Justine

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The style in which my flat is decorated gives everything away about me. A gift to you which includes the fact that there is something about me that will never be given away, let alone sold for a price. The inner recesses of my flat’s interior, the darkened niches velveted burgundy over, and the paintings with their faces set to the walls, hint at an enigmatic character with a taste more perverse than is entirely natural. These rooms are stuffed full of objets d’art but the space in which I live also requires the rigour of interpretation.

Interior decoration involves, after all, (and I mean after all), the black art of manipulation and the casting of spells. The arabesques on the walls run circles round my visitors’ preconceptions of me. The sword of perfect taste is brandished with which to chop off their heads. Now, they are too afraid to come in.

From the day that I was born, beauty surrounded me, embraced me, and picked me up, bloody and screaming, in her arms. She had a face as pale and hard as a pearl and her mouth was congealed from the blood-red drop of a ruby. She took her son home to Blenheim House where I became confused between the symmetry of my mother’s form and the arches that carved up the span between the high-ceilinged rooms. This has been my birthright: the indissoluble link between a house and the person who lives in it. To describe my flat to you in detail is to tell you exactly where I stand. It is my way of throwing down the gauntlet.

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