She tugged her hat down over her ears and tightened her scarf around her neck, feeling the first drops of sleet that were trying to be something more. It was still only November but they were into a hard winter already, with a wet, windy autumn succeeded by a succession of hoar frosts, and there were already reports of first snows falling in the countryside. The canals were beginning to look ever more sluggish and thick as the temperatures stayed low, the trees bare-armed against the northerly winds, and she knew it wouldn’t be long before the sea ice crept through the city too, like mercury bleeding through veins.
She wheeled around the myriad narrow streets, ringing her bell authoritatively at anyone stepping into her path – she had right of way and she would use it – gliding past the handsome black-bricked townhouses whose large square windows still glowed with breakfasting lights, people moving within them like puppet vignettes. Like the tourists, she couldn’t help but glance in. It was one of the city’s quirks that its inhabitants never drew their curtains, living their lives in plain, unabashed view of the neighbours, and this had been one of the hardest things for her to adjust to when she had first come back here. The instinct to scurry and hide, to tunnel down for safety, had become so ingrained that it had felt provocative and downright perverse to just . . . live freely and openly. In plain view. After five years here, she still couldn’t do it.
Her studio was only an eight-minute commute from Jasper’s kindergarten and she hopped off the bike with easy grace, triple-locking it securely through the back wheel and rear triangle against the stands opposite. This was her third bike already this year, and she now approached bike security like Bear Grylls on a picnic.
‘Lee!’ her assistant Bart said with evident relief when she tumbled through the door a few minutes later, shaking out her long, autumn-blonde hair as she pulled off her slouchy black woolly hat. Jasper had chosen it for her for Mother’s Day last year (aided by his overindulgent godfather, Noah) and now she refused to wear any other. It had little black cat ears on it and often prompted amused looks from the tourists as she cycled past, but she couldn’t care less; besides, it was hardly the most eccentric artistic expression in this city. ‘It’s the gallery,’ he said, the phone in his hand, his palm blocking the receiver. ‘Wondering if you’ve reconsidered on the guest list? They’re getting a lot of calls from management agents; the interest is there, Lee—’
‘We’ve already discussed this. It’s still no,’ she said in brusque Dutch – she made a point of only speaking English with Jasper, although most of the city was bilingual anyway and sometimes they all drifted into a form of ‘Dutlish’ (sentences in half-English, half Dutch) without even noticing. She shrugged off her thick dark-green-and-black tartan coat and unwound the navy scarf that was double-wrapped around her neck.
‘But the exposure would be off the scale—’
‘Yes, but for all the wrong reasons. I already told you, I don’t want a bunch of C-list celebrities piggybacking the show just to get their faces in the social pages and further their careers. It goes against everything this exhibition is about – authenticity, resilience, truth.’
Bart gave one of his dramatic groans and she looked back at him, tall and rangy with bulging blue eyes behind round-rimmed glasses, once-red hair that had been bleached to the colour of pale swede. She hung up her coat on the hook. They argued the way most people chatted; sometimes she wondered if he even remembered she was technically the boss. ‘I know that, but don’t you think it could all come off as a little . . . dry? Those images are so powerful, nothing’s going to dilute the message. It wouldn’t undermine what you’re trying to say just because there’s a few celebs in pretty dresses milling about.’
She pinned him with a withering stare. ‘Bart, please don’t be suggesting that people can only understand the horrors of assault and battery if Helena Christensen stands beside the pictures of it.’
‘I’m not saying that,’ he protested. ‘I’m suggesting the chances of people getting to know they have an opportunity to understand the horrors of violence will be markedly increased if someone like Helena can bring a spotlight to it.’
She shook her head wearily. ‘So we can’t process grit without glamour? Is war going to need celebrity endorsement too? What the hell is wrong with this society? Don’t you see what’s happening to us? If even war can be trivialized, human suffering diminished . . .’ Talent she respected, but vacuous celebrity, fame for fame’s sake, made her shake with frustration.
‘Lee, you know I admire your principles, but we’ll be suffering too if we can’t pay our bills and afford to eat. You do actually need to sell the images too, as well as exhibit them.’
She stared back at him.
‘A few famous faces would just help with word of mouth and raising the show’s profile. It’s about getting punters through the door, not cheapening your message.’
‘You just said the interest’s already there.’
‘Ugh.’ He rolled his eyes as she tripped him up with his own words.
‘The answer’s no, Bart.’ As far as she was concerned, the conversation was over. She walked over to the coffee machine and pressed the buttons with practised familiarity, closing her eyes as she waited for the tiny cup to fill, trying to ignore the fatigue that feathered her consciousness after another night of only four hours’ sleep. She could only ever sleep in short blocks of oblivion before one horror or another reached out from the past and crept into her dreams.
‘It’s a maybe. I’ll call you back,’ she heard Bart murmur into the phone.
She pretended she hadn’t heard, too tired to take him to task further. She always needed a double dose of caffeine before her day could begin. Even the strongest coffee she had been able to find here couldn’t give her the hit she was used to; she’d spent too many years drinking coffee that could have powered tanks to scale back to the mild blandness of the domestic stuff.
She downed the coffee in a single gulp, pressing the back of her hand to her mouth for a moment, as though feeling her life force gather, before turning back to the room. It was a vast space, with thick timbered beams and a concrete floor. Light poured in through the south-facing windows, creating pools of brightness when the skies were clear. Not today, though. The sky was thick with tumbling clouds, muffling the light; it was like peering through a gauze veil, everything softened and diffused.
Bart walked over to her officiously. ‘While I remember, I’ve booked the car to collect you for the opening night from your place at eight.’
‘Okay.’
‘And ditto for the Hot dinner two weeks Friday.’
‘Okay,’ she mumbled.
‘. . . Are you even listening?’
She was looking around flatly at the space, the centre of her working life now, so different from the landscapes she used to work in. A charcoal linen sofa and a rustic wooden coffee table were set by the far wall and a bolt of black canvas was draped from an overhead arm in the middle of the space, creating a mobile backdrop; a three-legged bar stool was set in the centre. Everything was light, bright, minimal – architect friends called it ‘urban’, but urban to her was rubble, a sinkhole and twisted metal.