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‘I can’t. Not today, Simon.’

Olivia was sitting on her bed, still in her dressing gown, dark circles under her eyes. Somewhere around four thirty in the morning she finally nodded off, only to wake again in tears. She must’ve been crying in her sleep. Once they started, she couldn’t stem the flow. Sobbing, moaning, practically barking with grief and despair, she worked her way through an entire box of tissues. There was nothing to live for. She was old and childless and alone.

Then, at some ungodly hour, Simon rang.

‘You can!’

‘No,’ she cleared her throat, ‘really, I can’t!’

‘I’m telling you, Olivia, you can!’

‘But you don’t understand! I’ve never hung a show before! And I’m … I’m,’ she struggled to find a delicate way to put it, ‘I’m not at my best today, Simon.’

‘Olivia,’ his voice was firm, ‘I need you. Ralph’s pulled his back out and it’s not finished! And we can’t afford to get this show wrong. Besides, you’re the only person I know who has the vision I need. It’s non-negotiable; I’m calling in all my favours. I need you now!’

Olivia sank to the floor, into the pile of used tissues that had accumulated in a snowy heap around the bed. She couldn’t fathom how she was going to get dressed let alone down to the gallery.

‘Olivia?’ He wouldn’t give up.

‘OK,’ she rasped.

‘Great. I’ll see you in an hour.’

He hung up.

Olivia blew her nose for the seven thousandth time. She badly needed a cigarette.

Sitting in her dressing gown on the back steps, Olivia fumbled with a box of kitchen matches, trying to light an ancient, stale Gauloise she’d found in an old handbag.

She wasn’t a real smoker. There was no style to the way she jammed the cigarette between her lips or struck the match so hard that it snapped in two. The Gauloise was a serious cigarette – thick, acrid. There was smoking and then there was napalming your lungs. But she needed napalm; her mind twisted wildly, to and fro, trying to justify the evidence, while her heart cracked with the same agonizing resistance of an old tree being felled, its trunk snapping painfully, slowly in two.

It was gone. Her world. The entire answer she’d formulated to the question of how to live life.

How could he do that to her? What made her so … so disposable?

Taking a deep drag, she choked and spluttered.

When she was done, she’d go back in and ring Simon. He’d have to get someone else. Today was a day for taking tranquillizers washed down by vodka, not for striking out in new directions.

In front of her, the newly erected fountain made a relentless dribbling noise like a leaky faucet. It was a horrific Baroque-inspired confection; a gold-encrusted seashell bowl surrounded by piles of fat, frolicking cherubs and dolphins spitting water. Expensive, ugly, derivative.

She thought about the shiny aluminium gulley cutting, as Ricki put it, like a blade through a bright square of green grass. If only she’d had the courage to listen to her. Taking another drag, she coughed and, pulling her dressing gown tighter, shivered in the brisk morning air.

‘Here.’

It was Ricki, holding open a box of Marlboro Lights.

Olivia’s face went red.

Before she could say anything, Ricki knelt down, taking the Gauloise from her fingers.

‘Let’s get rid of that, shall we?’ She tossed it into the fountain, where it fizzled out, bobbing up and down in the golden bowl. ‘What are you trying to do – kill yourself?’

Not a bad idea, Olivia reflected.

Then Ricki shook out a couple of cigarettes, popped both into her mouth and lit them with a battered black Zippo. She passed one back to Olivia.

It was all done so smoothly, so confidently. With what her mother would’ve called ‘élan.’

‘Thank you.’

Ricki nodded, settled down next to her, stretching out her long legs.

They sat, smoking in silence.

After a while, Ricki nodded to the fountain. ‘So, do you like it?’

Olivia struggled to find something nice to say. ‘You did a good job.’

‘Yeah,’ Ricki laughed, ‘but do you like it?’

‘It’s ghastly,’ she admitted, too exhausted to be polite.

‘Yes. Yes, it is.’

They stared at it.

‘It’s not too late. We could still get rid of it.’

‘But it’s what I asked for.’ Olivia looked miserably at the pudgy gold putti. ‘You gave me exactly what I said I wanted.’

‘So what?’ Ricki shrugged. ‘You’re allowed to change your mind.’

What a dangerous concept.

‘Am I?’

‘Sure. Any time.’

