Chapter 14

PATRICK, DUBAI, 2023, THREE DAYS BEFORE HARRY'S DEATH

I was in the back of a taxi when my phone buzzed in my jacket pocket with a message from my assistant at the gallery: Check your email. Moments before, Tate Modern had issued an official statement, and she had sent it straight over. It read:

We have been made aware that a second version of Self-Portrait as Sphinx, the Juliette Willoughby painting which has been on loan to us since 2000, is being offered for sale as an authentic work. While we have no reasons for concern over the authenticity of the painting in Tate Modern, its owner has requested it be removed from display pending further analysis.

So there it was. The cat was officially out of the bag. A bit earlier than I had anticipated or hoped. Still, that might be a good thing, I told myself. A load of media attention, the whiff of scandal, could actually be useful in pushing up the painting's price. Or it could scare buyers off. It was impossible to know. By far the highest-profile potential sale of my career, this was uncharted territory for me.

Just to make it all feel even less real, here I was at the Desert Palm Polo Club, very much not one of my usual haunts. Climbing out of the taxi—I could see a long line of expensive cars waiting for the valet—I gave my name at the door, took a seat at the bar, and ordered a beer. As I was waiting to be served, my phone buzzed again with new messages: someone from the art magazine Apollo, asking if it was true about the painting. Another from Harry saying that Giles Pemberton, now chief art critic at the Sunday Times, had phoned to ask him the same. And one from Caroline confirming that she had booked her flight out to see the painting in person.

Thank God for that, I thought.

Thumbing in speedy replies to each, I didn't notice one of Sarah's friends, Jerry Wilson, as he approached. A British expat of thirty years' standing, with a penchant for panama hats and striped blazers, he was always good value at a dinner party if you were in the mood for stories about the old days here.

"Patrick! Don't think I've seen you at the polo before. Know anyone playing?"

I shook my head. "Meeting an old university friend for a picnic, actually. You don't happen to know where...?"

"They'll be over on the far side of the pitch," said Jerry. "Members enclosure. Very VIP. I'll walk you over if you like."

As we strolled, I waved hello to a few familiar faces. One of the things I hadn't anticipated before moving here was how many people I would end up sort of knowing, or would turn out to sort of know already. Friends of friends, boys from school, art world émigrés, college acquaintances, like Dave White, who would suddenly pop up at a party or be sitting at the next table in a restaurant. People like Athena Galanis, whom I was here today to meet.

It might be three decades since we had been at university together, but I had recognized Athena instantly the first time I spotted her at a private event here, last year. Sky-high heels, waist-length hair, tasteful diamonds (but lots of them). When I asked what she was doing there, my assistant informed me that she was an art advisor, a very rich woman helping very rich friends invest sensibly in the art market and pick out the perfect blue chip pieces to fill their available wall space. As she said it, I did vaguely recall that Athena had grown up in Dubai, that her father was a big deal in something here—construction, I think, although Eric Lam had always insisted it was actually much murkier than that, which might have explained at least some of Freddie's reluctance to introduce her to the family as his girlfriend.

I had spoken to Athena briefly at that event—we swapped cards and said we should get a date in the diary to meet. But we never did, until this morning, when she had suddenly decided a catch-up was overdue and called with an invitation. I suppose it was part of her job, keeping her ear to the ground. I did feel a little disloyal to Caroline accepting—given how close she and Athena had been, it always seemed to me extravagantly cruel for Athena (whatever the circumstances) to have ended their friendship so coldly, so abruptly, so finally.

Even years afterward, whenever Caroline talked about it, it was clear how hurt she still was. Well into her late twenties, she kept trying to reach out, to attempt a reconciliation. We looked for Athena on Friends Reunited when that became a thing, then on Facebook. She was not on LinkedIn or Instagram. We googled her name on a fairly regular basis, but nothing ever came up. Like Dave White, I suspected, Athena was wealthy enough that she made herself unsearchable.

Jerry and I parted ways at the gate to the VIP enclosure.

