Chapter 5 — Forty-Eight Hours
Devika arrived in a white van that smelt of wet wool and vinegar.
She pulled to the kerb without attempting the impossible turn into the service street. Ottilie crossed between two taxis while photographers followed as far as the traffic allowed. The passenger seat held three lidded dye buckets, a coil of copper pipe and a paper bag darkened by butter.
“Move the pipe,” Devika said. “The buckle catches tights.”
Ottilie put it on the floor and climbed in.
Devika looked at the production exit in the mirror. “Did he have security put you outside?”
“Yes.”
Devika drove to her dyehouse rather than ask for an address.
Upstairs, the small flat used for visiting assistants contained one bed, a narrow table and three racks of drying samples.
Ottilie washed runway dust from her feet in the utility sink because her shoes were still in the sealed company bag.
Within the first hour, she changed the passwords Harcourt didn’t control, froze the joint household card she used for personal expenses and downloaded her last twelve months of studio payments.
She didn’t empty shared accounts. She requested balances and placed a notice on any transaction above ordinary household spending.
Felicity arrived with a charger, a legal pad and no advice about the marriage. She created two lists: evidence requiring preservation and needs that could not wait for court. Medication. Clothes. Access to private archive material. A safe correspondence address. Cash for independent experts.
The first list protected a claim. The second allowed Ottilie to remain gone while making it.
“Did he say the sentence himself?”
“Yes.”
“All right.” She pulled into traffic. “Eat the croissant before you tell me anything else.”
Ottilie opened the bag because refusing would create a discussion she could not afford.
Flakes fell onto her black dress. She had dressed in it yesterday morning to finish a hem.
Kit’s hands had pushed it over her head before midnight.
By noon, photographs of the same dress were labelled PLAGIARIST WIFE REMOVED FROM HARCOURT SHOW.
Her telephone displayed more messages each time the car stopped. Two came from Kit. One asked her to confirm she was safe. The second asked for a private meeting before either side involved external lawyers.
She forwarded both to Felicity Marr.
Felicity had reviewed Ottilie’s consultancy terms three years ago after Harcourt & Bell’s general counsel inserted a perpetual-rights clause into a routine fee amendment. She had removed it, told Ottilie never to sign an assignment on a Friday, and charged for twenty-two minutes.
Her reply arrived before Devika turned east.
Office. One o’clock. Bring every document outside company systems. Do not access company servers, even if you still can.
Ottilie put the telephone away.
“Where are we going?” Devika asked.
“Your workshop first. I need the blue archive box.”
“The one you made me keep because Kit said the house archive was safer?”
“That one.”
Devika didn’t say she had told her so. The withheld sentence occupied the van anyway.
At the Bethnal Green workshop, two assistants were filtering madder sediment through cloth. Steam clouded the high windows. Devika took Ottilie upstairs to the office, unlocked a steel cabinet and brought out a blue conservation box wrapped in a plastic bag.
Inside were the documents Harcourt & Bell didn’t control: signed sampling letters, courier receipts, photographs of original lengths before delivery, and the first page of every dye notebook.
Ottilie had kept the full notebooks at Holland Park because the house had better fire protection. The irony required no attention now.
She photographed the box as found, including dust along the lid, before removing anything. Felicity would approve of the sequence.
Devika watched from the doorway. “Do you want me in the room with the lawyer?”
“No. I may need a witness who hasn’t heard every detail from me first.”
“Unpleasantly sensible.”
“You taught me.”
Devika folded her arms. Dye had settled into the lines across her knuckles. “I taught you not to put silk into alkaline water because a man says the schedule requires it.”
“The principle travelled.”
Felicity’s office occupied two rooms above a surveyor near Lincoln’s Inn. There was no marble reception desk, only a bell that rang in both rooms and a coat stand listing beneath too many wet coats.
Felicity met Ottilie in shirtsleeves. Her dark hair had been cut shorter since their last meeting, and silver showed above one ear.
“Before we discuss the marriage,” she said, “we discuss the work. Before we discuss the work, you tell me whether you signed anything after the sampling letter.”
“No.”
“Verbal agreement?”
“We negotiated a licence and then an assignment. I refused the assignment wording. No final licence was executed.”
“Did you accept payment described as acquisition of copyright?”
“Consultancy fees, material reimbursements and a development fee. All invoices reserved pre-existing rights.”
Felicity held out her hand. Ottilie gave her the blue box.
For the next hour, they built a chronology on brown paper.
Felicity wrote dates. Ottilie placed documents beneath them.
The earliest Orchard Ashes photograph showed the finished silk in her old studio.
A courier receipt proved when it entered Harcourt & Bell for scanning.
The sampling letter restricted use to internal trials.
A later email from Ottilie refused “any transfer of the archive or its underlying artwork pending complete attribution and royalty terms.”
The public statement appeared on the line last.
Felicity read it twice. “He knew the archive chronology?”
“He saw me make some of it.”
“That is marital knowledge. I need company knowledge.”
“The first scans were stored under my creator code. Kit approved the archive budget.”
“Better.” Felicity made another note. “Where are the originals?”
“Some at Holland Park. Most in the Bell House archive. My notebooks are divided between both.”
They issued preservation notices before asking a court for anything.
