Until Proven Innocent

ONE

three months prior, february, the roux gallery

MORGAN ROUX USED to believe in karma. Back in high school, in her hazy Buddhist phase, where a girl with a tongue piercing and a penchant for incense had managed to convert her for a whole six months, she tricked herself into thinking that the world was fair. That was before, of course, mother-dearest shacked up with some guy from her office, and before Morgan and her Dad found themselves selling art on the street for five, six pounds per hours of work, and before today -- today, when, two years after the clouds of her misfortune broke apart, so to speak, she finds them gathering together again, conspiring, continuing her mother's legacy of fucking her up.

"Jesus F. Christ," she says. The gallery lights flicker on, off, then on again, indecisive, like they're not sure whether they want to be the ones to deliver the final punch. There's a hole through the window, splintered glass throwing itself across the floor, a statue - 1976, Italian, sculptor unknown - knocked from its beam, an Emperor's mouth cracked in a sneer, mocking Morgan all the way from 193 AD.

She sneers back. That's one thing her Mum taught her: don't let a man mock you. Mock him right back. She's not sure this applies to broken marble, but there's another thing she got from her Mum - bitterness in the wake of a disaster, sour over sad every time.

There's shredded canvas and grass stains on the mat by the door and white wall where before there was artwork. Not always valuable artwork, no, but artwork all the same - revolutionary and luminary and, Morgan used to think, permanent. It's why she's taken to this materialistic lifestyle, one of hedonism and too much red wine and ornaments she doesn't need. People are temporary, the things they create less so.

In keeping with this lonely philosophy, Morgan holds the most valuable piece of art in the gallery closest to her heart. She maintains that it's because of the money. The craft, even. The fact that a bona fide Ulijn painting trumps whatever else they're displaying - amateur clay statues with lazy eyes, university student attempts at earning some money, Morgan's own work, which a vast majority of the visitors have commented is almost too much to look at (which Morgan considers praise, because she's always tried to be the sort of person people can't quite stomach). Really, though, it's because the painting reminds her of Alma. Of lemonade and open mouthed kissing and brown legs over starch white sheets in the summer, with a window blowing fine strands of hair across upper lips lined with sweat.

And yes, maybe it's selfish, - Morgan is selfish - but she likes the thought of still owning a piece of Alma, one that can't leave her, one that can't move on to things greater than the likes of Morgan Roux. Immortalising people is Morgan's thing.

This clinginess is, perhaps, why she's friends with Hugo Inglesby. She sees her own addictive nature in him, though his is softer, fuzzy around the edges, born less out of abandonment issues and more out of hopeless romanticism. The trait settles over him, a shawl, an arm around his shoulders. On Morgan, it is too tight here, too loose there, and the material gives her a rash.

Still. They're both constants, to each other - and that's why she knows who to go to, now.

Hugo lives two streets across from Morgan, in a part of Preston that was built sometime in the '20s and has stayed that way ever since, save for a few plumbing adjustments (the first time Hugo ever flushed the toilet, he and Ray were left with piss-water dripping through the ceiling). It's all narrow flats and cobbled streets, and it's spilling with charity shops. It gives Morgan a headache, at the best of times, too many handwritten sale signs and musty donations from housewives - this was my Grandma's, she can hear them whisper, pure silk, the dressing gown she died in, very sentimental, yes. Today, she all but runs into Ray's antique shop.