She had to come. He hadn’t touched her or had a real conversation with her in twenty-six days, and he’d been off his head with missing her for every one of them. The only thing that distracted him from thinking about her was painting, so he’d been painting as much as possible. When his arm grew heavy and his vision began to blur with fatigue, he dropped into unconsciousness on the couch in the studio. He couldn’t sleep in his bed or eat in his kitchen. There were too many memories.
He painted, and he planned. With his parents’ help—his father’s knowledge of the art world combined with his mother’s legendary ability to browbeat people into submission—he’d nearly pulled together his first art show. Mother was handling the publicity, and she’d promised the space would be filled with interested buyers on Friday evening. God only knew who she’d invited. Dreadful people, no doubt.
It didn’t matter. So long as Cath made an appearance, Mother could fill the room with her friends from the club or her charity partners or every member of Winston’s polo team. Though it would be a boon if the people she invited brought their checkbooks. He’d taken out a loan against the building in Greenwich to cover the rent on this warehouse space. He had a mortgage to pay now.
“I saw her on that variety program last night,” Richard said.
“Me, too.” His lips wanted to smile, remembering Cath in her pink hand-knit cowboy hat, a tiny knit bikini patterned after the Union Jack, and a pair of red knitted high-heeled boots. She’d been sassy and beautiful, and she’d had the popular television presenter eating out of her hand for the entire ten minutes the interview had lasted.
The first time he’d heard her on the radio a few weeks earlier, it had been an accident. He’d flipped it on while making tea in the kitchen, hoping to find a way to get out of his own head. Instead, he’d heard her voice over the airwaves. For a moment, he’d thought himself delusional, and it hadn’t surprised him in the least. It had been ages since he’d slept. But no, it had been a real program—they’d called the segment “Knitting in the Bedroom”—and Cath had spoken at length about sex, love, and knitting, making a passionate argument that for all its practicality, knitwear had a saucy side. She was witty and sexy on the air, and they’d had her back on for a second time a week later.
It was when the Daily Mail ran a large, full-color picture of her in the cowboy getup that Cath had really begun to attract attention. For the photo, they’d slung pistols from holsters cinched low on her hips. Assistant Curator Cath Talarico of the Victoria and Albert Museum takes aim at stereotypes about knitters.
The photo taught him two things about Cath. First, she was a survivor. He’d stomped on her spirit, trying to force her into a mold in the hope of winning his family’s approval. She’d come out shooting.
Second, she had a new tattoo. The formerly empty canvas of the left side of her stomach was now filled with an urban skyline, jagged and post-apocalyptic. He’d been able to make it out quite clearly, the word CITY in crimson centered beneath the buildings. And below that, a small, anatomically correct human heart.
Her heart, he thought.
“It’s working, you know,” his father added. “Her campaign, I mean. The exhibit will be a smashing success.” He hesitated. “I did try to make the donation.”
“Did you?”
“Christopher phoned me back and said they weren’t in a position to take it.”
“She didn’t want it.”
“No. I assume she decided she’d rather get the money on her own terms.”
“That is how she prefers to operate.”
At the bus stop, when she’d first told him her story, the unrelenting misery of it had blasted him speechless. To the extent he’d been able to think at all, he’d thought it meant he didn’t know her. But he’d been wrong. He knew her inside out. It was his own character he’d been too blind to see properly.
Now he had his head screwed on straight. Whatever she said, however many times she told herself he was a mistake, she was wrong. She’d tattooed City’s name onto her body, not his. He wasn’t City. Not anymore.
“Shall we hang the new ones?” his father asked. “The paint is dry, I think.”
They walked over to the false wall he’d had erected directly in front of the building’s entrance—the first thing people would see when they came into the room. It was painted a stark, bright white, with five large Copperplate numerals in black. One for each tattoo.
Imagining how it would look in two days’ time, he allowed himself to hope. He smiled as he said, “Not yet.”
She loved him. He would show her.
Chapter Nineteen
Sharing dumplings with Judith and Christopher was weird, but taking a walk with them afterward was even weirder.
When Christopher had dropped by the office and insisted they accompany him to dinner, Cath had wanted to say no. Exhausted from juggling public appearances on top of the crazy final-week-before-the-exhibit-opens workload, the last thing she needed was to have to spend the evening in the company of her boss and her boss’s boss.
Sadly, unwritten employment etiquette said that when the big kahuna invited you to dinner to celebrate your smashingly successful guerrilla PR campaign, you had to go. So she’d gone, and now here she was, strolling the artsy streets of Shoreditch with the voluble and opinionated Christopher on one arm and the prickly, offbeat Judith on the other. She played Monkey in the Middle and wondered how soon she could politely excuse herself and go home.
“Where are you taking us?” Christopher asked Judith. They’d left Hoxton Street behind several minutes ago, and the neighborhood was getting more run-down and eclectic, industrial spaces mixing with tattoo parlors and art galleries and tiny restaurants that smelled of curry powder and emitted clouds of dishwasher steam.
“There’s an opening around here some
where tonight. I thought we could check it out.”
Cath tried very hard to keep her sigh internal, but some of it might have escaped. Judith’s knowledge of art openings was bizarre and encyclopedic. They were like church for her, both tedious and mandatory. On Monday mornings at work, she often reported back on the terrible food and the talentless artists, relishing her own disdain.