by Lindsey Kelk
‘Well, that’s because you shagged her fella, didn’t you? You dirty mare.’ She let out a foul, hacking laugh and slapped the desk. ‘She isn’t happy with you. But I’m fucking ecstatic.’
‘Yay?’ I whispered.
‘Those pictures of Bertie Bennett were amazing,’ she said, suddenly switching gears. ‘As soon as I saw them, I knew Vanessa hadn’t shot them. She hasn’t done anything as good as that since I’ve had her on my books. Even the pictures that made me sign her weren’t as good as those.’
‘I keep hearing about these amazing pictures.’ Fear of violence fading, I relaxed a fraction into the uncomfortable visitor’s chair. ‘Do you have them?’
‘Yeah, they’re in her book ? give me a sec.’ Veronica lit another cigarette, clamped it between her bright red lips and spun around to a bookcase full of portfolios. ‘Now, obviously you’re going to be signing an agency agreement with me before you leave this office, since I’ve smoothed everything over with Gloss and I’ve got your first job lined up already.’ She handed me a thin, light brown pleather book with Vanessa’s name printed on the side in silver type. Mmm, tacky. ‘You’re welcome.’
‘I’m sorry, I’m not following?’ I said, flipping through the pictures. I very nearly felt bad saying it, but they really weren’t great. Vanessa was not a natural photographer. ‘A job?’
‘Bertie Bennett, aka your best friend in the entire world, other than me,’ she announced with a flourish, ‘wants you to go to Milan and work on his retrospective. He’s putting together some sort of exhibition with someone. He’s doing a book – the whole shebang. Shenanigans ahoy. He wants you to do all the pictures, document the entire exercise. It’ll be three months at least. Starting as soon as.’
If Bertie’s proposal hadn’t left me speechless, what I saw in Vanessa’s portfolio would have done the job.
‘These are her pictures?’ I breathed out without breathing in again.
‘Oh yeah, they’re the ones. There are, like, four of them? She really caught something there.’ Veronica took a drag on her cigarette and then flicked the ash over her shoulder. ‘Other than an STD, for a change. That’s why I took her on. I thought she knew how to tell a story, but all I’ve had off her since is bollocks.’
I couldn’t speak. The photos were beautiful. The first one showed an old couple sitting beside a pond at sunset, smiling at each other and feeding the ducks. The next one showed the same couple walking off down a country road, holding hands, silhouetted by the low light. The next two were more of the same – a mother and baby smiling at each other, two teenage girls giving each other filthy looks.
‘Intimate,’ she said. ‘Honest. Bit like your Bennett pics.’
‘That’s because I took these,’ I said, my words stilted and uncertain. ‘Veronica, these are my pictures. I took them years ago. They must have been on the memory card when she took my camera.’
‘Fuck. Right. Off.’ She looked absolutely delighted. ‘You’re serious? You’re fucking serious. That sneaky cow.’
‘I don’t know what to say,’ I breathed. It was becoming something of a catchphrase of mine. Perhaps I should get it printed on to a T-shirt to save my breath. ‘But these are totally mine. It’s the mill pond in the village where I grew up. I can’t believe she would do this.’
‘You can’t?’ Veronica didn’t seem quite so surprised. ‘I can.’
‘I just … she knew how much I loved photography and she still took the camera, but to steal my pictures, pass them off as hers and make a career out of it? That’s something else.’
‘Yeah, that’s even more mental than pretending to be your flatmate, nicking off to Hawaii and shagging the journo on the job,’ she replied, leaning across the desk and snapping her fingers in my face. ‘Tess, this is the past. We are looking at the future. Your future, my massive commission. Say yes to the job. We’ll book your flight right now. You get to go and play dressing-up with your mate Bertie and even use your own name. How exciting is that?’
‘It’s so exciting,’ I said, still staring at the photographs in my lap. ‘Um, can I have a day to think about it?’
‘What?’ She didn’t sound nearly as understanding as Charlie had. ‘What is there to think about?’
‘I’m just really tired and jet-lagged, and I think I need a minute.’ I slapped the portfolio shut and threw it onto the desk, suddenly disgusted by it. ‘I think I need some sleep before I make any big decisions.’
