Lessons in Laughing Out Loud (20 page)

“You have no idea how risqué it was in those days for the nude to be looking directly at the viewer, even via a reflection. That seductive, flirtatious look she’s giving you, that’s practically the invention of porn.”

“She’s gorgeous,” James said, as he took his seat, now properly buttoned. “Perfect.”

“She’s got awful cellulite, though,” Kayla added. “Look at that orange-peel skin.”

“Pah, cellulite was invented by cosmetic companies to give you women a new complex to spend money on,” Daniel said dismissively.

“I for one like a woman with curves.” James grimaced, pouring himself a large glass of wine.

“I think we are now all aware of that. Now I suggest you hush your mouth before Willow has to take a restraining order out on you.”

“What has this got to do with me?” Willow asked him, well aware that he was skirting around something.

“I’m putting together an exhibition. I’m reimagining Old Masters through photography. These paintings were about so much more than just the subject, they were full of hidden meanings, symbolism that was as easy to read to the people of the time as Twitter is to us. But over the centuries that meaning is lost. I want to reshoot these images with the amazing lighting and texture and sexiness of the originals but make them relevant, ironic, irreverent. So maybe I’ll include some anticellulite cream, maybe I’ll have a folded copy of a celeb magazine. At first glance you see a straight reproduction of a famous painting, but look again and it’s a comment on modern life. Just as the original artist meant.”

Willow studied the painting. “It’s a good idea, Daniel, it’s a really good idea. But I still don’t see what it’s got to do with me.”

Daniel hesitated. He had the look of a naughty schoolboy who’d just drawn a penis on his desk in indelible marker.

“James is going to be both the Ambassadors in my version of Holbein’s masterpiece, but instead of an anamorphic skull in it, I’m going to replace it with an anamorphic iPhone.”

“Is he?” Willow looked at James, intrigued that he’d agreed to take part. “I think I know that one. . . .”

“Kayla is going to be all three Graces, the 1535 version by Lucas the Elder. That involves full frontal nudity and a total wax.”

“Which isn’t a problem because I already have a total wax,” Kayla told her casually, turning Serious James bright red again in an instant.

“Wow, Kayla—you’re brave.”

“Not really, it will be good for my portfolio, plus I’ve done full nudity loads of times before, so it’s no biggie.”

“Well.” Willow smiled at Daniel. “I’m impressed—you actually had a grown-up and very interesting idea. How do you
want me to help? Hook you up with some publicity-hungry celebs?”

“Not exactly,” Daniel said, looking like he was waiting for the penny to drop. Willow glanced back down at the image of the big naked blond woman and the penny clattered noisily to the ground.

“No. Oh no, no, no, Daniel. No.” Willow was firm. “No, Daniel, I’m not getting my fat arse out for you or anyone else to mock. Get a model, get two. They might add up to a normal-size person.”

“Not to mock, Willow, to adore,” Daniel insisted, as passionate about his idea as Willow had seen him about anything in a long time. “The whole point is I need ordinary people to do this. That’s what’s going to make it so real, so touching. And look at her. She’s radiant. In her time she was the very pinnacle of what was considered beautiful. I started with this image—the whole idea came from this because I was thinking about you. The first clever brilliant thing I’ve come up with in months came from you.” Daniel leaned across the table a little, looking into Willow’s eyes so that for a moment it felt like they were alone. “I never told you because I knew it would piss you off. But the first moment I met you I thought of Rubens’s Venus. That’s kind of my own private nickname for you. There isn’t another woman in the world I’d put in this picture, and without this picture I’d have to scrap the whole idea.”

Willow looked at him and in that moment a silent communication passed between them that both Kayla and James registered but neither one understood. They couldn’t know the deep bond that existed between Willow and Daniel, forged in tumultuous times, perhaps unhealthy and almost certainly never destined to be conventional. Willow counted Daniel very firmly as one of the good guys. He had always been there for her, always, and she knew he always would be, even if it
was in his own haphazard, ambiguous way. He cared for her about as well as he could care for anyone, and perhaps, just perhaps, more than he’d ever cared for anyone else.

