Exposure

by Aga Lesiewicz

That traitor Pixel, who normally hides at the sight of a stranger, is rubbing himself against the man’s legs, purring.

  ‘That’s great, thank you.’ I touch my chin to check I’m not drooling. ‘How long will it take?’

  ‘Oh, we won’t be long . . . a couple of hours at most.’

  ‘But how will you get out there?’ I wave at the windows.

  ‘Our high-level access vehicle is right outside.’

  I look out through a gap in the red paint and see a huge cherry picker with the Wall 2 Wall logo parked in the street.

  ‘So it is . . .’ I want to kick myself for sounding like an idiot. ‘So you won’t need to go through my loft?’

  ‘No, thank you, it’ll all be done from the outside. We won’t disturb you. Please make sure you keep your windows shut while we’re out there.’

  He gives Pixel one last pat, flashes another of his sweet smiles at me and is gone.

  I sit down at the kitchen table, flushed and confused. If not for the massive cherry picker outside I’d have thought it was a kissogram visit from a rogue member of the Chippendales cast. But of course it’s not. It’s not my birthday and the very few friends I have don’t do kissograms. It would’ve been totally inappropriate after Anton’s death, anyway.

  But still, I get up and tiptoe towards the window. The man – what was his name? Toby? Tony? – is already downstairs and putting on a yellow hi-vis jacket and a hard hat. Surely this is too much of the Diet Coke break cliché to be true . . . I’m almost expecting Etta James’s smoky voice to blast out of the cherry picker’s bucket. Instead I see another man, also dressed in hi-vis clothes, appear from behind the truck. He is short and bald, and carries his beer gut in front of him with an air of self-satisfaction. No, these guys are for real. Soon the cherry picker’s long arm begins to unfold, carrying the bucket with the two men up. I step away from the window.

  This is ridiculous. I’m in a flutter about some muscled hunk cleaning my windows. I’ll be inviting the milkman for a coffee next. What on earth is wrong with me? It hasn’t even been a week since Anton’s death, for God’s sake! I jump as a jet of pressurized water hits the windows. It must be hormonal, this is not my normal behaviour.

  I force myself to go back to the computer. But my mind is out there, floating above the street in the cherry picker. As the layers of paint begin to disappear and the loft becomes brighter, an idea forms in my head.

  My windows are spotlessly clean and the Wall 2 Wall guys are beginning to pack up when I dash downstairs with my Canon, a tripod and a digital camera mount.

  ‘I was wondering if I could ask you a huge favour.’ I’m addressing Toby/Tony, fluttering my eyelashes and making my voice higher-pitched. ‘I’m a photographer and I’ve been dying to take a panoramic picture of the neighbourhood, waiting for an opportunity . . . and here you are, with this wonderful piece of equipment . . .’ I wave in the direction of the cherry picker.

  ‘Erm . . . we’re not allowed to let anyone unlicensed onto the work platform . . .’ The Diet Coke man’s charming smile is gone.

  ‘Please – it wouldn’t take long . . .’

  ‘And our parking dispensation is running out. We’re blocking the road.’

  ‘Just a few minutes . . .’ I know it’d take a bit longer.

  ‘Sorry, no can do.’ He turns his gorgeous back to me.

  ‘What’s that thing then?’ His beer-gut companion is pointing at the digital rig.

  ‘Oh, it’s a GigaPan. You mount your camera on it and program it to take loads of photographs which you can then stitch together to create an amazing panoramic picture. They use the same camera mounts on the Mars Rovers.’

  ‘Really?’ There is a sparkle of curiosity in the man’s eyes.

  ‘Yep, they developed the technology with Mars exploration in mind.’

  ‘Blimey, it must’ve cost a few bob . . .’

  ‘Wait till you see it in action.’ I try my most seductive smile.

  ‘Yeah?’ The beer gut is hesitating. He looks at his watch. ‘How long did you say it’d take?’

  ‘Ten, fifteen minutes, tops.’ I’m crossing my fingers behind my back.

  ‘Go on, then.’ He wipes his bald head with his hand. ‘Hope I’m not gonna lose me job over this . . .’

  ‘Thank you!’ I feel like giving him a hug, but the sight of his beer gut stops me. Out of the corner of my eye I see Toby/Tony angrily throw his hi-vis vest to the ground. But my guy ignores him.

