Mel spotted Aaron talking to Louie over at the drinks table. She thought it strange there was no Karin to chaperone, so had moved swiftly in and stolen Aaron away to enquire where she was. He told her they had come together, but that Karin must be looking round the exhibition on her own somewhere.
It was even busier now than when Mel had arrived. She didn’t really do this as a rule, art wasn’t her thing, so she hadn’t known what to expect and was surprised by the number of people.
‘Have you been round yet?’ she asked Aaron.
‘Not yet. I’ve seen some of her work online though. This stuff looks much less commercial, but I reckon she can make a good living out of her talents if steered in the right direction.’ Aaron waved his arm over the paintings. ‘I don’t mean with this kind of thing, although it looks interesting,’ he added.
‘Yes,’ replied Mel, feeling an obligation to agree with him. They found themselves having to raise their voices as the general noise level increased. Mel took a sip of wine, Aaron doing the same, and they made a start at the first panel. ‘I do find them quite odd though. I had a quick look as soon as I got here. Some of them give me the creeps.’
‘You never know, these might be worth something one day,’ Aaron said, amused by her response.
As they shuffled down the display it was like a kind of dance they were doing, moving in to read the title, standing back to get a better angle. Mel felt she had to say something. Aaron needed to know what he was dealing with, or at least be able to work it out for himself. That the artist behind these paintings was a potential threat and not to be trusted.
‘Have you noticed anything?’ she asked.
‘What’s that?’
‘Some of these have a striking resemblance to Karin. Don’t you think? See this one. Woman Standing on Pier. Look at the hair for instance. And this one too. That could almost be Karin.’
Aaron seemed to be giving her theory some consideration, going from one painting then back to another he had already seen. ‘Can’t see it myself,’ he replied. ‘And certainly not in these.’ He laughed because the next set of panels featured a female mannequin, dressed or undressed, positioned in various real-life settings. Standing in a queue at the hotdog van. Sitting in a deckchair on the beach. The last one in the series was titled Woman Standing on Pier II. It was identical to the first painting with that name apart from the woman in the other was real.
Aaron was examining each of them closely.
‘So what do you reckon to these mannequin ones?’ asked Mel, hoping to recover his attention.
He straightened up, took a sip of wine and pulled her to one side. ‘Playful?’ he said. And then whispered: ‘Actually I’m not too keen on these, but don’t tell the artist I said that.’ He may have been about to say something else but stepped out of the way for a couple trying to push their way through, and then moved off down the other panels.
Mel left him to it.
On her way over to the drinks table she had that feeling she often had, ever since childhood in fact, of playing a part in other people’s lives yet not really featuring in her own. She looked around at the throng gathered here tonight, trying to work out who were the couples among them, imagining what their lives were like. Mel hoped she hadn’t left it too late for herself, and just had to trust her time would come.
‘Red or white, madam?’
‘Oh, erm. Red please,’ she answered, realizing this probably wasn’t the first time she had been asked the question. But she was convinced that she had just seen Karin disappearing with Louie behind one of the panels, into an area which said:
‘NOT OPEN TO VIEWING PUBLIC.’