‘Your journo friend is back in New York,’ Veronica said with a casual wink. ‘Heard he didn’t take your big reveal that well.’
‘How do you know he’s in New York?’ I sat up straight, my plait swishing behind my head. ‘Do you know him?’
‘Passing acquaintances.’ She screwed up her face and clucked. ‘And he was in on the emails from the magazine. Bennett wants him to work on the retrospective as well.’
‘Has he said he will?’ I could barely sit still at the mere mention of his name. My heart was beating hard, and not just from the jet lag and the caffeine. If we were both working with Al, he’d have to talk to me.
‘He hasn’t confirmed yet,’ she said. ‘Seemed very keen to know whether or not you’d be there, actually. Email him. Tell him your side of the story and see what he says. If nothing else is true, I do know that man loves a story.’
I pulled out my crappy knackered phone and opened a new email. But what was I supposed to say?
‘I didn’t mean do it now, you wanker.’ Veronica clapped for my attention. ‘Go home and cry over your love letter there. You made quite an impression on everyone, you did. Not sure if that’s good or bad, but I do know you’re a fucking good photographer and I want you on my books, Brookes.’
She slapped her desk hard and cackled. ‘Ha! It rhymes. Now fuck off home, get some sleep and call me in the morning to apologize for making me wait an entire fucking day before I book this job.’
I stood up again, nodding like the Churchill dog, and stumbled towards the door in a complete daze.
‘Come on, Brookes,’ Veronica yelled over her shoulder. ‘I’ve just offered you a job and a shag in a oner. How often does something like that come around?’
‘You’d be surprised,’ I said, pushing the door open, and wished I had another Wispa to eat on the way home. Or some crack. I imagined some crack might be nice about now. ‘You’d be really surprised.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
‘I have no words.’ Amy sat cross-legged on the settee, clutching her neon-pink ankles, her face a picture of shock. ‘No. Words.’
Stretched out on the hardwood floor of the living room, I gently knocked the back of my head against the floorboards and pressed my feet into the sharp edges of the TV cabinet. Nope. Still couldn’t actually feel anything.
‘I know.’
‘No, really, all of it.’ Amy grabbed the remote and turned off the random episode of The Vampire Diaries that she had on mute. This was serious. ‘The agency, the cockwomble finally bloody growing a pair, Milan, that’s all awesome. But fuck me, Tess, I cannot believe she is such a complete and utter psycho.’
‘I know.’
For the last two hours, all I’d done was think about what might have been. What if Vanessa had shown my photos to her agent but admitted they were mine? I could have been a professional photographer for years. I might have left the agency and had a life. I might not have spent so long hung up on Charlie that I didn’t know how to have a functional relationship with another human being. Jesus, forget the relationship – I didn’t even know how to have a conversation about a relationship. Everything might have been different. She’d stolen my life.
Which was funny when you thought about it.
But, then again, everything might not. I might have said thanks for the offer, but I’ll stick with my torturous, low-paying, zero-regard office tomb, thanks, because that’s what my mother wants me to do. There was no way of knowing, and as Al had said, life was too short for regrets. It was, however, not to
o short for swift and violent retribution. If only I knew where she was.
‘So what are you going to do?’ I could tell Amy was feeding on the drama. I hardly ever gave her anything to get her teeth into, so this was like all her Christmases come at once. ‘What does your gut say?’
‘My gut says I need to not eat any more pineapple for about a year,’ I replied. ‘I don’t know. I’m too freaked out right now. I’m having more feelings than I knew one person could have at one time.’
‘Have some more wine,’ she said, grabbing the open bottle of white and pouring it into my Snoopy mug. ‘That’ll help.’
‘It won’t help because it’s half past twelve in the afternoon,’ I said, taking a swig. ‘But I will have some anyway because I don’t really know what else to do.’
‘You do seem very emotional,’ Amy said with as much sympathy as she could muster. ‘Like, more conflicted than when Jersey Shore finished, and I know how hard that was for you.’
‘I was just really worried about what would happen to them when the cameras stopped rolling.’ I sloshed my mug back onto the floor, trying not to spill any of the half-bottle of wine Amy had poured into it. ‘What life will they have now?’
