I couldn’t say anything for a moment. Well, that was a surprise. Not Veronica telling Ess to go and fuck himself, that seemed fairly standard, but Gloss wanted me to shoot for them again? Already? I silently praised Angela Clark and all who sailed in her.
‘And then there’s your other option.’
I noticed that she wasn’t swearing as much as usual. It was disconcerting.
‘I had an email from the Spencer Gallery this morning.’
‘You did?’ My heart began to race.
‘I did,’ she replied. ‘They fucking hated the photo you entered for the New Image prize.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Good of them to let me know.’
‘They went into a lot more detail,’ she said. ‘But that’s the general gist.’
‘Right.’ I tore off another strip of pastry. ‘Wait, how is that an option?’
‘It isn’t,’ she replied. ‘I’m not done, am I? They hated your entry for the New Image prize but they loved your portrait of Bertie Bennett.’
I closed my eyes and breathed out.
‘They’ve had several offers on it,’ she went on. ‘And while you’re not technically eligible for the apprenticeship, the David Sanders Gallery has a similar programme that they’ve recommended you for. And David Sanders has personally confirmed the offer. Anything you want to tell me about that?’
‘I met him at the exhibition,’ I said. I couldn’t believe it. ‘I emailed him a copy of my portrait of Al yesterday but I didn’t know if he’d seen it or not.’
‘He has,’ she said. ‘Seems pretty bleeding keen on it, if you ask me.’
‘Sounds like,’ I replied, smiling.
‘Shit like this doesn’t come around very often, Brookes,’ she said. ‘This is a golden bloody Willy Wonka of an opportunity.’
‘I wasn’t sure,’ I admitted. ‘Vanessa said he’d bought some of her photos so, you know, I was a bit suspicious.’
‘A lot of men have bought Vanessa’s photos,’ she replied, her voice arch and dry. ‘And by bought her photos, I mean, given her a length.’
‘Yes, I got that,’ I confirmed. ‘But thanks for clearing it up.’
‘He might have shit taste in Vanessa but he’s got fantastic taste in art,’ she went on. ‘I imagine her photos are showing at a very exclusive non-existent show in his basement with all the other ropy old tarts he’s seduced with his chequebook. But he has been a patron to some really shit-hot photographers, Brookes,’ she paused. ‘If you do it, it’ll be a tough six months, you won’t be able to run off to Hawaii or nick off to do a celebrity shoot when the mood takes you.’
‘I honestly hadn’t thought Gloss would want to hire me again,’ I admitted. I felt overwhelmed. ‘What do I do?’
‘Luckily for you, you’ve got a fucking brilliant agent,’ Veronica replied, pausing to take a drag on a cigarette I couldn’t see but knew full well was there. ‘You get your arse back to New York next week and we’ll book the Gloss gig, then you can start the apprenticeship the week after. I hope you’re ready to make a lot more cups of cocking tea.’
‘So ready,’ I replied, the excitement making my voice squeak in a most unprofessional manner. ‘I’m really good at tea making.’
I could have cried. I could fly back with Amy, shoot for Gloss, eat glazed bacon doughnuts and learn my trade at one of the best photographic galleries in New York.
‘Of course, that’s not your lot,’ Agent Veronica said, interrupting my doughnut fantasy. ‘Are you sat down?’
‘Yes?’ I pressed my palms against the chair underneath my arse to make sure. ‘What else can there be?’
‘I’ve had a request from Booker magazine to use some of your photographs.’
I knew Booker; it was, for want of a better description, the men’s version of Gloss. A glossy men’s magazine full of expensive watches, articles on craft brewing, men with immaculately groomed beards and famous actors answering deep and meaningful questions, while still managing to pack in lots and lots of pictures of women who weren’t quite naked, all shot from terribly tasteful and artistic angles.
‘Which photographs?’ I popped a piece of pastry in my mouth and washed it down with coffee. It had to be shots of Sadie; I couldn’t think of anything else I had that they would be interested in.
