The Collected Short Stories - Jeffrey Archer [156]
The following morning Sally caught an early commuter train from Sevenoaks, so she could spend a little time checking the pictures against their catalog entries. When she walked into the gallery, her eyes lit up: Half a dozen of the paintings had already been hung, and she actually felt, for the first time, that they really weren’t bad. She glanced in the direction of the office, and saw that Simon was occupied on the phone. He smiled and waved to indicate that he would be with her in a moment.
She had another look at the pictures, and then spotted a copy of the catalog lying on the table. The cover read “The Summers Exhibition,” above a picture of an interior looking from her parents’ living room through an open window and out onto a garden overgrown with weeds. A black cat lay asleep on the windowsill, ignoring the rain.
Sally opened the catalog and read the introduction on the first page.
Sometimes judges feel it necessary to say: It’s been hard to pick this year’s winner. But from the moment one set eyes on Sally Summers’s work, the task was made easy. Real talent is obvious for all to see, and Sally has achieved the rare feat of winning both the Slade’s major prizes, for oils and for drawing, in the same year. I much look forward to watching her career develop over the coming years.
It was an extract from Sir Roger de Grey’s speech when he had presented Sally with the Mary Rischgitz and the Henry Tonks Prizes at the Slade two years before.
Sally turned the pages, seeing her works reproduced in color for the first time. Simon’s attention to detail and layout was evident on every page.
She looked back toward the office and saw that Simon was still on the phone. She decided to go downstairs and check on the rest of her pictures, now that they had all been framed. The lower gallery was a mass of color, and the newly framed paintings were so skillfully hung that even Sally saw them in a new light.
Once she had circled the room Sally suppressed a smile of satisfaction before turning to make her way back upstairs. As she passed a table in the center of the gallery, she noticed a folder with the initials N.K. printed on it. She idly lifted the cover, to discover a pile of undistinguished watercolors.
As she leafed through her rival’s never-to-be-exhibited efforts, Sally had to admit that the nude self-portraits didn’t do Natasha justice. She was just about to close the folder and join Simon upstairs when she came to a sudden halt.
Although it was clumsily executed, there was no doubt who the man was that the half-clad Natasha was clinging to.
Sally felt sick. She slammed the folder shut, walked quickly across the room, and back up the stairs to the ground floor. In the corner of the large gallery Simon was chatting to a man who had several cameras slung over his shoulder.
“Sally,” he said, coming toward her, “this is Mike—”
But Sally ignored them both and started running toward the open door, tears flooding down her cheeks. She turned right into St. James’s, determined to get as far away from the gallery as possible. But then she came to an abrupt halt. Tony and Natasha were walking toward her, arm in arm.
Sally stepped off the pavement and began to cross the road, hoping to reach the other side before they spotted her.
The screech of tires and the sudden swerve of the van came just a moment too late, and she was thrown headlong into the middle of the street.
When Sally came to, she felt awful. She blinked her eyes, and thought she could hear voices. She blinked again, but it was several moments before she was able to focus on anything.
She was lying in a bed, but it was not her own. Her right leg was covered in plaster and was raised high in the air, suspended from a pulley. Her other leg was under the sheet, and it felt all right. She wiggled the toes of her left foot: Yes, they were fine. Then she began to try to move her arms. A nurse came up to the side of the bed.
“Welcome back to the world, Sally.”
“How long have I been like this?” she asked.
“A couple of days,” said