"Patrick!" Athena shouted over from where she was standing, signaling for someone to collect me.

It was an extraordinary sight. What most people probably think of, when they think of Dubai. Docile camels with Cartier-logo blankets on their backs flanked the entrance. Beyond that, a row of well-spaced Bentleys, Aston Martins and Rolls-Royces had been allowed to pull up, picnic blankets laid out beside them. At each, groups of guests lounged—women in blousy dresses and abayas, men in pastel suits and pristine kanduras—and around all of these hovered staff dispensing drinks, unpacking baskets of food.

"So glad you could make it!" She air-kissed me three times in a cloud of perfume. "Everyone, this is Patrick—a Cambridge friend of mine. In fact, we did art history together."

There were lots of faces I recognized—big-time collectors, high-end dealers, and an auctioneer from Sotheby's. Precisely the sort of people I had been attempting to cultivate ever since I had first arrived in Dubai. A white-gloved waiter offered me a champagne flute on a silver tray, another proffered a platter of caviar-topped blinis. We all made small talk about the heat, a lackluster exhibition that had just opened at the Louvre Abu Dhabi, a wonderful new Senegalese artist whose work Athena had just discovered. We all completely ignored the polo thundering alongside us, nodding occasionally for champagne top-ups. Eventually, Athena leaned over.

"So, spill the beans, Patrick. Another Self-Portrait as Sphinx? What is this, a publicity stunt? I can't imagine your ex-wife is too pleased about it," she said, with a sly smile—she had evidently been keeping tabs on Caroline and me over the years, too.

"It's exactly what it seems," I told her.

"It can't be," said Athena bluntly. "I've read Caroline's book. It took Juliette months to paint Self-Portrait as Sphinx. She only talks of a single painting in her journal, and there wasn't time for her to paint another, something that intricate, between her final diary entry and the fire."

"I'm aware of the logistics," I told her. "Nevertheless, the fact remains, the painting in my gallery is an authentic Willoughby, a genuine Self-Portrait as Sphinx."

Athena studied my face. "And you really think Caroline is going to torch her own reputation to acknowledge that?"

"I have absolute confidence in Caroline's professionalism, objectivity, and integrity," I said decisively.

"Always the gentleman. You haven't changed at all, have you?" Athena said with an airy laugh.

I was not quite sure how to take this, or if it was meant as a compliment.

"I'm sure Caroline would love to see you," I said. "After all these years..."

Most people I knew—admittedly the majority of them were middle-class, and English—would have paid this idea at least some lip service, even if they subsequently failed to follow up. Athena simply pretended I had not spoken.

"As you've probably guessed," she told me, her tone suddenly more businesslike, "the reason I invited you here is that I have several clients who would be very interested in viewing your painting. Who have asked me to gauge the sort of figure you might be looking for, if it were authenticated."

"I couldn't possibly say right now," I told her, truthfully.

As Athena well knew, that was not how private sales worked—the approach was usually much more guarded, money the last subject broached.

"Ballpark, Patrick, come on," she cajoled, suddenly switching back into her aren't-we-old-friends voice again.

"Well, I would be surprised if the vendor would consider less than thirty million."

I had suggested to Harry this might be a little ambitious for a painting that logically, technically, should not even exist. He had been insistent. The deal we shook on was that I would shoulder all the costs of restoring and marketing the painting—money I had to borrow—and would take a 30 percent commission, higher than my usual 10 on account of the level of risk. It was a gamble. If it paid off, the rewards would be extraordinary. What would happen if it did not sell, I did not like to think about as much.

"Thirty million pounds? The last time Self-Portrait as Sphinx sold on the open market—"

"The last time Self-Portrait as Sphinx sold was at a small provincial auction house in Ely. Before the discovery of Juliette's journal was made public. Before Caroline's book sold five million copies."

I was pleased I had managed to slip that in. I hoped it did rankle just a little with Athena that long after she and I and her clients were forgotten, Caroline's scholarship would endure.

"I'll pass the message on," said Athena, her tone once again cooler. "And I'll be in touch. It will all depend on Caroline's verdict, of course."

