by Karen Swan
‘Well, give us time. The night is but young,’ she quipped, her eyes darting towards Sam as she smiled.
‘There’s a wonderful one of you with . . . Matteo Hofhuis, I think it was, doing the flamenco.’
‘The flamenco?’ she repeated, completely surprised and mildly horrified as a vague, indistinct memory began to press into focus. The flounces on her sleeves, the swirl of the skirt on her dress as he twirled her . . . ‘Well, you won’t use that, I hope,’ she said quickly.
‘Why not? You look great in it.’
‘It wouldn’t sit well with the message we’re trying to get across. I don’t want to hijack my own work on account of . . . high spirits.’
‘High spirits,’ he repeated, sounding amused. ‘Ah yes. Leave it with me. I’ll take a look at it again. You might be right.’
She took a sip of her drink, aware of how silently and still Sam stood beside her. ‘So tell me, are you pleased with how the feature’s come together?’ she asked into the silence. Did anyone else detect the tension between her and Sam? Did anyone else see that he’d fallen quiet after having been a convivial guest only moments before her arrival?
‘Lee, it’s the best yet,’ Rubens enthused.
‘Really?’ She felt a thrill of disbelieving delight. ‘I can’t wait to see it.’
‘You’ve surpassed yourself. What you achieved with Matteo and Sam here, particularly. Your vision for them was so singular.’
She didn’t glance at Sam, but she could feel his stare, how he had heard that they’d been bracketed together . . .
‘I was just telling Sam what a devil of a time we always have getting you to agree to do the feature in the first place.’ Rubens looked at him. ‘It’s a great coup for us, getting someone of Lee’s stature to do the portraits. It would be so easy for it to come across as a puff piece, some pointless ego-fanning. Lee coming on board really reframes the whole concept of the idea, she gives it gravitas that these are the people – you, them – who are shaping our social and cultural and political landscape. There’s nothing flighty or trivial about that.’
‘Well, I feel incredibly honoured to have made the cut,’ Sam said neutrally. ‘Although I don’t know how I did. I’ve got full-blown imposter syndrome. This time last year I was just a struggling artist having to paint people’s pets to make a living. Now, somehow, I’m a bestselling author.’ He shrugged, bewildered.
‘That’s the beauty of social media,’ Veronika smiled. ‘You don’t need to find your audience; if you’re good enough, they’ll find you. And you’re amazing, Sam. Everybody loves you. Your book is already a classic. Not just your beautiful drawings but the words too. They touch people.’ She pressed her hand to her chest. ‘You make a difference to their lives.’
Lee looked between the PA and Sam, her heart feeling raisin-sized by this clear love-in.
‘. . . Thank you,’ Sam smiled, maintaining eye contact with her. ‘It’s kind of you to say so.’
Rubens clapped his hands. ‘Well, on that most eloquent note – thank you, Veronika – I think we should head upstairs and see exactly what it is that this exceptional group of people has achieved.’ He broke away from their huddle, herding the others towards the door. ‘Upstairs, everybody. It’s time for the big reveal.’
‘Sam, I’ll show you where you’re sitting,’ Veronika said before Lee could even open her mouth. ‘I was responsible for the table plan tonight.’
‘Oh. Well, lead on, then,’ he said, nodding fractionally at Lee as they departed, leaving her there.
She watched them go, feeling her heart crackle and splinter into crystal pieces as the stellar group exited the basement bar, taking their stardust with them.
‘Lee. You good?’ Bart was at the bar, putting back his glass.
‘Yes.’
He came back over to her, a wrinkle puckering his brow. He put a hand on her arm. ‘Sure?’
No. She forced a smile. ‘Well, maybe just a little nervous. You know what it’s like – I’d always prefer to see it first without an audience.’
‘Ah, but then where would the drama be?’ he said drily, taking her arm and linking it through his, squeezing it tight. ‘As well we know, drama is life.’
