hotel room right now. ‘I’m so happy to be
here. I can’t believe you were able to get a table at such short notice.’
He looked pleased. ‘Well, my family has been coming for many years. They’re usually able to oblige me.’
Flora smiled, noticing how good he looked in his indigo hopsack suit that was so lean it seemed to leave no room for a wallet or mobile phone in the pockets.
She fiddled with her glass too, glancing around at the other diners – all finely dressed and bedecked in summer jewels, white tablecloths hanging to the floor on the round tables,
tobacco-smoked mirrors lining the walls and reflecting their images like shadows.
‘Actually, my great-grandparents were patrons here when it first opened in 1907,’ he continued, filling the silence.
‘Really?’ She feigned interest, willing herself to get into the game.
‘Yes.’ He paused for a moment. ‘And my great-aunt sang here for a season. You remember? It was her portrait you were interested in earlier.’
‘Oh, yes. What was her name?’
‘Natalya Spiegel; Haas before she married.’
She lifted her glass slowly, trying not to look too interested whilst simultaneously absorbing every last detail. ‘And who painted the portrait, do you know?’
‘An artist called Gustav Huber.’
Flora swallowed the wine and frowned. ‘Huber? I’ve not come across him before.’
Noah blinked, studying her concentration and the way she wrinkled her brow. ‘No. By all accounts he came to art late, picking up a brush in his late thirties and finding he had a talent
for it. He only painted Natalya and a few other society figures before he was commissioned. He died on the Eastern Front.’
‘What a terrible waste. It looks like he had a great talent.’
‘I agree.’
She replaced her glass on the table. ‘And you said your family doesn’t have the portrait any more.’
‘That’s right. Again, it was sold by my great-aunt during the war.’ He hesitated. ‘Well, I say sold. What I really mean is stolen – signed away with a Nazi’s
gun pointed at her head.’ The bitterness in his voice was palpable and Flora sat in silence as he reached for the wine and took a sip; she knew exactly where this conversation was heading. He
caught sight of her subdued expression. ‘Sorry. I . . . I shouldn’t get onto the subject. It doesn’t make for good manners or polite conversation.’
‘No, I understand,’ Flora said quickly. ‘The Nazis’ looting of fine art is an issue that still plagues the industry today. It’s a complex and painful path to
navigate with no easy answers.’ She looked down, knowing she’d given him a stock professional response to a highly personal revelation, panicking as she found herself bound by client
confidentiality on the one hand and basic human compassion on the other.
He looked at her. ‘Did you lose any family in the war?’
‘My grandfather was a Halifax bomber pilot. He survived. Somehow.’
‘Well, that’s good to hear.’ He paused. ‘My family weren’t so lucky. They were double-crossed and sent to their deaths.’ His words were hard, thrown out there
like grenades.
Flora didn’t know what to say. ‘. . . Double-crossed?’
‘Yes. They made a deal to break up and sell their estate in exchange for safe passage to Switzerland. Three days later, expecting their passes for the border, they were packed by the SS on
a one-way train to Dachau.’ He took another gulp of his drink.
‘Oh my God,’ Flora gasped. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Almost my entire family wiped out in a stroke – my great-aunt, her husband and their four children.’
Flora covered her mouth – knowing the theory of the horrors and coming face to face with them were two entirely different things. Four children? ‘I don’t know what to
say,’ she whispered.
Noah inhaled and shook his head, his tone apologetic. ‘There’s nothing to say. Sadly this is a story shared by millions of people. Like I told you earlier, my grandfather –
Natalya’s brother – had already emigrated to America before the outbreak of war, otherwise I guess I wouldn’t be sitting here now either. My grandfather never forgave himself for
not making his sister go too – it affected the rest of his life. Survivor’s guilt.’ He glanced at Flora’s aghast expression and dropped his head a little. ‘I’m
sorry, forgive me. As I said, it doesn’t make for good conversation.’
‘No, I . . . it’s so sad.’ She let a beat pass as the waiter came over with the menus. ‘. . . Do you know who owns it now? The portrait, I mean.’ She was sure he
must be able to hear the lies coming from her mouth, to see the duplicity in her eyes.
‘Yes and no.’
He didn’t elaborate and she gave a hesitant laugh. ‘I’m confused.’
‘I know to whom it was last sold, back in 1943 – the guy who double-crossed them, the same guy who bought your Renoir.’ Flora swallowed, not remotely surprised. All roads, it
seemed, led back to Von Taschelt. ‘But he died the same year himself, leaving no apparent heirs. I have no idea where or with whom it is now. Like the Renoir, it’s vanished. No
trace.’ He cast her a look. ‘Of course, if the Renoir’s showed up with your clients, perhaps you have the portrait too?’
Flora’s mouth dropped open and he laughed. ‘I’m just messing with you.’
