Fight for me, she said silently, willing him to do something, anything, knowing that this was the moment, crunch time, the fork in the road for their future. It couldn’t end like this. In Hyde Park, holding a sandwich.
Time seemed to stand still. She looked at him, beautiful and unbearably forlorn, and finally she nodded.
Chapter Five
A smile. It wasn’t an expression that Abby was used to seeing on Stephen’s face. Disinterest, frowning distaste or a smug, airy sort of arrogance were his default states, depending on whether he was being asked to deal with the modern world – the media, the general public, lunch orders – or the world contained within the archive.
‘It is rather splendid, isn’t it?’ he said, a nervous hand sneaking up to tug at his collar. Stephen had dressed up for the exhibition’s opening night, and Abby suspected it had sent him into something of a panic. She had never seen him in anything but his comfortable cords-and-cardigan combo, but tonight, he looked like Oscar Wilde. A bottle-green velvet jacket and a purple knitted tie over bright red cords and suede brogues: he clearly fancied himself as a romantic poet or classicist painter. Abby was just happy to see him in a good mood.
‘Yes, I think you’ve done a wonderful job, Stephen,’ she smiled.
‘Oh don’t be so modest, Abigail, it was a team effort,’ said Stephen. Magnanimous, too? thought Abby. What next? Group hugs?
Still, Abby was proud of what she had achieved here. The MINA gallery on the ground floor of the Redstone Tower on London’s buzzing South Bank wasn’t a huge space, but it was modern and glamorous, with glass walls at either end of a whitewashed and stripped-oak room. She knew that Stephen would have preferred a more traditional gallery, with wood panelling and creaky floors, but she had stood her ground; the whole point of the exhibition was to bring these long-forgotten photographs to a wider public. If they’d been hidden away in some fusty establishment in Mayfair, they would have stayed forgotten.
She had quietly persuaded Stephen by bringing him down to the MINA and pointing out that the tower stood on the site of Spanish Wharf, a quay from which clippers and square-riggers used to sail, returning with loads of tea and spices, along with new maps, drawings, artefacts and stories of the outside world. ‘There’s no other location in London – in England, in fact – that better represents the notion of heading into the unknown and bringing back knowledge.’
She had heard him repeat her words dozens of times over the past few months as they had hit the phones to drum up interest among collectors, academics and – she could almost picture Stephen shivering – the press. But it had paid off.
The gallery was filling up already, and it was only 7.30. Men in suits and open-necked shirts, women in short dresses and high-heeled shoes, all laughing, sipping the free wine and gazing at the beautifully framed photographs and artefacts.
‘Is that the man from the Chronicle?’ said Stephen from the corner of his mouth.
‘Not sure,’ said Abby honestly. ‘Lauren’s on the door and I told her to tell me as soon as he got here. But the woman from the Times has arrived, and I got a call twenty minutes ago to say that Vogue is sending a photographer.’
‘Vogue? Really?’ said Stephen, pulling himself a little more upright.
‘I should go and check the guest list,’ said Abby, wanting something to do. She was not particularly comfortable at showy social occasions, or skilled at making chit-chat as Stephen had been encouraging her to do.
‘Go get ’em,’ he kept whispering if they saw anyone lingering more than thirty seconds in front of a photograph.
But while the thought of giving the hard sell to any of these sophisticated-looking guests made Abby feel a bit sick, it hadn’t been necessary. They had sold a dozen prints already, keeping her busy with the orange dot stickers she was using to indicate a sale.
She smiled with satisfaction as she looked around the room. In recent weeks, throwing herself into the organising of the exhibition had been a way of dealing with her sadness. But now the success of Great British Explorers was a genuine source of pleasure.
She had known that the photos had the potential to capture the imagination, but people were really staring at them, leaning in to look at a face or a detail. Usually at these affairs people came for the free bubbly, but today they were actually looking at the pictures, actually enjoying themselves.
‘Abby, Abby,’ said Lauren, running over. ‘He’s here. The guy from the Chronicle. Him over there,’ she said, pointing to the back of a man.
Abby looked around for Stephen, but he had gone to talk to the director of the gallery.
‘Go and introduce yourself,’ encouraged Lauren, giving her friend a gentle nudge.
‘Do I have to?’ whispered Abby, feeling panicky.
‘You’ll thank me for it,’ grinned Lauren, rushing back to her station at the door.
The man was bent over a cabinet reading the letters sent between Captain Scott and his wife, but Abby could see that he was tall, with dark blond hair cut short, and elegantly dressed in dark trousers and a pale blue open-necked shirt. She took a deep breath.
‘Mr Hall?’ she said. He looked up, and she was momentarily taken aback by his good looks.
‘Yes, sorry,’ he replied. ‘I was miles away – the Antarctic, actually.’ He grinned, and his eyes, almost the same blue as his shirt, twinkled mischievously.
‘Abby Gordon,’ she said, offering her hand. ‘We spoke on the phone?’
‘Abby, of course,’ he said, shifting his wine glass to his other hand. ‘Elliot Hall, from the Chronicle, but then you know that, don’t you? Sorry, I seem to be making a terrible first impression.’
I wouldn’t say that, thought Abby, immediately dismissing the thought. He was handsome, in a slick, public-school sort of way, if you liked that sort of thing – and I most definitely do not, she scolded herself.