the traffic to swerve around them, did they? The self-absorption was incredible, the desire for a good selfie overriding even personal safety. Was this a new mutation in human behaviour, she wondered, was it where the human race was heading – the glorification of the ego, the adoration of the ‘I’ transcending everything else? Not for the first time, she figured peace had a lot to answer for. From what she had seen, it bred insularity, selfishness, contempt for community . . .
She tugged her hat down over her ears and tightened her scarf around her neck, feeling the first drops of sleet that were trying to be something more. It was still only November but they were into a hard winter already, with a wet, windy autumn succeeded by a succession of hoar frosts, and there were already reports of first snows falling in the countryside. The canals were beginning to look ever more sluggish and thick as the temperatures stayed low, the trees bare-armed against the northerly winds, and she knew it wouldn’t be long before the sea ice crept through the city too, like mercury bleeding through veins.
She wheeled around the myriad narrow streets, ringing her bell authoritatively at anyone stepping into her path – she had right of way and she would use it – gliding past the handsome black-bricked townhouses whose large square windows still glowed with breakfasting lights, people moving within them like puppet vignettes. Like the tourists, she couldn’t help but glance in. It was one of the city’s quirks that its inhabitants never drew their curtains, living their lives in plain, unabashed view of the neighbours, and this had been one of the hardest things for her to adjust to when she had first come back here. The instinct to scurry and hide, to tunnel down for safety, had become so ingrained that it had felt provocative and downright perverse to just . . . live freely and openly. In plain view. After five years here, she still couldn’t do it.
Her studio was only an eight-minute commute from Jasper’s kindergarten and she hopped off the bike with easy grace, triple-locking it securely through the back wheel and rear triangle against the stands opposite. This was her third bike already this year, and she now approached bike security like Bear Grylls on a picnic.
‘Lee!’ her assistant Bart said with evident relief when she tumbled through the door a few minutes later, shaking out her long, autumn-blonde hair as she pulled off her slouchy black woolly hat. Jasper had chosen it for her for Mother’s Day last year (aided by his overindulgent godfather, Noah) and now she refused to wear any other. It had little black cat ears on it and often prompted amused looks from the tourists as she cycled past, but she couldn’t care less; besides, it was hardly the most eccentric artistic expression in this city. ‘It’s the gallery,’ he said, the phone in his hand, his palm blocking the receiver. ‘Wondering if you’ve reconsidered on the guest list? They’re getting a lot of calls from management agents; the interest is there, Lee—’
‘We’ve already discussed this. It’s still no,’ she said in brusque Dutch – she made a point of only speaking English with Jasper, although most of the city was bilingual anyway and sometimes they all drifted into a form of ‘Dutlish’ (sentences in half-English, half Dutch) without even noticing. She shrugged off her thick dark-green-and-black tartan coat and unwound the navy scarf that was double-wrapped around her neck.
‘But the exposure would be off the scale—’
‘Yes, but for all the wrong reasons. I already told you, I don’t want a bunch of C-list celebrities piggybacking the show just to get their faces in the social pages and further their careers. It goes against everything this exhibition is about – authenticity, resilience, truth.’
Bart gave one of his dramatic groans and she looked back at him, tall and rangy with bulging blue eyes behind round-rimmed glasses, once-red hair that had been bleached to the colour of pale swede. She hung up her coat on the hook. They argued the way most people chatted; sometimes she wondered if he even remembered she was technically the boss. ‘I know that, but don’t you think it could all come off as a little . . . dry? Those images are so powerful, nothing’s going to dilute the message. It wouldn’t undermine what you’re trying to say just because there’s a few celebs in pretty dresses