"Experts revise their judgment when new evidence comes to light all the time, as you know."

Under other circumstances I might have mentioned my father and his Raphael.

A waiter leaned a white-gloved hand over my shoulder to top up my champagne, and I put my palm over the top. "Actually, I'm just going to nip to the bathroom—please excuse me," I said.

I could not find the loos in the VIP zone. Having made two conspicuous circles of the area, I exited it in the direction of the toilet sign I could see near the clubhouse.

Jerry, conspicuously flushed, was swaying at the urinal.

"There you are, Patrick! Enjoying yourself?" he said. He did not wait for a response. "And was that George Galanis's daughter I saw you over there with? I should come over and say hello, perhaps."

"I actually have to leave—lots to do back at the gallery."

"Ah, shame. I knew George quite well. One of a kind he was. Tremendous energy. Wonderful polo player. Great raconteur. Always remember him with a brandy. Sort of person you imagine smoking a cigar in the bath. Who'd suddenly decide one day you were all going to fly to Paris for dinner that evening in his private jet."

I did wonder if even Freddie had fully realized the scale of the Galanis family wealth. I could imagine him rather enjoying that sort of lifestyle, had not some weird Willoughby glitch always prevented him from taking Athena seriously as a potential partner. Perhaps it was the flashiness of the family that was part of the problem—a term like flashiness coming with a fairly hefty helping of associated snobbery and prejudice for a family like Freddie's. I certainly knew exactly the kind of girl Freddie would have married, had he lived—blond, bland, blue-blooded. Exactly the same sort of woman, if the photographs on Facebook were anything to go by, that pretty much all the rest of the Osiris Society had settled down with.

"Of course, after George died," Jerry said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, "from what I hear, the family found out they had rather less money than they thought."

He raised a knowing eyebrow, searching my face for a reaction before he continued. "In fact, I have heard that after his heart attack, they discovered they were completely broke. It was all just shell company within shell company within shell company. Offshore bank account after offshore bank account with nothing in it."

"That's just Dubai gossip, surely," I countered, unable to believe it. "Athena certainly doesn't look to me like she is struggling, cash-wise. I guess she must be earning it all herself now, unless there's some rich boyfriend on the scene...?"

"Never been introduced to one," Jerry said, shaking his head. "Shame, a beautiful woman like that. Still, I can see why she would want to keep it quiet, about her father. As we all know, in her line of business, and yours, it's all about appearances, isn't it?"

We were at the sinks now, and he met my eye in the mirror. "And perhaps that is even truer here than anywhere else in the world."

CAROLINE, CAMbrIDGE, 2023, THREE DAYS BEFORE HARRY'S DEATH

I knew from the knock—a precise and familiar rat-tat-tat—that it was Sam Fadel at my office door.

I had hesitated about emailing him—not least because I knew he was likely to respond to my email with a personal visit like this—but if anyone could interpret the hieroglyphics on Harry's painting and on the lintel at Longhurst and that Harry had shown me on Cyril's pyramid, it was Dr. Sam Fadel, once the curator of the Willoughby Bequest, now the Archaeology Department's Head of Archives.

"Come in," I called.

"Is now a good time?" he asked, poking his head around the door with an uncertain smile.

Not really, was the honest answer, given that it was quarter past five and all afternoon I had been fielding calls about the Tate's press release, explaining to reporters that I could not comment as I had yet to see the painting for myself, and was currently answering the last few urgent messages from students before I flew to Dubai tomorrow morning to do so.

On the other hand, Sam was doing me a favor, and he had every reason not to.

"Of course," I nodded. "Thank you so much for this."

"It's no trouble at all," he said, jabbing his glasses up his nose as he spoke, perching for a seat on one arm of an unoccupied armchair. "I have to admit I'm intrigued by the pictures you emailed. Is there any more context you can give me?"

"These hieroglyphics appear on a second version of Juliette Willoughby's Self-Portrait as Sphinx that has been found at Longhurst Hall. I've been asked to authenticate it. Patrick's gallery is trying to sell it."

