Chapter 1.6

 

Her phone buzzed with a notification, and she glanced down at it. Her bank account had been credited with five hundred euros. Her brow furrowed as she processed the disparity. Five hundred Euro was the equivalent of around four hundred and fifty pounds, and despite Britain agreeing to convert to Euro as a concession when it re-integrated into Europe when the Fat Cat debacle of Brexit had finally been reversed, she, like most Brits born before the reconversion, still thought in pounds. She held up her phone. "Hang on, I thought you said pounds?" but as she looked up, he had gone, so silently she turned and looked the other way down the carriage, expecting him to be standing behind her, but it was empty in both directions, just the occasional lights flashing past against the darkness of the windows. "Fuck."

 At least he had actually paid. If it was an actual scam, he'd have run off without paying her anything, so perhaps he meant Euros all along and she'd just assumed pounds. Hadn't he said he was Italian? That would explain the confusion. Was the representation lead genuine or not? It wouldn't hurt to make the phone call, but she'd do it in a day or two to give him a chance to upsell her to this Adara Hewitt, assuming she existed.

The sour taste of being the victim of a scam filled her as she gathered up her sketches and closed the portfolio, stuffing it back into the gap between the seats. She sat again and, checking she was connected to the free wireless connection on the train, began a search of Adara's name. It was unusual enough to pop up on the first page, and sure enough, she was listed on LinkedIn as the owner of the Panoptical Gallery on, just as the buyer had said, Optic Street. She typed the address into a mapping program and clicked street view. She had to click on the advance arrows a couple of times, but she soon found the gallery, a double-fronted shop window sandwiched between a wine bar and a coffee shop. In face, the whole street seemed to consist of wine bars and coffee shops on one side, with what looked like a series of garages opposite. A finger-splay zoom revealed that they weren't garages at all. A yellow sign above a barred door revealed the sliding doors were rentable units belonging to 'Keith's Storage.' Handy. She wondered what the rent for a unit might be. Probably too far above her means for her to consider it, unless she started selling five-hundred-euro sketches on a daily basis.

Not a scam, then, but a genuine lead and, according to the balance shown on the back account screen after she'd logged in with her fingerprint, genuine payment. Not the five hundred pounds she'd expected, admittedly, but at least the deposit had put her balance in the black, however temporary that state of affairs might be. Heaving a sigh of relief as she closed her tabs and logged out, she sat back against the brushed cotton of the seat and consciously relaxed her tense muscles. It was funny how chance played such a huge part in an artist's life. She'd struggled for years to get any kind of representation and even had some once by way of a friend from college setting up their own agency, and failing spectacularly, and now she was a hairs-breadth away from representation from a chance meeting with a stranger on a train.

It was only then she realised he'd never told her his name and, strangely since the payment was right there in black pixels, she'd never told him the name on her bank account. All she could do was hope that by the time she made contact, he'd given Adara Hewitt a heads-up she'd be calling.

She yanked open her rucksack and pulled out her breakfast. She'd promised herself she wouldn't eat for least another three hours, but she was already one rung up and several hundred euros better off and it was less than two hours since she left the house. She could afford to buy some food when she got to her new house. Hell, she could even afford to get a taxi from the station to Dunstall Road and save herself the trouble of the fifteen- or twenty-minute walk with her rucksack, shoulder bag and portfolio. She cracked open her refillable bottle of Laverstone tap water and bit into her cheese and mustard sandwich, made at two o'clock in the morning with her mum's favourite sharp cheddar. She might even splash out on a cup of Southern Railway tea if the porter trundled past with the trolley.