They walked into the dining room several minutes later. Everyone had regrouped in the beautiful space, with its famous eighteenth-century pastoral scenes painted on the panelled walls, an empire chandelier hanging low above the table, peacock-blue velvet chairs. Veronika was leading everyone to their places, serene and confident in her hostessing role. Along the walls were the easels with her portraits printed to A1 size and covered with sheets – drama indeed. It was the same every year, but Lee was surprised to see a cinema screen set up too. She wasn’t aware of any ‘behind the scenes’ filming that had taken place, no extra footage for social media.
She sat down in her usual place, not needing to be shown by the oh-so-capable Veronika; she already knew she would be seated at the head of the table, to Rubens’ right, as she was every year. Haven was seated on Rubens’ left side, on the corner, with Sam beside her. Lee had the director Alexander Visser to her right, and the ballerina Claudia Prins to his right. She was relieved to see Matt was at the far end of the table, near Bart; less so that Veronika appeared to be to Sam’s left.
Haven was talking intently to Sam, using her hands to make her point, looking impassioned and distinctly unteenage. She watched him listen, nodding, making eye contact . . . A dark horse, Liam had said. The women love him.
The last few wine glasses were filled, the hum of conversation dying as Rubens stood and ting’d a fork to his glass for silence.
‘Hot Ones,’ he began, drawing the usual surprised laughter, ‘thank you for being with us here today. We know how insane your schedules are, especially at this time of year betwixt St Nicholas’ Eve and Christmas. But I hope you’ll agree it was worth your while coming out in the cold and the dark, for this is no ordinary project. Every summer, we start with a longlist of over a hundred names, people who – like you – are excelling in their fields, bringing a spotlight to important issues, changing how we look at and think about things, proving that diversity and inclusion are not only a part of the Dutch landscape but in fact the Dutch character . . .’
Lee, sitting beside him, kept her eyes down, knowing this speech well. He repeated it every year.
‘. . . whittle it down over the weeks until we are left with the very pinnacle of each of those peaks – film, TV, fashion, sport, politics, music, dance, fiction, art. And that brought us to you. You are the new game-changers, the ones we shall be looking to for hope, comfort, beauty, escape, guidance. You’ve probably already noticed the air is becoming thin where you now reside, you’re already not part of the masses any more. Anonymity is already denied to you, you are standing on the threshold of new lives. But that is nothing to what is coming. Because thanks to this woman’ – he put a hand on Lee’s shoulder and she looked up at him with a bland smile – ‘you are not going to step onto the international stage, so much as be jet-propelled onto it.’
A burst of laughter – excited, curious – rippled around the room, all eyes landing on her.
‘For the past five years now, Lee has sat beside me here and listened as I make this speech, graciously using her talent to lift others—’
‘Rubens, really,’ she protested.
‘I’ve had the privilege, many times, of standing on the sidelines and watching her work and I always come away asking myself the same question: what is it that sets her apart? What makes her so much better than her contemporaries? How does she get to the heart of someone and show us who they truly are? She’s not the most organized photographer we work with, nor, frankly, the most interested in this world; she’s not even the most expensive – she doesn’t care about fancy locations and ornate props and backdrops. And yet, her portraits stand apart. Where most photographers try to capture the magic of celebrity, she captures the humanity within celebrity. And I think it’s because of thi
s.’
At his cue, the lights in the room dimmed, the cinema screen suddenly glowing a bright white as a projector was shone onto it. Alexander, Claudia, Andrik and Honor moved their chairs around to face the screen.
‘What are you doing?’ she hissed to Rubens, as images started to come up – larger than life-size, black and white and in colour, the images of her past: faces that would always haunt her, screams and laments that still echoed in her ears . . . She felt her throat close as she remembered the Yazidi woman sitting by the roadside, too exhausted to walk another step; the children’s blinded tears as Assad’s chemical weapons attacked their immune systems; a building exploding in the very moment a mortar hit; a skeleton in a ditch, holding a much smaller one; a group of rebel soldiers huddled against a wall, faces and hair sifted with dust, exhaustion making their faces slack, limbs limp.
She could remember every single one of those moments; they sat within her like a pulse. She would not forget them; it was her personal pledge that even if she could not change their fates, she would remember them.
