Page 46 of How to Get Even

They were met soon after by Sascha’s professor who led them through halls towards studios that smelled of paint, damp, coffee and nicotine, because kids still thought they were invincible.

‘We’ve had our eye on Sascha for a while. Her promise was evident from the very beginning.’

Chase tuned him out and instead cast glances at the studio space. What had once been white walls – and would be periodically painted over again – currently looked like rough drafts of Pollock paintings. There were a few students still here in the afternoon. The die-hards.

He remembered. He’d been one himself.

Paint beneath the nails, knuckles grazed from pulling canvas across frames they’d made themselves.

A sudden memory of him and Dave falling into hysterics, because Dave had cut one piece of wood too small and didn’t have enough wood left to fix it, and had mulishly decided to keep it, resulting in some kind of deformed rhombus. Their art teacher hadn’t seen the funny side of it.

But they had laughed until they’d cried, gone to the pub and laughed some more.

Sometimes Chase wondered if that was the deepest betrayal from his wife. That she’d taken his best friend with her. Ruined all his memories of them.

‘She’s been working through here for the last six months,’ the professor said. ‘I’ll just make the introductions and then… maybe if you could pass by after, we could interest you in our donation programme?—’

‘No,’ Chase replied, without sparing the man a glance as he entered Levy’s studio space.

His eyes consumed the walls as, behind him he heard Bella apologising to the professor and lying about a meeting that they had after this. Irritation and resentment burned and, after the professor left, he turned to block her path.

‘What was that?’ he demanded.

‘What was what?’

‘What you said to the professor just then,’ he demanded, holding onto his temper by a thread.

Instead of backing off as he’d expected, she leaned in and whispered harshly, ‘I was apologising for you.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you were rude,’ she declared. ‘And because if we’re going to make Nayak New York a success then you need tostopbeingrude,’ she exclaimed hotly.

‘Do you want to know how much of their “private donations” go to providing scholarships for financially disadvantaged students?’ he asked, her eyes registering confusion at the sudden about-turn of their conversion. ‘Twenty-three per cent. Do you want to know how much of their “private donations” go to BAME students? Sixteen per cent,’ he said as Bella stepped back.

‘If I am going to donate to anything, then you can be damn sure that I wantallmy money going to where it should go, instead of lining the pockets of board members.’

‘I didn’t know,’ she said, her eyes huge and glistening.

‘No, you didn’t,’ he said, ‘because you just give the money, and as long as you’re told it’s for a worthy cause, you don’t really care.’

He was wrong. He knew that the moment he’d said it. The ‘you’ hadn’t beenBellaspecifically, but people like her. But that still didn’t change things.

‘Don’t ever apologise for me again,’ he warned frostily.

He turned on his heel, pushing down his anger at the professor and the discomfort at arguing with Bella, and stalked towards the studio space where Sascha Levy was eyeing him coolly, clearly having heard his disagreement with Bella.

‘You do your research,’ Sascha observed.

‘Always.’

‘It’s about time someone put him in his place,’ Sascha said of the professor that had left.

‘That wasn’t putting him in his place, sadly. But as my comms director says, I’ve got a gallery to make a success of.’

‘And you’re looking for art at a New York college? You’ve got bigger problems than your personality.’

‘I think Bella would disagree with that right now,’ he said, his eyes on her artwork.

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