The Blue Bath by Mary Waters-Sayer

there at all. Daniel had never liked openings.
    An older woman in a bright red coat boarded at Exhibition Road and took a spot by the door, her long neck hidden under the folds of an expertly arranged Hermès scarf. Kat watched her as she swayed gracefully in sync with her fellow passengers as the bus stopped and started its way through traffic on Kensington Gore, her fluid movements elevating them to a corps de ballet.
    Her mother had loved spending time with them in London, visiting so frequently over the years that Kat would tease her that she knew the city better than Kat did. On the mornings that Will was at school and Kat had something in the diary, her mother would set out alone to the museums. She had fallen on the last visit. Misjudging the distance from the bottom step of the bus to the pavement, she had fallen. Kat had gotten the phone call from the National Gallery and had raced over to find her resting on a couch in the staff break room, a cup of Earl Grey by her side. If she was shaken by the incident, she had not shown it, insisting on viewing the Vermeers that she had come to see, and then maintaining that it would be rude not to pay her respects to the Turners, as if they were old family friends. And so Kat had followed along beside her as she moved from Canaletto to Rubens to Ingres to Goya. Watching the changing shapes of joy in her face as the paintings passed her from one to the next. Looking like a schoolgirl with plasters on her knees.
    Kat tightened her grip on the slick metal pole as the bus slid around Hyde Park corner, eliciting surprised giggles from the young women as it stacked them neatly against a stout man in a well-worn mac.
    Walking the few blocks from Green Park, she arrived at the gallery, immediately identifiable by the news trucks parked outside. She was surprised by the amount of media there was. Someone was doing their job well. She paused briefly outside the gallery to check her phone. There was a message from Will. As sad as she was to have missed his call, she was glad to have the message, a little piece of him that he had left behind.
    Making her way through the crowd on the pavement, she entered the handsome Georgian stone building and gave her name to the woman at the door, who found it on the list and waved her inside. There had been no hesitation, no resistance, when she had telephoned the gallery asking to be added to the guest list for tonight. She had used her married name.
    She was well aware of the effect that Jonathan’s surname had begun to have on people in London. She had become inured to the immediate, subtle change in attitude that it engendered. A strange mixture of curiosity and resentment. When she married Jonathan, she had opted to keep her maiden name, a decision she had stuck with even after the success of the company had imbued his surname with new prestige. Jorie, who collected her husbands’ names and wore them about her neck like so many trinkets, continued to be puzzled by this decision.
    Once inside, she declined to check her coat. The gallery was packed. She spotted Jorie waving to her from the less crowded side of the lobby and she made her way over, intercepting a flute of champagne on her way.
    Jorie took her arm in the way that only European women can.
    “Darling, it’s a madhouse. I swear that I just saw Richard Hawthorne.”
    As with many of the names Jorie dropped, Kat recognized it in a vague way, feeling that perhaps she had read it somewhere recently.
    It was sometimes difficult to tell predator from prey in the art world, but this crowd was all predator. Dressed to the nines in the type of vintage clothing whose value was detectable only to the trained eye—watches that cost more than most cars, handbags with two-year waiting lists. Nostrils flared, heads thrown back the better to look down their noses, they prowled the openings, sniffing out the latest prize. Daniel was nowhere to be seen.
    Observing the crowd as it funneled in through