by Karen Swan
Lee looked away, feeling her throat close up. ‘Well, Cunningham is prone to exaggeration. You haven’t seen me trapped in a bathroom with a spider.’ Gisele laughed and Lee felt her constriction ease. ‘He’ll be okay, Gisele. Cunningham’s a pro. He knows what he’s doing.’
‘I hope so.’ Gisele nodded, closing the door softly with a smile.
The door clicked and Lee’s smile disappeared as she stood on the step, the echoes of words running through her head. Palmyra . . . Hotel . . . Something he needed to do. In spite of her encouraging words to his wife, something wasn’t right about this, she could sense it.
She went slowly down the steps and stopped again, her heart pounding as her mind strained for reasons, connections and clues, while her eyes slowly refocused on her surroundings, telling her something else was wrong.
It was another moment before she realized her bike had gone.
‘I’m here, I’m here!’ she proclaimed, knocking back the doors so hard they banged against the walls. ‘Sorry!’
Bart peered around the black curtain re-rigged for the set, his eyes wild with barely contained panic. He ran over. ‘Oh my God, where the hell have you been? I’ve been trying you all morning! I was about to start calling the hospitals.’
She gave him a withering look. ‘My bike was nicked. I had to get another one.’
‘Right now? They’ve been waiting for over an hour!’ Bart hissed, gesturing towards the back of the set. Music was playing and she could hear low voices on the other side of the curved curtain, a young blonde woman pacing in and out of view, arms crossed over her chest and a finger pressed to her lips in thought. She was wearing cream heeled knee boots and a navy mid-length skirt with a polo neck. She looked put-together, composed, chic. Everything Lee, right at this moment, was not. ‘Did you even remember this was on?’ he demanded, trying to keep his voice down.
Oh damn.
‘Of course I did,’ she lied. She had cycled to Cunningham’s house without any conscious thought, drawn there as though on a pulley, needing answers, finding none. ‘But I had to get it sorted, otherwise how will I get Jasper later?’
‘Uh – a cab?’ he replied sarcastically.
‘Duh! It’s not that easy – his bike seat is a special order now he’s so big. It’ll take four days to come in as it is. I had to get it ordered this morning. I mean, really, he wants his own bike but I’m still not sure he’s ready yet, you kno—?’
‘No, I don’t know, Lee, and right now, nor do I care. You should have rung, or texted, to let me know.’
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I just . . .’ She flapped her hands around her head, feeling uncharacteristically overwhelmed. ‘I’ve just got a lot going on at the moment. None of it any good.’ She tried not to think about last night’s fiasco. ‘Anyway, I’m here now. Just remind me who . . .’ Her gaze flicked towards the set again. The blonde had stopped pacing and was glancing over. She wasn’t looking happy.
‘Jesus, Lee!’ he whispered, almost buckling at the knees in exasperation. ‘I know you don’t rate these people. They’re not saving the world, why are we lauding them? But at least bother to know their names! Today’s the “new Eckhart Tolle”, remember—?’
‘And how are we doing? All ready to go now?’ the blonde asked, striding over suddenly and clearly out of patience.
‘Ah, Jacintha, good. Come and meet Lee. Her bike was stolen again this morning, hence . . .’ Bart waved his arms around in a vague manner. ‘Jacintha is Mr Meyer’s publicity agent.’
‘I’m sorry about your bike,’ Jacintha replied coolly, not looking at all sympathetic as they shook hands.
‘Mmm, seventh this year,’ Lee lied, taking an instant dislike to her. She lived and died by making snap judgements and there was a passive-aggressive edge to Jacintha’s words she didn’t like. ‘I’m sick of it.’
‘Where did it happen?’
‘On Prinsengracht.’
‘Really? I thought thefts were relatively low there.’
‘My luck,’ Lee shrugged. ‘Anyway, I’m sorry for the wait but Bart’s got everything set up, haven’t you?’ Her trusty assistant gave a reluctant nod. ‘So we’re good to go. No more time to waste.’
‘What were you doing on Prinsengracht?’ Bart whispered as they walked towards the set.
‘Shuddup,’ she muttered. ‘And turn that music up, will you? Did you stop at the bakery?’
