Page 57 of The Final Act of Juliette Willoughby
I arranged my features into a smile and started toward him, scanning the other guests as I passed. For tonight’s party, as expected, Patrick had assembled exactly the sort of glitzy art crowd I usually went to great lengths to avoid. Giles—famously the cattiest art critic in London—must be loving all this. I could imagine him mentally sharpening his quill already.
“Ma’am, can I offer you a glass of champagne?” a waiter asked as I passed him.
“Don’t mind if I do,” I heard Patrick’s voice announce behind me.
How had he paid for all this? The entire eye-wateringly expensive production—the vintage Krug, the caterers, the set design, and afterward, apparently, an intimate VIP dinner. Not to mention the immaculate, bespoke suit he was sporting.
“To Juliette Willoughby,” Patrick smiled, lifting his glass. Behind him, the lights in the towers of Dubai’s financial district were flickering. The hulking gray arch at its heart—like a giant Lego version of the Arc de Triomphe—loomed over us.
“Has Harry not arrived yet?” I asked, suddenly aware that I hadn’t seen him. Patrick’s smile flickered.
“I dropped him off at the hotel this morning—he’s staying at the same place you are—and I haven’t heard from him since. Texted, called repeatedly, even asked the concierge to slip a note under his door. Nothing,” Patrick said. “I’m just a little bit worried about him, actually.”
“He didn’t seem in a good way when I saw him at Longhurst,” I said.
Patrick nodded grimly.
“I keep meaning to have a word with him about it. Rattling around that house on his own, I wouldn’t be surprised if he has been hitting the bottle a bit hard. Still, it seems a real shame, coming all this way only to miss this. On which note, do make sure to grab one of those.”
Another waiter was now circulating with a tray of flashlights, offering them to intrigued guests. Someone used theirs to illuminate their face from below, to laughs.
“Join us, on a descent into the subconscious,” boomed a recorded voice from a speaker adjacent to the door of the gallery, causing several guests to spill their champagne in shock.
As a line began to form to enter the gallery, with people trying to turn their flashlights on, speculating about what was about to happen, I felt a tap on the shoulder. I turned to find myself face-to-face with Athena Galanis. I was not sure how she had managed it, but she had not aged a day.
“All very impressive, no?” she said. “Patrick told me you were going to be here, but I was not quite sure whether to believe him.”
“He said you would be here too. Listen, Athena, about what happened, what I said...”
She made a gesture with her hand as if to brush the topic off.
“Let’s not talk about that now. Ancient history. It’s your verdict on this painting everyone is waiting to hear. You saw that’s Dave White over there?” Athena gestured with her chin in the direction of a tall, middle-aged man in what I took to be designer sunglasses and a collarless silver leather jacket, standing in the center of a circle of admiring younger people. It sounded like he was halfway through a story about himself.
“I’m not sure I ever met Dave at Cambridge,” said Athena. “But he seems to remember you and Patrick very well. And these days he is a very serious art collector indeed.”
I bet Patrick wishes he had given him a lift back from Longhurst now, I thought to myself.
Dave White’s hair looked a lot darker than I remembered it. His chin looked stronger, also.
“Has he had...?” I asked.
“So much work,” confided Athena.
As we surveyed the line, she gave me a brief rundown of everyone else. The buyers. The advisors. Who already owned several Kahlos. Who had a villa with wall space they needed to fill. Who was actually surprisingly informed about art, despite what appearances might suggest.
“It’s basically everyone who is anyone on the Dubai art-buying scene, is what you’re telling me,” I said.
“Dubai? More like the whole Middle East. There are people who’ve flown in from Qatar to be here. Bahrain. Riyadh. Jeddah.”
Watching Patrick working the crowd, welcoming people, making them feel noticed, a little compliment for everyone, as happy as I had ever seen him, I could not help feeling proud. He had slogged long enough to get here, weathered enough setbacks. The disappointment of never quite achieving what everyone had predicted for him. The grind of constant precarity. The way it tells on you, year after year, having to make decisions constantly, all of them with a price tag attached, other people’s livelihoods as well as your own depending on your making the right call, never quite knowing if there is even a right call to make. And now here he was, on top of his world.
And then Harry Willoughby shambled in.
He had immediately located a glass of champagne and was holding it at a slightly odd angle, as if he couldn’t quite work out how to drink it.
“If you’ll excuse me for a second, Athena,” I said, and spotted Patrick exiting another conversation simultaneously.
He and I got to Harry at exactly the same moment. Unfortunately, so did Giles.
