About a Girl (16 page)

‘Must remember you’re here for a reason,’ I reminded myself, sliding the wide, webbed camera strap over my head. ‘Must take pictures. Pictures must be good. Or at least good enough for a professional to Photoshop.’

There was no one anywhere to be seen on the beach or up by the house and so I began to wander. Everything looked so calm, so peaceful. Either the entire island was medicated or Kekipi had slipped some Xanax into my coffee the night before. Tiny red-crested birds fluttered around me as I walked along the beach, the floury sand sticking to my feet like little white socks, and I took deep, full-to-the-bottom-of-my-lungs breaths of fresh, flowery air to wash away the grey smog of home.

‘Hi.’ I nodded politely at a little white bird who was jogging along the edge of the beach, his little head bobbing back and forth. He paused for a moment, looked at me with his head on one side, and then went about his business. I was officially a million miles away from London’s scabby one-footed pigeons.

After not really very long at all, the backs of my calves began to burn from walking in the sand. It was time to sit down. Somewhere between the cottages, the ocean and the middle of nowhere, I found a comfortable spot, checked for random men running down the shoreline, and once I was certain I was alone, I turned on by beloved camera. She clicked, whirred and flashed into life, blinking at me as I found my grip.

Trading my camera to Vanessa in lieu of rent had broken my heart, but at the time I hadn’t had any choice. And as my mum liked to tell me all the time, what was the point in wasting my time taking pictures when I should be worrying about my work? But now, with my camera back in my hands, the strap rubbing against the back of my neck, it didn’t feel like it was going to be a waste of time. And it wasn’t just because I was sitting on a beach in Hawaii and didn’t have a job to worry about anymore ? it just felt really, really good. I fiddled with the settings for a moment, changed the lens, tinkered with the exposure and the shutter speed and then held the viewfinder up to my right eye. The camera had a digital screen on the back, but I still loved to line everything up myself.

‘Let’s do this,’ I mumbled, focusing the camera on a small sailing boat out in the bay and pressing the shutter button. There. I had taken my first photo. It was blurry, overexposed and basically terrible, but still, it was a photograph taken in Hawaii. Baby steps.

For the next couple of hours, I wandered up and down the beach taking photos of everything I came across. Happily, Hawaii was a very giving subject. Everywhere I looked, there was something else that was ridiculously beautiful. Before I knew it, I’d filled an entire memory card with warm-up shots.

‘Having fun?’

And before I knew it, I’d tripped over a man sitting in the middle of the beach. I hit the deck hard, managing to hold my camera aloft but dropping to my knees with a force that would definitely leave a bruise. The camera strap jarred on my neck, and, completely incapable of controlling myself, I started to cry.

‘Oh dear, oh. Oh don’t, please.’ The man jumped to his knees, sprightly for an old fella, and placed an awkward hand on my shoulder. ‘There, don’t cry. Really, I can’t bear to see a woman cry. I’m very sorry. Are you all right?’

‘Yes.’ I gasped for air. I felt like a five-year-old who had skinned her knees. ‘It, doesn’t, really, hurt.’ I choked. ‘I just, can’t, stop, crying.’

My human tripwire gave me another pat on the shoulder and waited for me to stop making a complete show of myself before speaking again. Once I had wiped away the last tear and was able to press my hand over my raw kneecap without weeping, I gave him a smile and he sighed with relief.

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t see you.’ I held out my non-bloody hand and he shook it heartily. ‘I didn’t kick you or anything, did I?’

‘No, no,’ he replied, still shaking my hand. ‘I’m the villain of the piece. I saw you coming along but you seemed so engrossed in your pictures, I didn’t want to interrupt. I just assumed you wouldn’t actually walk into an old man.’

‘Never assume,’ I said with a mock serious expression. ‘I am quite stupid.’

Taking a better look at my beach buddy, I realized he wasn’t joking. He was an old man. Dressed in a washed-out blue Nike T-shirt that had probably seen the tumble dryer a thousand times since 1989 and a pair of granddad-appropriate shorts, he looked like Father Christmas on a senior’s beach getaway. A big and impressively full white beard obscured a lot of his face, but what I could see of it was pleasantly wrinkly and he had white panda eyes from wearing sunglasses in the sun. He had to be in his seventies, but if it weren’t for his white hair and wrinkles, you would never know.

‘Oh, I don’t believe that for a second,’ he said, finally letting go of my hand and gesturing for me to give him the camera. Reluctant but too polite to resist, I handed it over. ‘I’m Al ? pleased to meet you. You’re on holiday?’

‘Working, actually.’ I watched him flick through my morning’s snapshots quickly. ‘I’m Vanessa.’

I tried not to be a little bit sick in my mouth as I said it.