One went to Harcourt & Bell, one to the show producer, one to the streaming platform and one to the company managing security at the Calder Rooms. The notices identified source files, camera footage, access logs, bags searched and every instruction affecting Ottilie’s badge or notebooks.
The show producer replied that Harcourt & Bell owned the production recordings. Felicity answered that ownership of a copy didn’t permit destruction of relevant evidence. The streaming platform preserved both the live programme and the unused camera feeds.
Ottilie worked through contact sheets while Felicity’s assistant captured public pages. The campaign website changed twice. First her surname disappeared from the guest list. Then a banner appeared above the statement: Harcourt & Bell protects every creator.
“Save the page with the time,” Felicity said.
Ottilie did. The task felt smaller than anger and therefore possible.
They listed people who had seen original work before Saskia’s registration: Devika, two gallery handlers, a photographer, Jean and the courier who collected Orchard Ashes six years ago. Felicity stopped Ottilie from contacting any of them about what to say.
“Tell them only to preserve their records,” she said. “Memory becomes less useful when witnesses build it together.”
Ottilie sent five short requests without describing the dispute. Devika replied with a photograph of the blue archive box still sealed in her cabinet.
“Access?”
“My show pass was taken. I still have house keys.”
“Do not use them until we have written instructions about the legal hold. If material goes missing, I do not want somebody alleging you removed it.”
Ottilie looked at the brown paper. Every decision she had made to keep the archive safe had concentrated it inside Kit’s control.
The office bell rang.
Felicity’s assistant appeared. “Christopher Harcourt is downstairs. He says Mrs Harcourt agreed to see him.”
Ottilie had agreed to nothing. Kit had sent a message while they worked: Ten minutes. With Felicity present if you insist.
Felicity looked at her. “Do you want him admitted?”
“Ten minutes. You stay.”
Kit entered without a coat, rain darkening the shoulders of his suit. He carried no lawyer and no papers. Ottilie knew enough about him to recognise that as a presentation choice.
He stopped when he saw the chronology on the wall.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
Felicity started the timer on her telephone.
Ottilie said, “Retract the statement.”
“I am asking you to hold public comment for forty-eight hours.”
“Retract it.”
“Marwick Cale has suspended, not terminated. If we can replace the warranty with a direct licence—”
“There will be no licence.”
Kit pulled out the chair opposite but didn’t sit. “Hundreds of employment contracts depend on closing.”
“Then you should not have warranted property you didn’t own.”
“I believed we had agreement in principle.”
Felicity said, “An agreement in principle doesn’t convey copyright.”
His attention remained on Ottilie. “I can restore your credit and issue a clarification after the buyer approves the structure.”
“A clarification that says what?”
“That the suspension was precautionary and the works were created through an archive collaboration.”
“No.”
“Ottilie—”
“You will say I am the creator. You will say the company never obtained an assignment. You will say Saskia’s registration is invalid.”
Kit’s hand rested on the back of the chair. “If I say that today, Marwick Cale terminates.”
“Then the truth is not delayed by an investigation. It is delayed by price.”
“Forty-eight hours gives us a chance to protect the factory.”
“You used the factory before you asked whether I would carry it.”
“I am asking now.”
Ottilie looked at the man who had cleaned dye from her skin last night. “No. You are telling me the cost of refusing after you spent my name.”
The timer showed four minutes remaining.
Kit pulled out the chair and sat. The change brought him level with her rather than towering over the table. It didn’t make the request smaller.
“What are you filing?” he asked.
Felicity answered. “Preservation demands immediately. An application for interim injunctive relief if the company will not undertake to stop use.”
“The show is already under way.”
“The livestream, replay, campaign, sales and manufacture are not finished,” Ottilie said.
“An injunction freezes the collection.”
“Yes.”
“Retailers have committed floor space. The factory has cut cloth.”
“Then retract the statement and confirm my ownership.”
Kit’s face settled into the stillness he used when every available option damaged something he considered his responsibility.
“I cannot do that before the buyer meeting tomorrow.”
The answer arrived without raised voices. Ottilie felt the marriage move beneath it.
She nodded to Felicity.
Felicity stopped the timer at six minutes twelve seconds. “The meeting is over.”
Kit stood. “Ottilie, come home tonight.”
“Communicate through this office.”
“We are still married.”
“That didn’t prevent your lawyers searching my bag.”
He looked as though he wanted to correct the verb, perhaps explain evidence preservation or Tom’s authority. Whatever formed behind his teeth remained there.
After he left, Felicity locked the office door and returned to the table.
“We need to establish whether any licence exists beyond the sampling letter,” she said. “If it does, we ask the court to confine it. If it does not, the remedy is broader.”
Ottilie traced the photograph of Orchard Ashes without touching the ink.
Felicity turned the final unsigned draft towards her. “If the licence was never signed, you may not own part of the collection. You may own all of it.”
The forty-eight-hour deadline expired at 4:16 the following afternoon.
Kit’s solicitor sent an offer at 4:03: restore Ottilie’s credit, pay a substantial advance and negotiate a long-form exclusive licence after the buyer meeting.
The public statement would remain pending investigation until execution.
Ottilie read the offer once. It converted retraction into consideration and required her to rescue the warranty before the company admitted it was false.
At 4:17, she instructed Felicity to file.