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to pull out whatever you’re hiding in your trousers. Have you heard of YouTube?’
    I waited, keeping my eyes on his face, feeling my vertebrae tense inside my shirt. There was still no way I could get past him in that cramped space unless he was prepared to let me. I inhaled and exhaled very slowly. This was a very important client.
    ‘Thank you so much for your time, then, Colonel. I won’t take up any more of it. I’ll have someone from the warehouse come to pack the drawings this afternoon, shall I?’
    I had another brief moment of panic at the front door, but it was unlatched, closing quietly behind me with a heavy click. I kept my back straight as far as Abbey Road. I breathed in for four, held for four, out for four. Then I cleaned my face with a wipe from my bag, tidied my hair and called the department.
    ‘Rupert? It’s Judith. We can send someone for the Whistlers this afternoon.’
    ‘Er, Judith. Did everything, er, go alright?’
    ‘Why shouldn’t it have done?’
    ‘No, er, trouble with the Colonel?’
    He knew. Sweaty fucking Rupes knew . I kept my tone smooth.
    ‘No trouble at all. It was quite – manageable.’
    ‘Good girl.’
    ‘Thank you, Rupert. I’ll be back at the office soon.’
    Of course he knew. That’s why he’d sent the pretty one instead of doing such a significant valuation himself. Why are you such a mug, Judith? Why did you believe that he might have sent the departmental nobody on a major call unless the client expected a little extra? He was clear in his own mind, wasn’t he, about what I was good for?
    Then, just for a few seconds, I leaned against a wall and hid my face in my arms, letting the adrenalin surge through me. I was shaking so hard I felt the muscles of my stomach ache. I felt coated in the stink of Colonel fucking Morris and I was so furious I felt winded, like something had punched out my heart. I made a fist of my face in the effort to keep the sobs back. I could cry, I thought. I could press my face to the grainy London brick and weep for all the things I didn’t have, and the unfairness, and how bloody tired it made me. I could cry like the chippy little loser a part of me still was, because I just had to take this shit. But then if I cried I might not stop. Couldn’t have that. This was nothing, nothing. I caught myself thinking that Rupert might actually be grateful to me, because I hadn’t done the obvious thing, screamed harassment and insisted on the police, but I squashed that down along with my waver of self-pity. It was a waste of time for me to expect praise, just as it was a waste of time to be bitter about it. I might not have the right name, or have gone to school or on fucking shooting weekends with the right people, but I didn’t resent the Ruperts of the world, and I wasn’t insecure enough to despise them. Hate is better. Hate keeps you cold, keeps you moving fast, keeps you lonely. If you need to make yourself into someone else, loneliness is a good place to start.
    *
    When I had gone for the interview at Prince Street, Rupert had boredly shown me a few postcards to identify; elementary stuff – a Velazquez, a Cranach. I wondered then if he’d bothered to read my CV and, later, when I mentioned something about my Master’s, realised from his expression of perturbed surprise that he hadn’t. The last postcard, which he pushed slyly across the table, showed a slim half-nude girl wound in gauzy draperies.
    ‘Artemisia Gentileschi, Allegoria dell’Inclinazione ,’ I had answered without hesitation. For one tiny moment, Rupert actually allowed himself to look impressed. I’d had that postcard on my wall ever since my trip to Florence at sixteen. Artemisia was the daughter of a painter, the most brilliant of his apprentices, one of whom raped her while they worked on a commission in Rome. She took him to court and, after being tortured with thumbscrews to prove she was telling the truth, she won her case. Her hands were her future,