At the mention of Patrick, his smile stiffened slightly.

"I see. And you want me to translate the phrase?"

"Yes, and perhaps offer some insight into why it meant something to Cyril Willoughby," I explained. "It was written over the door to the east wing at Longhurst, where he kept his collection. And it's carved over the entrance to his pyramid tomb. What I was wondering—"

"Is if it features in any of the materials in the Willoughby Bequest?"

"Exactly."

"I can tell you the answer to that question very easily," he said, looking pleased with himself. "It features in all of them. You see, our understanding of the collection has developed quite significantly over time. Back when I started working on the written materials in the bequest, it was assumed that Cyril had a general interest in funeral texts and coffin inscriptions. It's since become clear that in fact he spent his life collecting as many different versions as he could lay his hands on of one particular chapter of the Book of the Dead. Chapter sixty-four, to be precise."

"I see," I said, although I wasn't sure I did, entirely.

"Look, the thing to bear in mind when we talk about the Book of the Dead is that the ancient Egyptians didn't call it that, and it wasn't a book. It is a collection of writings—prayers, or spells, or instructions—on tomb walls, inside coffins, on papyri inserted between the bandages of mummies—designed to guide the soul of a deceased person through the afterlife. Then in the nineteenth century it was ordered into a vague sequence and translated by a German scholar, Karl Richard Lepsius, and given the title Das Todtenbuch der ?gypter."

As he said this, something tugged at the corner of my mind—the white-bandaged body in the painting, the beaked boatman rowing it across the lake.

"Those passages were copied again and again over several thousand years, so for each chapter we have innumerable versions. Versions from a coffin which has been exposed to the elements. Versions from a tomb wall an ancient robber has gone at with a pickax. Versions where the scribe has missed something or repeated it. And that is what seems to have obsessed Cyril Willoughby. Collecting versions of chapter sixty-four, collating them. Trying, perhaps, to reconstruct an original, perfect version—or at least that's what his notes suggest," he explained.

"And that's where this hieroglyphic phrase comes from?" I asked.

"Absolutely. It's the first line in most versions: Ga ba ka, baba ka, ka ka ra ra phee ko ko. In Budge's Victorian translation, which is the one Cyril would have been most familiar with, it reads: ‘I am Yesterday, To-Day and To-morrow, and I have the power to be born a second time.' Meaning in the afterlife, of course."

I repeated the phrase to myself, thoughtfully, wondering aloud why Juliette had chosen to incorporate it into her work.

"That's not something I can help you with, I'm afraid," said Sam. "But there is something else I noticed in the photographs of the painting you sent. I'm not sure if it's useful, but..."

He paused. When Sam spoke again it was with the cautious hesitancy of someone who feels themselves at the outer limits of their professional expertise.

"I must preface this by saying that I am no art historian. However, what Juliette seems to be doing with Egyptological motifs is interesting. By which I mean interestingly wrong. She has taken great care to get the hieroglyphs correct, but then look at the hooded figure in the boat."

I called the pictures up on my computer. I had spent years analyzing this image. "The figure with the Ibis beak? That's Thoth. The god of knowledge," I said, pleased to contribute something.

"And magic, yes. But that's not the right god. Thoth is not the god who carries the souls of the dead through the afterlife on his barque, his mandjet. That ought to be Ra, the sun god, who has a falcon's head. Completely different bird. Completely different beak. The artist knows that, just like she knows Egyptian Sphinxes don't have wings. These are deliberate mistakes, which carry some sort of significance. What I am not sure about, though, is what."

Welcome to my world, I thought.

"Anyway, Caroline, that's pretty much all I can tell you. But, look, if you did want to discuss it further, perhaps we could do it over dinner..."

"I'm sorry, Sam, I—"

"Of course. I understand. Very sensible," he mumbled, holding out a hand to shake.

"I am really sorry," I said, conscious I was repeating myself, unable to think of a kind way to say it was impossible. Because there was nothing in my life I regretted more than sleeping with Sam Fadel, and I could never let it happen again, never let even the possibility of it happening again raise its head, for both our sakes.

