CHAPTER 1 - BETHANY
“BETHANY, WOULD YOU help that lady?”
I forced a smile for Henrietta, the gallery manager, a scrawny blonde with an addiction to mascara who’d hated me from the moment I started working at Pemberton Fine Arts.
“Of course.”
Henrietta thought I wanted her job, and while I couldn’t deny I’d have accepted if it was offered, I wasn’t about to stoop to her level and make snide comments to Hugo Pemberton, the gallery’s owner, behind her back. Not that I in any way expected an offer—despite being thirty-four years old, I was little more than a glorified intern. Henrietta had only asked me to help because she was busy with another client and the third member of our little team, Gemma, had disappeared. Again.
I glanced towards the door to see who “that lady” was and swallowed a groan. Mirabella Vallos was no lady. She might have had money, but she also had a drinking problem and a stinky attitude to go with it. Even at school, she’d been a cantankerous little witch.
“Mira, how lovely to see you.”
“Bethie!” Oh, how I hated being called Bethie. “It’s been months, hasn’t it? Since before your divorce? Wait—you’re not working here, are you?”
The word “working” obviously left a nasty taste in her mouth because she screwed up her face in disgust. Or at least, she screwed up the bottom half. The top half was frozen in place by Botox. Mine had long since worn off, and boy was I glad to have the ability to frown back.
Ladies like Mira didn’t work—well, maybe the odd day of volunteering to give them something to post on Instagram—and I’d once been a part of that realm. It was only recently that I’d turned my back on it, and I was still trying to find my place in a new world.
“Yes, I work here now.”
“I heard…” She lowered her voice to a stage whisper, and I saw Henrietta straining to listen. “I heard you got screwed over in your settlement.”
Screwed over? That was the understatement of the century. Somehow, our family home had ended up in a trust fund controlled by my ex-husband’s parents, the villa in Italy turned out to be “owned” by a business partner, the fancy cars were “leased,” and in an unexpected turn of events, our savings had dwindled due to a series of bad investments. By the time our lawyers finished arguing, I was left with our pied-à-terre in Kensington, an extensive designer wardrobe I no longer needed, a horse that ate the little money I had remaining, and a reputation as a gold-digging bitch. And the best part? My ex also kept my family. My parents and sister still liked him better than they did me.
“The settlement could have been better,” I admitted. “What brings you here today?”
“We’ve just redecorated the lounge that overlooks the indoor riding arena, and we need to spruce up the walls.”
An indoor riding arena was a mere memory for me. Chaucer spent most of his time in a muddy field now, and boy did he love to wallow.
“What did you have in mind?”
“Something horsey. Old-looking. What’s that guy’s name, the one who paints the thoroughbreds? Stubbings?”
“Stubbs. George Stubbs.”
“Do you have any of those?”
“I’m afraid not. We could find you a print, but I don’t believe there are any originals on the market at the moment.”
And even if there were, they’d cost hundreds of thousands of pounds. Hardly the thing to hang on the wall of an indoor school. The insurance would be astronomical.
“I don’t want a print.”
“We do have some lovely paintings with a similar feel about them. Perhaps you’d like to look at those? And can I tempt you with a cup of tea or coffee while you’re here?”
“Have you got any wine?”
It was only ten a.m., but okay then. If I recalled correctly, Mirabella tended to get rather loose with her husband’s credit card once she had a few drinks inside her. Give her a bottle, and she wouldn’t even know what she was buying. She’d once purchased a stallion at auction that turned out to be a gelding, and the day it arrived, she’d invited a bunch of us over to see her prized possession, still totally unaware. I hadn’t been popular when I’d pointed out the lack of balls.
“Red or white?”
“Rosé or champagne.”
But of course.
We’d held a show last night, and thankfully, we still had half a dozen bottles of rosé left over in the fridge. I stifled a yawn as I trudged to the kitchen. The show had been a success in that we’d sold all but two paintings, but the artist was a pretentious bore and the event ran late. Midnight had been and gone by the time I shovelled the last guest out of the door and into a taxi.
Still, I couldn’t complain too much. At least I had a job.
Between my complete lack of experience and Piers bad-mouthing me to anyone who’d listen after I left him, finding work hadn’t been easy. Do you know how much use a degree in art history is in the real world? No other gallery would give me so much as an interview, but luckily for me, Hugo had read for his degree at Oxford University, my alma mater, and also once had a bust-up with Piers’s father. The whole Fortescue-Hamilton family was mud in Hugo’s eyes, which I suspected was the main reason he’d offered me the position.
A position that paid peanuts, but it was better than having to turn to my parents. They weren’t short of money, and they’d even offered to bail me out, but their “gifts” came with so many strings attached that it was like wading through macramé. Never again would I be beholden to another person, not a blood relative and certainly not a man.
Which was why I poured Mirabella a generous glass of rosé and headed back to the gallery to find her studying one of the most awful examples of modern art I’d ever seen. Imagine if Picasso drew a pineapple, then put it through a shredder and gave the pieces to a toddler to reassemble. Even Hugo agreed it had no redeeming features. He’d bought it as part of a job lot from a house clearance to get a David Hockney sketch he really wanted, and it was a toss-up over whether to burn the piece or hang it in the gallery on the off-chance some schmuck with appalling taste came in.
“Isn’t it something?” I said to Mirabella as I passed her a glass of wine. “It’s by Vincent Crystalla.”
“Who?”
“He won the Turner Prize for Laughter Unchained.” Which was a vaguely horrifying sculpture of a clown in orange prison overalls, handcuffs and leg shackles lying on the floor behind him. “Are you familiar with his work?”
“I don’t think I saw that one.”
“It’s a metaphorical representation of the constraints oppressive governments put on human enjoyment. Profound. What do you think of Fruit: Reconstructed?”
“It’s, uh, interesting.”
“Imagine having that on the wall at one of your parties—it’d be a real talking point.”
“You think? It’s not a bit…offbeat?”
“Well, you have to be a real art lover to appreciate it.”
“I’m not sure it’d work in the riding arena.”
“No, you’d want something more traditional for that spot. Andrea Edmunds is an up-and-coming artist who paints horses in a distinctive style—acrylic on bare canvas with minute attention to detail—and she also takes commissions. Would you like to see her portfolio?”