Paul, her assistant, announced as he tapped the microphone. ‘May I introduce the woman responsible for tonight: Founder and Director of the Square Peg Gallery – Rachel Wright!’ Paul smiled as he led the applause. He wanted to please her. Everyone did. Rachel commanded respect. Little was known about her private life and the care with which she protected it was a point of staunch admiration. Paul and the others knew about the big thing, of course. But nobody mentioned it.
‘Thank you all for being here tonight,’ Rachel began. ‘And thanks especially to our sponsors, without whom none of this would be possible – in particular White Label Inc. and G&V Assets.’ She deliberately named his firm second; it was a stupid power thing. More applause, for them or for her, it didn’t matter. She needed their funds and they needed her association. She’d said as much in her pitch. Where was their commitment to community culture? Were their rivals delivering on social responsibility? She remembered launching her petition in his boardroom, the way his black eyes had trained into her as they trained into her now, challenging her. How did he always manage it? Rachel could present to sponsors from here to Milan, could sit opposite the greatest creatives in the world, but with him, well, he made her feel the spotlight. It was the excitement of their arrangement, she supposed.
‘If this gallery hasn’t stopped to breathe, then neither have I,’ Rachel told her audience, thinking of the three hours’ sleep she had grown accustomed to snatching; of the caffeine she lived off and the cigarettes she was trying to give up but that sometimes pushed her that extra hour into the night, of the determination – ‘my mother had another word for it,’ she joked – that took an idea out of one’s head and made it a reality; of the team she’d had behind her; of her Upper West Side apartment that she never spent any time in and that had become overtaken by work. Talking about the gallery was like talking about herself, for she had given everything to it over the past eighteen months. Art was her passion and her purpose. She had always found sanctuary in it, in its possibility and lack of boundary, in its subjectivity and beauty, in its strength to innovate and energise, to change minds and start dialogues. Since she could remember, she’d been happiest staring into a painting or admiring a sculpture, imagining the stories that went into it and, in doing so, she was able to forget her own.
As always when Rachel spoke in front of big crowds, she wound up feeling they were waiting for more. Perhaps they were. They knew, after all, what had happened to her back in 2012. It had been in the papers, talked about over breakfast tables. Did they expect her to reference it? She wondered, sometimes, if she should. That maybe if she mentioned it once, that would be enough. That would sate their curiosity about whether it was an event she acknowledged and accepted, an event she had dealt with. Perhaps she didn’t ever bring it up because she hadn’t dealt with it.
Her speech closed to the sound of rapturous appreciation. Rachel dared herself to find his face. It wasn’t difficult. She could just imagine the scent of his aftershave, which she caught when they embraced, just inside the angle of his shirt collar.
*
Of course he followed her back from the launch. Mutually they had decided not to be seen together in public. On the surface neither wanted their position to be compromised – his investment muddied the waters somewhat – but deep down it was their shared reluctance to commit. A no-strings arrangement suited both fine. Secret liaisons at her apartment or his heightened the thrill. Being linked officially made it too serious, too much of a fact. Rachel wasn’t ready for that. She liked the emotional distance.
She was stepping into the shower when she heard the buzzer go.
‘Aaron.’ She answered the door in her gown. ‘It’s two a.m. Can’t you sleep?’
He grinned. ‘Not without you.’ He leaned in and she turned her face away, just a fraction, to tease him, even though she knew she would let herself be kissed.
‘You were sensational tonight,’ he said, his arms looping round her waist.
‘Thank you.’
‘I mean it. I was impressed.’
She could never tell how sincere he was being. Aaron Grewal was arrogant and proud (as she suspected were many multimillionaires), and she had a reasonable inkling he slept with other women. But she didn’t care. This wasn’t about heart and soul; it was about danger and distraction. Aaron was different to what she was used to…to what was missing. He was like her late nights, her coffee, her deadlines, a quick fix to get through, nothing permanent or serious, nothing it would hurt to lose.
Afterwards, they lay in each other’s arms. It was nice to be held, to hear the warm beat of another person’s heart. When she’d won the pitch from Aaron’s firm, they’d told her she was one of the strongest candidates they’d seen. The word had stayed with her, become part of why she’d been drawn into romance with Aaron in the first place. He saw her strength and recognised it. Strength was the reason she was still here. It was how she’d got ahead, being decisive, being convinced: it was how she’d survived.
In the glow of the streetlight, Rachel made out the room around her: a student’s room, a rented room, a room lived in for hours at a time. Interspersed with her plans for the gallery, drawings, reports and journals filled with sketches and emails and wish lists, was a litter of empty cups, perfumes, piled up books, pictures that never made it on to the walls, propped up against wash racks, clothes strewn across the floor, handbags and pill packets and phone chargers…
There were no photographs. Aaron had commented on it when he’d first come over. No framed family, no memories, nothing personal. It hadn’t been intentional, just how things were. She couldn’t help it. The past was a stranger.
‘Goodnight, Success Story,’ Aaron murmured, kissing the top of her head.
She smiled into his chest, feeling the urge to cry. Exhaustion, that was all. And an expression of tenderness she had long learned to live without, so that when she received it, it hurt a little. Rachel had cried a lot at the start of her life, and she had cried a lot in 2012, but she hadn’t cried since. As a rule she didn’t cry. Instead she surrounded herself with noise and lights, with anything but quiet and dark.
It took ages to fall asleep. She would manage a couple of hours and that was what she preferred: a brief sliver of quiet before the day drew her into its comforting, busy embrace. And yet the shorter the sleep, the deeper her dreams… Always they came in bursts, the same one on a cycle for weeks at a time. This one had lasted longer than most. Rachel felt herself floating in a familiar space, inexplicable, tantalising, as known to her as her skin yet as alien as the stars: a dimly lit passage in a huge, impersonal house, a moon-bathed window, coarse floorboards beneath her naked feet. This faraway place called her, whispering, whispering, This is where you belong.
He left before she woke the next morning. Rachel was glad, fixed herself coffee and opened her emails. Her inbox was filled with messages of congratulation. They’d made a mint on some of the more expensive works last night and several write-ups had already appeared in the morning’s coverage, calling the Square Peg launch ‘a triumph’ and ‘an enthralling odyssey into the city’s burning talent’. Paul had written with news that tickets for next month’s exhibition had sold out, and that a renowned London artist wished to make an appearance at the weekend. Rachel summoned Paul for brunch and closed her tablet.
It took minutes to get ready. Despite her lack of sleep, the bathroom mirror told her she looked good. With neat brown hair, warm hazel eyes and a smattering of freckles across her nose, Rachel was no supermodel, but she had a fine figure, great skin and she carried herself well. For
