The Hidden Man. Charles Cumming

will have been used up in its construction, not even light or sound. Just a room full of nothing. That will be the exhibit, the gimmick, the thing you’re encouraged to look at and talk about over cranberry juice at Soho House. Emptiness. Actually, the opposite of art.’

      Jenny was glad that Ben wasn’t talking about his father any more. She preferred it when his mood was less anxious and abrasive. It was another side to him, more relaxed and quick-witted; she wondered if it was even flirtatious. But Ben looked like the faithful type: he was only thirty-two, after all, and there were pictures of his wife all over the studio walls, nudes and portraits of a quality that had persuaded her to sit for him in the first place.

      ‘Have you lived here long?’ she asked, and began gathering up her clothes. Ben was cleaning his brushes at the sink, wrapping the bristles in a rubber band and covering any exposed paint with small wraps of cling film.

      ‘Since we got engaged,’ he said. ‘About three years.’

      ‘It’s such a great house.’ Jenny’s stomach flattened out as she stretched into a thick woollen polo neck, her head disappearing in the struggle to find sleeves.

      ‘Alice’s father bought it cheap in the late seventies. Thought it would make a good investment.’

      The head popped out, like somebody breaking free of a straitjacket.

      ‘Well he thought right,’ she said, shaking out her hair. ‘And it’s useful for you to be able to work from home.’

      ‘It is,’ Ben said. ‘It is. It’s a great space. I’m very lucky.’

      ‘A lot of artists have to rent studios.’

      ‘I know that.’

      She was oblivious to it, but talking about the house always made Ben feel edgy. Three storeys of prime Notting Hill real estate and not a brick of it his. When Carolyn, his mother, had died seven years before, she had left her two sons a few hundred pounds and a small flat in Clapham that they rented out to unreliable tenants. Alice’s father, by contrast, was wealthy: on top of her basic salary as a journalist she had access to a substantial trust, and the house was bought in her name.

      ‘So what are you cooking for your brother?’

      Ben was glad of the change of subject. Turning round, he said: ‘Something Thai, maybe a green curry.’

      ‘Oh. Bit of a dab hand in the kitchen, are we?’

      ‘Well, not bad. I find it relaxing after a day in the studio. And Alice can’t boil an egg. So it’s either that or we eat out every night.’

      ‘What about Mark? What about your brother? Can he cook?’

      Ben laughed, as if she had asked a stupid question.

      ‘Mark doesn’t know one end of a kitchen from the other. Anyway, he’s always out at night, with clients or away at the club. Spends a lot of his time travelling overseas. He doesn’t get much chance to be at home.’

      ‘Really?’ Jenny was putting on her shoes. ‘What time’s he due back?’

      She’s interested, he thought. They always are. They see photos of Mark in the hall and they want a chance to meet him.

      ‘I’m not sure. He just called on the phone from Heathrow.’

      ‘Right.’

      From her reaction, it was clear that Jenny would not have time to stay. Picking up her bag, she soon made for the stairs and it remained only to pay her. Ben had thirty pounds in his wallet, six five-pound notes, which he pressed into her hand. They were walking towards the front door when he heard the scratch of a key in the lock. The door opened and Alice walked in, talking rapidly into her mobile phone. She did a double-take when she saw Ben standing at the foot of the staircase beside a tall, slightly flushed pretty girl and he raised his eyebrows as a way of saying ‘hello’. Jenny took a step back inside.

      ‘That’s not the point,’ Alice was saying. Her voice was raised to a pitch just below outright aggression. ‘I told her she’d have a chance to read through the piece. To check it. That was a promise I made.’ Jenny found herself standing awkwardly between them, like an actor waiting to go onstage. ‘So if you go ahead and print it, her whole family, who I’ve known since I was six fucking years old, are going to go …’

      Ben smiled uneasily and felt the dread of the phone call’s aftermath, another work crisis the dutiful husband would have to resolve. ‘Thanks, then,’ Jenny whispered to him, moving towards the door. ‘Same time tomorrow?’

      ‘Same time,’ he said.

      ‘About midday?’

      ‘Midday.’

      ‘Your wife’s lovely,’ she mouthed, standing below him on the threshold. ‘Really pretty.’

      Ben merely nodded and watched as Jenny turned towards Ladbroke Grove. Only when she was out of sight did he close the door.

      ‘But that’s exactly what I’m saying, Andy.’ Alice had kicked off her shoes and was now stretched out on the sofa. A great part of her lived for arguments of this kind, for the adrenalin surge of conflict. ‘If the article appears as it is …’ She pulled the phone away from her ear. ‘Fuck, I got cut off.’

      ‘What happened?’

      Ben came over and sat beside her. Her cheek as he kissed it was cold and smelled of moisturizer and cigarettes.

      ‘You remember that piece I wrote about my friend from school, the girl who was arrested for drug smuggling?’ Alice was redialling Andy’s number as she spoke. Ben vaguely remembered the story. ‘It was supposed to be a feature but the news desk got hold of it. Now they’ve gone and made the girl out to be some kind of wild child who should have known better, exactly what I promised Jane we wouldn’t do.’ She stared at the read-out on her mobile phone. ‘Great. And now Andy’s switched his phone off.’

      ‘Her name is Jane?’ The observation was a non sequitur, but Alice didn’t seem to notice.

      ‘She came to me because she knew the press would be on to her sooner or later. She thought she could trust me to tell her side of the story. I’m the only journalist her family knows.’

      ‘And now it’s been taken out of your hands?’

      He was trying to appear interested, trying to say the right things, but he knew that Alice was most probably lying to him. She would have leaked the story to the news desk in the hope of winning their approval. Alice was ambitious to move from features into news; the more scoops she could push their way, the better would be her chances of promotion.

      ‘That’s right. Which explains why Andy isn’t returning my calls.’

      ‘And how did Andy get hold of the story?’

      Her answer here would prove interesting. Would she confess to showing the interview to a news reporter, or claim that it was taken from her desk? Each time there was a crisis of this kind, Alice inevitably found someone else to blame.

      ‘I just mentioned it to a colleague over lunch,’ she said, as if this small detail did not in itself imply a breach of trust. ‘Next thing I know, the news editor is demanding that I hand over the interview so that he can farm it for quotes.’

      Ben noticed that she had stopped trying to reach Andy’s mobile phone.

      ‘So why didn’t you just refuse?’ he asked. ‘Why didn’t you just tell him you’d made a deal with the girl?’

      ‘It doesn’t work like that.’

      Of course it doesn’t. ‘Why not?’ he said.

      ‘Look, if you’re just going to be difficult about this we might as well –’

      ‘Why am I being difficult? I’m just trying to find out –’

      ‘Did