In retrospect, it was easy to understand how it had come about. By that stage in my marriage to Patrick, we hardly ever saw each other. By the time he got back from the gallery most evenings I'd be asleep. Three nights a week during term I was up in Cambridge, and sometimes I went for a drink with Sam, to talk about colleagues, joke about our work frustrations. He must have been able to sense I was unhappy, that Patrick and I were not getting along. He had just been through a nasty breakup himself, and he talked about how over time, relationships accumulated resentments, frustrations, flashpoints. How hard it could be sometimes to recall why you'd fallen in love in the first place. How you could reach a point when every conversation seemed freighted with the potential to turn into an argument, every comment was capable of being taken as a coded insult. It all sounded very familiar.

It was easy talking to Sam. It was something I looked forward to a lot more than I did going out with Patrick on weekends in London. Being buttonholed by some up-and-coming young conceptual artist at a loft party in Shoreditch and harangued for hours about the pointlessness of my academic discipline. Loyally turning up to every one of Patrick's private views and having to sit there and not pull faces or wriggle through garbled speeches by the showcased artists mixing misunderstood art theory with misremembered art history. Listening at dinner parties as he and fellow dealers talked about artists and their reputations like they were brokers discussing stock prices—who was on the way up, who was on the way down. Conscious that I was probably not hiding what I thought and felt as well as I might have done. Aware that there were times Patrick found me just as irritating as I found him.

Then one day Sam kissed me.

We were in a pub, on a sofa in a corner. It was nearly closing time. We had both been drinking. I should have told him we had got our wires crossed somewhere. I should have explained that even though I thought he was kind and clever and funny and attractive, I had never thought about him like that before. That I was very flattered, but it was not something he should have done or should ever do again. That the reason Patrick's parents had divorced was his father's cheating, and he had always made it clear how impossible he would find it to stay with someone who betrayed him that way. I should have told Sam all that. I didn't. Instead, I kissed him back.

In a way, perhaps that was precisely the reason I did cheat. To break up the marriage. To bring to crisis an intolerable situation. It was only after I had told Patrick, after I had explained to him what had happened, after we had talked it over, and fought, and thrown accusations around, and cried, and come to a decision, that it dawned on me I also had to tell Sam that what had happened was a mistake, something I regretted. It was only seeing his attempts to suppress his reaction—we were in a café, it was lunchtime—I understood that he still felt very differently about things, that he had not been exaggerating when he told me how much he had always liked me, that I was watching someone's heart breaking in front of me in real time.

There was a gentle knock at my office door, and then the cleaner stuck her head around it to check if my wastepaper basket needed to be emptied. Sam used this as an excuse to hurriedly say goodbye. I switched my computer off, waiting a few minutes to make sure I would not bump into him, then left. It was time to go home. The lights were coming on around the quad as I crossed it to the porter's lodge. As I was passing, I stopped in to check my mail and grabbed a letter from my cubby.

Taking a seat at the bus stop, I had a closer look at the envelope—it was from Boots, the kind they send containing photos you've ordered online. Here we go, I haven't had one of these for a while, I thought. Like any female academic who does media appearances, I have on occasion been sent some weird things. Drawings. Self-published books. Helpful feedback on how I dress and how I speak and how I have failed to grasp anything about my subject.

I opened the envelope cautiously. Inside were four glossy photographs. I slid them out and inspected the first under the fluorescent glow of the bus shelter light. The photograph was dark, blurry. It took me a little while even to work out whether I was holding it the right way up. Then, all of a sudden, I understood what I was looking at, and when it had been taken. The second photograph confirmed this. It was a lot more brightly lit. I glanced at the third, the fourth. My hands were quivering. My mouth was dry. My eyes felt like they were going in and out of focus.

