Free Waking Broken by Huw Thomas

‘I’m not sure I can bring a lot to the party but that’s not really my role, is it?’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘Well, like you say, it’s your party. My job is to make sure everyone comes to the party.’
    Cash snorted. She was unsure whether the sound was an expression of contempt or smothered humour. ‘Fine. That’s obvious. But why you? What made that woman decide to send you?’
    Rebecca bit back on a smile. She wondered what Paul Cash thought of Claire Hamilton. And vice versa. And had he seduced her? Somehow she doubted it. The artist might have a rake’s reputation but from what she remembered of the conquests he had painted they were all extremely nubile, if not always conventionally attractive. La belle dame Hamilton did not fit into either category.
    She shrugged. ‘I imagine “that woman” thought I was probably the best qualified person to send.’
    ‘What makes you say that?’
    Rebecca turned to face Cash again. ‘I’m probably the closest thing they’ve got to someone with the right experience for your party. We don’t have any artists in the office… well, none I’m aware of. But my uncle was a photographer, quite well known. So, in the mind of someone working in the PR world that probably counts as an artistic background. And, before I worked for Claire Hamilton, I studied garden design.’
    She shrugged. ‘It’s a long way from what you’re planning, I realise, but I guess that makes me the closest thing to an arboricultural artist in the office… or artistic arboriculturist if you prefer.’
    Cash’s expression was hard to read. ‘Who was your uncle?’
    ‘VJ Shah.’
    ‘Really?’ His eyebrows lifted just a fraction. Cash fell silent for a moment, his pale gaze weighing her up.
    Rebecca watched his face without comment, waiting for the outcome of whatever calculations were going on behind the artist’s eyes. She had guessed Cash would know her uncle’s name. Vikash Jai Shah had been her father’s elder brother. Born in Fiji, Vikash had come to England as a young boy just after the Second World War. As a teenager, while Rebecca’s father Mahesh worked in the family grocery store, the young Vikash somehow persuaded his parents to let him enrol at the local art college. Five years later his portraits were appearing in magazines worldwide, from The National Geographic to Vogue and Rolling Stone.
    It was the money made by VJ, as he started calling himself, which had put his younger brother through university. It was thanks to her uncle that Rebecca’s father had become a respected GP rather than spend his life stacking shelves and selling cheap food to customers who looked down on him as just another foreign shopkeeper. Rebecca had always been very fond of her Uncle VJ, as well as extremely grateful for everything he had done for the family. Particularly as if Vikash had not made it possible for his little brother to go university, her father would never have met her mother and then there would have been no Rebecca.
    It had been a genuine family tragedy when VJ died in a car crash in the south of France five years ago. He was driving his latest sports car too fast around the hairpins of the Cote d’Azur after a lengthy session photographing another Hollywood star. The only consolation for the family was that VJ died as he had lived: enjoying himself. Something Rebecca imagined Paul Cash could relate to.
    ‘That’s all very well.’ Cash gave an unimpressed sniff. ‘Your uncle was a good man with a camera. But do you really think his abilities qualify you to understand what we’re doing?’
    ‘No. But I think that’s completely irrelevant.’
    ‘What?’ Cash sounded irritated. This time he turned away from her and Rebecca’s heart sank a touch. He looked bored with the conversation but she decided to forge on.
    ‘Why should I be qualified in what you’re doing?’ She glanced at the third person in the room. Ron Meredith had hardly said a word except to say hello