Free The House at Midnight by Lucie Whitehouse Page B

eyes. 'It's true then.'
    'What is?'
    'That you should never touch your idols. If I'd known you looked like this without make-up ...'
    'Bugger off.' I kicked him under the quilt.
    He laughed and rolled over so that he was on top of me. He held my arms back above my head and kissed me; I worried for a moment about not having cleaned my teeth. 'I like waking up with you,' he said, pulling back. 'I'll make some coffee. Don't go anywhere.' He put on jeans and a jumper and padded out of the room. I watched his broad back disappear round the door.
    I waited until the sound of his footsteps faded away then got out of bed and went to look more closely at the painting over the mantelpiece. It was a Goldstein, a piece that I had seen exhibited at Patrick's gallery some years before. Lucas, Danny and I travelled together from Oxford to London on the bus to go to the opening. Even though I had picked up a bit of self-confidence at university I remembered feeling gauche that night. We got the tube to Bond Street station and walked down. It was October and chill. The shop windows exhibited models wearing outfits of untouchable sophistication. Lucas was walking fast, excited about the paintings. He knew Goldstein from meeting him at Patrick's and had heard that the show was particularly good.
    Cork Street was dominated by galleries. The majority of the ground-floor windows were plate glass, each embossed with the name of the artist currently on show there. There was traditional English and Islamic art, posters from Japan, some striking modem sculpture that loomed stonily behind the darkened window of the gallery next to Patrick's. Light spilled out from the Heath field on to the pavement. The place was full of metropolitan people, well-dressed men and women in elegant middle age, younger people, some of them artists, I guessed, in ensembles so outlandish they were walking installations in themselves. One woman was wearing a hat with a long green feather that trailed behind her, reaching almost to the floor. She had a quick, sharp way of turning her head and the feather flicked sinuously with her, like a whip. I was acutely conscious of my cheap black trousers and plain jumper.
    Lucas had opened the door for me and ushered me inside. Patrick was near the back talking to a short man in an expensively cut suit, stooping gently to catch what he was saying. He saw Lucas almost immediately, excused himself and came over to swamp him in a bear hug. Lucas was over six foot but Patrick dwarfed him. He shook Danny by the hand and kissed me on the cheek.
    'Good to see you again, Jo,' he said. 'Have a glass of wine and take a look around. It's extraordinary work, even by Goldstein's own standards. I'll be interested to hear what you think of it.' His naturalness put me at my ease at once.
    That evening was like visiting a foreign country and I drank it all in, the paintings, the people, the gallery itself. It was a large white space, very bare. Even the doors looked like part of the walls, without detail and painted white to cause minimum distraction from the exhibits. Goldstein lurked in a corner, smoking incessantly, eyes inscrutable under enormous black brows. Patrick came over to talk to me later in the evening and explained in an undertone that he hated shows and only attended his openings under duress. Lucas told me that, in fact, even though he was American, Goldstein only came to his openings at Patrick's; he never turned up for his New York shows.
    I remembered another conversation from that night. I had been standing a little apart, near the wall at the back, to allow Lucas to speak to Patrick on his own. They were about fifteen feet away. Annoyingly, Danny hadn't seemed to realise why I'd moved; he had been carelessly chatting up a confident girl with a club-cut black fringe but as soon as he saw Patrick talking to Lucas he excused himself from her and joined them.
    The room was hot and busy and I felt as if I had perhaps had one glass of