Turning quickly, she saw that the hand on her elbow belonged to a tiny woman in a navy bouclé jacket. It was a second or two before her brain made sense of that face beneath white hair. Of course, she must be in her seventies now: she’d retired the summer they left St Helena’s.
‘How are you?’ the woman was saying. ‘It’s good to see you again though I wish, I wish, it weren’t like this. What a terrible thing – what a waste. All that talent – just . . . gone.’ She made a starfish gesture with her fingers, pouf, a magician’s disappearing trick.
‘I know. And poor Jacqueline.’
Mrs Orvis glanced at the photograph, too. ‘A husband and a daughter – very cruel. But you’ll miss her as well. I remember the pair of you, your friendship – you always used to interest me. In many ways you were different – with respect, my dear, you were one of the worst draftswomen I ever had to teach.’
Rowan smiled.
‘But you were similar, too – I could see why you were close. Marianne had her talent and you had your brain and you were both . . . driven. You sparked off each other.’ She took a sip of her sherry. ‘I had a friend like that but she’s been gone for many years now. Breast cancer.’
‘I’m sorry.’
Mrs Orvis tipped her head a little. ‘Some people in life change us. Not many – two or three, maybe, over the course of a lifetime. Speaking as one of great age.’
A woman inched past with a tray of canapés. Mrs Orvis – ‘Please, call me Rosemary’ – took a miniature quiche. ‘But tell me, what are you doing now? I hoped I’d bump into you at one of Marianne’s shows – she always invited me – but we never seemed to cross paths.’
‘I’m a student.’
‘Still?’ She looked shocked.
Rowan smiled again. ‘No, I’ve gone back. I was in TV production – documentaries, history mostly – for a long time, straight from college, but it wasn’t really . . . I didn’t feel . . . satisfied. I’m doing a PhD now.’
‘Interesting. What are you writing on?’
Out of the corner of her eye, Rowan saw James Greenwood come into the room. ‘Sorry?’ She pulled her attention back.
‘Your thesis.’
‘Oh. Catholic rebellion in the seventeenth century.’
‘Guy Fawkes and friends?’
‘Exactly, yes. Among others.’
‘Here? You did your first degree here, didn’t you?’
‘Wow, you remember everything.’
‘Contrary to popular belief, we teachers do care about our students, you know.’
‘As a teenager, you can’t imagine that. But no, I’m not here. I’m in London, at Queen Mary.’
‘Well, good for you.’ Mrs Orvis – Rowan really couldn’t call her Rosemary – drained the last sticky drops from her glass and edged it onto the mantelpiece among the frames. ‘God, that fire’s hot. Do you think Mrs Glass was expecting so many people?’ She lowered her voice. ‘You can see how highly Marianne was rated – it’s a Who’s Who of British art. Pennie Muir is over there,’ she tipped her head like a grass giving the nod to the police, ‘and there’s Jenny Higgins. Charlie Gilpin took my arm on the steps on the way in. Now, I hope you’ll excuse me but I have to go. My husband’s not very steady on his pins these days and I told him I wouldn’t be gone too long. Good to see you, my dear.’ She squeezed Rowan’s forearm. ‘Best of luck with the thesis and look after yourself – it’s hard, losing someone important, especially like this.’
When she was gone, Rowan angled herself for a better view of the room. Charlie Gilpin was easy to spot, with his height and auburn hair. Together with a shaven-headed man who was almost as tall, he was looking at a large framed sketch that Marianne had made of Adam asleep in the garden the summer before he started Cambridge. Beyond them, talking to a woman with a sharp hennaed bob and hands knuckled with turquoise rings, was another man Rowan knew was an artist. After a moment she remembered his name: Simon Freemantle, the sculptor. He and Marianne had had a show together, Marianne’s first professional exhibition, at the gallery in Westbourne Grove that had taken her on while she was still at the Slade. Freemantle made angry, sexually explicit bronzes of figures from mythology; Rowan still sometimes thought about his liberally endowed Minotaur, five feet tall, who’d stood in a corner thrusting his groin at browsers like a vertically challenged pervert at a bus stop. Freemantle commanded huge money these days, apparently; he’d been profiled in the Sunday Times Culture section not long ago.