by Mo Hayder
After ten long days I got the manuscript off to the editor. The publishers' art department had been sending us visuals of the dust-jacket and now they'd arranged a photo session for Angeline in some studio in Brixton. This was something Finn and me and Angeline had spent a long time talking about – how to show her to the world. She wasn't going to let the deformity itself be photographed, so we'd decided on a still from the video, and for a modeller who worked for a medical-supply company to make and photograph a fibreglass cross-section of it. The publishers were going to send her up to Pig Island later in the month to get some shots of her at the chapel, but they wanted some studio portraits too. Just head and shoulders. It happened on the first Monday in March. The beginning of spring and, looking back at it now, it turned out to be the beginning of another kind of change in the air.
'Well?' I said. 'How do you feel?'
We sat in the makeup room looking at each other. She hadn't taken off her outdoor clothes: she still had on her coat and a knitted stripy beanie pulled over her hair. I'd brought the JD with me and now I opened it, poured her some in a plastic cup and handed it to her.
'You going to be OK?'
'I don't know.' She took it and shivered, shooting an anxious look at the door. We'd been let in by the janitor to an empty studio, but now the others were arriving. We could hear voices out there. 'They've seen the video. I wonder what they're going to think. Of me.' Her eyes went across the room at a rack of dresses pushed into the corner. They were covered with Cellophane but you could see the long skirts trailing the floor. She'd been fitted and measured for these, specifically so nothing would show. 'But whatever I wear, it doesn't matter. They'll still know.'
'You can change your mind,' I said. 'I'll have Finn tear up the contract. You only have to say the—'
'No. No, really.' She gave a small, nervous laugh. She pulled off her hat and ran a hand through the short curls, raising her eyes cautiously to the mirror, getting a shy look at her face, bare and colourless. 'I'm going to do it. Of course I am.'
When the makeup girl came in I left them to it and wandered into the studio, thinking about what she'd said: What will they think of me? The studio was in a warehouse with polished concrete floors, ceiling cross-braces painted black, and big, unlit studio lamps standing like sentinels in the dark corners. A roll of white paper hanging from an overhead brace had been pulled down to the floor and a small swivel stool placed in the centre. An assistant wandered around setting up lights, snapping open diffusers, all the time chatting in a low voice to the photographer, who was bent over the top of his camera, peering into the viewfinder. The photographer was in his early twenties and looked like he wrote for an alt music mag like Mojo or NME, with his faded print Bob Marley T-shirt and his jeans hanging round his arse. They didn't see me come in so I got quite close and I'd listened to them for a few minutes before I sussed they were talking about disabled people modelling.
'There's this whole, like, obsession with it at the moment. Marc Quinn and that pregnant bird, Alison Lapper.'
'Yeah, and Aimee Mullins ...' said the assistant. 'Both totally cool.'
'And personally, I'm, like, this is 50, you know, so about time too.'
'I know.'
'It's so overdue, it's just not funny. It's time they—' The photographer broke off suddenly and straightened, looking far off into the corner of the studio. Me and the assistant both turned to see what he was looking at. The dressing-room door had opened and Angeline was there, blinking shakily in the studio lights. She was wearing some silver number that had a neckline half-way down her stomach and looked like it cost half my yearly salary, and she was a totally different person: the makeup girl had slicked her short curls back against her head like a black helmet, fixed false eyelashes on her, and outlined her mouth in lipstick like red plastic. Her hands were shaking but her face was as composed as a shop-floor dummy, almost glassy it was so perfect. She swallowed, then began to walk, slowly, sort of tentatively, putting one foot in front of the other, like she thought she might fall. No one breathed while we took her in and the studio went totally silent, just the sound of her heels clicking on the floor echoing round the high roof. She got to the edge of the lights, hesitated, then stepped on to the paper, walked quickly to the stool and sank on to it like it was a life raft.
'Fuck.' The photographer let out an amazed whistle. Just soft, under his breath. 'Fucking hell.' He shook his head, then tugged up his jeans and went to stand on the paper about two foot in front of her, looking at her curiously, like he was asking a question. There was a long pause. Then he goes, all surprised, 'You're beautiful, Angeline. You're totally fucking gorgeous.'