‘Oh!’ She swallowed, so sure he’d been able to see the truth in her face. ‘Well . . .’ she said, trying to recover. ‘If ever . . . if ever you should
want—’
His hand reached across the table and clasped hers. ‘Is this where you offer me your services and try to find it for me?’ he asked, his voice lower suddenly. ‘Because if what
you said earlier is true, about not dating your clients, then I’m really not feeling incentivized to become one of them.’
Flora felt the floor drop an inch. ‘I . . . I . . .’ she stammered, feeling the blood rush up her cheeks like a tide as he held her stare, his pupils opening like black tulips, his
cards on the table now.
For the second time in as many minutes, she didn’t know what to say.
‘Are you hungry?’ he asked, his thumb pressing slightly on the veins on her inner wrist, feeling how her pulse raced.
She shook her head. Between the argument with Freddie and this conversation, she had been well and truly robbed of her appetite. ‘No, not really,’ she admitted.
‘Want to get out of here?’
He stared at her, unafraid of the silence his question brought, unafraid of the rejection she might yet give, unafraid of everything. He was bold, brave, vital, here.
‘Yes,’ she whispered, even as he raised his arm to get the bill.
The moon fell in great sabre-flashes of lambent light across the dark glossed floor, the cadmium yellow of the painted dress glowing like a miniature sun on the opposite wall.
She couldn’t take her eyes off it. It had felt as though another person had been in the room with them, its presence so fully fleshed and defined.
Beside her, Noah slept and she wondered again at the events that had led to them lying here together. There were so many reasons why, ordinarily, it would never have happened – she
wasn’t looking for this, he wasn’t her type, she was here to work . . . Good reasons, all of them. But events of the past few weeks had converged inside her to create a perfect storm of
insecurity and lies, tipping her off-balance just enough to send her running for the escape he offered, if only for a night.
She watched the slow rise and fall of his chest, his skin tanned and dark beneath light sweeps of hair, his muscles relaxed, mouth parted slightly. He had been a skilled lover and she had clung
to him, hungry and grateful for the hiatus he brought as she allowed her body to take over from her mind for a while. How long had it been since she’d shared a bed with someone? Two months?
Nearly three? Too long, anyway, for a young single woman, that was for sure. Was it any wonder Ines kept trying to get her to give things another go with Stefan?
She stared at the Renoir, knowing precisely what a privilege it was to even stand in a room and be witness to it, much less to sleep there. There wasn’t much else to look at, anyway,
possibly for that very reason. What else could compete? There wasn’t anything more to see in there than she had clocked on her fleeting, polite visit this afternoon. (Had it really only been
this afternoon that she’d first come here? She’d had no inkling then that she’d be sleeping here the same night.) The wardrobes were flush and push-touch; the shimmery silk rug,
delicious to the touch of her bare feet, a plain grey rising to silver; the stovepipe-dark walls free of a single fingerprint. There were no chests of drawers or radiators to break up the lines of
the room, no other photographs or even a cufflink tray to betray human occupancy of the almost gallery-like space. There was just the painting, the bed and them.
She lay there a while longer, listening to the sound of his slow, sleeping breaths, her legs beginning to twitch as she replayed in her mind the conversation with Freddie. He wouldn’t
really cut her off. Would he? She had no doubt her instincts were right about Aggie. If she only knew what was happening . . . But could she take the risk?
She jerked suddenly, a bolt of anger barrelling through her that they were even in this position – hiding from friends, living with secrets and lies. Noah stirred slightly, shifting onto
his side, away from her. Flora lay still for a moment, restless, heart pounding, before she silently lifted the duvet off her and got up. She couldn’t lie here next to him.
She padded over the rug, slipping on a cotton dressing gown that had been hanging on the hook in the bathroom. It swamped her and she rolled back the sleeves, tiptoeing out of the bedroom and
into the vast acreage of the main living area.
At the kitchen sink, she ran herself a glass of water – it took several minutes of pushing against dummy walls before she located the glasses. As she sipped the water, she dispassionately
surveyed the trail of clothes that stretched along the floor, these traces of passion marring the otherwise pristine minimalism of the apartment. She winced and looked away, walking over to the
windows and looking down on Vienna as it slept. There wasn’t a light on in any of the opposing apartment blocks and the trams were still at last. It was after three in the morning –
‘the witching hour’, her father had always said – and she felt as though she was the only person in Europe awake right now.
She turned away from the peaceful scene, gazing back into the apartment, her eyes scanning it with an outsider’s scrutiny. She took in the expensive Italian sofa, the Seurat above the
fireplace, the marble wall, the industrial kitchen, the bank of impressive books and sculptures making a considered statement about the refined cultural tastes of the owner of the apartment –
Fifty Shades of Grey
notwithstanding.