  ‘You’ll need to wear a hard hat, though, and I’ll have to strap you in a harness. Shane’s the name, by the way.’

  I’d agree to anything to go up with my GigaPan. Shane climbs into the bucket with surprising agility. He hands me a hard hat and straps me in.

  ‘Your colleague doesn’t seem very happy . . .’ I look at the Diet Coke guy, who is leaning against the truck looking handsomely pissed off.

  ‘Tones?’ Shane clips his harness in. ‘Ignore him, he can be a right tosser sometimes.’

  I forget ‘Tones’ as soon as we start going up. Never mind the fear of heights, this is fantastic. We swiftly climb to the level of my floor and I look in through the spotless windows. The loft looks unreal, more of a set in a dollhouse than my own home. I can see the messy kitchen with my Mac on the table, my clothes scattered around, Pixel sitting on the bed licking his paw, Aunt Stella’s art deco mirror reflecting the warm, afternoon sunlight. I feel a strange sense of detachment, as if I am a spectator, not only outside my house, but also outside my life. The disturbing feeling disappears as we keep moving higher, the magnificent panorama of East London and the City opening before our eyes. The closest view is messy: flat warehouse roofs interspersed with brown-brick Victorian mansion blocks. An occasional flash of green announces the area’s latest fad, roof gardens. Beyond the Shoreditch roofs stretches the shimmering monolith of the City. If London was a face, this is where its teeth would be.

  ‘So tell me how it works.’ Shane points at the rig and I’m reminded of the reason we’re up here.

  As I fix the camera to it and run the initial calibrations, I describe the beauty of the GigaPan to him.

  ‘It’s basically a very precise robotic mount that lets you divide any view into a multitude of single shots. What’s special about it is that you can use a telephoto lens and create a large image out of extreme close-ups. Once you’ve got all the shots, its software stitches all the images into one massive mega-high-resolution panorama. It’s essentially billions of pixels and hundreds, even thousands of photos combined into a single image. I’m not going to go for something that big, but the detail and resolution will be stunning, anyway.’

  It turns out Shane is a keen amateur photographer with a special interest in astrophotography. He watches me set all the functions and is impressed when I’m able to preview the four corners of the intended panorama. Once all is set, I click on the ‘OK’ button and the GigaPan begins its laborious shoot. We both watch its progress in silence, keeping still, trying not to rock the platform. There is hardly any breeze, the hot London air isn’t moving and for once I’m happy it’s listless.

  Exactly seventeen minutes later the shoot is complete. I pack up my toys as we majestically sail down. We land with a bump and are greeted by Tones’ silent disapproval. Ignoring him, I thank Shane and try to offer him a couple of twenty-pound notes. He tells me to put the money away and wishes me luck with my picture. I promise to send him a link to the final panorama and dash upstairs to upload the photos onto the Mac.

  I take the flash card out of the Canon, slot it in the card reader of my portable photo-data storage drive NextoDI and press the ‘Copy’ button. As the red light begins to blink, I go to the kitchen and make myself a coffee. Sipping the hot Java, I look around the loft, which seems much brighter now. Life isn’t so bad, after all.

  When the NextoDI announces the end of copying with a bleep, I take out the flash card and plug the drive into my Mac. It’s the fastest way of dumping photos from the card and once I�
�m done with my coffee they have all been uploaded. I’m ready to launch the panorama-maker software. The Mac begins to crunch the pixels, estimating a waiting time of ten minutes. Enough to put an overdue load of washing into the machine and empty the fridge of all the mouldy smellies. To complete my cleaning fit I wipe the kitchen worktop with an antibacterial spray and go back to the computer feeling positively virtuous.

  The panorama is done. Except for a few minor glitches that can easily be straightened out, it’s perfect. The power of GigaPan panoramas lies in their mega-high resolution that allows one to zoom in and see things we wouldn’t normally see in a picture. Try zooming in on an ordinary holiday snapshot and all you’ll see is a blur. Not in my photo. I click on the screen and, using the stylus, scroll through the image. I can see every brick in the nearby houses, every small detail of the cityscape, things I wouldn’t see with the naked eye. I keep zooming in and out of the picture, playing with it like a child. I’m not sure what I’ll use the image for, but seeing it with such sharpness is exhilarating.

