2019
Juliet was at an auction at Sotheby’s. The lot she was planning to bid on was quite far back in the catalogue, but she liked to sit through the earlier pieces to get a feel for the atmosphere of a sale, how heated the room was. Her years of buying precious gems on the global market had honed her skills for any kind of trading. If she felt a sale room was overexcited, which sometimes happened if there was one special lot in it, or people bidding who didn’t have much experience, or just too many people there, she would leave, no matter how much she loved a painting.
That was why she always went to the auctions and didn’t bid online or over the phone. She also enjoyed the sense of occasion and would often bump into clients there, so it was a good place to wear her newest pieces. She’d made sales from that which had paid for whatever she’d bought in the auction room.
Figuring it would be at least another twenty minutes until her lot came up, she decided to go and get a coffee to sharpen her mind for the fight. As she walked out into the lobby, she saw him – the man from the Phillips’ showroom. He noticed her at the same time and raised his hand in greeting.
Before she’d had time to move away, he was next to her.
‘Hello,’ he said. ‘We meet again. Fellow auction house haunters. Are you buying tonight?’
‘Possibly,’ said Juliet, thinking it was none of his bloody business and planning to keep on walking, but then he spoke again.
‘Did you buy the Lizzie Cromer we looked at that time?’ he said.
She nodded, immediately regretting it, and then when he looked down, leafing through the catalogue he was holding, she thought – with relief – that the exchange was over and took a step towards the coffee bar.
‘Hang on,’ he said, holding the catalogue open and pointing at one of the pictures. ‘Is this what you’ve got your eye on this evening?’
Juliet stared. It was exactly the piece she was interested in. Caught off guard, she said, ‘How did you know?’
‘Because it’s the only thing I’d buy tonight,’ he said, smiling in a way that put her at ease, although all her warning bells were ringing simultaneously. Had he stalked her in some way? Or seen her looking at the lots for this show, by chance? He’d said he was an ‘auction house haunter’, so it was possible he’d been there at the same time. She’d been in more than once to look at this sale, which increased the odds of that, and she had stood in front of that particular painting for a long time.
‘Are you buying?’ she said, to throw his attention off her and give her more time to suss him out.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I just like watching the circus and being around the pictures. I’m getting a coffee, do you want one?’
And against all her better judgement, she said yes.