‘So do you think you’ll go to Milan?’ She poured her own wine, switching the subject right back to where we started. ‘And are you going to call Nick? And tell him you love him?’
‘I don’t know.’ I needed so much more wine than there was in the universe. ‘And I don’t love him.’
‘Yeah, you do,’ she said, kicking me in the hip. ‘But I think you probably still love Charlie too.’
‘I don’t know,’ I said again. And again. And again.
‘Yeah, you do,’ she said again, this time kicking me in the head. ‘But that’s definitely more of a Stockholm Syndrome love. I’m team Nick. Deffos Team Milan.’
‘And what will you do if I go off to Italy?’ I asked, unfastening my plait and fanning my hair out around my head. ‘You going to stay here and get more and more sensible?’
‘No way,’ Amy yelped. ‘I’m coming with you. I want to meet this uber-amazing crazy sex wizard that’s finally shagged some sense into you.’
‘That is the most interesting interpretation of what’s gone down over the past week that anyone could come up with,’ I said, staring up at our manky ceiling. It needed painting so badly. ‘A different kind of sense, yeah?’
‘Of course the sensible thing to do would be to start the agency with Charlie,’ she explained, as though it was a thought that hadn’t crossed my mind a million times in the past hour. ‘But the amazing thing would be to go to Milan with Nick.’
‘What you’re forgetting,’ I pointed out from the floor, ‘is that Nick isn’t talking to me. So there’s not necessarily any Nick in the equation. And there shouldn’t be any Charlie in the equation, at least not in a sexy way. Not until I’ve decided what I want to do workwise.’
‘Want you want to do or what you think you should do?’ Amy asked. ‘Close your eyes and tell me what staying here and opening the agency looks like.’
‘It looks good,’ I said, flexing my toes. ‘It looks familiar. I know the work, I know the clients. It would be fun, owning the business, and maybe I wouldn’t get quite as drawn in as before. Maybe I’d be able to keep a better work–life balance.’
‘Yeah, right,’ she scoffed, her disbelief echoing around her own mug o’wine. ‘And what does going to Milan look like?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, a small smile in my voice. ‘I’d be taking photos, living somewhere new, working with Al. It could be incredible or it could be awful.’
‘Pretty sure even awful things are amazing in Italy,’ Amy said dreamily. ‘The telly says so.’
‘And the telly never lies,’ I confirmed solemnly.
‘So it’s head or heart, Tess,’ she replied. ‘What’s it going to be? And leave your baby box out of this, because we both know she’s Team Nick too.’
‘I need more wine.’
We lay in our respective positions, quietly drinking, Amy presumably planning our Italiano adventures and me flipping back and forth between the easy thing and the new thing. Charlie or Nick? Photography or advertising? What if I’d got lucky with the pictures in Hawaii? I might be terrible at the next shoot and then I’d be out of a job again. And it wasn’t like starting my own advertising agency with ready-made accounts and super-keen clients was a runner-up prize. I worked too hard and I forgot I was supposed to have a life outside the office, but I loved my job and I was good at it. There was no doubt or nerves there. And, yes, Charlie had made an epic, epic mistake by shagging Vanessa, but if he said he wanted to be with me, then he meant it, didn’t he? Whereas Nick didn’t even want to talk to me. I needed to email him, but I still didn’t know what to say. I needed all the information before I made a decision.
‘We need more wine,’ Amy announced from her perch on the settee. ‘That bottle’s dead.’
‘We’ve only just opened it.’ I looked over at the empty green glass beside my head in disbelief. ‘We are such drunks.’
‘We are modern women on the horns of a dilemma,’ Amy corrected. ‘We are culturally conditioned to drink. It’s Bridget Jones’s fault, not ours.’
‘There should be a bottle of sauv in the fridge then,’ I called as she hopped over me and vanished into the kitchen. ‘And bring the biscuits. I’m culturally conditioned to be greedy as well.’
I flapped my arms out by my side, making an imaginary snow angel, and carried on staring at the ceiling. It didn’t have any answers for me. Just like the stupid toaster. It really was time the flat started pulling its weight in the decision-making around here. But while the ceiling wasn’t great at telling me how to live my life, the front door was spectacular at providing an early warning system. Amy was in the kitchen. I was on the floor. There was only one other person it could be.