‘And what are you working on in Hawaii, Vanessa?’ he asked with a mixed-up traveller’s accent, handing back my camera. ‘They’re very good, by the way, your pictures.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, turning my baby off to save the battery life. It hadn’t been great five years ago; it wasn’t going to be any better now. ‘I think it’s probably hard to take a bad picture out here, though, isn’t it?’

‘I don’t know.’ Al squinted into the sunshine. ‘Even the most beautiful woman can look ugly if you’ve got the wrong man behind the camera.’ He waved a regal hand towards me. ‘Or woman, of course.’

‘Well, I hope you’re right,’ I replied, nursing the camera in my lap as the throbbing in my knee died down. ‘I’m here taking photographs for a magazine.’

‘A shutterbug, are you?’ He combed his fingers through his magnificent beard as he stared out at the ocean and I fought the urge to reach out and give it a tug. He made the Santa in Selfridges look like an amateur. And I would know because Amy made me go and sit on his knee every bloody year. ‘Wasn’t sure if you were just at this for fun. And what are you taking pictures of?’

‘I’m doing something for this fashion magazine called
Gloss
? I’m taking pictures of Bertie Bennett?’ Now I was going up at the end of my sentences, just like nobhead Nick. ‘He owns this beach, actually. Do you know him?’

‘Know of him,’ Al said. ‘He’s a character.’

‘He’s a character that’s cancelled on me twice since I’ve got here. Fingers crossed he’s not avoiding me.’

‘Maybe he doesn’t know what a pretty young thing you are,’ he said, giving me a twinkly grandpa grin. ‘I’m sure he’d be happy to sit for a snap or two if he did.’

I wasn’t sure if it was the sea air or the fact that I’d clearly gone completely insane, but I looked away and giggled. Somewhere in the back of my mind, London Tess gave me a disgusted look. But I liked Al. He reminded me of my granddad. He reminded me of everyone’s granddad. And he just seemed so nice.

‘Do you live nearby?’ I asked, slipping my feet out of my leather flip-flops and wiggling my toes until they had disappeared into the sand. ‘It’s so gorgeous here.’

‘I do,’ he said, pointing over at a little cabin a way down the beach. ‘That’s me. Just in the summer, though. The wife never likes to be away from the city in the winter.’

The cabin looked too tiny for anyone to live in it, let alone two people. ‘You’re married?’

‘Was,’ he clarified. ‘I lost Jane two years ago. Still not very good at remembering she’s not here any more.’

‘I’m so sorry.’ I winced. Hurrah! Another awkward conversation! ‘Were you married for a long time?’

‘Thank you. We were married fifty years,’ Al replied, clearly used to fielding condolences. ‘I do miss the old girl, but she’s in a better place now. No one wants to drag these things out, do they?’

‘They don’t,’ I agreed readily. Amy and I had a reciprocal pull-the-plug-pact that I secretly worried I would never be able to see through. I was not concerned about her ability to make the same tough decision. ‘So you’re retired now?’

‘Semi.’ He shook the misty look out of his eyes and wiggled his bare toes at the sea. ‘I was doing something I loved and then I was asked to stop doing it. Now I’m not sure what to do with myself.’

‘I understand completely,’ I nodded, not wanting to ask unwelcome questions and make him feel awkward.

‘So is there a Mr Vanessa?’ Al asked in classic elderly-relative style. ‘A paramour back at home?’

‘It’s a bit of a long story.’ I heard my voice break ever so slightly and pressed my fingernails into my palm to distract myself. ‘But to make a long story short, no, there is not.’

Al nodded gravely, his baseball cap bobbing up and down. ‘Ahh, to suffer the slings and arrows of young love again.’

My spluttering laugh squeezed out a lone tear that I wiped away quickly before Al could see. ‘Quite.’

‘These things all work themselves out when you’re young,’ he said, smiling gently. ‘Tell me more about these photos of yours. Have you been doing it long? Must be a bit of a big shot if you’re taking pictures for this fashion magazine.’

‘That’s actually an even longer story than the boy nonsense,’ I said, slipping the camera strap back around my neck and hoping that the longer I wore it, the more I would feel like a real photographer. ‘I used to do quite a bit of photography stuff, then I did something else for a while, but I lost my job so now I’m back into it.’

‘I’m glad you found your way back,’ he said. ‘You looked so happy when you were taking those pictures, like you were in another place.’

‘Just concentrating,’ I laughed, oddly unable to accept the compliment. Usually I rolled around in professional praise like a pig in shit. ‘Just trying to get it right.’

‘Trust me –’ Al tapped me on my uninjured knee ? ‘when you get to my age, you can tell these things. I know when someone’s got a passion for something. You were a million miles away.’