‘Your pictures of Bennett in Hawaii,’ she said. ‘You haven’t got a Scooby what I’m on about, have you?’
‘You’ve lost me,’ I admitted.
‘I’ll forward you the article they want them for,’ Veronica said with more incoherent swearing under her breath. ‘And you can decide whether or not you want the wanker to have your pictures or not but I need to know today. They’re going to print this week – it’s all very fucking last minute.’
‘Everything is,’ I replied with a sigh. ‘Send it over, I’ll look at it now.’ I had about half an hour before Kekipi would come looking for me.
‘Grand,’ she said. ‘But wherever you are, I’d stay away from sharp objects, if I were you. I need a decision today, on the photos and the apprenticeship. Gloss want you over there next Monday and Sanders is being a stroppy little cock about getting you started as soon as possible, so call me back when you’re done. Actually, call me back in two hours. I’ve got to get to the offy before all the decent shit’s sold out and I’ll be buggered if I’m ringing the New Year in with a WKD. Trying to get your life in order is screwing my New Years.’
She hung up without further explanation and I immediately opened my inbox, refreshing over and over until her name popped up. And right there beside it in the subject line: ‘Love Is … by Nick Miller’.
My heart dropped as I opened the attachment, my hands shaking.
Valentine’s Day is often written off as a Hallmark holiday, the article began, but however cynical or jaded or busy on Tinder you may be, there is no way of avoiding the self-reflection brought about by the holiday.
Love stories are all around us. On TV, in the cinema, in books and songs. We hear them from our parents and we tell them to our friends, following them as they come to life on Instagram, sometimes culminating in a hashtagged wedding, sometimes collapsing in a broken heart icon on a Facebook feed. But one thing is certain, love is unavoidable, pursued by many, shunned by some but ever present in our lives. But, somewhere down the line, this proliferation of love stories has watered down the real thing. How many times have you heard the word today? How many times has someone told you that they love someone or something – a football team or a cup of coffee or their new deodorant?
It is this dilution of the most fundamental human experience that has made it so easy for us to turn away from the concept. We can live without that coffee; if our football team loses, we’ll live; and there will always be another, better deodorant, so we toss our human relationships into the same column, because it’s easier. Love is a consumable: we believe love can be replaced or retired, it can be upgraded or lived without.
But that’s not true.
Albert Bennett met his wife when he was twenty years old. He was working as a Saturday boy in his father’s department store in London when Jane walked through the door, on the arm of her fiancé who had come looking for his wedding suit. Less than an hour later, that man left with two suits and a diamond ring in his pocket. Albert and Jane married six months later, leaving their lives behind and moving to America. The only thing they were sure of was each other.
The couple were married for fifty years, until Jane passed away from cancer, Albert by her side, holding her hand and wishing her peace. She told him she was tired, he told her that he loved her and that she should go to sleep, that he would still be there when she woke up. Jane closed her eyes and did not open them again.
But Albert is still there, waiting.
For a long time, I didn’t believe in love like this. I considered it anachronistic and told everyone as much – who needed complete devotion from another human being when you could fly to Europe for less than a hundred quid? Who can commit his l
ife and soul to someone else who might not want to spend all weekend binge-watching Breaking Bad? That kind of love was from another age, full of settling and compromises, unhappiness, dressed up as nostalgic romance for the sake of children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. That kind of love was for people who didn’t have a better option.
Today’s love is optional, transient. Today’s love supplemented my life; it was elective, it did not define who I was or make my decisions for me. I had been in love once. I gave up my hopes and dreams for those of another, only to have my initial suspicions confirmed: she had another agenda and putting me first was not part of it. And so it became easy to join the Tinder generation, to make easy, casual connections where you created a new version of yourself on every date and wore yourself like an outfit, ready to be tossed aside whenever the fit became uncomfortable. Winter called for a heavy coat, long nights on the sofa, takeaway and lazy sex. Summer demanded something lighter, cooler, less committal.
And then I met her.’
I broke away for a moment and realized I was shaking.
