Rob’s email comes a week later, the day after the auction, at the same time as the news article. The masterpiece nobody wants—can Night Swimming be cursed? I’ve been on my sofa for days.
“It’s not Night Swimming,” I mutter as I close the browser tab, revealing my open mailbox and allowing Rob’s words to hit me full in the head.
Subject: end of contract.
I click to read the message. He must be joking. This must be a tantrum. With immediate effect due to gross misconduct. He copied HR in. When I close my laptop, I know I have to let the realization sink in.
I don’t work at Courtenay anymore. Before worrying about the mortgage on my extortionate London one-bedroom flat, “merely a hop away from Kensington High Street and Hyde Park,” a thought comes, clear and pure as rain on a hot evening: my career is over. All the late nights studying, all that time spent looking for rare articles and visiting obscure collections, weekends spent doing the jobs nobody wanted, wading through hoarders’ houses to evaluate their contents, working my way up in the auction house to my dream job were all for nothing.
My whole life has gone.
It was going to go wrong sooner or later. They were going to realize you’re unstable, away with the fairies. I don’t know why they gave you the job in the first place. Maman’s voice in my head. My least favorite of the voices. She spoke every time something went wrong. When she found out I had been awarded a full scholarship for the boarding school they had wanted me to get into (no way would my parents have been able to afford school fees, but they wanted me out of the way), she acted as if she was disappointed by the school’s poor standards. Then she waited for the first report I didn’t get one hundred percent on to prove that she had been right.
And now it is the same again. Although Maman died ten years ago, I can always count on her in these moments.
Here in my living room, the sound of passing cars reaching me through the open window, I am once more swimming in the dark—but in a darkness of my own making. I replay what happened at Courtenay once again. Did they all recoil because of me, not my gift? Because of how unhinged I acted? Did it all just—get to me, like Rob said? The pressure of tight deadlines when millions of pounds are at stake isn’t for the weak. It finally leaked out of me—my fear, my brokenness—and I thought I had it all under control. Maybe what I saw in the sculpture were my own issues, my own weaknesses, my own wrongness. I projected them onto the first thing that I couldn’t understand because I just wasn’t good enough. They should have never hired you, never trusted you. They finally saw the truth about you. I was never worthy of my gift.
I don’t have to go to work anymore, so there goes my perception of time. I leave my email open on my laptop, hoping for some kind of ping to bring me back to reality—Rob begging me to come back as Courtenay simply can’t function without me. But it lies there quietly for days until I notice it’s disconnected. I type my name and password again. Unknown username. They didn’t waste time kicking me out of the system. More time passes as I cry on the sofa, then on the floor.
I fall into a routine. I wake up in my bed around 7:30 a.m., then remember in a pang why my alarm did not go off. I stare at the ceiling awhile, until I’m too stressed by its blank canvas. What’s next? How can there be a next when I’m feeling this bad? Then I get up, put on a robe (if I’m feeling fancy), and walk to the sofa, turning on Netflix and pressing “watch again” on BBC’s Pride and Prejudice. Sometimes (if I’m feeling really fancy) I might spend an hour or two rewinding and rewatching the pond scene over and over again. I don’t really feel hunger, but when I know, rationally, that I ought to eat, I go scavenge in the cupboards. I’m not a cook—never had time to make anything when I was working—so the offerings are meager. I soon run out of peanut butter.
It must have been two weeks or a bit more, I think. I have allowed my phone’s battery to run out completely. No point without the work emails or calls about an exciting piece brought in for valuation… When I quickly scan myself, like in that mindfulness class Courtenay made us all take during our lunch breaks a couple of years ago, I realize my overriding emotion is fear. I don’t even know what of; it’s a sticky kind of dread, something clinging to me and clouding every thought I have, every action I propose to take. My nervous system is in overdrive, my heart beating that bit too fast, my body both too cold and too hot.
I’m trapped in it, and thinking about the fear only seems to make it worse.
I try to conjure my happy place: D’Arvor’s grounds and turrets, the lake glistening in the sunlight. But I can’t conjure it without thinking of Maxime Foucault, its owner, and remembering that he too had witnessed my demise, so the fear sparks up all over again.
Perhaps I should text Lowen. Perhaps Rob was right when he mentioned him. Lowen has been my best friend since the start of secondary school. Was. Is? He wouldn’t have tried to get in touch because of what he said to me last time we met, and how I received it. It’s not been the same between us since then, but I didn’t expect it to be. I knew we both needed some distance, and him moving back home to Cornwall provided that. But perhaps this counts as an emergency?