They rounded the curtain and the ‘new Eckhart Tolle’ looked up from his phone.
Lee froze mid-step. ‘Sam?!’
Bart looked impressed (and relieved) that she knew his name. Then suspicious.
‘Lee.’ Sam’s expression matched hers, she imagined – namely, horrified. He was wearing a casual unlined black blazer, jeans and white shirt. ‘I didn’t . . .’ He looked to Bart and Jacintha. ‘I didn’t know it was y—’
‘You two know each other?’ Bart asked, his mischief antennae already up and scanning as he took in Lee’s stunned face and deep blush.
‘Uh, we met last week,’ Sam said, recovering first. ‘At the hospital.’ He looked across at Jacintha.
‘Oh yes, the Sinterklaas visit,’ the PR said after a momentary blankness. ‘That was very well received, by the way. The kids loved it. They’ve booked you back in for Christmas too.’ She looked over at Bart. ‘Really great for tapping into the whole family-gifting vibe.’
Lee looked away, trying to compose herself. How could it be him? Bart hadn’t told her Sam’s name – had he? No, he would have known she’d have forgotten it by this morning. And she would have remembered on Friday when she met him, she would have made the connection. Surely?
‘What were you doing there, Lee?’ Jacintha asked her.
Lee flicked her eyes over and away again. ‘I do some volunteer work there at this time of year. I covered Sam’s visit.’ She looked back at Sam. ‘Although you told me you were an artist, not an author.’ Her expression was determinedly benign, but there was accusation in her voice.
He blinked and she could see the tension in his face too. ‘I am. I’ve been a properly struggling, impoverished artist for the past decade. But then I produced a picture book that’s done quite well.’
‘Quite well?’ Jacintha laughed. ‘Honestly, if only all my authors were this modest! Sam’s book has sold over two million copies.’
Lee stared at him, not hearing, not caring. How could this be happening? The one person in the city she had hoped never to see again was standing in her set . . .?
Wait. Two million?
‘But of course, you’ll have seen it, of course you will. The details were in the press pack sent over to you.’ Jacintha cast a concerned look in Bart’s direction as if it was his fault his boss hadn’t prepped for her client’s shoot. ‘It’s been in the charts for sixty-three weeks already.’
Lee nodded dumbly. ‘Of course I’ve seen it – it’s called If and it’s got sheep on the front,’ she mumbled, saving Bart. He gave a wholly audible sigh of relief.
But Lee couldn’t take her eyes off Sam. That was his book? The one that had been put in her basket? The one that Liam had told her about? He was Liam’s friend? Oh God, the connections came thick and fast. If any of what had happened (or rather, not happened) last night got back to Liam, her humiliation would be complete.
‘You told me she was a news journalist,’ Sam said to Jacintha in a low voice.
‘She is. Was. Well, it was more war correspondence than . . . plain old news.’
Lee’s eyes met Sam’s again momentarily, startling them both, it seemed. He clearly didn’t want to be here any more than she wanted him here. Lee tried to think of a reason to cancel the shoot – setting off the fire alarms, perhaps, or breaking a leg. But she knew it would only delay the inevitable. This was the last portrait for the feature, it had to be done. As Bart was forever saying to her: ‘Bills, Lee!’
She saw both Bart and Jacintha were watching them, everyone picking up on the strange tension in the room between the two
main players. The only way past this was going to be through it.
‘Right. Well,’ Lee said, weakly clapping her hands together. ‘Shall we get started then? I’ve already wasted quite enough of your time today. Let’s see if we can’t get the shot quickly.’
‘Here you go.’ Bart handed her the camera with a loaded look, but she refused to acknowledge it. Her heart was thudding against her chest so loudly she was convinced everyone could hear. Just point and click, she told herself. Get the shot and get the hell out of here. This could all be behind her in an hour if she was lucky, and then she’d never have to see him again.
She kicked off her Vans shoes so that she was in just her socks, and walked over to the high stool in the centre of the set. ‘Sam, if you’d just like to come over here?’
She pretended to adjust the exposure as he walked over, trying not to replay in her head everything that had happened between them only last night – the way he had tried not to kiss her, and then the way he had, how he had stepped away from her with effort, left without looking back . . .