‘Like so many love stories, mine started with the perfect meet. We were working together in Hawaii and it was exciting to be seduced by the romantic setting, the pretty girl, the easy sex – and at the end of the trip it was just as easy to walk away. Or at least it was for a while. When an opportunity presented itself to work with her again, I took it, uncertain why. My father’s most often-cited romantic advice was ‘never go back’, a mantra that was easy to live by when every hook-up is only a right swipe away.
But I did go back and soon I realized why. I was in love.
It made no sense. I didn’t know this girl, there was nothing obvious as to why she should have such an effect on me but, as I lay awake in my bed at night, she was all I could think about. And so, like any right-minded man with everything to gain and nothing to lose, I ended it. I ended it like a coward. No conversation, no explanation. I left a note, a step above my usual text message kiss-offs.
For almost six long months I have put myself to bed at night, sometimes alone and sometimes not, but every morning I have awoken, hoping to see her by my side. I still look for strands of her copper hair on my sheets, I keep the T-shirt she wore in my bed under my pillow and I wonder how I could go back in time and have another chance at being brave. It wasn’t like I didn’t try. I wrote her letters, I sent her notes and photographs and reminders of our time together but it was all too late. The bridge was too badly burned for me to rebuild.
Everything else has been a distraction. Love is not optional; love is not a choice. Love cannot be left-swiped or filtered from your inbox or ignored at a party. To deny love is to live half a life. In creating this huge, modern world we live in, we have made love harder to find. What was once our only ambition has been reduced to a novel app, something to pass the time while you wait for a bus. Love has become the eye of the needle in an all-consuming haystack and it is almost impossible to find. But love should be holding your wife’s hand and promising to be there when she wakes, knowing that, one day, she won’t …
I found it and I let it go.
Don’t make the same mistake I did.’
Tears streaming down my face, I closed the email.
Picking up Amy’s phone, I dialled his number as fast as my shaking hands would allow. Three short beeps and the call cut off immediately. I tried again, looking up at the birds in the trees and heard the beeps again. The number wasn’t blocked but his answering service was off.
There wasn’t time for this, I told myself, taking a deep breath and choking down my sobs. I was late for my date with the hairdresser and Kekipi would kill me if I walked down the aisle with a dirty topknot.
Wiping my eyes with the sleeve of my sweatshirt, I stood up and headed back to the house. I was so confused. Surely he would know I would read the article? Surely he wanted me to? Somehow, I had to get hold of him, there would be no waiting for his ‘soon’, whenever that might be. Stopping, I turned and held up Amy’s phone, trying to capture my secret garden. I wanted him to know where I was, I wanted him to know I was thinking about him and that I was done with waiting. I framed a shot of the table and chair, the stark trees with their low, bare branches and the steely blue Milanese sky then texted it to him. If he was words, I was pictures. I had to do something to stop him slipping out of my life.
‘A vision,’ Al said, letting himself into the dressing room just after the make-up artist had left. ‘And if I do say so myself, what a fabulous dress.’
‘It’s just a dress,’ I said, smiling and playing with the diamond necklace Amy had given me for Christmas as he sat down beside me. ‘Actually, a stunning one, thank you so much.’
‘I’ve been sent to give you a ten-minute warning,’ he said, looking around the empty room. ‘Are the other bridesmaids all prepared?’
‘I’m in the lav!’ Amy screeched from inside the bathroom. ‘I’ll be out in a minute.’
I glanced at her dress, still hung on the back of the dressing room door and nowhere near her actual person.
‘There was a situation,’ I said in a light, quiet voice. ‘Someone thought today might be a good day to try something interesting with her hair.’
‘It’s fine!’ Amy shouted. Clearly I wasn’t quite quiet enough. ‘It’ll come off!’
Al rumbled with his familiar chuckle. ‘I don’t doubt it,’ he called back. ‘And Miss Paige?’
‘MIA,’ I frowned. ‘That’s another situation.’
‘So I hear,’ he nodded. ‘What a pickle.’
‘In happier news, I’ve been offered an apprenticeship with a gallery in New York,’ I said, finding a smile in spite of myself. ‘I think I’m going to take it.’