At first she stared at him, like she couldn't work out what he'd said or who he was. Like he might be telling her off, maybe. Then something inside her sort of cracked open and all this colour spilled out under her skin and her cheeks went pink. 'Thank you,' she whispered shyly. 'Thank you.'
He gave a disbelieving laugh, still staring at her. 'You,' he said, 'are totally, totally welcome.'
Not taking his eyes off her, like she might run away if he did, he walked backwards to the camera. He lifted up his hands – the way you'd pacify a skittish animal.
'Don't move,' he said, glancing down at the viewfinder. 'Don't move.' And before she knew what was happening he'd taken a photo. The flash fired and he was winding on the camera.
Angeline blinked at him. 'Did you do it?'
'Yes,' he said, switching the camera to display and squinting at the screen. He looked up at her. 'See how easy it's going to be?'
It was so weird that afternoon to stand there, outside the lights and watch her kind of... I don't know the word, but expand, maybe. Like she was growing under the attention. It was like each time the flash fired the muscles in her face relaxed a bit more until the doll look softened and she looked, even I have to say it, awesome. And no one was treating her weird or patronizing. No one was stupid about the way she had to sit, half tilted over because she was never comfortable on a stool and had to grip the sides of it. Instead they were treating her like she was something cool.
When they'd done about twenty shots they got her changed, put her in a different dress, different hair and stuff. During the day she went through about six different dresses, most of which looked totally fucking ridiculous to me, like some of those makeover boudoir get-ups but must've been some kind of style statements because everyone else seemed to get them. Even Angeline. By three o'clock I had to sit down. I was getting tired. And there was something else. I was starting to get arsed off with the photographer.
At first it was great, seeing how happy he was making her, but now he was getting sort of tiresome. The way he kept up with this beautiful, beautiful shit, it was getting on my tits. I started watching him a bit more closely. I went further into the shadows so they couldn't see me, and stood there, fiddling impatiently with my keys, spinning them on my finger, pulling them on and off the ring, trying to stop myself saying, 'What? Do you fancy her or something? Stop staring at her.' So when, at the end of the day, we were all knackered and I thought, At least it's over, he went up close to her, dropped his face, and said something really quiet, I stopped spinning the keys and went very still, watching them closely. Angeline's smile went. She sat there, her eyes on the floor, and listened to him talk, tucking the hair behind her ear and thinking about what he was saying. He finished and straightened, took a step back. 'Well?'
'Hey,' I said, coming closer to the set so I could feel the lights on my face. 'Angeline?'
But she didn't turn to me. She didn't even seem to hear me. Her eyes were locked on his. There were a couple of beats, then she gave a small nod.
'Hey,' I murmured. 'Angeline?'
No one reacted. The photographer went and unscrewed the camera, took it off the tripod and lay down on his stomach, resting on his elbows with the camera raised to his eyes. He was focusing on her skirt hem and, suddenly, catching us all by surprise, she reached down, grabbed the fabr
ic and lifted it to her knees.
I've got the photo from that moment and I still look at it, even today. Her thin ankles, the little sweaty footprints of her feet on the background paper, but most of all the third, broken and squashed foot, heavier-looking, but you can tell it's made out of the same flesh as the other two, and it's hanging there, with its own shadow. Turns out it's the best shot in the book, the one everyone talks about. But at the time I was ready to kill the photographer.
When they'd finished, when she'd gone to get her makeup off and someone had brought round coffee and a bottle of sparkling rose, I took my glass and made sure I sat near him. Wanted to keep an eye on him. I wasn't having him talking to her on his own again.
He was lounging on a sofa, half on his back, idly running his charity bands up and down his arms. If he knew I had the arse with him he didn't show it. 'So,' he said, all casual, 'what happens when it all comes out?' He paused to drain his glass, and swivelled his eyes to me. 'When I was watching her all I could think was, What if her dad reads the book? What's he going to think? See, if it was me I'd be hiding in a hole.'