Lowen and I always wanted our lives to be such wildly different shapes and colors, we might as well have been painting, he a Dutch still life of fruit, and I a Botticelli. And there’s this way he used to look at me every time I talked about work, as if he was readying the dust brush and pan to come and pick up the pieces. He is the best person I know, the best I have ever known, the only person I’ve ever bared my soul to, but he can be a patronizing twit.
No, I need to sort out my mess by myself. Like always. So I take a deep breath, grab my laptop, shake my arms, which have fallen asleep for lack of use, and open my personal email.
The fifty unread messages make my heart skid, my palms sweat. I don’t look at them. I know nobody uses my personal address and all I receive is special offers, beribboned in we’ve missed you, targeted at lonely single women in their thirties. As if I was going to buy a mop just to feel like someone is happy with me. I open a blank message to Rob.
I can’t believe you’ve done this to me, I type with one hand, the other plunging a spoon into a jar of Nutella. I had been saving the Nutella for a special occasion and this is it. Call it anger fuel.
The response pings almost immediately. I shouldn’t be talking to you, Leray. But I hope you’re OK.
When can I come back from my “gardening leave”? The leaves are gardened to the max and I am suitably contrite. Surely I can help fix things? We can have another go at the sale? I’m fully on side, I promise.
The thought of ever working with that sculpture again covers me in a cold sweat, but I’m desperate. I need to be back, working with art; I’ll have to figure the rest out later.
Rob’s answer is not the one I was hoping for. Again, I’m not supposed to communicate with you. But I think you need to know. That woman, the one who fainted? She’s in a psychiatric hospital. A proper breakdown. And her partner is blaming us—he’s in a right state, throwing threats and demanding compensation all about the place. So I would lie low if I were you. You’re the last person who can fix this whole mess.
I stare at the email, the semblance of a grip I had managed to gather dissipating once more.
It wasn’t in my head, then. It was real—it hurt her. I have hurt someone.
A few minutes pass, which I spend groaning into a sofa cushion, feral like a cat. I imagine Rob must have felt bad for me, because another email comes.
Listen, I’ll write you a decent reference. That’s the best I can do for you. I hope it’s enough. Please go through HR next time.
I whimper with anger and am about to shut my laptop when my eyes catch sight of an unread email a few lines down, sent three days ago, more precisely the subject of the message.
On behalf of Maxime Foucault.
The effect is so instant that I sit up straight, forgetting the slump my back has now adopted as its natural curve. I brush some crumbs off my pajamas, straighten my hair, run my fingers under my eyes as if suddenly Maxime can see me here, on my sofa. I press pause on Pride and Prejudice.
Maxime Foucault’s hair might be lighter than Mister Darcy’s (though equally tousled); he might have a bit more of a sense of humor, be more agreeable, as Jane Austen might have put it. But deep down, he is just as broody, charismatic, and kind. Plus he owns the most impressive castle in Brittany. His family is rich, of course, but also fascinating, and private, and down-to-earth, in a “we escaped the French Revolution with our heads on our shoulders and managed to live our lives in a preserved and respected French aristocracy because nobody would ever mess with us” kind of way.
He is, in short, something else. Tossed together by the randomness of fate, we have met before on a few occasions I will never forget. He was at Courtenay, and now this?
I feel warmth spread across my cheeks and I bring the back of my hand to them. My hands are too hot; my childhood eczema has started to flare up again. He can’t see you, Camille. And why would he remember you? It is likely to be a coincidence. I go back to the sofa to open the email.
Dear Ms. Leray,
I am writing on behalf of Maxime Foucault. He wishes to invite you to his residence, le château D’Arvor, in order to appraise some artworks from the estate. Mr. Foucault would much appreciate consulting your expertise in this matter and about the sculptures themselves, which have only very recently come to light and he suspects to be by Constance Sorel. As you most likely know, she was a distant relative of the Foucault family and lived some years in the castle. It is Mr. Foucault’s understanding that you might have some availability in the coming weeks. All expenses will of course be covered.
Sincerely,
Anaïs Garnier, assistante
I don’t waste any more time, typing with fingers made erratic by adrenaline:
Apologies for the delayed response. I would love to come and discuss appraising the estate. Would Thursday next week be suitable? A first appraisal can take up to a day, depending on the number of works. Happy to share my initial thoughts with Mr. Foucault, then communicate any further findings via email.
