Kathleen Tessaro - The Flirt

He handed her a small stack of note cards and a pencil. ‘For your last exercise I would like you to write down the proper name of everything you see in this room. I will be back in fifteen minutes to check your progress. And remember, good penmanship is also a consideration.’

He closed the doors.

Rose looked round.

There was an awful lot of stuff.

She started with basics.

‘Settee,’ she wrote and placed the card carefully in the middle of the velvet Knowle sofa. ‘Pouff,’ she labelled the matching ottoman. On either side stood a pair of large salon chairs with elaborate claw arms, painted with gold leaf. They reminded her of the ones Posh and Becks used at their wedding. ‘His and Hers Thrones,’ she wrote neatly.

Now, there must be a television somewhere. No one had a settee without a television. She scanned the room. Wait a minute…it must be behind one of the wall panels! She smiled. Very clever! A lot of people were probably fooled by that one. ‘Television,’ she wrote, being careful to use the full and correct name rather than just TV. Licking the back of the card, she stuck it to the wall.

The marble-topped Empire commode had bottles of liquor and glasses on it: ‘Home bar,’ she inscribed. And these bookshelves were filled with fake books; she tried to pull one out but they were all glued together. Why would anyone bother to do that? They must have something to hide. It was probably a secret panel, the kind which when you pressed, led to another room. ‘Secret Panel!’ she wrote boldly, adding an exclamation point to show that she too had been amused.

Six Holbein self-portraits fell under the heading of ‘A Few of the Apostles’ (she wondered that they hadn’t bothered to buy the rest) and the unfinished Degas sketch was labelled ‘Picture of a girl with no legs’. The chaise longue was cast as a ‘Broken Settee’, the Ming Dynasty vases as ‘Sweet Jars’ and the elephant foot’s table as ‘a badly burnt stump’. (There was no accounting for taste.)

Next she turned her attention to the priceless collection of Dresden china figurines massed on the mantelpiece. There were a couple of words one was meant to use for things like this. Rose had heard her father, who ran a junk shop, use them. And she dearly wanted to impress Mr Gaunt with her expertise.

It wasn’t ‘bits and bobs’, but it was something like that…ah!

‘Nick Naxs,’ she wrote quickly.

And to the assortment of tiny seventeenth-century cloisonné snuffboxes, she gave the other specialist heading of ‘Brick a Brack’.

But then Rose wavered.

This was the trouble with getting clever, there was always something to catch you out.

Surely the chief differentiating feature between a knick-knack and bric-a-brac was the size of the object.

But which was larger?

Her confidence faltered. There were only a few minutes left and still so many things to label.

Rose’s concentration began to fray.

‘Faded old rug,’ she jotted, dropping the card on the Aubusson. ‘Half a table’ landed on the demi-lune console, and ‘Fun House Mirrer’ on the large Georgian convex looking glass above the mantel.

But still the larger question wrangled: which was bigger? A knick-knack or bric-a-brac?

Two minutes left. Rose began to panic. ‘Picture Book Bible’ on the large edition of Les Très Riches Heures de Jean Due de Berry. She frowned. ‘Dirty Pictures,’ she scribbled disdainfully on the signed Helmut Newton photography book. (You’d think he’d have the decency to at least hide them!)

Only one more minute!

Should she switch them?

Her throat constricted, heart raced. All her past failures and missed opportunities distilled into this single task. What was the use anyway? She’d failed the cutlery test. And the one about the silver. Her entire life was one big stupid mistake after another!

And, in the shadow of this sudden, crushing depression, Rose’s standards began to slip.

‘Another fucking chair’ on the Victorian reading chair, ‘Two ugly pillow biters’ on the portraits of Arnaud’s great-great-grandfather and uncle, ‘A bunch of total strangers’ on the cluster of silver-framed family photographs on the piano. And on top of the Steinway, in capital letters, ‘I’LL BET NO ONE EVEN PLAYS!’

And so on it went.

Until Mrs Bourgalt du Coudray herself walked in, followed by Simon Grey.

Now, as is often the way in large households, a great many things were all going on at the same time. So, while Gaunt was busy vetting young hopefuls for the position of junior assistant to the acting assistant household manager, somewhere on a floor above him Simon Grey and Olivia were conducting their own fevered interviews for a replacement for Roddy Prowl. They had scoured the art schools of London for someone daring, original and preferably offensive to take Roddy’s place and were promised that several candidates would appear at 45 Chester Square before the day was out. Indeed, in bedsitting rooms all across London, young artists were gathering together portfolios, throwing on clothes, and gulping down vast amounts of coffee in an attempt to sober up in time to make an impression on this powerful duo.

But they needn’t have bothered.

Because fate had another thing in mind.

Olivia flung open the drawing-room doors.

Her head throbbed from worry and nerves. Never had she imagined that agreeing to become chairman of the gallery would involve so much hands-on interaction. Now all of a sudden they were in crisis and Simon was looking to her, of all people, for help. Already they’d seen dozens of portfolios, none suitable. Hope waned. They would never be able to find a worthy replacement in time.

It was time to face facts.

‘The thing is, Simon,’ she explained, ‘we need an original statement, not just a worthy candidate but an exceptional one, with something daring to say. But the chances of us finding an artist of that calibre at such short notice…’

She stopped. Something above the mantelpiece caught her eye.

‘Fun House Mirrer,’ a small note card read, written in careful, childish writing. Lower down, by the china figurines, was another.

‘Nick Naxs.’

And on top of the collection of snuffboxes, ‘Brick a Brack.’

She turned round.

Little cards were everywhere!

‘Sette.’

‘Pouff.’

‘Half a table.’

‘My God!’ Simon gasped. ‘Your home has been vandalized! Shall I call the police?’

Olivia didn’t answer.

She was staring at the photographs in the silver frames.

‘A bunch of total strangers,’ it said.

A bunch of total strangers!

Who could’ve done such a thing?

What did it mean?

Still, she couldn’t escape the bizarre feeling that she was seeing her relations clearly for the first time.

‘Another fucking chair…’ she murmured, reading the cards out loud. ‘Secret Panel?’ The breath caught in her chest. ‘His and Hers Thrones!’

How ghastly!

How intrusive!

How accurate!

Simon was right: it was vandalism. But it was also something more.

Here was the room, just as she’d left it except for the mysterious cards. Nothing had really changed. And yet suddenly her perspective was irrevocably altered. It was offensive, shocking; subtle.

Simon tried unsuccessfully to suppress a laugh. ‘Look at this one!’ He pointed to the Helmut Newton. ‘That’s hysterical!’

‘I’ve always hated that book.’

‘Really?’ He leafed through it surreptitiously. ‘I think it’s kind of sexy.’

Olivia gripped his arm. ‘This is extraordinary!’

‘Yes. The spelling is atrocious and the handwriting!’

‘You said Mona was sending someone?’