Free A Matter of Marriage by Lesley Jorgensen Page B

didn’t go back in at all.
    â€”
    A HAND LANDED on Rohimun’s neck, squeezing the flesh, then pinching the little hairs on her nape.
    â€œ
Love.
”
    She froze, made herself keep looking at the Raphael. In a light summer sky, ravens circled. Faded by time of course. They would have been much darker, more dramatically contrasting, when freshly painted.
    â€œGive me your purse,” said Simon. “That’s a bloody awful hairdo. You could clean the toilet with it.”
    She turned toward him as he took hold of her handbag. His eyes were bright and his top lip, near the nose, was pinkish and glistening. She felt a surge of disgust. He must have done a few lines just now, in the cloakroom or the toilet, having stashed the rest in her purse for later.
Her
purse. Without thinking, she pulled back viciously on the straps of her handbag and stepped away from him.
    â€œYou fuckin’
bitch
,” he shouted, making her jump, his face suddenly much closer to hers, dark red and screwed up, like a shrunken, concentrated version of himself.
    He put his other hand on the bag as well and hauled her toward him. Her soft sandals struggled for grip on the floor, and Rohimun twisted away. Then the strap broke, and she lost her balance and would have fallen but for Simon’s arms yanking her against him and spinning her around in some kind of monstrous waltz.
    She could hear the rustle and shift of attention in the room, and with a surge of shame leaned into Simon. His head bent down as if to whisper endearments, pale blue eyes focused on hers. Then he let go of her and pushed her hard with the heel of his hand on her sternum. She staggered sideways and came up against a man’s shirtfront. He grasped her forearms, held her up, and she looked up into his face. Tariq.
    Gasps and smothered laughter ran around the room, along with a comment about it being a bit early for a domestic.
    Simon’s voice, shrill with need and anger and self-justification, rose above it all. “She’s pissed!”
    Baiyya, big brother, clean-shaven and in a dinner jacket as she’d never seen him, while she was dishevelled and still reeling from Simon’s pseudo-embrace. Tariq turned his gaze away from her and toward Simon. She felt sick to her stomach. After almost two years away, Tariq comes back now? For this?
    Slowly and awkwardly she sank down, until one knee, then the other, was on the checkered marble floor. She stared at the two men. Such stillness, with Simon standing in front of the avid exhibition-goers, and her beautiful, beardless brother to one side of him, an arm outstretched toward her, though his eyes were turned away. For one strange second she was outside of it all and could see their trio with her painter’s eye: a tableau, classically balanced, with all the whirling color and activity of the red-carpeted arrivals visible behind them.
    â€”
    T HE BUZZ OF the exhibition crowd, audible to Richard through the open doors, suddenly quieted then was broken by an angry shout, followed by the rising murmur of people with something to talk about.
    â€œOh, man,” said the guard. He looked at his half-finished cigarette, then dropped it onto the flagstones and walked quickly toward the main doors.
    Richard followed, telling himself that another hour of the opening was still preferable to spending all Saturday placating Deirdre. Once inside, the guard pushed without hesitation through a wall of backs. Richard stopped near the door, keeping the guard in sight. From where he was, he could see over people’s heads to the two men that the crowd had circled.
    An Asian man in a dinner suit, his face set and angry and as impossibly handsome as a magazine model’s, was standing over a young woman on the floor. She sat awkwardly on one hip, an orange and pink sari piled around her, breathing quickly, her soft features blank and slack-looking. One hand gripped a thick braid that hung over her shoulder,