Maestra (35 page)

EPILOGUE

INSIDE

It was the first big night of the Biennale, nearly a year since I’d left Paris. The sky above San Giorgio Maggiore was an improbable pink and blue; everyone said that it looked like a Tiepolo ceiling, as everyone always does in Venice. A supple line of Rivas bobbed by the island’s jetty, waiting to ferry a squawking gaggle of dealers and art-whores across the lagoon. Up towards Zattere, I could see the
Mandarin
tucked between two brushed-carbon leviathans. Their bulks squatted over the white Massari church, a surrealist installation in themselves. Steve would have to get a bigger boat if he wanted to keep up. I was to dine with him later. I wouldn’t let him take me to Harry’s; we’d have drinks on the perfect floating terrace at the Gritti, then La Madonna in San Polo for sea urchin risotto whether he liked it or not. I had three Quinn casts in mind for the garden of his new London house, magnified renderings of embryonic babies, curled in granite like mysterious sea creatures. Actually rather pretty, for once. But first there was the Johnson Chang party at the Bauer, for the Hong Kong gallerists, and I thought I’d have time to look in at the Prada Foundation too, before I met up with Steve. I held out my hand for the water taxi driver to grip and stepped neatly down into the boat, followed by a posse of stylists and photographers who were covering the shows for
Vanity Fair
. I made vague conversation with Mario Testino’s buyer on the short crossing, but really I just wanted to take great heady gulps of the view.

The Chang party was strictly invite-only; I had my exquisite scroll of antique Chinese parchment in my floppy Saint Laurent clutch. A couple of paps and tourists were hanging around to gawp. I skirted them and walked up to the greeter. As she checked me off on the clipboard I looked beyond her to the long, bronze marble lobby of the hotel, opening onto the delicate Byzantine stonework of the terrace. Ranks of waiters with trays of the inevitable Bellinis stood between incongruous lumps of Shanghai street art.

‘Are you going in?’

‘Lorenzo!
Ciao, bello.
I wondered where I’d find you.’

Lorenzo represented the Other Place in Milan. He was Venetian, with the tawny hair and pale eyes of the lagoons. One of his great-grandmothers had famously given Byron the clap, or so he’d told me while I was fucking him in Kiev.

‘You know Rupert, of course?’

Rupert. Rounder and redder than ever, the perennial Englishman abroad in a crumpled linen suit and a jaunty Lock Panama. I looked him straight in the face.

‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t believe we’ve met.’

‘Elisabeth Teerlinc.’ Lorenzo had already been whirled inside. We stood at the centre of a sudden caesura in the crowd.

He offered his hand, sweaty naturally. I scanned his eyes, searching for some flicker of recognition, but there was nothing. How could there be? This woman in her cobalt suede Celine shift, her impeccable pumps, existed in another dimension from Judith Rashleigh. One should never notice the servants. I hadn’t even bothered to change my hair in the end.

My hand was still in his. I let it rest there.

‘And you’re with?’

‘I have my own gallery. Gentileschi. I have a space in Dorsoduro.’

‘Ah. Gentileschi. Of course.’

I extracted my hand and fished in my purse for a card.

‘You should come to our opening tomorrow. I’m showing a group of Balkan artists. Quite amusing.’

‘I’d love to.’ He was leering at me. Rupert. Like he had a hope.

‘Are you coming in – Lorenzo’s waiting?’

His skin flushed a deeper red under the claret tan.

‘No, er, NFI actually.’

No fucking invite. Oh Rupert.

‘That’s a pity.’

‘Too many bodies.’

‘Yes. Quite the crush. Well, see you tomorrow, Rupert.’

I offered him my cheek, and then turned my back as the greeter lifted the velvet rope. I felt his eyes on me as I walked tall through the bodies and out into the Venice twilight. The lapis lazuli water shone at my feet. I took a glass and stood alone at the parapet, and looked at the waves, and they lifted my heart.

T
O
B
E
C
ONTINUED

First published in Great Britain in 2016 by Zaffre Publishing

This ebook edition published in 2016 by

Zaffre Publishing

80-81 Wimpole St, London, W1G 9RE

www.zaffrebooks.co.uk

Copyright © L.S. Hilton, 2016

The moral right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-7857-6002-0

Hardback ISBN: 978-1-7857-6003-7

This ebook was produced by IDSUK (Data Connection) Ltd

Zaffre Publishing is an imprint of Bonnier Publishing Fiction, a Bonnier Publishing company

www.bonnierpublishingfiction.co.uk

www.bonnierpublishing.co.uk