Still the images kept coming, each one distinct and fully formed, her heart pounding as her old life flashed in front of her eyes, the one that had belonged to Cunningham and not Jasper. But then the mood changed, the tenor of the images shifting from war and devastation and ruin to rare snapshots of joy too: children washing in a river in Afghanistan, droplets of water catching the light; an old bearded shepherd walking through a village, surrounded by his flock of goats; two little boys using the husk of a burnt-out car as a climbing frame; a group of girls laughing as they washed clothes in buckets; Cunningham driving, his face in profile, mouth open in amused speech, the dry red landscape reflected in his aviators.
She caught her breath at the unexpected sight of him. So familiar. Like he was part of her own reflection. A face she had probably looked upon as many times as her own.
‘Where did you get these?’ she whispered, but Rubens just winked. She already knew anyway.
Dita. It had to have been why she had stopped in the city on her way to Pyongyang; what she’d had to say to her, after all, could have been done by phone.
She watched the pictures flash past, less familiar to her than the headline-grabbing ones. These images had only ever been taken as asides, out-takes on the way to an interview or a red zone or a scoop. They had never been published, they had just been stolen moments to keep her going when the shellings and bombardments and killings all became too much and she needed to be reminded that there was more to life than just survival; that joy could be found in hellholes, that there was always light, even in darkness. Especially in darkness.
And then it came – the first of those defining images – as perhaps she should have known it would. They were attached to her now like a shadow upon her shadow. The first one. One of four.
The skinny dog cocking its leg against a falling-down hut.
An old man carrying a basket down a narrow street.
His splayed feet, holey shoes, as a soldier crouched over the body with dribbles of juice on his chin.
Brown eyes, point blank to the lens.
She snatched her gaze away, but too late: they scorched her retinas, remaining in her mind’s eye like sun spots, her chest tight and hurting. Hurting.
Everyone began to applaud as the last image faded into obsolescence and Lee Fitchett, Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography 2015 appeared on the white screen in stylish black type. Someone began whooping – Bart or Matt, she didn’t look. She willed the applause to die down, eyes to move off her as she struggled to keep her face impassive. These weren’t just pictures to her. They were scars. A map of her own journey.
Rubens stood again, clearing his throat, driving the evening onwards.
‘So you see, Hot Ones . . .’ Another ripple of amusement shimmied through the small group. ‘You have not simply had your photograph taken for a magazine article. You have been seen by someone who has seen humanity – the best and the very worst of it. She’s not interested in flattering your egos, as I’m sure you became well aware on your shoots – consider yourself lucky if you got given stroopwafels. We’re not all so privileged.’
Everyone laughed loudly and Matt and Alexander clapped their hands above their heads proudly.
‘But when you find yourself on the other end of Lee Fitchett’s lens, you’d better believe that she’s coming after you. She doesn’t want your good side or your best smoulder. She wants your soul and she’s not going to stop till she gets it. She’s going to tell the truth about you and put it out there for the whole world to see. Can you handle that? Are you ready?’
‘Yaasss!’ they cheered, even Haven, Matt the loudest.
‘Then take it away, please,’ Rubens said, indicating to the waiters standing beside the shrouded easels.
The sheets were whisked off and a rolling, jostling expectant silence filled the room as everyone saw themselves with a fresh gaze. Then the gasps came. The murmurs. The squeaks of delight, hands flying to mouths as they absorbed themselves, redrawn.
Claudia – her dark hair worn down, and manspreading, wearing a man’s suit and unlaced trainers, no socks, no shirt. No pointe shoes, no tutu, no princess.
Matt – roughed-up and feral, his self-satisfied shine lost to the mud and boredom.
Haven – sitting in a giant log basket, bare arms and legs dangling out, laughing uproariously like she’d just been pushed in. (She had. Bart had been terrified.)
Sam – the gentle artist staring unafraid at the camera like it was the barrel of a gun. Daring her to do it, see him, capture him. Goodbye, Lee.
The room erupted again, everyone clapping and cheering. ‘Brava!’ was shouted out by someone. Sam was clapping too but he had his head angled towards Veronika as she was saying something in his ear.