‘What are you doing down there?’ Vanessa stood over me, hands on her skinny hips, her hair falling in a perfect blonde curtain around her face as she stared down at the floor. ‘Have you had a stroke?’
‘No, but I feel like I’m about to,’ I said, not moving. ‘Where have you been?’
‘Ohh, I was at a spa,’ she sighed, shrugging off a shrunken leather biker jacket I didn’t recognize and throwing it on the sofa. ‘After all that shit I had to deal with last week, I needed a break. No phones, no Internet, no TV. It was amazing. Spiritual.’
She sat down and pulled her non-shattered, brand-new iPhone out of her pocket, sighing dramatically as she scanned her emails. I wondered if she even remembered that she had a BlackBerry in her room.
‘Gingernuts or Hobnobs?’ Amy shouted from the kitchen.
‘Oh God, she can piss off home,’ Vanessa spat, flicking at the iPhone screen. ‘I haven’t just spent three grand learning how to relax to have to deal with that mentalist when I get home.’
Even though I knew she could only be seconds away from something on her phone that would give away a hint at my adventures, I just couldn’t seem to get off the floor. Instead, I rolled over onto my side, curled into the foetal position and waited for Amy to come back into the living room.
‘I went with Hobnobs,’ she said, holding the packet in one hand, and the open bottle of wine in the other. ‘Gingernuts and wine seemed a bit tacky. Oh, look, you’re home. Amazing.’
Whatever witchcraft was stopping me from getting up and running for the hills froze Amy to the spot in the middle of our living room. Vanessa looked up from her phone, perplexed.
‘Have you two been doing mushrooms or something?’ she asked. ‘I’m going to bed. Fingers crossed you won’t be here when I wake up.’
‘You stole Tess’s photos,’ shouted Amy as loud as her little lungs would let her, pointing a finger at the accused.
‘What?’ To her credit, Vanessa looked completely and utterly flummoxed. ‘I did what?’
‘When Tess sold you her camera, you said her photos were your photos and that’s
why you’re a photographer and you’re not really – you’re shit.’ She punctuated the ‘shit’ by slamming the full bottle of wine down on the tabletop beside her.
And yet still I could not seem to move.
‘Huh.’ Vanessa crossed her long, leather-covered legs and cocked her head to one side. ‘And how have you worked all this out, Sherlock?’
‘Might have, sort of, borrowed my camera back?’ I whispered from the floor.
‘Did you now?’ She was starting to sound a bit peeved. And I didn’t like it when she sounded peeved. It usually ended in something being broken. But still, best to get everything out in the open.
‘And there’s a chance I sort of pretended to be you and went on a shoot to Hawaii for Veronica, and then she called me in and I looked at your portfolio and that’s how I know.’
‘OK, I’m totally not following you now.’ She blinked twice and put down her phone. ‘You did what?’
‘She went to Hawaii and she took amazing photos and fell in love with an amazing man and you are a complete demon,’ Amy wailed.
‘There’s no way.’ Vanessa paled, very, very slightly, underneath her make-up. ‘There’s no way you did that. You probably haven’t moved off the floor since I left.’
‘It doesn’t really matter who did what or where I was or whether or not I used your name and stole a job.’ I felt eerily calm as I explained all of this from my ball on the floor. ‘What matters is you stole my pictures. You kind of stole my life. I think I’m going to be moving out.’
‘I’m calling Veronica,’ she snapped, grabbing her phone. ‘You better start packing. You need to find somewhere else to live, like now.’
‘Ooh, put it on speakerphone,’ I suggested. ‘I think we’d all like to hear what she’s got to say to you.’
Vanessa did not put the call on speakerphone, but it didn’t matter. Agent Veronica – my agent, Veronica – did a fine job of amplifying her own voice. I couldn’t quite make out the entire conversation, but it definitely included the words ‘you’re fucking fired’ and ‘you filthy, talentless little shitbag’. It was a bit like The Apprentice only not. Most importantly, Vanessa’s face was a picture.