“That went well,” he said, when we were alone in the gallery.
“Well? That was a disaster.”
“Mm. ‘Stuart Innes, the one who had the three-hundred-thousand-pound painting destroyed.’ I think you need to be forgiving, don’t you? She was a fellow artist, even one with different goals. Sometimes you need a little something to kick you up to the next level.”
We went into the back room.
I said, “Whose idea was this?”
“Ours,” said Paul. He was drinking white wine in the back room with the red-haired woman. “Well, Barry’s mostly. But it needed a good little actress to pull it off, and I found her.” She grinned, modestly: managed to look both abashed and pleased with herself.
“If this doesn’t get you the attention you deserve, beautiful boy,” said Barry, smiling at me, “nothing will. Now you’re important enough to be attacked.”
“The Windermere painting’s ruined,” I pointed out.
Barry glanced at Paul, and they giggled. “It’s already sold, inksplatters and all, for seventy-five thousand pounds,” Barry said. “It’s like I always say, people think they are buying the art, but really, they’re buying the story.”
Paul filled our glasses: “And we owe it all to you,” he said to the woman. “Stuart, Barry, I’d like to propose a toast. To Cassandra.”
“Cassandra,” we repeated, and we drank. This time I did not nurse my drink. I needed it.
Then, as the name was still sinking in, Paul said, “Cassandra, this ridiculously attractive and talented young man is, as I am sure you know, Stuart Innes.”
“I know,” she said. “Actually, we’re very old friends.”
“Do tell,” said Barry.
“Well,” said Cassandra, “twenty years ago, Stuart wrote my name on his maths exercise notebook.”
She looked like the girl in my drawing, yes. Or like the girl in the photographs, all grown-up. Sharp-faced. Intelligent. Assured.
I had never seen her before in my life.
“Hello, Cassandra,” I said. I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
WE WERE IN the wine bar beneath my flat. They serve food there, too. It’s more than just a wine bar.
I found myself talking to her as if she was someone I had known since childhood. And, I reminded myself, she wasn’t. I had only met her that evening. She still had ink stains on her hands.
We had glanced at the menu, ordered the same thing—the vegetarian meze—and when it had arrived, both started with the dolmades, then moved on to the hummus.
“I made you up,” I told her.
It was not the first thing I had said: first we had talked about her community theater, how she had become friends with Paul, his offer to her—a thousand pounds for this evening’s show—and how she had needed the money but mostly said yes to him because it sounded like a fun adventure. Anyway, she said, she couldn’t say no when she heard my name mentioned. She thought it was fate.
That was when I said it. I was scared she would think I was mad, but I said it. “I made you up.”
“No,” she said. “You didn’t. I mean, obviously you didn’t. I’m really here.” Then she said, “Would you like to touch me?”
I looked at her. At her face, and her posture, at her eyes. She was everything I had ever dreamed of in a woman. Everything I had been missing in other women. “Yes,” I said. “Very much.”
“Let’s eat our dinner first,” she said. Then she said, “How long has it been since you were with a woman?”
“I’m not gay,” I protested. “I have girlfriends.”
“I know,” she said. “When was the last one?”
I tried to remember. Was it Brigitte? Or the stylist the ad agency had sent me to Iceland with? I was not certain. “Two years,” I said. “Perhaps three. I just haven’t met the right person yet.”
“You did once,” she said. She opened her handbag then, a big floppy purple thing, pulled out a cardboard folder, opened it, removed a piece of paper, tape-browned at the corners. “See?”
I remembered it. How could I not? It had hung above my bed for years. She was looking around, as if talking to someone beyond the curtain. Cassandra, it said, February 19th, 1985. And it was signed, Stuart Innes. There is something at the same time both embarrassing and heartwarming about seeing your handwriting from when you were fifteen.
“I came back from Canada in ’89,” she said. “My parents’ marriage fell apart out there, and Mum wanted to come home. I wondered about you, what you were doing, so I went to your old address. The house was empty. Windows were broken. It was obvious nobody lived there anymore. They’d knocked down the riding stables already—that made me so sad, I’d loved horses as a girl, obviously, but I walked through the house until I found your bedroom. It was obviously your bedroom, although all the furniture was gone. It still smelled like you. And this was still pinned to the wall. I didn’t think anyone would miss it.”
She smiled.
“Who are you?”
“Cassandra Carlisle. Aged thirty-four. Former actress. Failed playwright. Now running a community theater in Norwood. Drama therapy. Hall for rent. Four plays a year, plus workshops, and a local panto. Who are you, Stuart?”
“You know who I am.” Then, “You know I’ve never met you before, don’t you?”
She nodded. She said, “Poor Stuart. You live just above here, don’t you?”
“Yes. It’s a bit loud sometimes. But it’s handy for the tube. And the rent isn’t painful.”
“Let’s pay the bill, and go upstairs.”
I reached out to touch the back of her hand. “Not yet,” she said, moving her hand away before I could touch her. “We should talk first.”
So we went upstairs.
“I like your flat,” she said. “It looks exactly like the kind of place I imagine you