‘Three cheers for Lee!’ Alexander said beside her, raising his glass and leading them all in a toast. ‘Hip, hip—’
‘Hooray!’
‘Well, I certainly wasn’t expecting that,’ Lee said a few moments later to Rubens, as he sat down again and the waiters moved in to start pouring water.
‘Of course not. You wouldn’t have come if you’d known,’ he said accurately. ‘But these things need saying every now and again. We know how lucky we are to have you.’
‘Well, it was very sweet and utterly mortifying.’ She patted his arm, knowing exactly what he was alluding to. ‘Just so long as you promise not to do it again next year.’
He arched a hopeful eyebrow. ‘So there’ll be a next year?’
She smiled enigmatically. ‘Let’s just say it’s definitely a maybe,’ she murmured, her eyes sliding over to Sam again. He, Veronika and Haven were locked in a three-way conversation and she watched him talk – understated, calm and yet still somehow pivotal, as though he was the sun and they were the stars spinning around him.
He was being polite, of course, a good dinner guest, but she also had the distinct impression he was avoiding her. Unless she’d been directly talking to him or the focus of attention in the entire room, he hadn’t looked her way once.
She tried to listen to Rubens as he began telling her about their ongoing negotiations for an exclusive with DiCaprio he wanted her for – cover, possibly limited edition covers, eight-page spread . . . but she scarcely heard the words. The minutes were sliding past, the entrées already on the table, and still Sam’s attention stayed on everyone but her.
She couldn’t fail to get the point. He had moved on. Deep, deep down, she had been holding out hope that he had just been busy, giving her time and space, playing her at her own game, even – but it was patently clear now that the kiss really had been a goodbye, that their brief flirtation, their faltering emotional entanglement, would stay forever that.
The realization felt like a burn, deep inside her. She blinked hard, trying to crush the feeling flat, to rationalize it – she didn’t want to want him. She just wanted him to want her. Yes, that was it. She just wanted him to want her.
Her vanity demanded it. Her ego needed it. She hadn’t let him walk out on her a second time, surely? Reject me once, shame on you; reject me twice, shame on me.
She took another sip of her drink, feeling her heart burst into flames as Veronika touched his arm again, getting ever closer.
Mila had been right. She should have worn the green dress.
Chapter Nineteen
‘Lee, I’ll be in touch about DiCaprio,’ Rubens said as his coat was handed back to him. ‘As soon as we get a confirmed date I’ll let you know, but it’s looking like sometime early Jan – probably around the BAFTAs in London – so keep your diary flexible. You’re my first choice.’
‘Sure, no problem,’ she nodded, buttoning her own coat too and feeling relieved Bart had pre-booked her a car. There was a time and a place for cycling around this city and midnight, in minus three degrees, wasn’t it. Her kitten hat was in the pocket and she pulled it out, smoothing it down over her hair and not caring any more if it didn’t ‘go’ with her soignée look. The night was done, their fates firmly spelled out.
He patted her arm. ‘Speak soon. And take some time off over Christmas. Relax with your boy.’
‘I will,’ she called after him as he trotted down the steps to his waiting car. ‘Night, Rubens.’
Bart came to stand by her. He had a Missoni striped scarf tucked into the neck of his coat. ‘Is it here yet?’
‘Not yet.’ She looked down the length of Herengracht. The grand canal – the grandest canal – was frozen solid and glittering with lacy white frost crystals.
‘Hmm,’ Bart tutted, vainly searching the street too. He looked at her. ‘So, you must be pleased with how that went?’
‘Yes, I think the—’ Andrik came up to them, pumping their hands hard. ‘Oh, good night, Andrik.’
‘Yes, it has been,’ he said earnestly. ‘It’s given Haven exactly the boost she needed.’
‘Well, she’s an incredibly talented singer, we were delighted she wanted to be a part of the feature.’ Lee realized she hadn’t asked about tomorrow night, after all, her mind on other things than her friend’s promotion hopes. And it was too late now, of course; she couldn’t just spring it on them as they stood on the hotel steps. She would simply have to pretend the answer had been a flat no; it wasn’t like Liam was holding out any realistic hope of it being otherwise, anyway.