The Debutante (29 page)

Someone was pressing her forehead.

Cate’s eyes flicked open.

It was the young woman from the gallery. She was looking very serious. And there was a crowd of people around them; she recognised the security guard from the gallery talking on his mobile phone. He too was looking at her anxiously. ‘Yeah, she’s conscious now,’ she heard him say to whoever was on the other end of the line.

‘Try and sit still,’ the gallery girl commanded, pressing down again with a towel.

‘Owww!’ Cate winced, pulling away.

‘Sit still,’ the girl said again.

That’s when Cate noticed the towel she was holding was red with blood.

‘You fainted and hit your head on the pavement,’ the girl explained. Her face was tense.

Cate closed her eyes. ‘I don’t feel very well,’ she muttered. ‘I think I might be sick.’

And the crowd moved back.

When the ambulance arrived, the girl from the gallery went with her, holding her handbag. There were bloodstains on her navy cotton shift dress.

At St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington, she was taken into a cubicle. The girl came too, holding the clipboard the nurse at registration had given her, and, while Cate’s head was cleaned up, she filled in the form with her name and address.

‘Cate. Cate Albion.’

‘Is that with a K?’

‘No. A C’.

‘Cate Albion,’ she wrote, her brow wrinkling. Then she made the connection. ‘You’re the artist. You’re C. Albion!’

Cate nodded very slightly. It hurt just to blink. ‘What’s your name?’ she asked.

‘Karen,’ the girl said.

‘Thank you, Karen. Thank you for helping me.’ She closed her eyes again.

The nurse was back with a small plastic cup, some vials and a long needle. ‘You’ve got quite a high fever. But if you can manage it, we need a urine and a blood sample. The doctor will be with you in a minute to see if you need stitches. Here,’ she eased Cate up off the trolley, ‘I’ll help you to the loo.’

When she came back, Cate slipped in and out of sleep. The doctor decided stitches weren’t necessary but a high dose of intravenous antibiotics were. They gave her a bed on a ward and Cate dozed until late evening. When she woke up, she was alone. Her mouth was dry and her head ached. She was still wearing her summer dress and cardigan, a tube dangling from her arm. She felt dirty and sticky. There were fans whirring away in each corner but otherwise the ward was as stifling as it was outside. Across from her someone was curled up on their side, their face hidden from view, and there was the sound of low moaning from another bed; she could hear them but couldn’t see them. The light was dimming, lending the grey walls and tiles a soft blurriness.
Someone had left a copy of
OK!
magazine, a bottle of water and a KitKat by the side of the bed, presumably Karen.

Cate sat up, her head throbbing, and pressed the bell for the nurse. After what seemed like ages, a woman in her fifties, with close-cropped red hair, arrived.

‘So you’re up.’ She had a thick Belfast accent. Holding Cate’s wrist, she began taking her pulse. ‘How do you feel?’

‘Rough. When can I leave?’

She finished counting the beats and let her wrist go, picking up the chart from the bottom of her bed. ‘Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow. The doctor will be through later and she’ll give you a better idea. Is there someone you want us to contact for you?’

Cate shook her head. ‘What’s wrong with me?’

‘You have a kidney infection. Quite a bad one. Those are antibiotics.’

‘Oh. So, I’m not …’ Cate hesitated, biting her lower lip. ‘Am I pregnant?’ she asked after a moment.

The nurse shook her head. ‘No. But you have traces of blood in your urine.’

Cate relaxed back against the pillows. She hadn’t realised how much it had weighed upon her; what a relief it was to know she wasn’t. ‘Good,’ she murmured.

The nurse hooked the chart back on her bed and walked round, checking the readings on the dispensing machine. ‘What happened anyway? The girl who brought you in said you’d just fainted.’

‘What? Oh, yes. I guess that’s right.’

She tapped the side of the machine. ‘The doctor who admitted you wanted to know if you had been attacked.’

‘Attacked? Why?’

The nurse looked at her closely. ‘They did an examination on you. Don’t you remember?’

Cate shook her head.

‘There’s a note on your chart. A query.’

‘What kind of query?’

‘There’s some evidence, some scarring. That you’ve been sexually violated in the recent past.’

Cate was silent.

‘Do you know what I’m talking about?’ She touched her arm lightly.

Cate said nothing, moving her arm away.

‘If you want to speak to someone,’ the nurse’s voice was low, confiding. ‘to file a report—’

‘No,’ Cate cut her off. ‘That’s not necessary.’

‘The police have a special unit—female officers … the whole thing’s very private and very safe.’

Cate said nothing, concentrating instead on the folds of the hanging curtain opposite.

‘I understand that it can be very difficult and upsetting, but if someone’s hurt you …’ the nurse persisted.

‘It’s not what it seems.’

‘Yes, but … if you change your mind … if you need to talk to someone…’

‘Thank you. I appreciate your concern. But it’s not what it seems,’ Cate said again, firmly.

The nurse sighed, shaking her head.

‘I wonder if you would mind getting me a tea?’ Cate asked. ‘I feel a bit shaky.’

The nurse stared at her. ‘Any sugar?’ she asked finally, giving up.

‘A couple. Thanks.’

After she left, Cate turned her face to the wall, trying to block out the low moaning of the person in the next bed.

She didn’t understand; none of them would.

It wasn’t what it seemed.

Especially not if you asked for it.

It was evening. Jack sat down on the bed in his room at the B & B. Across from him, on the chest of drawers, was the writing case he’d bought from Jo Williams. The one he’d promised not to sell.