He instinctively sat with both feet on the foot rail, knees splayed, hands laced together. It was a confident, relaxed pose. Most of her subjects perched nervously on the stool, one leg on the ground, their hands at a loss for where to be.
‘I’m so sorry I was late; did you hear what happened?’ she said with an absent-minded faux-cheeriness, loud enough for Bart and Jacintha to hear, as her eyes ran up and down him with a professional, almost doctorly indifference, taking in the composition of his pose, the drape of his clothes. ‘My bike was stolen.’
‘Oh.’ There was a pause as he took in her tone; he knew perfectly well what she was doing, performing an act of civility for the crowd. But he was no actor, his voice sounding awkward and stilted. ‘. . . Where?’
‘Prinsengracht.’
‘Bad luck.’
‘I know, right? I’ve had a run of that lately,’ she said distractedly, repositioning him slightly so that he wouldn’t be so forward-facing to the camera. He didn’t say anything, but sat perfectly still as she picked a red thread off the shoulder of his jacket, smoothed a wrinkle in the arm, pushed a stubborn curl back from his forehead that kept trying to fall over his left eye. ‘And you didn’t want hair and make-up today?’
He didn’t move his head but his eyes flicked up to her diagonally. ‘No.’ He seemed . . . bemused by the suggestion.
‘Good,’ she said, deliberately tracking her eyes over him busily, not daring to linger anywhere. ‘I much prefer shooting people in the raw.’
There was a small pause. ‘I hope that’s not a euphemism.’
Behind her, Bart spat out his coffee. ‘Sorry,’ he spluttered, laughing. ‘. . . Wasn’t expecting that.’
Nor was she. Lee was surprised by the flash of humour too but she didn’t acknowledge it. She would not laugh, she would not smile. They were not friends.
‘Well, talking of raw, we had an actor in here last week,’ Bart said confidingly as Lee made an adjustment to one of the rig lights. ‘Big name. Huge heartthrob. And by the end of the shoot, he was in the buff, head shaved and covered in mud.’
‘Who was it?’ Jacintha asked, when Sam didn’t.
‘Well, I really shouldn’t say . . .’ Bart protested feebly. ‘But seeing as you no doubt move in the same circles . . . Matteo Hofhuis,’ he mouthed.
‘Oh, he’s gorgeous,’ Jacintha breathed, losing some of her composure. ‘Did you really shave his head?’
Lee shrugged. ‘He was game. He had some gumption, unlike a lot of people.’
She felt Sam’s gaze flicker towards her briefly but she didn’t care if he felt the barb; she put the camera up to her eye and began to walk slowly around him, seeing how he looked in the frame. It never ceased to amaze her how the whole world fell away when she looked through the lens, anything outside the shot cut out so that her focus zeroed in entirely on the subject. Like looking through the crosshairs of a rifle, there was nothing beyond the target. It was as though the world was put on mute.
Unlike Matt, Sam didn’t try to engage with the lens; there was no provocative eye contact as she moved slowly – moving the camera up, moving it down, not snapping yet, not committing to an image, but getting a feel for him. Seeing how he moved, how he stayed still. The angle at which he naturally rested his head, the upward tip of his chin, the straight line and then gentle flare of his nose. His really was a face that had been eight hundred years in the making. It was classical, noble . . .
He blinked rapidly, several times, and she realized he was feeling the weight of her scrutiny; in spite of his outwardly relaxed demeanour and loose hands, he either wasn’t used to having his photograph taken, or he felt uncomfortable in her gaze.
She was in front of him now and she still hadn’t clicked the shutter, not yet taken a single image, unable somehow to commit to the process of capturing him. He was looking into the middle distance ten degrees past her right shoulder, her covered gaze gliding over the sweep of his shoulder, the cut of his jaw, the smooth blow of his cheekbone—
She felt his line of attention shift and found he was looking straight at her. Like faces either side of a window-pane, he filled her field of vision, his gaze directly on hers like a missile on lock. She felt held – caught – as he stared right through the glass to her; right through to her glass heart.
And in that golden silence, the shutter clicked.
