Behind Every Lie(34)
I felt quite faint as I watched them, my palms slimy with sweat. I rubbed furiously at Barnaby’s bloodstained ear. After a moment, I put the car in gear and crept slowly after them. Nobody could see me. If word got back to Seb that I had warned Rose, my punishment would be severe.
Twilight pressed in, the pink bleeding into the darkness. Rose withdrew a key from her coat and slid it into the park’s locked gate. My heart twanged painfully in my chest. She was going to disappear and I would miss my chance.
I threw the car in park and staggered out. “Rose!”
Rose jumped at the sound of her name, darting a furtive look around. When she saw me she grabbed Laura’s hand and tugged her through the gate, shutting it as fast as she could behind her.
I stared at the blank space where they had just stood as the final rays of the sun slipped beneath the horizon.
seventeen
eva
I GRABBED A CUP OF strong tea and a cheese croissant from the café beneath Jacob’s flat. On Old Street, I found a stall selling pay-as-you-go phones and bought the cheapest one. The first thing I did was google David Ashford.
Clicking on David’s gallery’s website, I saw that it sold everything from antique to contemporary pieces of Asian art, including ceramics, ancient Japanese armor, and an entire display of items that had been repaired using kintsugi. When I clicked on History, I read that the gallery had originally opened in 1972, but had relocated to the bottom floor of Selwyn House in Mayfair about ten years ago. The address was the same as the one written on the torn piece of paper from my mom’s.
That’s where I needed to go.
“Excuse me,” I asked the shopkeeper. “Do you know how to get to Mayfair?”
He handed me a Tube map. “Take the Tube to Bond Street.”
It sounded so simple. It wasn’t. Even the ticket machine was a ridiculous puzzle to navigate. I somehow managed to buy a day ticket before a helpful businessman informed me that an Oyster card would’ve saved me money.
I made my way to the platform and boarded the next train, getting off at Bank Station to change to another line. Bank Station was a cramped maze of tunnels with escalators leading in every direction. I promptly got lost and spent the next twenty minutes shuffling, bewildered, through underground passageways to nowhere.
I finally managed to find the right Tube line and made my way to Bond Street, my eyes gritty, nose itching from subway dust. Outside, the sun had broken through the clouds, leaving the sky a dazzling blue with puffy, cotton-ball clouds skidding by. October leaves glowed like golden embers.
I plugged David Ashford’s address into Google Maps and followed my phone past eighteenth-century Georgian mansions, swanky redbrick Edwardian buildings, sophisticated wine bars, and exclusive designer shops.
Selwyn House was a beautiful three-story house with a symmetrical white-stucco fa?ade, white bow windows, and fluted pillars that rose on either side of the entryway. It was set a little way back from the road behind a gold-tipped fence. A plaque above the door read SELWYN HOUSE ART GALLERY.
Inside, the open-plan space was painted a stark white with elegant mahogany cornices. Oriental rugs were scattered artfully across the dark hardwood floors. Wooden room separators with birds in flight carved into the panels sectioned off each area: sculptures, armor, ceramics, silk screens, paintings.
I walked through the gallery almost reverently. It was, I realized, exactly how I would’ve decorated my own gallery, if I had one. It practically murmured with the voices of the past, ancient and true.
A group of college kids chatted in front of the East Asian ceramics, talking loudly and jotting notes into their notebooks. I stopped in front of a mahogany-and-glass case filled with items repaired using kintsugi. There were bowls and plates, teapots, urns, vases, even lamp bases that had been repaired using gold to mend the broken pieces.
One bowl in particular caught my eye. It was plain, the gray-green of old clay, spidered with threads of gold. But where one chunk was missing, the artist had used a large opal to fill the hole. The end result was stunning.
I pressed my fingers to the glass, wishing I could hold it in my hands and see how the artist had mended it. My own clay plates and bowls seemed so amateur in comparison.
“It’s a beautiful piece, isn’t it?”
I whirled around to see a very young woman beside me. She was thin, her shoulders protruding from her black sheath dress like tiny fists. She had a sharp nose and chin, angular cheekbones, and strawberry-blond hair pulled into a sleek bun. “Yes, they’re gorgeous.”
“You know about kintsugi?”
“Not much,” I admitted. “It’s funny, I only heard about it for the first time the other day, and suddenly I’m seeing it everywhere.”
She laughed. “Yes, I often find it’s like that. Like when you buy a car and then you realize there are so many more of that model on the road than you ever noticed.”
“Exactly.” We smiled at each other.
“That piece there, the one you were looking at, the artist repaired it using a kintsugi technique called yobitsugi. That’s when a completely new piece is used to fill in the missing area. This artist used opal to fill the hole. I think it was a rather good choice.” She clasped her hands behind her back and smiled at me. “This is my favorite display. I think there’s something rather magical about how kintsugi transforms the broken, isn’t there?”