It was far too hot inside. She would faint if she stayed where she was. So she walked to the nearest exit, skirting the main rooms, praying to escape before anyone she knew found her.
She burst through the first door she came across, gulping in great breaths of cooling air, and when she felt a little steadier she walked to a nearby bench and sat down.
All along, she had been wrong. When she had believed she was progressing, improving, she had been wrong. When she had thought she might, possibly, have some small amount of talent, she had been wrong.
When her friends had told her that her work was good, they had been wrong. They had been lying to her, out of kindness no doubt, but still—it had all been a lie.
And the year she had begged for? The year in Paris she’d been so certain would transform her life? It had been a twelvemonth of delusions, nothing more.
“There you are.”
She didn’t look up, couldn’t look up. Not him.
Not Sam, not now.
“Why are you here?” she asked dully.
“Why am I here? How can you ask such a thing? I’m here because of you.”
“Oh,” she said. “Thank you.”
“Something’s the matter. Did something happen in there?”
“Nothing happened,” she lied, and tried to remember what it felt like to smile. It was impossible, so she conjured up an approximation and pasted it to her face before turning to face him. “It was too warm inside.”
“I saw your painting. I’m proud of you.”
“Thank you.”
“We’ve all been looking for you—it’s nearly time to go to the Murphys’.”
“What time is it?”
“It’s just gone eight o’clock.”
She had been sitting on the bench for an hour and a half. The sun had nearly set, and she hadn’t noticed.
He led her inside, where she endured the embraces and compliments of her aunt and friends, and then they were in the car and on the way to the Murphys’ flat, and Sam would not leave off watching her, his concern impossible to ignore.
She would not speak of it with him, or with anyone else. She had made a fool of herself, but it wasn’t a killing blow. It wasn’t the sort of thing a person could die from, not unless they were very silly and self-involved.
Tomorrow she would figure out what she was meant to do—but tonight she would set it all aside, all of the heartache and disappointment, and she would be happy for her friends. For a few hours she would be happy, and then, in the morning, she would begin again.
Chapter 27
The Murphys’ pied-à-terre occupied the top two floors of an ancient building at the corner of the quai des Grands Augustins and rue G?t-le-Coeur. Although the staircase and corridors of the building were shabby in the extreme, Sara and Gerald’s apartment was a marvel of modern décor. Its floors were painted a glossy black and its walls a bright white, and the only touch of color in the sitting room came from red brocade curtains that hung at the floor-to-ceiling windows and framed a marvelous view of the Seine and the Sainte Chapelle. Unusual flower arrangements further brightened the rooms—one was nothing more than stalks of celery, their leafy tops intact—and on top of the grand piano was an enormous metal sphere that most guests took to be a piece of sculpture but was, Sara confided, actually an industrial ball bearing. Altogether it wasn’t Helena’s idea of homey comfort, but it was the perfect venue for a cocktail party.
It had been hours since she’d eaten, but rather than help herself to any of the food in the dining room she went straight to Gerald and ordered up one of his near-lethal cocktails. Its effects were gratifyingly numbing, and after following it with three glasses of champagne Helena decided that she was quite happy with the world and her place in it after all.
For a while she hovered at Agnes’s elbow, not trying to insert herself in any of the conversations that ebbed and flowed around her, and then, suddenly, her head was pounding and she’d had enough. One of the sitting room windows was open, so she stood before it and gulped in deep breaths of night air, clearing her lungs of the fug of cigarette smoke and too-strong perfume.
Someone came to stand behind her, and without turning she knew it was Sam.
“Ellie. Something’s wrong. Don’t say there isn’t.”
“It’s nothing. I made the mistake of drinking one of Gerald’s cocktails on an empty stomach. That’s all.”
“You aren’t happy, not even close to it, but you should be. Just look at what you’ve achieved.”
This angered her so much that she whirled around to face him, but her head started to spin and she had to clutch at his shirtfront to steady herself. “I learned today that I was wrong,” she said when her vision finally cleared. “I was wrong to think I had a future as an artist.”
“What happened?” he asked, his expression a curious mixture of anger and disbelief.
“I overheard Ma?tre Czerny talking to someone, I don’t know who. He didn’t use my name but he was talking about me. He said I was monied and hopeless and I was there only to support the students who are poor and talented. He said he’d forgotten my name already.”