I looked at him steadily. 'Malachi Dove is dead. How can he read the book?
'Is he?'
'Don't you read the papers? They've been talking about it all week.'
'Oh, that body. In Dumfries. But they never confirmed it. Never said it was definitely him. Did they?'
'No,' I said, in a slow voice, like he was a child not listening properly. 'They're waiting for DNA before they do. But it was him. He. Is. Dead.'
Angeline came across the floor then, holding an opened can of diet Coke. We both looked up. She was wearing a white dressing-gown and I could see where her makeup had been taken off: a line round her neck. Above it, she was pink and shining, glowing more than she had a right to after five hours under the lights.
'Hey,' said the photographer, getting up and smiling, a really fake smile like he was dazzled by her. 'Have a seat.'
She sat down, tucking her curls into two pins above her ears. 'I'm 5000 tired,' she said, with a smile. She looked at me. 'I'm so tired.'
'You were great,' I said, but I had to force it out.
'Hey, Angeline.' The photographer leaned sideways and shoved a hand into his back pocket. He pulled out a card. Held it out to her between two fingers, so delicate you'd think it was some exotic butterfly, not a bit of cardboard. 'I work with her all the time. Her work is lush – just lush. Edgy. Real. Know what I mean?'
She took the card and looked at it. Her mouth twitched a little.
'What is it?' I said, leaning over. 'Let's see.'
There was a moment's hesitation before she handed me the card. I had to pull it a bit to get it out of her fingers. Just a bit. I flipped it over and stared at it, my face set. The features editor of the Daily Mail. What was going on? I turned to the photographer, moving my head stiffly. 'Well? What's this?'
'She's really wanting to do something on Angeline.'
The fucking features editor of a national newspaper knew about Angeline? How had that happened? I leaned forward and tapped his knee, getting him to look at me, wanting to tell him to sit upright, stop slouching. 'That's OK. That's fine. Except we're negotiating the serial rights on this story and it's not with the Mail.' I paused to make sure he'd heard that. 'OK?'
'Sorry, mate.' He held up the glass to me, like he was toasting our status as a couple. 'Didn't want to interfere. Not my job to make waves.'
I stood up. 'Come on,' I said, holding my hand out to Angeline. 'Let's get you dressed.' But she didn't get up. She sat there, staring at my hand. 'Come on,' I repeated. 'It's time to get dressed and go. Let's give your friend some time to read his contract.'
Angeline sighed and rolled her eyes. 'OK,' she said, in a sarcastic voice. The same voice Sovereign always used with her mother. 'I'm commg.'
She finished the Coke and dropped the can into the bin. She held up her hand, thumb at her ear, pinkie at the corner of her mouth, and smiled at the photographer. 'Call me,' she mouthed, and walked straight past me, sauntering off to the makeup room, her feet in the towelling slippers slapping lazily on the floor, the way I'd seen hookers in Tijuana walk. I stood and watched her and all I could think about was when I was a teenager in Bootle. Back then the local fathers used to line up outside nightclubs waiting for their daughters at kicking-out time. They'd get out of their cars and put their elbows on the roofs. They'd look casual, but you could tell what they were thinking. They were thinking if one of those arseholes in the club had laid even a finger on their little girl he was going to get a hiding he'd never forget.
7
We travelled home in silence, Angeline in the passenger seat chewing gum she'd picked up somewhere. She kept fiddling with the radio, trying to find Choice FM, until I reached over and switched it off. I'd made up my mind we weren't going to speak to the photographer again. I didn't like his interfering and I didn't like the knowing way he talked about Dove. The body in Dumfries was him, no one had said it wasn't. In the morning I'd call Danso – just so I could hear the DNA match from his mouth. Even so, when I got home I went into the back garden and nailed the gate closed. Then I double-checked the cellar door and trundled the lawnmower up against it.
Inside, the phone was ringing. As I came into the kitchen I heard Angeline's hurried footsteps on the stairs, and her breathless 'Yes? Hi?' I came into the hallway and stood there, my coat half off, staring at her. 'Yes,' she was saying into the phone. 'It's me.' A giggle. 'I know – he told me all that.'