“Things are different now, now I know how much you mean to me,” Daniel said out loud. “I’d never do anything to put that at risk.”

Sitting back to break the spell that Daniel had so expertly cast between them, Willow looked at James. “Do you think I should do it?” she asked him quite unfairly.

“I think you should if you want to,” he said carefully. “I think it’s the best idea Daniel’s ever had. I think . . . I think if you do, he will do you and the painting and the second Mrs. Rubens here justice. He’ll show the world how truly beautiful you are.”

“Oh, go on, Willow,” Kayla cut in, rather to Willow’s relief. “We can do ours together, and I promise you when you’re naked in front of a photographer it’s not embarrassing at all, they don’t even see you. They just see shapes, shadows and light. You forget you’ve got no clothes on after a bit.”

“But what about the cherub and the other guy?”

“Shop mannequins,” Daniel told her. “To signify our obsession with self-image. In the seventeenth century it was a status symbol to have slaves wait on you; in the twenty-first century we are all slaves to self-image.

Willow thought for a moment, aware of three pairs of eyes on her. Three things she knew for a fact. A day ago she would never, never ever have had the courage to do something like this, and in a few days’ time she might not again, but at that moment, she thought she might. Daniel always said what he had to, to get what he wanted; he could charm birds out of trees with a look or a smile. But the way he’d looked at her just then, he had never done that before, not even when . . . well, not even in their closest moments. For those few seconds Willow felt like he knew her utterly, like he knew her and that
in his eyes she was a whole person. And she knew that she had to find out if that was true, because there wouldn’t be very many more, if any, moments, when she could.

“Fuck it, okay then,” she said, feeling a rush of adrenaline surge through her. “Okay!”

“Brilliant, when?” Daniel asked her, anxious to seal the deal before she could back out.

“Soon, before I change my mind. Monday, but it’ll have to be night . . . there’s some stuff I’ve got to do.”

“Oh, I can’t do Monday, I’ve got a shoot,” Kayla said.

“Doesn’t matter,” Daniel said. “I’ll do you tomorrow, that way I can really concentrate on Willow. So Monday evening here, at the studio. You, me and the camera.”

“And several bottles of wine,” Willow said, the idea of posing naked for Daniel thrilling and terrifying her all at once. To be near him for any longer now would be too difficult—either she’d change her mind or something about him would change, something that showed he had really meant all those things he said just now. Looking for an out, she glanced at her watch. It wasn’t even ten yet.

“I’ve got to go, actually. Thanks for the wine and the food . . . although I didn’t get around to eating any.”

“Really? Do you really have to go?” James asked her, dismayed.

“Don’t go yet, Wills,” Daniel said.

“I don’t see you enough.” “I’ve got to, I’ve got this . . .” She smiled at James. “Couple of unexploded bombs I’ve got to look after. It’s a long story.”

“I’ll see you out,” James said, before either Daniel or Kayla could offer to do the same, although Willow got the distinct feeling Daniel wanted to. Disappointed that it wasn’t Daniel who was escorting her down the stairs, she had nevertheless warmed a little to Serious James and his odd mix of awkwardness and sincerity.

“So I’ll maybe see you Thursday then?” he asked her as they reached the front door. “At the gig?”

“Yes.” Willow nodded. “Yes, I’ll try and be there, I will. ’Bye then.”

James made no move to leave.

“Or . . . if you like, if you wanted, I could come along to the studio on Monday evening and sort of chaperone?” Willow could not hide her mirth.

“James, look, if you do fancy me, then I think that really we should go on at least one date before you see me naked, don’t you?”

“Oh, God.” James looked mortified. “It’s not that. I don’t want to see you naked, I mean I do, but that’s not why I . . . Daniel can be terrible. And sometimes he doesn’t really care how terrible he is.”

