I knew the invitation had been sent to me by mistake. I am still on his mailing list and he sent them out automatically without checking. Typical. He had a sloppy mind for all the years we were married. Divorce obviously hadn’t changed anything.
So, there I was, holding an invitation to his latest girlfriend’s upcoming exhibition, knowing I shouldn’t have been and wondering what to do about it. I should have returned it or torn it up. It would have been the best for everyone. But curiosity has killed this cat before, I must have used up most of my lives by now, so I decided to go.
I regretted it the moment I entered the gallery. Portrait after portrait of HIM lined the walls. At least they claimed to be of him, with titles like ‘Derek at Work’ and ‘Derek Asleep’. Yet the man in the paintings looked nothing like my ex. She had distorted his features, twisted them into something mean and feral. Perhaps she has worked out his true nature twenty years faster than I did.
I knocked back two glasses of white and left before anyone noticed I was there.