He knew why he’d bought it; who he intended it for.

Was he being foolish? Would he even have the courage to give it to her? And would she understand what the gesture meant or how unique it really was?

Of course these things had to be learned, he reminded himself. There was a time when he would have dismissed a box like that out of hand as nothing special. A time when he wouldn’t have been able to see it was worthwhile either.

He kicked off his shoes, stretching out on to his back. And thought of his father.

Henry Coates had a passion for the past. A respect bordering on reverence for it. Few things used to please him more than discovering an overlooked gem, then delving into its history, digging up every bit of its back story—who made it and when, what part of the country it was from, how it was passed from hand to hand until it finally came to be resting in his. ‘It’s a real-life history lesson,’ he used to say. At the time, Jack had been interested in shaping whole cities, making his mark on the world with great constructions of glass and steel. His father’s obsession seemed quaint and eccentric. Who cared what happened in the past or how some old chair happened to come into your possession? Sell it and move on. That was his feeling.

But now, looking at the mahogany writing case, he felt an uncomfortable affinity with his father. The past did deserve respect. Now that he was old enough to have one that baffled and confused him, he understood a little better.

He folded the pillow over, propping it underneath his head.

He’d been longing to change the world—his world. Move away from the piles of musty old furniture in his father’s business. The truth was he’d been embarrassed by his dad when he was younger; certainly he’d been ashamed to work at the shop in Islington. There was a
certain grandeur in saying, ‘My father’s an antique dealer’—with its implication of a refined eye and wealth of stylistic and aesthetic knowledge. It was different, however, sitting in a cold, draughty shop during the grey winter months, piled high with dingy old furniture, reading endless books and newspapers, drinking cups of tea, waiting for someone, anyone, to stop in out of the rain and buy something. He’d found it mind-numbingly boring. Henry had tried to persuade him to educate himself about the business, but at the time Jack was too cocky to care. If he could sell something relatively expensive early on in the day, then he could shut up shop early and get on with his own life. He had plans, ambitions. He didn’t want to be stuck like his father, going from auction to auction, in search of some rare once-in-a-lifetime find.

And when Henry did find a piece worthy of all his years of acumen, it was Jack who allowed it to slip through his fingers.

The rare Georgian convex mirror had a filmy, dark glass and an ornate frame fashioned with twisting vines of ivy and delicate, detailed sparrows. Made around 1720, it had originally been a wedding gift, commissioned for the daughter of an earl in Wales, who had a particular fondness for the birds. Henry had found it in the sale of personal belongings from a house in Amersham. Wrapped in old blankets, it sat in the back of the shop for months while he lovingly did his research on it, which in those days involved trips to libraries and collection archives.

It was a misty April morning when the well-dressed man came into the shop, browsing lazily. Jack had been reading copies of
Interview
and
Rolling Stone
magazine in between dozing, sitting close to the space heater that provided the only warmth in the place. Henry was emphatic that no central heating be installed in case it dried out the delicate wood. The man was maybe ten years older than him and struck up a conversation. With his dapper appearance and lingering eye contact, Jack swiftly concluded that he was gay. But he was pleasant enough and easy to talk to; he seemed to understand how dull the business could be, especially if you’d been on your own all day. Soon Jack found himself confiding his own dreams and aspirations. The man admired his plans. Then he explained to Jack that he was on a buying trip from New York. He wondered if there was anything special that wasn’t on the shop floor.

The instant Jack showed the mirror to the man, his eyes lit up and Jack could sense he had a real sale. In fact, when he asked Jack to name his price, he didn’t even bother to barter. And Jack had doubled what he imagined it to be worth. The man had written him a cheque for it then and there, even going so far as to have Jack ring a local cab company to come and take it and him away immediately.

At the time Jack had been euphoric, swollen with a feeling of accomplishment, closing the shop early and heading over to the pub to celebrate. It was only later that
his father explained to him that he’d undersold it by thousands. Henry had tried to contact the dealer, tried to get the mirror back by appealing to the man’s better nature. But it was useless. It was clear he’d spotted that Jack was a novice, someone who had no respect for what he was doing. ‘We’re not junk dealers!’ his father had shouted at him in exasperation. ‘These things have real value when you bother to understand them!’

It had formed a rift between them. Full of arrogant, self-centred youth, Jack had spent years silently judging his father, finding him wanting, even vaguely effeminate. And the truth was that Henry was a simple, gentle, unremarkable man. Under Henry’s anger that day was the sudden realisation that his son found him ridiculous.

Now, years later, Jack was still paying penance; trying to prove, by following in his father’s footsteps, that it wasn’t true. Only his father wasn’t paying attention; he was lost in a world all his own, drifting in and out of the slow, creeping dementia of Parkinson’s.

Jack stared at the writing box, its smooth mahogany gleaming in the warm evening light.

It was humbling, so many years later, to see that his entire career to date had been little more than an extended pantomime performance of a ‘good man’. And even more humbling because it was all for his own benefit. No one else was watching or even noticed.

How much of his persona was wrapped up in that idea of himself? That he was ‘good’? And that somehow people
could see that, indeed were observing and quietly commenting on the superiority of his actions and judgement? It was a false front—an elusive, circuitous front, readily endorsed by society, but false just the same. He liked to pretend there was some value in sacrificing his own desires. But in fact it was simply a version of himself that gave him comfort at night, when, alone, he lay awake in the dark, wondering who he was or what he was doing. A mental security blanket to cling to when the terror rose inside him, twisting it round and round, well … at least I’m good.