Chapter 38
‘Oh my God, have you heard?’ Olu’s clutching me in the home goods aisle of Sainsbury’s before I even realise I’ve bumped into her.
‘Er, hello, Olu!’ I say, blinking at the unexpected encounter. I’m trying to avoid the tedious task of packing up my room so volunteered to go to the supermarket in search of cleaning products. ‘What have I heard?’
‘Felix,’ she says, raising her eyebrows.
‘What about him?’
‘Maybe it hasn’t escaped the French group chat yet, but . . . he’s been kicked out of uni.’
My heart starts racing. ‘What? Why?’
‘Well, we all knew he was a bit of a shit and a total player, but it seems as if it all went a bit further than that.’ She widens her eyes suggestively.
‘What do you mean?’ My throat feels dry.
‘You know how hard it is for anything like this to actually stick against anyone, let alone a rich white boy like him – no offence; I know you used to be mad about him,’ she says, holding up a hand to pause my objections, not that any would be forthcoming.
‘So I guess it must have been something pretty compelling for him to actually get kicked out. People are saying it was multiple credible allegations of sexual assault.’
‘Fuck . . .’ I say.
Olu pauses. ‘Was he ever –’ she cocks her head – ‘like that with you?’ I guess I didn’t do a very good job of keeping our ‘relationship’ under wraps from the Quad lot.
‘No,’ I say, shaking my head. But that’s not true, is it? I let out a sigh. ‘I mean . . . yes. It was one of those things that . . . I kept telling myself had to be OK because Felix wasn’t like that . . . but it wasn’t OK . . . and he was like that.’
‘I’m sorry . . . and I’m sorry for being the one who had to tell you about this . . . I didn’t know you didn’t know.’
‘I’ve sort of avoided him as a general concept as much as possible since I left Quad.’
‘Probably a good idea. I’m just happy he’s not going to be unleashed on the female student population of Guadeloupe. If he felt empowered to behave like that here, who knows what he’d get up to there?’
‘You’re right,’ I say, feeling a bit sick.
‘Anyway, enough about him – what are you doing this summer?’
‘Um . . .’ I say, decidedly discombobulated.
‘I’m doing an internship at a gallery in Bermondsey.
My sculpture lecturer put in a good word with a friend who works there.
’ Jessica has really saved this academic year for me, and I’m going to be history’s best intern to her mate by way of thanks. ‘How about you?’
‘Just working before heading to Paris.’ Olu says, as if getting to move to Paris for a year is so totally casual and not something I would love to do.
‘That’s so exciting, I’m so happy for you,’ I say with a smile. ‘Well –’ I brandish my bin bags and bleach – ‘I’ve got a flat to pack up and clean. It was . . . good to see you.’
‘You too,’ she says, and draws me into a hug. ‘He was always the problem. Always. I know we were never close, but I often found myself really wanting you to know that.’
A thought crosses my mind suddenly. ‘Olu!’ I call after her and she turns back to look at me.
‘Mmm?’
‘Did you once write into my column . . . about, well, about me and Felix? I got a letter once in the magazine pigeonhole and I never knew who it was from.’
She closes her eyes and shakes her head. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done it. It wasn’t the way, you know?’
‘But it was you, right?’
She nods, chewing her lip.
I now draw her into a hug. ‘Thank you.’
‘You’re not mad? We’re hardly, like, close so I thought maybe it would come off as weird or rude.’
‘No. It’s . . . sort of nice to know that good people are thinking of you even when you don’t know it. It sounds silly to say it, but . . .’
‘What?’
‘But maybe it’s like we all have these little invisible networks of people doing good things and we hardly know about any of it.’
Olu smiles wryly. ‘You? Being an eternal optimist? I’m shocked! See you when I’m back from Paris, I guess.’
I walk back to the flat in a daze. Felix kicked out of Queen Anne’s College for multiple sexual assault allegations?
Olu’s right – things like this don’t stick to guys like him, so it must be inescapably bad.
I don’t know how to feel. I mean, obviously I’m glad he’s experiencing some consequences for his actions, but now he’s just .
. . gone. Cut loose. Free to go and be the same person he’ll always be, just somewhere else.
It should feel like a win, but like so many things with Felix, it’s ended up being so much more tangled.
I have packing to do, but something about this encounter with Olu makes me want to go and see my saints.
I drop my purchases off at home and hop on the Northern Line down to the Portrait Gallery.
I tread the familiar route to the little dark-green exhibition room, but when I get there, there’s a sign blocking the entrance.
THIS GALLERY IS CLOSED WHILE WE PREPARE THE NEXT EXHIBITION
I give a little gasp of horror. My saint! She’s gone! All 450 of her! I feel as if the rug has been pulled out from under my feet. Of course I knew it was a temporary exhibition, but I realise now I’d never really thought it would close. I miss her already. It really is the end of an era.
I go for a wander around the National Gallery instead.
I come across one painting on its own, with a crowd of people around it, transfixed.
It’s a painting on loan from Naples, one I’ve heard of but never seen in person.
I wait for the crowd to thin a little and make my way forward.
It’s gnarly. Dark, both visually and thematically.
A woman cutting off a man’s head complete with spurting blood, while another woman holds him down.
Artemisia Gentileschi’s Judith Slaying Holofernes.
I read the card next to the painting, read about the Biblical story the painting is based on – a beautiful widow who saves her people from an oncoming army by beheading its general – and, maybe more interestingly, how this painting is understood to be a way for the artist to metabolise her own rape by her mentor, who was tried and convicted.
I look at the painting for a long time. At the long streaks of blood. Good for her, I think.