happens if we go to the good doughnut place.’
I picked at a loose thread on my trousers. ‘Want to play I Spy?’
‘Are you kidding me?’
I lay back in my seat with a sigh and listened to the rest of the comedy show, then to Garry’s laboured breathing as it slowed and became an occasional snore. The sky had begun to darken, an unfriendly iron grey. It was going to take hours to get back through the traffic. And then my phone rang.
‘Louisa? Are you with Agnes? Her phone seems to be turned off. Can you get her for me?’
I glanced out of the window to where Steven Lipkott’s studio light cast a yellow rectangle over the greying snow below.
‘Uh … she’s just … she’s just trying some things on, Mr Gopnik. Let me run into the changing rooms and I’ll get her to call you straight back.’
The downstairs door was propped open with two pots of paint, as if in the middle of a delivery. I ran up the concrete steps and along the corridor until I reached the studio. There I stopped at the closed door, breathing hard. I gazed down at my phone, then up to the heavens. I did not want to walk in. I did not want irrefutable proof of what had been suggested at Thanksgiving. I pressed my ear against the door, trying to work out if it was safe to knock, feeling furtive, as if it were I who was at fault. But all I could hear was music and muffled conversation.
With greater confidence I knocked. A couple of seconds later, I tried and opened the door. Steven Lipkott and Agnes were standing on the far side of the room with their backs to me, looking at a stack of canvases against the wall. He rested one hand on her shoulder, the other waving a cigarette towards one of the smaller canvases. The room smelt of smoke and turpentine and, faintly, of perfume.
‘Well, why don’t you bring me some other pictures of her?’ he was saying. ‘If you don’t feel it really represents her, then we should –’
‘Louisa!’ Agnes spun around and threw up a palm, as if she were warding me off.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, holding up my phone. ‘It – it’s Mr Gopnik. He’s trying to reach you.’
‘You shouldn’t have come in here! Why you didn’t knock?’ The colour had leached from her face.
‘I did. I’m sorry. I didn’t have any way of …’ It was as I was backing out of the door that I glimpsed the canvas. A child, with blonde hair and wide eyes, half turned as if about to skip away. And with a sudden and inevitable clarity I understood everything: the depression, the endless conversations with her mother, the endless toy and shoe purchases …
Steven stooped to pick it up. ‘Look. Just take that one with you if you want. Have a think about it –’
‘Shut up, Steven!’ He flinched, as if unsure what had prompted her reaction. But that was what finally confirmed it.
‘I’ll meet you downstairs,’ I said, and closed the door quietly behind me.
We drove back to the Upper East Side in silence. Agnes called Mr Gopnik and apologized, she hadn’t realized her phone was off, a design fault – the thing was always shutting down without her doing it – she really needed a different one. Yes, darling. We’re headed back now. Yes, I know …
She did not look at me. In truth, I could barely look at her. My mind was humming, marrying up the events of the last months with what I now understood.
When we finally reached home I walked a few paces behind her through the lobby, but as we got to the lift, she swivelled, stared at the floor, and then turned back towards the door. ‘Okay. Come with me.’
We sat in a dark, gilded hotel bar, the kind where I imagined rich Middle Eastern businessmen entertained their clients and waved away bar bills without looking. It was nearly empty. Agnes and I sat in a dimly lit corner booth, waiting as the server ostentatiously offloaded two vodka tonics and a pot of glossy green olives, trying and failing to catch Agnes’s eye.
‘She’s mine,’ Agnes said, as he walked away.
I took a sip of my drink. It was ferociously strong and I was glad. It felt useful to have something to focus on.
‘My daughter.’ Her voice was tight, oddly furious. ‘She lives with my sister in Poland. She is