‘Tess, that’s marvellous news!’ He leapt up, bouncing to his feet like a man half his age and gave me a bristly, beardy hug. ‘I’m so pleased.’
‘If nothing else,’ I shook my head at my own hands, ‘I know this is the right thing to do. Not the easiest, I know, but definitely the right thing. I can’t really believe it.’
‘Much easier to live with the right things than the easy things,’ he assured me. ‘In the long run, at least. You may have had help from your friends along the way but no one took the pictures but you. No one went out and seized these opportunities on your behalf. You did this, Tess, and you’re the only one who can make it work.’
‘I suppose,’ I said, looking down at the phone in my hand. ‘I have to call my agent and let her know as soon as we’re done.’
‘You can’t call her now?’ he asked, fussing with his bedazzled tie. ‘Call her now!’
‘She’s not answering,’ I smiled, straightening the knot. ‘I’ve tried twice. She said to call her in two hours and when she says something, she means it.’
‘I’m very pleased for you,’ Al said. It was impossible not to notice how much happier he looked since we had left New York. His eyes were brighter, his hair was bigger and there was a distinct spring in his step. ‘I hope you won’t be too busy to come and visit me in Hawaii.’
‘You’re really going back then?’ I asked and he nodded, happiness all over his face. ‘I’m not sure I’ll be able to duck out any time soon but I can’t imagine it would be much of a hardship to drag myself over.’
Just as soon as I transferred my credit card balance, I thought, hoping Mel had kept hold of all my post including the useful junk mail offers.
‘You’re going to make a beautiful bridesmaid,’ he said, placing a hand on my shoulder and giving me a proud, parental smile I couldn’t say I’d ever seen before. ‘I’ll go and have a look for Miss Sullivan and send her your way.’
‘You do that,’ I said weakly, giving him a double thumbs up. ‘Thank you, Al.’
He gave me a little bow and closed the dressing room door behind him.
‘Tess!’ Amy stuck her head out of the bathroom door, wearing nothing but her knickers and a towel. ‘Can you still see it?’
She turned her back to me,
looking like a neon-blue Pepe le Pew.
‘A bit?’ I said, pinching my fingers together in the air.
If only her hair weren’t so short. If only her dress weren’t backless. If only she hadn’t decided today was the day to experiment with temporary hair dye.
‘Shat,’ she muttered, slamming the door shut on herself. ‘Give me five more minutes.’
‘No rush,’ I said, looking out the windows as a stream of white cars arrived and dozens of beautifully dressed men and women began to swarm the palazzo steps. ‘It’s not like anyone’s getting married or anything.’
And, right on cue, the door to the dressing room cracked open and Kekipi slipped inside.
‘Is it too late to elope?’ he asked, smiling.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
‘Gentlemen …’ Al was taking the utter chaos of the dressing room in his stride. He turned to Charlie and Nick first of all, gracious and warm as ever. ‘Perhaps you would like to take your seats? I believe there are two spots in the back row.’
Blinking, Charlie managed to right himself and staggered out of the room, still finding the strength to shoulder-barge Nick as he went. With a dark look in my direction, Nick followed, the unlikely wedding dates finding their seats just as Kekipi’s instrumental began.
‘I do believe the bridesmaids are up next,’ Al said as I yanked Amy’s dress over her head and Paige pulled at the zip, wiping her face with the back of her wrist. Amy tucked her boobs into the bodice.
‘We’re ready,’ I said, slightly out of breath and more than a little bit confused. ‘Shall we do this?’
‘I feel like a five-minute sit-down, TBH,’ Kekipi said, standing up and knocking back his champagne in one big chug. ‘But we’re all dressed up and everyone’s here and – Amy, what is that on your back? Did you bone a Smurf last night?’
‘Just go and get bloody married,’ she frowned, taking her bouquet from one of Domenico’s friends and fluffing out her hair.
‘All right then,’ he said, shooing the bridal party out ahead of him. ‘Make me proud, ladies.’