Contemporary art is the thread through Margo's week. She goes to openings for the work rather than the wine, and prefers small galleries where a single canvas can hold an entire white wall. Standing beside her in front of a painting is instructive; she says little, and every word lands. She has an unhurried way of stepping back, then closer, until the painting seems to open for her.
The piano is her private discipline. She plays most evenings, often Satie, sometimes Debussy, and it has given her a musician's sense of timing, in conversation and in silence alike. Gardening, perhaps unexpectedly, is her third love: a courtyard of roses and lavender, tended with the same patience she brings to a difficult phrase. Her playing is private, but her taste in music is freely shared. Ask what she is practising this month and watch her face soften.
At 31, Margo is one of the more seasoned presences in the house, refined, calm and just slightly mysterious. She is slim at 166 cm, with long, straight dark brown hair and brown eyes, and her style is vintage-inspired lounge elegance: a velvet evening jacket, wide black trousers, a single antique brooch. It is a wardrobe assembled slowly, one considered piece at a time, and it shows. She moves through a room without hurry, and the room tends to rearrange itself around her.
She lives in Oud-Zuid, close to the Museumplein, and her English is low and exact. Karolina shares her devotion to the piano from the Jordaan, while Angelika keeps her own list of galleries worth the walk. Margo suits an exhibition preview, a recital at the Concertgebouw or a lounge where the pianist is genuinely good and the lights are kept low. There is a mystery to her that never quite resolves, and she is content to let it stay that way.
