Chapter 22: At Least it’s not Blackmail

My studio felt uncanny and not in a good way. When you enter the same room repeatedly, it simply exists for you, effortlessly, withdrawn, happy-in-itself. You and the room get along just fine without paying each other any attention. Now though, even before I’d put my backpack down, I sensed that the studio was in a state of high alert, waving at me to become aware of it. Why? Desk, strewn with its usual debris. Shelves, overflowing with fabrics and bric-a-brac. Easel, leaning against the far wall. Sketch pads on the floor and the torn-off drawings neatly stacked beside them.

Far too neatly, all the corners were aligned.

Somone had been here and had looked at my sketches, then carefully tidied them up.

The image of a cartoon thief came to my mind: a chubby, little man dressed in a black-and-white stripped top, with a black mask and a big bag over his shoulder on which was written SWAG.

You think something was stolen?

Celine didn’t answer. She didn’t need to. Kneeling, I leafed through my drawings, turning them over. Woman with rose. Women as a copse of trees. Woman crying petals. Women wading through a petal-strewn lake. Woman with flowers for eyes. Woman with flowers for mouth. Women asleep among the flowers. Woman dissolving into flowers. There was one missing, a woman touching her forehead to another woman while petals rose from the back of her head.

Who took it?

A memory. Arm over the back of her chair, Paula looks at me with her dark eyes. ‘Adverts in dreams are no more harmful than adverts on billboards and screens,’ she says.

At the time, I considered those words to be an empathetic statement by someone who was on my side and trying to reassure me that the DreamAds experiment would not be too dangerous. Recalling the moment again, I realised there was no empathy in that look. Her statement was matter-of-fact and careless of the horror of the new technology. It did not concern Paula that adverts were coming to our dreams, adverts were already omnipresent and she accepted this as normal.

How sure are you that it was Paula?

Celine’s response had me reeling. I became so aware of all the scents around me – really aware – that I lost my sense of balance and fell to my cushions. The scentscape of the studio was richer and more vivid than a Bruegel painting. Even the dust came in a variety of flavours: overwhelmingly that of my skin, but some of it was timber-scented and there was also a distinct flavour of dust formed from old plaster. Closing my eyes, I found that I could identify individual tubes of paint by their particular scents. No wonder I spent the day filtering out ninety-nine per cent of this information: being continually conscious of this way of experiencing the world would be so overwhelming that you wouldn’t be able to function. And among the scents, unmistakable and unambiguous, was that of Paula, it mostly consisted of her Dove classic roll-on deodorant, accompanied by a hint of leather and smoked paprika.

Was it me who had us storming towards Paula’s studio or Celine? Best if it was me, the less murderous half of our mind.

In other circumstances, I would have appreciated that a new noticeboard was fixed to the wall and was covered in newspaper and magazine clippings about me. My community were evidently delighted by my success. My community was fractured. Ruined. By a thief. That thought, more than the actual theft, was causing Anger to press her molten fingers to my head. For now, these hot days, is the mad blood stirring. This place was my family. Paula was robbing me of my sense of home as well as of my sketch.

I’m short, so when I hurry, filled with indignation, my quick-moving feet clack out a swift, fierce percussion.

There she was. Sitting at the table under the stairs with Carmel and Tony.

‘Cyn! So good to see you. I …’ Tony was speaking but I wasn’t looking at him.

‘Paula! You have ten minutes to bring back my sketch or I’m calling the guards.’

‘What?’ cried Carmel.

Tea sloshed around Tony’s cup and over the side, causing him to leap up and brush at the hot liquid that had spilled onto his trousers.

Only Paula was unaffected by my shout, picking up her phone from the table and taking her time to read the notices before lifting the focus of her dark, unblinking eyes to mine. ‘I’ve no idea what you mean.’

‘Of course you do. You went into my studio, looked through my drawings and stole one.’

‘Jesus, Paula!’ exclaimed Tony. ‘How could you?’