She noticed me then in the doorway and turned away to face the wall, twiddling her hair round her fingers, resting one foot on the other and jiggling up and down as she spoke. 'No, that's OK. Honest. I wanted you to call.'
I stood there in silence, toying with the idea of putting my fingers on the phone connectors. Instead I pulled off my coat and went and sat at the kitchen table in the semi-dark, moodily necking a bottle of Newkie Brown. The fathers outside the Crosby nightclub kept coming back to me.
'Joe?' When she finished the call she appeared in the kitchen doorway, eyes bright, chin lowered, a little-girl smile on her face. 'I've been naughty, haven't I?'
'You're going to do it?'
'Friday.'
'Friday? You really think that's safe? Before we know if it was your dad or not?'
'But it was him.'
'He looked so different.'
Her shoulders slumped. 'Not this again.'
I sighed and rubbed my temples wearily. 'I don't know. I really don't know. I don't like it.' I dropped my hands and looked at the window, thinking about the security locks on them. They hadn't been used in years – like we had anything worth robbing – and I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen the key. It was probably in the old coffee jar on the basement shelf. Danso, I told myself again, would've called if there was a problem.
'Joe,' she said, coming and putting her hands on my shoulders. She swung her leg over my legs and sat on my lap facing me, her skirt bunched up between her thighs so her legs were exposed. I could smell the coffee she'd drunk and the cold cream they'd used to take off the makeup. 'Why don't you believe me? It was him.'
'And why can't you wait until we're sure? They'll have the DNA any time now. I'm going to call Danso in the morning.'
'But it was him, Joe. And, anyway, it's not like I'm going to say anything.' She shifted a little, pulling the skirt out of the way so her bare thighs pressed against my jeans. 'I won't say where I live.'
'You're going to have to wait till I've spoken to Finn. You could mess up the contract if you're not careful. He's not going to like it.'
'He is. He'll love it.' She took my hands and eased them up under the skirt, forcing my fingers between her legs. She hadn't got knickers on. She was damp and warm and I could feel the hard pressure of the deformed leg pressing down on my knuckles. 'I promise, I promise,' she whispered, closing her eyes and moving her hips in a circular motion. 'I won't say a word about you.'
8
&nbs
p; She wasn't trying to antagonize me. She totally wasn't. I wasn't in her thoughts at all, I knew that. All she was doing was wanting to be heard. She was nineteen, for Christ's sake, and if everything she did when the Mail came to interview her seemed like she was giving me the finger, it was my own fault.
I'd talked to Finn and he didn't love it. Not one bit. He'd gone through the contract with a fine-tooth comb and unless she talked about the massacre itself there wasn't a thing he could do to stop her, but he was furious. I'd called Danso over and over again and I kept getting his answer-service, so I left all these messages telling him to call me if the DNA didn't match. But he didn't get back to me. It was starting to seem like I couldn't stand in front of this landslide and hold it back. All of which made me the bad tempered-arsehole boyfriend during the Mail interview, hovering behind the journalist and signalling to Angeline over her head if I thought she was giving stuff away.
She kept losing her grip – being careless about what she was saying. At one point she said, 'I can't talk about that because Joe and I...'
'Angeline,' I said significantly, 'you're, uh—'
'Oh, yeah,' she said. 'What was I thinking? What I meant to say was ...'
I spent the rest of the time staring at her furiously, waiting for the wrong word, the wrong expression. After a while she got fed up with me hovering and took the journalist into the kitchen, where the pair of them sat in a girlie huddle, drinking tea and smoking. I kept making excuses to come in: to boil the kettle, or wander through into the garden. Every time I did it they'd stop giggling and turn to me with sweet, empty smiles, waiting politely for me to go so they could get on with the interview.
I didn't know if she'd stuck to her promise until the article came out three days later. It was a Monday, and although I'd set the alarm for seven, when I woke up the bed was already empty. I knew where she'd gone – down to the newsagent's to get the paper. I was still in bed, rubbing my head and trying to wake up, when the phone rang. It was Danso, his usually austere voice weary and tense.