Chapter Eight
Her old boss had bagged one of the velvet sofas by the window, the city laid out behind her six storeys below. They had arranged to meet at Soho House – it was suitably central and chic for Dita’s needs. After so many years living in war red zones, her tastes now ran to the extravagant, by way of recompense.
She was wearing her usual uniform – a navy tunic with matching wide-legged trousers that she would dress up, when required, with a vibrant scarf. Today’s was bunched up in her handbag, a green and orange abstract print that looked like it could (when unfolded) be a Matisse print. To anyone passing by, they would have guessed she was a former art teacher, rather than bureau chief of one of the biggest press agencies in the world.
‘How are you, old woman?’ Lee asked, coming to stand by the table, Dita engrossed in something on her phone.
‘Lee!’ Dita looked up with a pleased smile, tossing the phone away casually. ‘You made it.’
‘Well, it was touch and go, the traffic was a bitch,’ she quipped.
Dita laughed and the two women hugged, not in the social air-kissy way, but with pressed fingertips and closed eyes. Their clothes might be freshly laundered and their hair smelling of shampoo today, but they had embraced each other covered in dust and blood before now. They had seen other worlds and lived other lives before this one. They were neither of them fooled by the pretty artifice of their surroundings.
‘When did you get in?’ Lee asked, sinking into her seat and ordering a black coffee and croissant.
‘Knocking on midnight, in the end. Another air traffic control strike. I swear to God, it’s easier getting out of Beirut than Paris these days.’
Lee grinned, crossing her legs and sitting back in the chair as Dita cast a critical eye over her. She always did this when they were reunited; at twenty-six years her senior, her old boss was an unspoken mother figure too. ‘Hmm, I really thought you’d be fatter by now.’
‘Well, what’s the culinary equivalent of being green-fingered? Because whatever it is, I don’t have it.’
‘Is it your culinary skills which are to blame – or just a lack of appetite in general?’ As ever, Dita had a way of cutting straight to the chase.
Lee smiled, making no comment. They didn’t need to extrapolate on the difficulties of adapting to ‘civilian’ life – it didn’t need to be said; rather, it sat as a quiet understanding between them. ‘So how long are you in town for?’
‘I fly out tomorrow evening. I’m en route to Pyongyang.’
‘Wow, lucky you – you must have done some
thing right.’
‘Yes, I’m in the good books at the moment.’ Dita laughed at her sarcasm, a throaty sound that caught the room’s attention, and eyes settled upon them, the two thin women with cat-startle reflexes, calloused hands and direct stares. ‘And I hear you’ve got an exhibition coming up.’
‘Did you? Where did you hear that then?’
‘Oh, a little bird told me,’ Dita said secretively.
‘It’s this Thursday,’ Lee said with a wry smile. ‘I’ll get you on the list if you can stay for it.’
‘I only wish I could.’
Lee nodded. She knew how it was.
‘So what’s it about? I’m guessing not a retrospective, or you’d have been in touch with us for archive pics.’
‘No. I’ve been visiting a women’s shelter for the past few months.’
‘Ha! Of course you have,’ Dita laughed, clapping her hands together.
‘Of course I have?’
Dita held her hands up, indicating their plush surroundings. ‘Even somewhere as beautiful and safe as this, you’ll manage to find a war on the doorstep.’
‘The war is on our doorsteps, you know that – refugees, migrant camps, assimilation issues . . . We live side by side with the consequences of war every day. Even here.’
‘I know. I just thought you’d turned your back on these harder subjects. No one could say you haven’t done your time at the coalface. I thought you were all about the glamour of glossy editorials these days.’
Lee rolled her eyes. ‘I’ll never be about that. But I’ve got bills to pay and a little boy to take care of now. He comes first.’
‘Well, I admire you for it. I know what a sacrifice it is for you.’ Dita smiled. ‘And how is my godson?’
‘Wonderfully wicked, you’ll be pleased to hear,’ she grinned. ‘He sent a cyclist into the water the other week, chasing pigeons.’ An echo of Sam’s laughter as he had read it out of his book flashed through her mind before she could stop it.
Dita gave one of her signature laughs again too. ‘Darling boy! Of course he did! Remind me, how old is he now?’