right!” said Lou, “because you’d just won the Tennent’s Sculpture Prize. So you see, pretty random really. Anyway, Madam,” she said, leaning forward in her seat and fixed Sara with a gimlet eye, “it cuts both ways, let me tell you. That day you first spoke to me, remember?” Sara did. “I was a nervous wreck!” Lou glanced at Neil and Gavin, as if for affirmation. “There she was, all colour-co-ordinated and spiffy from the school run, and me looking like shit in my filthy work clothes and, what’s her name? Carol, watching me like a hawk from across the road. I felt like I was auditioning for something. And then you invited me round for a drink and I was, like, yesss!”
Sara didn’t know what to do with this information. She blushed with pleasure and pushed a crumb around the table with her forefinger.
“Well,” said Gav huffily, “if no one’s going to tell me how fucking marvellous I am, I suppose I’d better serve the dinner.”
They laughed. He had a knack for putting people at their ease, Sara had noticed. She’d imagined an artist to be the tortured, introverted type but Gav was neither. You couldn’t call him charming, quite, because there was no magic about it, no artifice. He was just easy in his skin and made you easier in yours. He pottered about the kitchen, humming under his breath, pausing occasionally to toss some remark over his shoulder, and then served up a fragrant lamb tagine as casually as if it were beans on toast. When at last he sat down, he didn’t hold forth about himself or his opinions, but quizzed Neil about his work, with every appearance of genuine curiosity.
“I just think it’s great how you guys give back,” Gav said, shaking his head with admiration.
“Oh, I’m no Mother Teresa…” Neil protested, through a mouthful of food. “It’s important work, don’t get me wrong, and I believe in it one hundred per cent, but they pay me pretty well. And if you heard the grief I get from some of the anarchists on the tenants’ associations, you’d think I was bloody Rachman…”
“Rachman?” Lou skewered a piece of lamb on her fork and looked up, inquiringly.
“He was a notorious private landlord in the fifties,” Neil explained, “became a byword for slum housing and corruption. I did my PhD on how he influenced the law on multiple occupancy. It was fascinating actually.”
“Neil, you can’t say your own PhD was fascinating,” Sara murmured.
“I meant doing it was fascinating.”
“So you’re Doctor Neil,” Gav said. “Very impressive. I can’t imagine having the staying power for something like that.”
“It was a bit of a slog,” Neil conceded. “Then again, I don’t suppose you leaped fully-formed from your mother’s womb wielding a paintbrush…?”
“Too true mate, and if my mother had had anything to do with it, I’d have leapt out with a brickie’s hod instead.”
He put on a broad Lancashire accent, “‘Learn a trade, our Gavin, if you want to put food on’t table.’”
“But you do put food on the table, as an artist,” said Sara. “Surely your parents must be proud of that?”
“What do you reckon, Lou?” He turned to his wife with a rueful smile. “Are they proud?”
“We wouldn’t know, would we?” said Lou coldly.
“Lou gets very indignant on my behalf. The truth is they don’t really get it. If I was a doctor or a lawyer, I’m sure they’d be pleased, but my mum’s idea of art’s a herd of horses galloping through surf, so…”
“She knows you’ve done well,” Lou muttered, “wouldn’t kill her to say so.”
“Doesn’t bother me,” Gav said, shrugging. “I always played second fiddle to our Paula, anyway.”
“Is that your sister?” asked Sara. “What does she do?”
“She’s just a primary-school teacher,” Lou interjected, “but to hear Gav’s mum, you’d think she walked on water.” She mimicked her mother-in-law with unsparing sarcasm: “‘Our Paula’s doing an assembly on multiculturalism, Gavin. Our Paula’s taking the kids to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.’ No mention of the fact that Gav’s got a piece in the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Never occurs to her that she might actually stop playing online bingo for two minutes and go and have a look herself.”
“Lulu,” Gavin put a hand on her arm, “it’s no big deal.”
Lou’s eyes were glittering.
“That does seem a bit unfair,” said Sara, doubtfully.
“Not really.” Gavin shrugged. “I mean, artists aren’t very useful, are we? People don’t actually need art.”
“God Gavin,” Lou fumed, “I hate it when you put yourself down. You’re an important contemporary artist, represented by a top gallery.”
“I know,” Gavin laughed, “and I never stop wondering when they’re going to rumble me.”
“What do you mean?” Neil asked.
“Well honestly, what is it I do? Just muck about really, like those kids our Paula teaches. I just haul my guts up in three dimensions; I play around with bits of old rubbish until they start to look like the things I fear or loathe or love and then I put them out there and amazingly, people seem to get it.”
“Some people,” said Lou.
“Well,” said Neil, draining his wineglass and placing it decisively back down on the table. “Sara’s too shy to ask, so I will. When are we going to get a look at your studio?”
“Neil!” Sara turned to him indignantly.
“Haven’t you seen it yet?” Gavin seemed surprised. “Oh no, you haven’t, have you? That was Stephan and Yuki. Come on then!”
He slapped his thighs and stood up. So much for their banter last evening, Sara thought – the Chelsea oligarchs long forgotten. Nevertheless, she couldn’t quell a fluttering in her stomach as she rose, unsteadily, to follow him. She only wished she were feeling her bright, articulate best, instead of fuzzy with drink. As she wove her way towards the spiral staircase which led to the studio, she tried to recall some of the aperçus she had read when she’d googled his latest show, but the only phrase that sprang to mind was “spastic formalism”, and she couldn’t see that tripping off her tongue. Lou dried her hands on a tea towel and moved to join them, but Gav turned to her with a look of pained regret.
“Do you think maybe one of us should stay up here in case Zuley wakes up?”
“Oh…okay,” Lou gave him a tight little smile and turned away. Sara struggled to shake off the feeling that she had somehow usurped her friend, but that was silly – Lou must be up and down these stairs all the time, she would hardly wait on an invitation from her own husband.
Her qualms were quickly overtaken by astonishment and fascination when they emerged, not into the picturesque, messy studio of her imagination but into a stark, brightly lit space more reminiscent of a morgue. She could see at a glance that a lot of money had been spent here. There were