‘I suppose I was,’ I said, looking down at the camera. She gazed back up at me with love. Maybe this was meant to be. Or maybe Al was a crazy old beach bum who didn’t have a blind clue what he was talking about.

‘Don’t waste time worrying about the things you don’t have,’ he went on, imparting his pensioner wisdom. ‘This is what you should be doing.’

‘I hope you’re right.’ I unconsciously stroked the camera case and looked at Al. He was nodding sagely.

‘I always am,’ he said, hopping to his feet far faster and with more grace than I ever could and holding out his hand again. ‘Well, I have places to be, things to do. What a pleasure it was to meet you, Vanessa.’

‘And you, Al,’ I said, sad to see him go. ‘Thank you for being so kind about my pictures.’

‘Just honest,’ he corrected me as he took off in a jog. An actual jog. ‘Hope to see you again.’

‘Maybe I’ll jog back to the cottage,’ I murmured, turning to look at the mile or so I’d wandered in the past couple of hours. Hmm. Maybe I’d just have a lovely walk.

CHAPTER NINE

The walk back to the cottage might not have helped me look any better in my bikini, but it did give me time to think and develop a little bit more confidence in my photos. So far I hadn’t quite managed to cock up entirely, but I wasn’t doing terribly well with my double identity. I was still very much Tess, and, as I’d established, Tess was not working for me. I needed to work on Brand Vanessa. Obviously my Vanessa wasn’t going to be quite the same as the original, but there was definitely some room for improvement on my previous personality. Settling down at the desk, I pulled a pad of thick white paper and a couple of coloured markers out of the drawer. Coloured markers made everything better. I drew a thick black line down the middle of the page, and on one side, at the top, I wrote ‘TESS’, and on the other ‘VANESSA’.

‘Right ? work mode,’ I whispered, shifting around to edge the last remaining grains of sand out of my bikini bottoms. ‘What is Brand Tess?’

Taking the cap off my green pen, I started with words I was sure of. Loyal, honest, dedicated, hardworking, a good friend, quite funny, relatively clever. Genuine. I stopped. I had run out of steam worryingly quickly. Looking at the list over and over, I began to wonder, was I a good friend? Amy and I had been besties since before we were born, and, yes, I had plenty of work buddies, but how many other genuine friends did I have other than shithead Charlie? Who was I forgetting? My sisters were hardly beating the door down to hang out with me. With gritted teeth I added some more words to the list that I didn’t like nearly as much. Shy. Walkover. Lazy. Boring.

I sort of knew I was boring. Amy might not have had a steady job in ten years, but she was always trying something new or going off on an adventure. Before this, the furthest my passport had taken me in the past two years was on a work trip to Brussels, and I’d spent most of the time throwing up after some dodgy
moules frites
. And I’d only had the
moules frites
because someone had made me. That was the old Tess Brookes, someone who thought eating shellfish and chips was a wild night out. The girl who had been waiting for her best friend to fall in love with her and kick-start her life. But my life didn’t need kick-starting; it needed a crash cart and a shot of adrenaline straight to the heart à la Mia Wallace. By coming to Hawaii and pretending to be Vanessa, I’d effectively
Pulp Fiction
-ed my own existence. But what now?

I had to change. I couldn’t sit through another meal blushing at Nick Miller and start sobbing on the beach every time a complete stranger even hinted towards a romantic interest back at home. If Tess was boring and lazy and cowardly, what was Vanessa? I took the lid off the red pen.

Bitch. Slut. Selfish. Mean. Gorgeous. Lazy.

Well, what do you know ? we had something in common: we were both lazy mares.

‘Not that I would mind adding slut to my column as well,’ I told the empty room. The empty room was sympathetic.

Not only had sleeping with Charlie been the worst idea since Amy had tried to make toast at university by ironing a loaf of Kingsmill, but it had also reminded me that my ladyparts didn’t exist exclusively to cause me agony once a month and keep hot-water bottle companies in business. I had the raging horn and there was nothing I could do about it. Well, there was quite literally one thing I could do ? Nick Miller. But I was almost certain that would be the second worst idea since Amy’s amateur Heston Blumenthal moment. However, that was exactly what Vanessa would have done, I thought to myself ? she would have shagged him then and there last night. Over the table. Probably with Kekipi filming the whole thing. I might hate her, but when she wanted something, she took it. I’d spent ten years waiting for Charlie to get drunk and bored enough to put it in me. Presumably Vanessa had put less than ten minutes’ work into getting him to shag her with such enthusiasm ? and then he’d taken her on a mini-break to Wales within a week. Granted, I had very little interest in going on a mini-break to Wales, but I was sure there was a lesson to be learnt somewhere in there.