  If only I could zoom in and out of my life like this and see what’s going on with such clarity! Wouldn’t that be nice . . .

  I scroll down and see the roof of my building and, underneath it, my loft. Again, the sharpness of the image is incredible. I can almost count the whiskers on Pixel’s nose. I keep rotating the picture until the building opposite comes into view. Feeling like a spy, I peek into Patrick Ewer’s loft, which is disappointingly dark and empty. I suppose with his busy concert schedule he doesn’t spend much time in London. A tiny flare above his loft catches my eye and I move the image to have a closer look.

  Right above Ewer’s loft there is a narrow recess, which hides a shaded window. A loft above the loft? I crank up the brightness of the picture until the darkened window reveals more detail. As it dawns on me what I’m looking at, cold sweat begins to trickle down my back. The flare that has caught my eye is a reflection of light in the lens of a telescope. I can just make out the name Bushnell on its side, right next to an attachment that holds what looks like an iPhone. The telescope is not pointing at the stars. It’s looking straight into my loft.

  I drop the stylus and turn away from the computer screen to face the windows. The sun’s gone down now and the building opposite looks dark. But I can see the narrow recess above Ewer’s loft, an architectural quirk I’d never noticed before. From this angle it’s hard to imagine that the shadowy niche hides a window. But now I know it does, and in that window there’s a powerful lens trained on me.

  As I get up from the chair I realize I’m trembling. But it’s anger, not fear, that is giving me the shakes. I grab my keys and storm out of the loft, slamming the door behind me. I charge down the stairs, the adrenaline in my body making me feel invincible. I’m going to get the bastard who’s doing this to me. This has to end, right now.

  It’s quiet and dark outside, too late for the locals to be out, too early for the transient party animals. I sprint across the street and check the door to Patrick Ewer’s building. It’s locked, of course. I try the buzzers on the entryphone, starting from the top, all the way down. Someone must be in. No answer. I try again, keeping my finger on each buzzer until my arm goes numb. How is it possible that in a five-storey building in the centre of London there is no one to answer the door? The back door. There must be a back entrance. Tripping on the slippery cobblestones, I run along the front of the building. A couple of doors with black shutters down, an industrial rubbish bin, a wide, painted-over shop front reinforced with thick iron bars, but no visible access to the back.

  I turn the corner and hit a brick wall. As I stumble backwards, the wall in front of me transforms itself into a big guy in a dark T-shirt and low-slung black jeans. His face is partially covered by some kind of respirator mask. I step back with a gasp.

  The guy raises his arms in a placating gesture.

  ‘Wow, you gave me a fright.’

  ‘I gave you a fright?’ I’m still trying to catch my breath.

  ‘You OK?’ He pushes his mask further up his forehead, staring at me. I can now see cans of spray and a ladder leaning against the wall. A tagger.

  ‘Was someone chasing you?’

  ‘What? No, I was just . . . jogging . . .’

  ‘Ohh-kaaay,’ he drawls incredulously.

  ‘Yeah,’ I try to sound casual. ‘Sorry, I should’ve slowed down . . .’

  ‘No worries.’ He turns back to the wall and picks up a spray can.

  ‘Well, I’d better get going.’

  ‘Sure. Enjoy your jog, yeah?’ I can’t see his face, but I can hear a smirk in his voice.

  I slowly retrace my steps, reach my front door and sit down heavily on the stairs outside. I can’t face going up to the loft. The adrenaline rush from a few minutes ago has suddenly faded. I take a deep breath and look up, suppressing a sob. The walls of the buildings on both sides of the street form a shaft capped with the bleached darkness of London’s night sky. It seems still, almost serene. But it’s not. Because I know that somewhere in that darkness there is someone who watches me, someone who wants me to be scared. And I don’t know why.

  ‘Kristin?’ I flinch at the sound of my name.

  ‘Heather?’

  She crosses the street towards me.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  I force a grin. ‘I’m having . . . a moment . . .’

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I’ve been better,’ I sigh.

  ‘Can’t you get in? Have you lost your keys?’

  ‘My mind, more like.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ She sits down on the step beside me.

  ‘Oh, nothing.’ I don’t feel like telling my only employer that I’m cracking up. ‘I thought I’d sit here for a while and enjoy the night. What are you still doing here?’

  ‘Bubbles and Browse open evening. I’ve just closed the shop.’

