We step into the spacious gallery. I always hated galleries and could never tell Art, but they give me an instant migraine, like shopping malls and churches. It’s the pressure of a building with intent. My mother takes two glasses of wine off a tray and hands me one. I drink half of it. I can feel the gin inside me, looking for a friend. It finds the wine. They hit it off. My head is a party. I look around at all the people and for a second I am happily lost – and then I feel the darkness of their clothes and the situation. It is inevitable I will see Art – the one my soul dreads and seeks (there’s always one at any given time) – any second, even if I try to talk to my mother, even if I pretend to smile at a stranger, even if I look for the bar or the toilet when I do not want the bar or the toilet or maybe I do want the toilet, even if—

Now. Look. There.

STILL

LIFE

I take him in – hunched and shaven-headed, the warlock he always was. And, next to him: her. Perched on a stool, pinching the stem of a glass of red, she is like a buzzard in a distant tree – elegant, solid, rare, doubted-at-first, and then: THERE.

She is smaller than she looks on my phone.

I take a moment, on my own, bent over with my hands on the top of my knees. I breathe deeply. A few yogic lion breaths.

My mother says, ‘There’s Art!’

I stand up. Straighten myself.

‘Where? Oh, yes. There he is.’

‘Let’s go over.’

Art jumps up as we approach. ‘Hello! Gosh, I didn’t think you’d come! It’s so great that you’ve come!’

We should not have come. I look down at the floor. Then I realise I do not want Suzy seeing me looking at the floor in case she reads too much into it, so I look at her. Except I cannot look at her. Especially not when she is looking at me so … vibrantly. I look down again.

‘Your hair!’ says Art. ‘It looks great.’

‘It does not.’

‘It doesn’t,’ says my mother. ‘Well, look at this!’

Art says: ‘Jenny, Carmen, Suzanne. Suzanne, Carmen, Jenny.’

My mother is straight in there with the double kisses. I look at Suzy.

Art says: ‘Suzanne has been dying to meet you.’

Suzy says: ‘He talks about you all the time.’