Page 40 of Days You Were Mine

When Robin offered me a show at his gallery, I had second thoughts immediately afterwards.

‘I’m not ready for this,’ I told Jake again and again, until he finally became impatient.

‘How can you expect people to believe in you if you don’t believe in yourself? Robin hasn’t offered you a show as a favour to me. He’s a businessman; he thinks your work will sell. He knows it will.’

Jake tells me – and I know he is right – that a childhood lived in the shadow of a volatile and vengeful father has corrupted my self-confidence. But slowly I am learning.

Robin Armstrong, more than any other dealer and gallerist in London, has the power to accelerate an artist’s career; it’s hard not to feel like an imposter when it’s me, not Rick or any of the other star students from the years above, who is getting this break.

As soon as Lawrence Croft hears of my impending show, he calls a meeting with Gordon and Rita.

‘I can safely say we’ve never had this happen to a first-year student before. Congratulations, Alice,’ Lawrence says. ‘What an opportunity. We must think how we can best support you.’

‘You deserve this,’ Rita says. ‘The work you’ve been doing in class recently is outstanding. You’ve really put the hours in.’

That, at least, is true. These past two weeks, Jake and I have barely slept, working through the nights. And how I have loved it, the silent consensus that the two of us are wholly committed to our art. It is Jake who has made me feel like an artist and not a fraud.

Gordon says, ‘It seems to me that next term Alice should be allowed to focus solely on her work for the show, and this can count towards her degree. Rita and I can oversee her progress with one-to-one tutorials. It’s true that you have great skill, Alice, and you deserve to succeed. But the thing that really distinguishes you from your associates is your grit.’

Later Jake takes me to Kettner’s, our customary haunt for celebrations big and small. We order four seasons pizza and drink house white from a small carafe.

‘The thing about you, Alice Garland,’ he says in a mock-Scottish accent, ‘is that you’re full of grit.’

Later, though, in the darkness, curled around each other in bed, he reaches for my hand.

‘He’s right, you know,’ he says. ‘You do have grit. And it’s your childhood that’s done it, weathering the years with your pig of a father. Standing up to him like you did the other day. I’m proud of you.’

I cannot see his face clearly, but I know that he is watching me, doing that thing where he hopes to transfer all his thoughts to me without words.

‘You’re a survivor, Alice,’ he says just before we both fall asleep.

A throwaway line that would turn out to be more prescient than I could ever have imagined.

Now

Luke

The trickier reunion to navigate is often that of the adopted child and his birth father. With a male child in particular there may be a feverish desire to attach coupled with an instinct to emulate his absentee role model. Jung aptly described this obsession as ‘father hunger’.

Who Am I? The Adoptee’s Hidden Traumaby Joel Harris

Lunch with Rick at Nobu, summoned by text earlier today after the travesty of the colliding mothers. You don’t say no to lunch with this famous artist, who by some bizarre quirk turns out to be my father, or to one at Nobu, which is still one of the toughest places to get a table, unless you happen to be him. I arrive at Park Lane clenched with a toxic permeation of dread and anxiety, even though he assured me in his text that there was nothing to worry about.

Bottom line, I screwed up massively, which are my first words when I’m shown to his table, black-clad waiters tearing up and down with their enormous trays of sushi.

‘Rick, I’m sorry. I completely messed up last night.’

‘Complicated situation. Not entirely your fault. Don’t beat yourself up about it.’

He stands up and we hug a little awkwardly.

Rick is wearing a pink and orange checked shirt, electric, loud, look-at-me colours in a known celebrity hangout, and here I was thinking he was a recluse. A waiter comes over with a Sapporo beer for me, which I didn’t see being ordered, and starts talking to Rick about his work.

‘Last year’s show at the National Portrait Gallery was incredible. Would I be able to get your autograph before you go?’

‘Sure.’

‘I thought you didn’t like being recognised?’ I say once the waiter has gone. ‘That’s what Alice says.’

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