‘Don’t be silly Tony. I wasn’t there. In fact, I’ve never been in her studio; I wouldn’t be sure which one it is. If Cyn has lost a sketch, she’d be better off looking for it instead of making unsupported accusations.’

Unhappy, with her plump cheeks having become pale, Carmel looked from Paula to me.

What could I say? That my id knew for sure that Paula had been in my room? For a moment, no one spoke. Tony believed me; Carmel didn’t. Without their support, I was in danger of losing my sketch; my home from home; and, worse, of giving this thief a drawing which, since the auction, might be worth a few thousand.

‘Paula,’ I took out my phone, scrolled to my old camera app and turned the screen towards her. ‘I have you recorded.’

With Celine’s help, I knew exactly how to angle the screen so that from Paula’s seat it was mostly glare. And in any case, the “camera offline” message (I hadn’t used this app for over a year) was a credible one.

‘All right. I’ll give it you back.’ Paula stood up, cool and undismayed; I was trembling, mainly with the effort of supressing Celine, who wanted to start a physical fight that would make the most violent scenes in a Quentin Taratino film look like an episode of Peppa Pig.

‘Paula! How could you?’ Carmel was open-mouthed. ‘I’m so sorry Cyn.’

Paula put her leather jacket on and edged past Carmel’s knees. The younger woman recoiled from any possibility of being touched. ‘Just being entrepreneurial.’

As her footsteps receded, Tony said, ‘she’s out of here. Just show that video to Magella.’

‘I find it hard to believe. I thought I knew Paula. She was one of my best friends.’ There were tears in Carmel’s eyes and she was blinking rapidly.

‘I should have listened to Celine. She understood Paula a lot better than me. Being robbed by a fellow artist is such a kick in the stomach.’

A hand on mine. A gentle voice. ‘Sit down Cyn. Hashtag, not-all-artists. Let me make you a tea, I need a new one myself.’ Carefully, as though protecting a damaged back, Tony raised himself from the chair and straightened.

I received a concerned glance or two from Carmel. No one spoke, however, as I listened to the kettle boil, the tea caddy opening and closing (an intense waft of Earl Grey tea filling the scentscape, an after-effect, perhaps, of Celine having earlier opened my mind to the full range of scents around me), the water being poured (I could even sense the slight increase in temperature from the warmth of kettle and cup), the clink of spoon on china, and Tony stepping back to the table.

‘There,’ he said.

‘Much better. Thank you.’

‘Theft aside, we are all really proud of you Cyn.’

Carmel recovered her enthusiasm. ‘I watched the auction on YouTube. Fair play to Neo for giving the painting to the National Gallery.’

‘I suppose I should be grateful. He made a pretty miserable speech though, all about how it was DreamAds technology that mattered. He even got my name wrong.’

While Tony gave a tut of disapproval, Carmel looked puzzled and took her phone out of her bag. ‘Did he? Because in the recording I watched on YouTube Neo says Cyn Sweetwater.’ She watched her screen for a minute, peroxide hair falling forward and as a result blocking my view of it. ‘Here.’

Neo’s appearance was immaculate; he looked more resolute than I remembered him: a Daniel Craig-as-James Bond filtered version of the softer, more tremulous reality.

‘A moment of your time please, before we continue. I have an announcement. This painting is a consequence of DreamAds. Our technology releases the inner artist in all of us. No insult to the artist, Cyn Sweetwater, but this work, which seems a masterpiece in our eyes, is only the harbinger of the future, where every artist will be at this level and higher. Imagine a world where everyone is a Mozart, or a Picasso, or a Joyce. That’s coming.’

I handed the phone back, giving her a “can you believe it” roll of my eyes. ‘They cut out a rambling comment about sex and tidied it up. The gist of what Neo actually said is there though: DreamAds does make a difference because the creation of worthwhile art is all about listening to the artist within.’

‘That’s always been my philosophy,’ said Tony.

‘Who does your social media?’ asked Carmel.

‘No one. I keep off it. Much to the annoyance of Julien.’

‘Ten thousand people are following Cyn Sweetwater on X and twelve thousand on Instagram.’