I press send, then throw myself back against the cushions. All these years, and even through email, even indirectly, he still undoes me. It’s work, Camille. Like any other request. I try to rationalize, but I can’t. It’s him, but not only him—it is D’Arvor as well, and Constance. The one estate on earth that has held my heart for nearly thirty years, keeping it going by pumping it quietly with longing. How long have I been hoping for this exact email—how many articles or mentions of my name in prestigious sales did I hope he would notice? And he chooses now.
I’m about to close the laptop when a response pings through.
Camille,
So professional of you, but I’ll need you for more than half a day. Can you spare a week? I’ll make it worth your while, I promise.
M.
That’s him. That’s come directly from his personal email address. A week? What does he want to talk to me about that would justify a whole week spent in his castle in a professional capacity?
And “some artworks” by Constance Sorel, plural? There it is—a hint of aliveness in me again, finally.
I don’t know if Maxime and I have history. That might be too small a word for me and much too big a word for him, if he were to be asked. I don’t know if he remembers meeting me at all or if he’s simply reaching out to the leading expert on the artist he is appraising. But there are coincidences in life that, when you pay attention, have to be more than that, have to be fate, some kind of design that makes perfect sense, even if you don’t know what sense yet. He might easily have forgotten our meetings, but every one of them has been formative to me.
A month ago, I would have been over the moon to receive his invitation. I would be straight out the door, gone shopping for castle-compatible outfits, thinking my life had finally given me the opportunity I deserved. I would be prepped to meet him again and show him the woman I have become: a bloody hardworking, tough heroine who takes no crap. Someone who has managed to engineer her career so well, it has culminated in her long-term dream man—begging for her expertise.
But now I’m broken, out of the game, and worse: I am afraid. What I felt when I tried to tap into Wrong Night Swimming hasn’t dissipated. How I struggled to get out of it and back to reality is lingering in me. In some ways, that first night, working alone with it, was worse than the showcase. I couldn’t find the light. I had sunk deep into that horrible lake of death, unable to breathe. It was like being a child locked up in a closet again, with no air. I was trapped, my lungs burning, tears streaming from my eyes, the voices telling me how disgusting, pathetic I was. I woke up on the office floor and realized I had passed out for hours. It was the first time I’d been “absent” for more than a few seconds, and the first time I hadn’t been able to control my entry and return.
Get a grip, Camille. I go to reread the emails, startling at this seemingly innocent statement I glossed over before: It is Mr. Foucault’s understanding that you might have some availability in the coming weeks.
His most recent face flashes in my mind again, his calm, perceptive demeanor as I ran from the showcase. His elegant silhouette framed by the window, his head of burnt-caramel curls, determined jaw, and those eyes—almost supernatural, sharp like the edges of an emerald. If he found some potential Sorels in his castle, it makes sense that he would have come to check out the sale, to see how it might affect the value of his pieces. Perhaps he came in at the very end. Perhaps he didn’t see me act unhinged, disruptive, and he thinks it’s all a terrible mistake. He must have given me the benefit of the doubt—he wouldn’t have contacted me otherwise. But how can I face him right now, when my gift is suddenly out of my control? When there is a real possibility that I could be a danger to myself and others when in the presence of art? The memories of being trapped, drowning in Wrong Night Swimming, are so physical that I find myself gasping for air. That woman’s horrified face, her black dress tight like a rope around her neck. I think we could have died in there. I think… What if I don’t get out next time? What if I hurt him or his family?
Him wanting to meet with me, inviting me to D’Arvor, has been my dream for years. And now it’s happened—it’s the worst possible timing.
I can’t go right now; I’ll ask for more time. I’ll find some treatment—there must be some pills out there that can stabilize me, take the edge off my dread, perhaps even dull my gift or impede it temporarily. I’ll tell Maxime that I’m under the weather and I’ll go when I’m back to normal, able to handle whatever curveball he is going to throw at me, because this visit could never be straightforward. Not for me, anyway.
For now, I decide it is best to try my new strategy of rolling into a little ball and pretending the world beyond my flat doesn’t exist. That I can stay here forever, as long as I want, and that I haven’t counted that I have exactly five months of mortgage payments until my savings are wiped out. I feel around for the remote, press play on Mr. Darcy again, whispering my question at him: What am I going to do?
The answer doesn’t come from Regency England, but from the doorbell.