“James, I know that already. Daniel is my best friend, I know everything about him. You don’t have to worry. I can look after myself.”

“Willow . . .” Willow waited. “I think you are really very nice. Quite the nicest person I know.”

“Thank you. I think you are very . . . you. I’ll see you Thursday, then.”

“And . . .” Willow had walked a few steps before turning back.

“And?”

“I’ll see you Thursday.” James nodded, and Willow knew he was watching her as she walked down the street, probably only going back inside once she had climbed into the black cab.

It was a cold evening and once she was ensconced safely in the back of the cab, Willow drew her coat even more tightly around her, trying to imagine the woman who had once worn it, the arms of her husband or lover around her the first time
she had tried it on, that sense of loving or being loved. Willow opened her eyes and slid the little locket out of its bag, turning it over and over in the palm of her hand. It looked like nothing, a little dull gray grubby disk, but to Willow it seemed like a window into a life that was probably not all that different from a million other lives but was certainly different from hers. Without thinking Willow pressed the locket to her lips and kissed it before slipping in back into the pocket where it seemed to belong, just as her phone started to vibrate.

“I’m getting a distinct sensation of sexual chemistry,” Holly said by way of a greeting. “Tell all.”

Chapter
          Nine

W
hen she got back from Daniel’s, her head full of what it would be like to be with him, alone, naked, Willow found not exactly the sort of trouble she’d feared when she went out, but a very close approximation of it.

The first thing she smelled when she got in was cigarette smoke.

The living room was empty, but seeing the flicker of the TV under the closed door, Willow checked her own bedroom, hoping against hope that not only did India smoke but also found it acceptable to indulge in the habit in the bed of her host, unlikely as that seemed, considering her objection to frozen peas.

India was not smoking, though. She was asleep in Willow’s bed, the TV on some trashy channel, an empty bottle of garage wine on the bedside table, no glass apparent, and a halo of cake crumbs surrounding her head on the pillow. She must have gone to sleep clutching her phone, which now lay loosely in her fingers, as if she had only recently surrendered to sleep. After a moment’s hesitation, Willow picked it up and checked the call register. There were sixty-eight missed calls, almost all of them from unrecognized or withheld numbers, probably the press, and certainly none that read “Mum” or “Dad.”
Willow noticed a few from someone called Tally, who she guessed was the trusted best friend, and one from “H.” After a moment’s hesitation, Willow checked the dialed calls. “H” had been dialed a total of eighteen times, which suggested that he had not picked up until someone had been forced to return her persistent calls, probably a publicist . . . or maybe his wife. Willow wondered what had been said and if it had anything to do with the other empty bottle of garage wine, the neck of which poked out from under the bed. India had stirred as Willow put the phone back, scooping up the empty at the same time.

“Wha . . . oh, you’re back. Sorry, I’m in your bed and there are crumbs.”

“Don’t worry,” Willow said. “It’s your bed for now, besides, I am the opposite of a princess—I can’t sleep unless there are crumbs.”

Willow looked at India huddled in the sheets, the empty bottles of wine. The eighteen calls to “H.”

“How are you feeling? You look a little lost.”

“I certainly do feel lost,” India said, wincing as she moved her head. “I make a terrible alcoholic. I don’t usually drink, you see, not really. Actually, I think I might have to be sick. . . .”

In one movement, Willow took a potted plant out of its planter and handed it to India. It wasn’t the first time it had done double duty.

“Tomorrow I’ll buy you as much mineral water and vegetable matter as it takes to max out Victoria’s card—I can’t have you going to pieces on my watch, there’ll be a heroic ‘wronged starlet’ photo shoot anytime now.”

“Am I a starlet?” India’s delicate features seemed to fall inward. “I never wanted to be a starlet.” She looked around the room. “I think vegetables are a good idea. I’ve eaten all the emergency cupcakes anyway.”