  ‘Busy night?’

  ‘Free champagne always brings in a crowd.’ She chuckles. ‘And when people are tipsy, they are more likely to be creative with their money.’

  ‘Heather, do you know if there’s another flat above Patrick Ewer’s loft?’

  She looks at me, surprised by the sudden change of subject.

  ‘Well, there is an attic space there . . . why, are you interested in renting it?’

  ‘No, I thought I saw someone there earlier today. I never knew there was anything up there.’

  ‘It’s just an empty space, no utilities. It actually belongs to Patrick’s loft, but has a separate entrance. He’s been letting it out as an artist studio.’

  ‘Do you know who rents it?’

  ‘Not sure . . . Actually, he might have mentioned a photographer. Yes, I think there’s a darkroom up there. Which reminds me – are we still on for our shoot next week?’

  ‘Absolutely. Hope the weather holds.’

  ‘Rain or shine, my dear, I need those photos.’

  ‘And you shall have them.’

  ‘Great.’ She gets up and yawns. ‘I’m off, my bed is calling me. Cheerio, lovely, don’t stay out here too late.’ She wiggles her turquoise-tipped fingers at me and toddles off down the street.

  31

  When I eventually get back to my loft I’m chilled to the bone. It always surprises me how the temperature can drop so dramatically at night, even though it’s the middle of the summer. Without turning the light on, I grab a blanket from the bed, wrap it round myself and sit down in front of the Mac. As I move the cursor, the panorama lights up the screen. It’s mesmerizing. A familiar warm feeling spreads inside me. I get it each time I manage to create something aesthetically pleasing, something that could be called art. This is not art, it’s just a product of advanced technology, but it could be a start . . .

  It’s so quiet in the loft that the ping of a new email hitting the inbox sounds like a gong. At this time of the night it has to be junk. But out of habit I minimize the panorama and click the ‘Mail’ icon. Yes, on top
of the list sits a new message announcing that ‘English Bespoke Tailors are visiting UK’. How very nice of them. I click the ‘Delete’ icon and look at the long list of unread emails with a sigh. I’ll have to tackle it, sooner or later. I scroll through the messages, looking at senders and trying to separate junk from the real stuff. Thankfully there are no new ‘Exposure’ messages. There is, however, a cluster of four emails from Marcus, sent at more or less the same time this morning. What now?

  I click on the first of them and stare at the screen, perplexed. The message contains just one short line of text.

  I’m sorry.

  No ‘Dear Kristin’, no signature, nothing else, just these two words. How bizarre.

  I click on the next email from him. And the third. And the fourth. The message they all carry is the same.

  I’m sorry.

  I look at the four identical emails, trying to understand. What is he apologizing for? Our embarrassing clanger? Why now? Or is he feeling guilt-stricken about Lust Junction? He should be apologizing to Sophie, not me, about it.

  If it is a digital atonement, he could’ve chosen a more personal, and civilized, method of making amends. To be fair, he did try to get in touch, rang me a few times, and I hadn’t returned his calls. OK, so he’s sorry. Fourfold sorry. Is he expecting an answer from me? All’s forgiven, Marcus, it was as much my fault as it was yours. Now go away and try to sort out your life, and I’ll try to sort out mine.

  Why has he sent the identical message four times? Perhaps it’s just some weird email glitch? I look at the time of the emails. They were all sent around 8 a.m., within a few minutes of each other. It could be an email outage, like the one that flooded some poor guy’s Hotmail account with thousands of messages.

  There is something desperate, almost unhinged, about the four identical emails. Is he losing it because of the split-up with Sophie? It must be hell for both of them. But that stuff with Lust Junction, it was such an unexpected, unlikely revelation. Marcus and lust . . . it almost seems like an oxymoron. Marcus, the dependable, if not a little boring, best friend’s husband. A hazy, neutral figure hovering on the peripheries of my friendship with Sophie. She never spoke about their sex life, but over the years I got the impression it wasn’t earthquakes and fireworks. More of a Sherlock Holmes/Dr Watson marriage of the minds. The mousy, self-effacing Marcus with his ‘Kiss the Cook’ apron and lazy sperm. And Sophie, a fashion-flower-turned-entrepreneur. I’d always thought I knew them well; now I’m not sure any more. What other skeletons are they hiding in their cupboard?