‘I got your rework,’ she says, her expression unreadable. She must get an inordinate amount of botox to keep her face that still.

‘Yes,’ I say, swallowing hard.

‘It was good. Much better,’ she says.

My shoulders soften. Though why do I feel like she’s annoyed?

‘But my question,’ she says, leaning forward just an inch, ‘is why didn’t you do it that way to begin with?’

Oh.

‘I was trying to fit in with what the magazine’s demographic might want. Trying to match the tone of the section.’

She snorts.

Clearly the wrong answer.

‘Harper, how many applications do you think we got for your job?’ Her words fire out like irritated bullets.

‘A lot?’ I suggest.

‘One hundred and seventy-six.’

‘Oh,’ I say. Why is she asking me this? Is she about to point out how replaceable I am?

‘And of those about twenty-two were strong,’ she continues. ‘We interviewed three. And do you know why you were one of those three?’

‘Because I had art knowledge?’ I suggest, thinking of my interview questions.

‘Yes,’ she says slowly. ‘That was one thing you had: real-life art knowledge. Not the sort you get from university, but the sort that people understand. That makes someone want to go to an art gallery. But that’s not what I’m talking about. You had something else too. Something not everybody has. Something that can’t be taught.’

I look at her, blank. I want to say the right thing but I have no idea what she’s talking about.

‘Balls, Harper. You had balls. Fire. I knew that the moment I read your piece “Why I hate John Lennon”.’

Oh. The article I wrote about my breakup with Harrison. About how I’d lost myself and he’d ruined the Beatles for me forever. The article that started all of this.

‘That’s why we hired you, Harper. You’re interesting. And you’re accessible. So why do you keep trying to pretend you’re not?’

I hold in a smile because I don’t want to look smug but Hyacinth just complimented me.

‘Understood,’ I say.

‘There’s another show I’d like you to cover. It’s on tonight at Galerie Nathalie Obadia. I’ll forward you the invite.’

‘Great, thank you, Hyacinth,’ I say.

‘That’s it.’ She smiles.

‘Thank you,’ I say again, standing up. And then I head back out of her office and over to my desk.

Wesley smirks as I sit down. ‘Everything okay?’ he asks.

‘Great,’ I say with a fuck-you smile. ‘She just wanted to tell me how much she loved my new article.’

Chapitre douze

I stare at the triptych: three watercolours separated by two inches of stark, unblemished wall. Each is blue at the base for water, with trees or plants of differing proportions emerging with strokes of green, brown and fuchsia. Above them sits an orange and black all-seeing eye of a sun, in a grey and cloudy sky. The blue of the water drips upwards, while the trees and sun melt downwards, as though the canvases were rotated during production. I pull out my phone, balance it over the flyer I was given when I walked in and make a note: The artist’s representation of a cyclical and symbiotic relationship between earth and plants, air and sky, humans and planet, are deftly represented by…