About a Girl (22 page)

‘You need to go and take some photos,’ she pointed out. ‘Maybe practise taking pictures of actual people?’

‘Fair point,’ I grumbled, my mind having been on something altogether more touristy. I’d read some very exciting reviews about a wolphin at the Sea Life center. He was half whale and half dolphin! When was I going to get a chance to see that again? But she was right. I did need to practise taking pictures of people. ‘But I don’t have a model?’

I batted my eyelashes at her and made an effort to look as pathetic as possible. Not too hard.

‘Tess, I’m tired,’ she replied with a dramatic yawn. ‘I think not.’

‘Please?’ I pressed my hands together in prayer. ‘I really do need the practice. You said so yourself.’

‘I did, but I’m tired and I’m pissy and I need more caffeine before I can do anything,’ she said, pulling her hair up into a high ponytail before letting it fall back down around her shoulders. ‘Actually, that makes me the closest thing you’ll find to an actual model for miles.’

‘Just an hour,’ I promised, rushing inside to get my stuff. ‘We’ll just do an hour and then you can go and have a nap and I can go and see the wolphin and we’ll both feel better about the shoot tomorrow.’

‘Fine ? I’ll be by the pool,’ she called after me. ‘Just get me more coffee.’

Behind our cottages there was a great big kidney-shaped pool surrounded by sunloungers and brightly coloured parasols. I had barely registered it before, given that there was an entire ocean only a few feet away, but it was perfect for our faux shoot.

‘So where do you want me?’ Paige emerged from her cottage in a dazzling white bikini and huge sunglasses, her blonde hair loose and shiny. It was beyond me how normal people looked like that in swimwear, but then I remembered Paige wasn’t normal people ? she worked for a fashion magazine. That was why she was wearing huge neon-pink wedges and red lipstick to hang out by a swimming pool.

‘Um, over by that wall?’ I pointed towards a short white wall covered with climbing vines and beautiful, colourful flowers. Looking up at the sun, I waited until she was in position, checked my light meter and pulled out an assortment of reflectors, lenses and back-up batteries that I’d nicked from Vanessa. It never hurt to be overprepared. ‘Right, so just stay there, keep your face towards the light, but don’t, like, do any posey stuff for the camera. I just want to do a few test shots.’

‘I really hate having my picture taken,’ she complained, picking a bright pink bloom and carefully placing it in her hair. ‘I look awful.’

‘Yeah, you look really disgusting,’ I agreed, seeing something quite different through my viewfinder. Paige was pretty in real life, but through the lens she was beautiful. Honest to God gorgeous. When I zoomed in, I could see the green flecks in her blue eyes and a tiny smattering of freckles that she had tried to cover up with make-up. I snapped away as she stroked the petals of the flowers and wrinkled her nose self-consciously.

‘Can we start soon? I just want to get this over with,’ she shouted, shielding her eyes from the sun after ten minutes of mindless snapping. I was so in the zone I’d forgotten to tell her I’d already started.

‘You’re brilliant,’ I shouted back. ‘Just carry on doing what you’re doing. I’ve already got loads of shots.’

But as soon as I spoke, she froze. It was as though someone had swapped her for a waxwork. Everything that had come alive for my camera died.

‘Paige, you’ve gone weird. Can you just do what you were doing before?’ I called, trying to work out what was wrong.

‘What was I doing?’ She sounded as awkward as she looked, shoulders stiff and hard, her face a mask of panic. ‘I don’t remember.’

‘You just looked normal.’ I didn’t know what else to say. ‘Just relax.’

‘I am relaxing,’ she replied in a voice that did not support her statement. Turned to face me, arms straight sticks be her side, Paige pulled her shoulders up to her ears. ‘Is this OK?’

It was not OK.

‘Why don’t you sit down on the sunbed?’ I suggested. ‘Give me something else to try.’

Nodding, and clearly relieved, she took herself off to the nearest sunlounger and collapsed on her improbably flat stomach. I consoled myself a little with the fact that she wasn’t fitter than me, just hungrier. After rearranging my equipment, I crouched down on the floor in front of her and started snapping. She still looked about as lifelike as one of the Kardashians. I had to get her to stop thinking about the pictures.

‘Tell me about when you met Nick.’ I shuffled onto my bum and snapped as quietly as possible. I hoped that if I kept her talking, she would be distracted enough to stop worrying. And also I wanted to pump her for information about my one-night stand without fessing up.