They finished their cigarettes.

Ricki stood up. Holding out her hand, she pulled Olivia to her feet.

‘Thanks.’

‘And you’re … you know … OK?’ Ricki’s dark eyes were full of concern. ‘You seem a bit stressed.’

It surprised Olivia. No one really asked her how she was. Arnaud certainly didn’t, the staff wouldn’t dare.

‘I’m OK.’

Ricki nodded. ‘Good.’

‘Thanks for the cigarette.’

‘No problem.’

Olivia was about to go in when suddenly she stopped, turned. ‘Actually, my husband moved out of the house yesterday.’

It wasn’t the sort of thing one said to the gardener. She hadn’t intended mentioning it to anyone yet, not even Mimsy.

‘Really?’ She was refreshingly undramatic. ‘What happened?’

‘I don’t know. We don’t seem to get on.’

There was a pause.

‘The truth is, he’s cheating on me.’

What was the sudden spate of honesty?

Ricki shook her head. ‘Cunt!’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘What a cunt!’ she elaborated.

Olivia had never used that word before; she’d never even thought it. In her family, it was considered cutting someone to the very quick to call them ‘a bit of an ass.’

‘Yes,’ she realized, slowly, ‘what a cunt!’

It was surprisingly satisfying to say – full of sharp, unapologetic sounds.

She said it again.

‘An absolute cunt!’

‘There we have it. Men! What a fucking fool!’

‘Do you think?’

Ricki was emphatic. ‘Biggest fool I know!’

It had seemed complicated before; now it was painful but simple. ‘Yes. Yes, I suppose so.’

‘So what are you going to do?’ Ricki wanted to know.

‘Me?’ The question was almost offensive.

‘Yeah.’ Ricki leant against the wall, folded her arms in front of her chest. ‘What are your plans?’

No one had expected Olivia to do anything before, least of all herself. Action, accomplishments were optional. Surely her dreadful situation gave her immunity from such practicalities.

‘I don’t know.’

Ricki pulled a tiny weed growing between the paving stones. ‘I’d hire a fuck-off lawyer.’

‘A lawyer? You mean, you think the marriage is over?’

Ricki looked up. ‘Didn’t you just say he was sleeping with someone else?’

‘Yes, but …’ her voice trailed off.

In Olivia’s family marriages limped under the burden of far greater betrayals than just infidelity. She could practically hear her father’s voice, ‘When a Van der Lyden makes their bed, they lie in it!’ Lord knows how many women he’d had over the years.

‘How could you ever trust him again?’ Ricki pointed out.

Did I ever trust him? Olivia wondered.

Ricki began unpacking her tools. ‘Well, at least you have your job. That’s a real solace in a time like this.’

Olivia had never thought of the gallery as an actual job. She’d treated it more as a dalliance. ‘Something to keep me off the streets,’ was how she put it to Mimsy.

‘Get on with your own life,’ Ricki selected a narrow trowel, ‘that’s the best revenge.’

‘Yes, you’re right,’ Olivia agreed, not entirely sure it was true.

Ricki set about weeding in earnest.

Get on with your own life.

The words hung in the air, like a gauntlet thrown. What would her life be like without Arnaud to hide behind? Suddenly the prospect was intriguing as well as daunting.

Olivia watched as Ricki crouched low, weeding the flower beds in the pale sunlight. She was so strong, so sure of herself. Just being near her shored Olivia up; gave her clarity.

She’d needed to talk to someone, someone she could trust. How odd that it should be her.

Olivia wandered back into the house.

Something had shifted. The thick, cold, suffocating weight she’d known most of her life, dampening her spirit, was gone. In its place, something new, dangerous stirred. It fluttered, dark, uncontrollable, in the pit of her stomach.

‘Cunt,’ she muttered under her breath, climbing the stairs. The word resonated, clean, tough, full of unfamiliar power. She chanted it like a mantra. ‘Cunt, cunt, cunt, cunt, cunt, cunt!’

Gaunt passed her on the way down. ‘Good morning, madam.’

‘Good morning. Cunt, cunt, cunt!’ She rounded the landing. ‘Oh, and Gaunt, put the coffee on, will you? I need it strong today.’

‘Very good, madam.’

Simon was waiting for her; she had a job to do.