They were photographs of me at Longhurst, at Harry Willoughby's twenty-first birthday party. Photographs I had no memory of someone taking. Photographs I could not immediately figure out how someone could have taken. The bus pulled up, but I shook my head at the driver, waved him away again, uncertain whether my legs would support me if I tried to stand. I didn't understand if the bus stop's fluorescent light had suddenly started flickering above me or if the bright flashes popping in front of my eyes were because I couldn't catch my breath.

I reached into the envelope and drew out a piece of paper with the Boots store logo at the top. It read simply: "Authenticate the painting."

JULIETTE, PARIS, 1938

Oskar was dead. My beloved Oskar was dead, and I had killed him. I had taken a knife and in a moment of terror I had driven it into his chest, into his heart.

At first I could not quite bring myself to believe it. I stood there frozen, looking down at his unmoving body, and despite everything my rational mind was telling me, part of my brain remained convinced that any moment he would suddenly jump up to his feet, with a cry of pain or fury.

Someone on the other side of the courtyard was listening to their radio. Someone else was coughing. I wondered how audible our argument had been, how obvious its sudden end. Oskar and I had often rolled our eyes at that couple in the building opposite arguing—her voice getting shriller and shriller, his louder and louder, until the inevitable crash of a thrown plate, the slam of a door. The thought of that shared memory, of all the memories we had shared, stuck sharply in my throat, and silly as it might sound it was only at that moment I understood the gravity, the true horror, of what I had done, and to whom.

Part of me wanted to stick my head out the window and call for the police. Another part wanted to curl up on the floor next to Oskar, even as his blood seeped onto the floor beneath his unmoving body.

Then my eyes came to rest on the money, next to the envelope on the table with the passports in it. The next thing I knew I was standing at the sink scrubbing at my forearms, the icy water swirling pink in the basin. Then I was making my way down the stairs, passing my landlord's wife in her doorway, in her apron, the smell of her dinner hanging in the hall, responding to her greeting with a bright bonsoir à vous, trying to keep my face from twitching.

Then I was turning out of the front of our building, passing the café at the end of the street, busy at that time of night. I gathered my coat around me. It was a cloudless night, freezing cold, and by the time I reached the end of the street I was shaking so hard I had to hug myself to stop. Shock, I told myself; this is your body reacting to the shock of what has happened. I was very aware of the need to look normal, the need to behave normally.

I knew that every decision I made that night could change the rest of my life completely.

He was dead. He was dead and I would never forgive myself. But I could also never forgive him for what he had done. I told him that, in my head, as I walked, alternately apologizing and raging at the idiot, the poor stupid dead idiot.

Thanks to Oskar, my painting now belonged to my uncle and there was every likelihood that during the hours they spent drinking together Oskar had let slip enough information to give away where we lived. Uncle Austen might, with a policeman in tow, be hammering on the door of the apartment at that very moment, demanding I return to England with him. What a wonderful gift for my family, for my father, Oskar's death would be. Just the excuse that was needed to lock me away forever.

How clearly I remember, one of those evenings at Breton's apartment, his going around the room asking the assembled painters and poets in turn why they hated their father, and everyone giving the usual bourgeois Freudian answers. When it was my turn, I said, "I do not hate my father. My father hates me." I was not being glib. He blamed me for Lucy's loss, just as I blamed myself. But even now I could not fully bring myself to hate him. Instead, I pitied him, inasmuch as it is possible to pity someone and fear them at the same time. I pitied him for the sorrow he had suffered. I feared the monster it had made him.

Passing the window of a darkened shop, I caught a glimpse of my own reflection. The bruise on my cheek would soon bloom purple and black, but there was no outward sign of the assault yet. I had expected my reflection to greet me with flashing eyes, wild flying hair, some sort of madwoman's grimace. Instead, I looked perfectly normal, not even especially flustered. Under my arm I had a bundle of my clothes, tied up with string.

I knew where I was going. I knew what I had to do.

As I walked, I thought of the first time I had taken this route, with Oskar. As I retraced my steps, recognizing buildings I had forgotten, streets and squares I suddenly remembered, I listed all the things that would need to happen for my plan to work, and tried to block out what might happen if it did not.