‘Oh, it was a couple of years ago.’ She squinted at me and pursed her lips. ‘Well, the first time would have been a lot of years ago, but I was with my ex then. And he was with his.’

So Nick did have a serious ex. Interesting.

‘But then I ran into him at a Christmas party just after me and Stefan broke up and, you know how he is, he just looks like trouble.’

‘Yes, he does.’ I couldn’t have agreed more. I’d had that stupid Taylor Swift song running through my head ever since Amy had mentioned it on the phone. ‘So … you two, what, got together?’

‘Oh no.’ She smiled and her shoulders dropped half an inch. ‘Didn’t quite manage to get that far. Anyway, we were chatting at the bar and he’s all hand on my leg and, to be honest, full disclosure, I probably would have gone home with him, but just when everyone was clearing out, he leans in and he says to me, “Before we go, I should probably tell you I’m a complete arsehole, so you shouldn’t go falling love with me.”’

Paige dropped her head onto the sunlounger and laughed out loud. My fingers, not connected to my brain, carried on taking pictures. My brain, not connected to anything, packed its bags, waved goodbye and tried to make a hasty exit out ofthe fire escape.

‘Classy line, isn’t it?’

Thankfully, Paige couldn’t see my face for my massive black camera. It was a classy line. It was also one I’d heard less than twenty-four hours earlier.

‘Thank God I came to my senses, laughed in his face and went home alone. But for some reason I’ve always sort of regretted it. Maybe that’s why he says it ? gets girls’ backs up. Makes him a challenge. And of course every time I’ve seen him since, he hasn’t been the slightest bit interested in me.’

‘Yeah, but you wouldn’t be interested in him either, surely?’ I crawled over to the sunlounger next to Paige and sat down for a moment, camera in my lap. ‘You must have loads of blokes wanting to go out with you.’

‘We always want what we can’t have, don’t we?’ She sat up and hugged her knees. ‘Or at least what we know is bad for us. I’ve been more or less single since Stefan. Still can’t believe he did it.’

‘I’m sorry.’ I turned my attention to the screen on the back of my camera. Those last few pictures were so pretty. The ones when she was talking about Nick. ‘Really.’

‘I know you’re pretending to be Vanessa, but you’re not her, remember?’ She rested a hand on my wrist and squeezed. ‘You didn’t shag my fiancé a month before my wedding, did you?’

‘No?’ I probably should have sounded more certain about that.

‘I had my dress and everything.’ She let go of my wrist and wrapped her arms around herself. ‘We’d have been married three years this September. I thought I’d have kids by now.’

I thought back to three years ago and wondered whether or not Vanessa had ever brought Stefan to our apartment. Had I met him? Had I made awkward conversation with him in my kitchen on a Saturday morning? It was more than possible.

‘But who wants babies when they’re trapped in Hawaii with a really hot man and endless cocktails?’ she said, snapping out of her trance and clapping her hands on her thighs. Which did not even quiver. ‘Totally going to bang Nick, totally going to break my curse.’

‘I don’t think that would be a very good idea,’ I choked, wishing we had some of those cocktails to hand. ‘He’s clearly got some problems.’

‘Yeah, and I want to be one of them,’ she replied with a sly smile. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t go falling in love with him. But he might accidentally fall head over heels for me.’

‘Shall we take some more pictures?’ I suggested with forced brightness, scrolling through the terrible posed pictures and deleting them as quickly as I could ? anything to distract myself. ‘Just a couple?’

‘Can I have a look at what you’ve done so far?’ she asked. I nodded, nervous. Not only was I dealing with a woman who disliked having her picture taken, I was also dealing with my boss.

‘Oh God, I look awful.’ She screwed up her face and kept clicking through. I knew what she really meant was ‘your pictures are awful’. ‘I look like my mum.’

‘Not a good thing?’ I asked.

Paige shook her head, skipping through the shots too fast to really take in just how terrible they were. Until she reached the ones on the sunlounger. Finally she slowed down.

‘This one is quite pretty.’ She paused on a shot of her laughing, halfway through her Nick story. ‘And I don’t hate this.’

Slowly, she cycled through all the shots we’d taken until we got to the first few, the ones she didn’t know I’d been shooting at all.

‘Oh, Tess, these are beautiful.’ Paige looked up at me with something new in her eyes. It looked strangely like respect. Mixed with surprise. ‘Like, really, really beautiful. The light, the expression you’ve captured. These are great.’

