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Three twenty.
The speed matters.
Hesitation hints at a limit. An instant response tells the other bidder I crossed their number without noticing it. Blasé.
The woman on the telephone desk listens.
Her expression gives me the answer before she lowers the receiver.
Finished.
“At three hundred and twenty thousand pounds with the gentleman at the back.”
Gentleman.
That’s kind of her.
The hammer falls.
“Sold. Paddle one hundred and eighteen.”
A ripple of polite applause moves through the room.
I don’t react, don’t even smile. Inside, I’m already imagining the portrait on the wall opposite Bryce’s side of the bed.
Not that Bryce has a side of my bed. Of course he doesn’t. He just happens to sleep in the same place whenever he’s there.
Which is most nights.
Ok, every night.
The auctioneer moves on, and the game is well and truly in play. The Gilded Table now has another public acquisition, right here, for the onlookers. They know I haven’t entered the room solely to pursue Alice. Job done.
The sale continues.
Martin Foster wins a large abstract at four hundred and eighty thousand, proving he still has something to compensate for. Dalloway leaves the room shortly afterwards, her twisted metal secured and her evening apparently complete.
A gallery representative drops out of a mixed-media lot at seven hundred thousand, exactly as Bryce predicted.
We were both wrong about Helena Mercer, though.
She hasn’t bid once. Not even the ones we had her starred as definitely.
She’s sitting near the centre aisle with her adviser beside her. Her catalogue remains closed on her lap, and they aren’t exchanging a word.
Stillness.
Complete fucking stillness.
Most observers would assume she hasn’t found anything she wants yet, but I know better. I’m counting on it.
Mercer has seen Alice’s triptych four times now.
She bought Giovanni Vescari’s painting, and that wasn’t purely because she liked the artist’s face. I’m sure that was just a bonus, since he’s hot as fuck.
She bought it because the work spoke to the same part of her that Alice’s will.
Collapse. Constraint. A life splitting open. Divorce.
