‘I get it.’
‘You know, it looks like that Adrian guy’s telling the truth? He’d have run the story by now if he didn’t want anyone to beat him to it, don’t you think?’
Kelsey didn’t like to say she wasn’t at all sure so she tried to agree and sound as positive as she could for Jonathan’s sake.
‘So… if you can, I just wanna forget all about it?’ he said, a note of entreaty in his voice. ‘Can you forgive me for flying off the handle like that and then taking so long hurting over it all?’
‘Of course I can. I already did.’
‘No more secrets?’ he said.
‘No more secrets, I promise.’ She rummaged for a tissue in her pocket. ‘Are you… I mean, will youpleasecome to the exhibition launch next month?’
‘I wouldn’t miss it for the world.’
Just like that, Kelsey could exhale the breath she’d held since Christmas and she danced in the frosty market place in the shadow of the fountain for all of Stratford to see.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
‘Forgive me, Valentine. If hearty sorrow
Be a sufficient ransom for offence,
I tender’t here. I do as truly suffer
As e’er I did commit’
(The Two Gentlemen of Verona)
All across the broad expanse of the theatre gardens leading to the marina the grass was muddy after weeks of frosty nights and rainy afternoons. In the flowerbeds the first snowdrops and narcissi drooped their heads, mirroring the white winter sky over Kelsey’s barge. Valentine’s Day had come at last.
Mirren had been sure to lock the doors leading to her little living area at the back of the boat and Kelsey had given the exhibition one last assessing look-over. She checked one last time that her phone was charged up and the credit card processing app was installed on it correctly – on the off chance of any launch-day buyers.
All the framed photographs were marked with price stickers, and Mirren had been given a sheet of little red dot stickers to place in the top corner of anything that sold. Kelsey had proudly put out the A-frame – once a sign advertising the Norma Arden Guided Tours Agency and now freshly painted and bearing Kelsey’s business details.
Gallery: OPEN
Tuesday to Sunday 10am–5pm
Photo portrait commissions available at the town centre studio.
The job advert for a part-time gallery assistant was already in theStratford Observerand Kelsey was to interview applicants next week. In the meantime, Mirren – when she wasn’t pulling pints at the Yorick – and Kelsey would somehow have to manage staffing the gallery between them. The studio had certainly been quieter for most of January but Kelsey was looking forward to the school photography sessions she had booked for the spring and word had slowly made its way around town about the increasingly popular new-born photo shoots in her cosy studio.
‘Are you ready?’ Mirren asked.
‘We should have got some nibbles or canapes or something, shouldn’t we? Too late now, I suppose. Is this dress all right? Not too arty, is it?’ Kelsey thrust her hands into the big grey pockets of her new linen pinafore dress which tied in front of her shoulders in two tight knots. ‘This collar is choking me.’ She pushed a nervous finger into the high, delicately frilled neck of her white blouse and gulped.
‘You look perfect. You’re Kelsey Anderson, photographer and gallery owner.’
‘We’re doing this then?’
‘Well, we could haul anchor and putter away up the river Avon but then you’d never see Jonathan, would you?’
‘You’re right, you’re right.’ Kelsey flustered over the business cards she’d arranged and rearranged in a fan on the barge’s open side-hatch umpteen times that morning. ‘It’s cold in here with the hatch and the door open. Is that little heater working?’
‘It’s fine, and everyone will be wearing their coats anyway. Kelsey, get outside on that red carpet, grab a glass of bubbly, down it, and greet your guests. They’ll be here any minute.’ Mirren’s expression was firm. She’d put on her best black work suit and red lipstick to support her friend. Kelsey had told her she looked like a sexy bodyguard and Mirren had grinned and said, ‘Accurate.’
After an entirely unnecessary tidy of her new range of birthday cards – printed with her pretty local landscapes and all priced up in their cellophane wrappers – Kelsey wobbled down the gangplank and onto the red carpet over the pavement. She’d wangled the carpet from Myrtle and Valeria’s hire shop and she’d already booked it again, ten months in advance, for this December’s costumed photo booth, which she’d been sure to firm up again with the Osprey Hotel since the corporate Christmas party shoots had turned out to be so lucrative this winter.
