of money antennae, Rhoda appears and starts to give them the hard sell. Just as I start to drift off elsewhere, Rhoda grabs my arm and pulls me toward her.
‘Sorry, sweetie. Before you go off on your travels again, there’s a guy at the entrance asked me where you were. Said he’s a friend of yours. Didn’t want to come in. Obviously not a freeloader.’
I can’t imagine who it is. Is it Gavin, I wonder? I run a hand through my hair to spruce up his creation and head towards the front of the gallery.
My heart almost stops when I see who it is.
‘Hi, Chloe.’
It’s Mark. I can feel my heart thumping in my chest, but it’s not a pleasurable thumping, it’s an angry thumping.
‘Mark. What are you doing here? I mean, how did you…?’
‘I happened to see an ad in the paper. There can’t be that many Chloe Dixons who are abstract artists, can there.’
He looks uneasy and out of place. He stares at the people milling around us and a suspicious expression flits across his face.
‘What do you want, Mark?’
‘Who are all these people? Are they your friends?’
‘No, they’re not. Again – what do you want?’
‘You didn’t have to leave me like that, did you? That was mean. I had to get the tube back from the airport and then a cab.’
This feels rather unreal. He’s complaining about the expense I caused him? After all this time? Well, at least I’m glad to see he hasn’t changed. I decide I’m not going to take this lying down.
‘Mean? If that was mean, what would you call going on a foreign holiday with a mate and a couple of girls? Leaving me on my own because I didn’t have the money for a holiday.’
I really don’t want to get into this. I’ve been fairly successful about putting the whole thing out of my mind. All the work I’ve been doing helped, but now it looks as if all that effort might be unravelling. I clench my teeth together to supress the tears of rage that threaten to fill my eyes. Mark looks me up and down like he’s seeing me for the first time. It’s a leering look and I don’t think I like it very much. I think he spotted the suspenders through the dress.
‘It was only a week. Five days, really. I didn’t think you’d be so upset.’
I try to think of all the things that my friends had said about Mark at the time. I can’t remember many of the arguments against him now, though I do remember that there were quite a lot of them.
‘Can you imagine how you would have felt if I’d gone on holiday with a girl and a couple of men? You’d have been livid. You’d have gone on about it for the rest of time.’
I glance behind me. I can see Rhoda giving me a curious stare. Of course, she has no idea what Mark looks like, so she wouldn’t know who it was I was talking to.
‘That’s a nice dress you’ve got on. Expensive, was it?’
‘What the hell’s my dress got to do with anything?’
‘Those shoes are new, aren’t they?’
‘My shoes are none of your business.’
What a silly thing to say!
‘Look. I know you were probably upset…’
‘Probably? It burned a bloody hole in me, Mark! I couldn’t believe you would do such a thing. That you could hurt me so much. That you were so selfish! I hated you. I hoped your plane would crash.’
‘You look great, Chloe. Really beautiful. If it was the two girls that was the thing that was upsetting you, there was never anything going on. That was never the plan. They were just friends of Danny’s. I didn’t fancy either of them.’
He looks pleased with this statement. Smug, even.
‘That was never the plan? You didn’t fancy either of them? And what would have happened if you had fancied either of them? Can you imagine what was going through my mind when you were away? All the pain you inflicted? I felt totally betrayed by you.’
‘We just got pissed every night. Swum in the sea in the day. The girls went off on their own most of the time. We just had a couple of meals together, that’s all. I got quite a tan, if you want to know. Listen – wasn’t it my right to have a holiday?’
‘Sure. Sure it was your right, if you were a single guy. But you weren’t. You were in