Carefully she handed me my camera and smiled.

‘You’re going to be great at this,’ she said, nodding. ‘I’m not worried at all.’

‘Are you just saying that so you can go and have a nap?’ I asked, blushing.

‘A little bit,’ she replied. ‘But those pictures are genuinely beautiful. They are so hot, I would totally let you tag me in them on Facebook.’

Wow. Now there was a compliment.

‘
Aloha
, Vanessa,’

A couple of hours later, still bathing in the glow of not quite hating myself as much as I had when I woke up, I opened my cottage door to find Kekipi standing on my doorstep with a giant wicker picnic basket in one hand and a white envelope in the other.

‘
Aloha
.’ I eyed the picnic basket like a rabid Yogi Bear. I’d been so busy editing Paige’s pictures, I had completely forgotten to eat lunch. ‘How are you?’

‘Since Mr Bennett cancelled once again, there was a suggestion that you might enjoy a tour of the property. The boat is ready and I have a picnic.’ He waved the basket at me and my eyes followed it, tongue almost hanging out of my mouth. ‘Sound like fun?’

‘Sounds amazing!’ I clapped my hands together like a little girl and jumped from foot to foot. ‘Can I just run in and change my battery pack? I want to take my camera.’

‘
Wiki wiki
,’ he said, handing me the envelope. ‘That means be quick. I’ll wait right here.’

I nodded and wiki wiki’d myself into the house. The note was from the main house and confirmed that Artie would have everything ready for the fashion shoot tomorrow. So things were actually happening. Confidence buoyed by my test shoot with Paige, I left the card on the kitchen top and didn’t think any more about it. The only thing on my mind was how many awesome selfies I could take to post on Facebook with the caption, ‘Hey, Charlie, you wanker, I’m in Hawaii having the best time of my entire life and not even thinking about you at all.’ Or something.

I was already suffering from sunburn so I pulled on a long black T-shirt over my bikini, but abandoned my shorts. There was nothing more disgusting than sitting in damp denim ? I’d learned that lesson the hard way after one too many turns on the log flume as a kid. It was Amy’s favourite ride. The T-shirt wasn’t fooling anyone into believing it was a dress, but I figured Kekipi wouldn’t be that offended by the sight of my arse. Or at least he’d be too professional and polite to say otherwise. Piling my hair on top of my head and grabbing my camera bag, I was ready to go. Just as I was about to leave, my phone started beeping. I yanked it out of my bag and stared at the screen, frozen to the spot.

Charlie Wilder.

I looked at the screen for a moment, looked at the letters in his name, looked at the tiny photo that had popped up, the whole situation so unwelcome. Unable to take another second of it, I pressed answer and felt three days of progress disappear.

‘Hello?’

‘Tess?’

‘Who else would it be?’ Well, perhaps I had managed to hang on to a touch of attitude.

‘I … I just wanted to call you. It’s been ages.’

‘Right.’

Standing in the middle of a kitchen that wasn’t mine, on an island in an ocean that was far, far away from the island and the ocean I had grown up on, I didn’t know quite what to say. If I’d been in my kitchen, on my island, in my ocean, I had a feeling I’d be crying by now. But something was stopping me.

‘You wanted to call me to say what?’ I asked, reaching out to steady myself on the kitchen counter.

Even though I knew the smart thing to do would be to hang up, there was a sickly softness in my stomach that was begging him to tell me he loved me. No matter where I was or what I was doing, ten years weren’t that easily undone. If he would just say that he needed me.

‘Just to say, you know, hello and everything,’ he said, laughing with nerves. ‘I think this is the longest we’ve gone without speaking since we met.’

‘It
is
the longest we’ve gone without speaking since we met,’ I replied, picturing him rubbing his eyebrow, biting his lip. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve got to go.’

‘But I wanted to tell you …’ he said hurriedly. ‘I meant to say …’

‘Meant to say what?’ I asked, holding my breath and hoping.

‘About work. I’ve heard the company is in loads of trouble. Apparently it’s not the economy or anything; it’s just that Michael has pissed loads of money away and we’re going under. Or something. And they didn’t have the budget for the job he’d promised you any more. Anyway, that’s what I heard.’

‘That’s what you wanted to say?’ I couldn’t quite believe it. My grip on the kitchen top tightened and I watched my knuckles turn white. ‘That’s all you wanted to tell me?’