Bleak Water. Danuta Reah

on to the confusion of the massive Park Square roundabout. She switched lanes with the expertise of practice, ignoring the impatient horn that sounded behind her, and drove down past the new developments of the canal basin and along the road where the old industrial buildings still stood, unchanged and deserted.

      The gallery and Eliza’s flat were housed in one of the old warehouses beyond the expensive and redeveloped canal basin that seemed to be the demarcation line between new Sheffield and the promise of prosperity, and old Sheffield, upon whose flesh the beneficiaries of industrial wealth had fed, and where now there were only the decaying bones. At night, when the gallery was empty, Eliza sometimes felt as isolated as if she were living on a remote island in the Shetlands rather than in the centre of a massive urban sprawl.

      She drove past the hotel that seemed to mark the end of the gentrified area and under the bridge to the road that led along the canal side. The change was abrupt. The brickwork on this side of the bridge was crumbling, the surface stained with the water that ran from the broken fall-pipes. Beyond the bridge, there was a narrow alleyway, a cul-de-sac, where old household rubbish was dumped and then left to rot.

      She took the turning that led to the canal road and drove past the chained and padlocked gateways of the old loading bays and the canal company offices. She was at the gallery now, the old warehouse looking dark and forbidding in the fading light. It had a mellow brick frontage and arched windows that gave balance and symmetry, and made the building beautiful in the daylight, even before its restoration.

      Eliza locked the car and set the alarm. This was an area where you had to be careful. Her mind was already moving away from the events of the morning, and towards the work she still had to do. She noticed that Jonathan Massey’s car was parked at the side of the old warehouse.

      Jonathan Massey was the gallery director. Eliza had known him for years – he had been her tutor at college, and Maggie’s tutor as well. She hadn’t been expecting him in today. He’d had some kind of meeting at the education department.

      She went into the gallery, nodding a hello to Mel, a young trainee Jonathan had taken on before Eliza’s appointment. Mel had dropped out of an art and design course at the local college. They couldn’t teach her anything, she’d claimed to Eliza. She was sitting on one of the window sills reading a magazine, More, or Hello!, Eliza assumed from past experience. She tried to suppress her irritation. Mel was supposed to be working on the opening today, checking the invitations, making sure the replies were in, checking the catering arrangements, while Eliza worked on the exhibition.

      ‘Have you finished checking the invitation list?’ she said as she pulled off her hat and unwound the scarf from round her neck.

      Mel looked round and shrugged. ‘I was waiting for you,’ she said. She was affecting boho glamour today, Eliza noticed, a tiered skirt of leather and chiffon, an embroidered jacket, DMs. Mel made most of her own clothes. Her hair, which was currently black, was gelled severely back.

      So that’s a ‘no’, then. ‘You don’t need me to do that,’ Eliza said shortly. ‘Next time you’re waiting,’ she began, then decided that she couldn’t be bothered. Mel’s contract only lasted for another five months, and then she would have to move on.

      Jonathan must be in his office. She knocked on his door and went in. He was rummaging through his desk drawer, his back to her. ‘Jonathan?’ she said.

      He looked round quickly. ‘Eliza! I didn’t…’ He pushed the drawer shut. ‘How did it go?’

      Eliza shrugged. A funeral was a funeral. What did you say? ‘I thought I’d get on with setting up the exhibition. What have you lost?’

      ‘Oh, just a letter,’ he said. ‘I’ll ask Mel…There was a message for you earlier, about Friday.’

      ‘From Daniel?’ She’d last seen Daniel six months ago, a brief glimpse in a bar on her last night in Madrid. ‘What did he say?’

      ‘No idea.’ Jonathan began putting papers back into folders. ‘Mel took it.’

      ‘OK.’ The Triumph of Death. It was Eliza’s triumph as well, vindicating her appointment, relatively inexperienced, as curator of the new gallery. But Jonathan had been surprisingly unenthusiastic when she’d suggested that they try for a preview of Daniel Flynn’s latest exhibition. ‘Flynn?’ he’d said. ‘He’s overrated. And he thinks far too much of himself to come somewhere like this. What’s the point? He’s only ever been interested in London.’ Jonathan and Daniel had trained together at St Martin’s. Jonathan’s low-key response to the exhibition, the most prestigious the gallery had had since its opening six months ago, had been a constant irritation to Eliza.

      The rationale of the Trust that funded the gallery was to bring important and innovative work to the provinces, breaking the stranglehold that London had on the arts scene. ‘Daniel Flynn would be perfect,’ Eliza said. ‘There’s a real buzz about his work – a lot of people will come. Look, The Triumph of Death is already scheduled for London, but I think he’ll agree to a preview. The dates are right and I know this is the kind of setting he’s thought about.’

      Jonathan’s agreement had been grudging. She’d enjoyed showing him the letter agreeing to her suggestion: a one-week preview before the exhibition transferred to London. Even then, he’d had been oddly subdued. ‘Must be some kind of gesture towards his roots,’ he’d said. Daniel Flynn had grown up in Sheffield.

      He was having problems with his own work – a series of photographs around the idea of social exclusion, photographs of children whose lives and origins more or less put them out of the race from the very beginning. The idea was good, but he had been working on it for the past five years, and it still seemed no nearer completion. Which would explain his rather sour response to the success of one of his fellow students.

      He’d said, almost as an afterthought, ‘That was good work on your part, I suppose.’ She hadn’t told him about her personal connection with Daniel Flynn. It was good work. She was happy to accept the plaudit, tepid though it was. She looked quickly at the diary to see if anything had changed since yesterday. ‘I’ll get on with setting up the exhibition,’ she said.

      Jonathan murmured something. He wasn’t really paying attention. Then he looked up. ‘Do you need me for anything? Only I want to get off early. I’ve got tickets for the theatre in Leeds.’

      ‘No, that’s fine.’ Irritated, Eliza went back to where Mel was looking through a list and ticking names off in a desultory way.

      ‘Daniel Flynn’s been in touch,’ she said. ‘He said he’s sorry he hasn’t been up before but he’s been stuck with something in London. Anyway, he’s coming in tomorrow.’

      ‘OK,’ Eliza said. She hadn’t known Daniel was back in England. There was no reason why she should. But she’d thought – somehow – that he was still travelling, that he’d gone to Tanzania where they had planned…

      Mel was looking at her, and there was a knowing gleam in her eye that Eliza didn’t like. She shook herself. ‘Right, I’d better get up there. He hasn’t sent all the work yet.’

      ‘There’s some more coming in tomorrow,’ Mel said. ‘Didn’t you know he was in London?’ There was the sound of a door opening and she sat up and became more focused on her work.

      Jonathan came out of his office, pulling on his jacket. ‘I’ll be off then,’ he said to Eliza.

      ‘Bye, Jonathan,’ Mel said brightly. They watched him go.

      Eliza pulled on a smock to protect her clothes. She went quickly up the stairs, trying to put the irritations of Mel out of her mind and concentrate on the exhibition which combined interpretations of detail from Brueghel’s Triumph of Death, a vision of a medieval apocalypse, with modern imagery and icons that spoke compellingly to a twenty-first century audience.

      The windows of the gallery looked out on to the canal: low, arched bridges, the water shadowy