‘Damnit. Show me?’

Again I took Carmel’s phone. Of course she was right. Perhaps it was something I might have anticipated. Maybe I should have created these accounts just to protect myself from identity theft.

‘You’re having a bad day Cyn,’ observed Tony, perhaps because I’d unconsciously put a hand over my eyes.

‘It’s all right. I’ll just carry on ignoring all social media. I resent this, of course, but it doesn’t matter. There’s something about the content though.’ I resumed scrolling through the Instagram. The pictures of me were familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.

What am I looking at Celine?

Closing my eyes, I imagined myself under a cascade of memories, each like a square of paper with a photograph on it. Arms outstretched they continued to descend, parting over my head, shoulders and arms until I brought my hands together in a clap that captured one of them. Dad.

Blue motorway signs. White lines. Vibrations. Dad with his arms on the wheel, eyes on the road. I’m high up in the cabin, looking over the roofs of the cars ahead and those overtaking dad’s huge truck.

‘You need to get a HGV license.’

‘HGV? Seriously?’

‘Our business is going under Cyn. I don’t mind hard work but I’m not allowed to drive more than fifty-six hours a week.’

‘Even if I could get a license, I’m not going to make the difference.’

‘We’d do shifts. One sleeping, one driving. We could keep her on the road. I could bid for that Pfizer contract.’

I don’t say anything. The idea is maniacal and if mum had been alive, she’d have told him so.

‘You know what sets me off?’ he speaks again after pulling out to overtake a slow, yellow-painted VW Beetle.

‘Everything?’

Dad snorts, giving me a quick glance. ‘Getting up at five thirty and thinking about you in your student flat, lying in after your parties. Going to art school and doing fuck all, other than sit around with your friends, drinking coffee and talking about Russian Constructivism.’

‘Is it Vladimir Tatlin in particular who triggers you? Or my whole lifestyle?’

‘You’re selfish and inconsiderate Cyn.’

‘You’re the selfish and inconsiderate person in this cab. You want me to give up my goal of being an artist for a job I’m unsuited for, which I’ll hate, and which will almost certainly fail to save the business in any case.’

The memory was vivid. Right then, I had resolved to leave the family home for good and I had acted on that decision. Whatever happened to dad’s one-truck haulage business, it had nothing to do with me and he had no claim on me. I would take nothing from him: no meals; no accommodation; no heat; no light. No love.

I understood why Celine had brought this up. ‘It’s my dad. He’s using pictures from mum’s old Facebook account and filtering them to make me look older.’

‘What the hell?’ exclaimed Carmel.

My next breath went into the depths of my lungs and out again. ‘He’s either going to blackmail me for money, or he’s hoping to monetize these accounts through adverts.’

‘That’s success for you,’ said Tony. ‘Spare me from success.’

‘I know, right? And this is just a particularly miserable side effect. I’ve eighty…’ I took out my phone and looked at the red alert button over my email app… ‘No, make that a hundred-and-twenty emails in the last two days.’

I hated the sight of all the email alerts. On the next page of my phone was the Signal app. That’s where I wanted to see a red dot with a number in it. Amanda, however, was not returning my messages and it was still blank.

Carmel said, ‘You need a secretary. You can’t deal with all this and still paint.’

It occurred to me to check to see if dad had emailed me. And sure enough he had. I tapped on his name and read the contents aloud.

‘Hello Cyn, long time. I’ve seen you a lot in the papers and online. Fair play, I didn’t realise there was so much money in art. Or rather, that you’d be able to get it. You’ve done well. But listen, that art world is full of people who will try to rip you off. Look at these links to the story of the Beatles or the Sex Pistols. You need an agent who isn’t going to rip you off. You don’t even have proper social media and you need to get going on that. I’ve made a start for you. Give me a ring. I’ll help with everything. Dad.’

Tony said, ‘I was lucky with my dad. He was a decent man.’

‘At least it’s not blackmail.’ The look Carmel gave me was supportive.

‘Not yet.’