Together by Christmas Read online

  ‘Matt, please.’ He made a move to say something else and she guessed he’d reflexively been about to ask whether she’d seen the show – it would be all anyone ever talked about to him, she knew, his standard patter; but from the way he deflated fractionally again, she could tell he sensed she hadn’t, that she wasn’t one of the housewives he’d left in a flutter. He dropped her hand, breaking the gaze and casting a curious eye around the space, catching sight of the rail of sober clothes nearby. ‘So, what are we doing today?’

  ‘Well, as you can see . . .’ She paused, not quite able to suppress the boredom in her voice.

  Did he pick up on it? His gaze came back to her again. ‘I am happy to put myself completely in your hands. I’ll submit to your vision, whatever that may be.’

  Claudia gave a small startled sound that quickly became strangled under one of Bart’s delighted, arched-eyebrow looks.

  Lee shifted her weight as she stared back at her subject, a small light climbing into her eyes, though it was scarcely visible behind the reflection of her glasses. ‘Really? . . . Are you quite sure about that?’

  Chapter Three

  ‘They’re going to hit the roof,’ Bart said as she shrugged on her coat, her eyes on the clock. Their guests had just left and she had fifteen minutes to collect Jasper.

  ‘Good. Reaction is the whole point, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, but there are still protocols to observe, as well you know. You didn’t use a single item of clothing they sent over. Couldn’t you at least have put him in a pair of trousers? I mean, they’re a magazine, Lee, they need to keep their advertisers happy—’

  ‘That’s their problem, not mine. I did my job and got the shot. That shoot will make the cover and the cover will sell out the issue and that’ll make the advertisers happy instead.’ She wound her scarf around her neck and pulled her hat on over her hair, making sure the little ears were on straight. She leaned over Bart as he sat on the high stool, resting her chin on his shoulder; he was looking at the images on the contact sheets on screen and she felt another small thrill of professional achievement, so rare these days. Matteo Hofhuis was utterly transformed from the cookie-cutter heartthrob who’d walked through the doors seven hours earlier. The beard was still there, but the hair was not (Lee always kept a pair of clippers in her props bag for just such moments as these) and his bare, tanned skin had been blackened, daubed and smeared with mud Bart had had to quickly gather from the pot plants in the lobby, mixing soil and water to her desired consistency. She had been adamant he had to look like a rough sleeper, a soldier, someone living by instinct, opportunity. She wanted to scrub off the starry artifice that was already layering upon him like a golden glow, to show him stripped back and raw.

  The nudity hadn’t bothered him either. He looked good walking around with a tiny towel between shots and he was at that point in his career when he’d do anything to prove ‘artistic integrity’. It helped that Lee took a matter-of-fact approach to these things, offering to close the set for him – but it was only her, Bart and Claudia anyway, as she had sent away both the hair and make-up artists upon their arrival.

  Claudia hadn’t realized the full extent of what was happening with her client until it was too late, Bart getting out the king-size stroopwafels at the pertinent point when Lee had brought out the clippers. She had started the shoot gently, taking the stool away and standing him in the black space in the very clothes he’d arrived in, getting him used to the camera as she prowled around him like a cat, changing height, perspective, coming in tight, pulling away, insisting he keep his eye locked on the lens at all times. She had got Bart to turn up the thermostat and as the studio warmed and his layers came off, as the minutes ticked past, she had seen the change happen in him that she’d been gently prodding for – the studied poses and eager willingness to perform for her gradually yielding to something less contrived and conscious, the novelty beginning to pall, boredom to surface, until the camera was no longer something to play to but to endure. The eyes had flattened, becoming harder, the jaw had relaxed, and steadily the act, the public persona, had fallen away until it was just her and him, even the camera being forgotten. They had been connected by the lens, divided by it, as he fell back into being the man of his private moments when he moved unobserved. Unjudged. It had been like watching a wax figure melt, blue-eyed chiselled distinction blurred out so that only the core remained. It was the moment she always strove for – naked truth. Basic humanity. Shared experience. Equality.

  Lee had taken this box-fresh housewife’s hero and recast him into something so much more than a stud in a suit. If he wanted Bond, this was his golden ticket. Or Hamlet. Or Atticus Finch. Or Mr Darcy. Doors were going to open on the strength of these images.

  ‘Hmm,’ she said with a pleased nod, straightening up and walking briskly towards the door. ‘Not a bad day’s work. Who’ve we got next?’

  ‘The last one, you’ll be pleased to hear. An author. He’s the new . . . hmm.’ Bart thought for a moment, trying to pigeonhole their next subject. ‘A. A. Milne meets Eckhart Tolle.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Mindfulness, Lee – gratitude, acceptance, kindness. It’s a thing,’ he said wryly.

  She rolled her eyes, not needing to be told. She’d seen quite enough of the schmaltzy quotes being passed off as deep insight on social media to know what he was referring to. Insta-wisdom.

  ‘So he’s on Monday morning, ten o’clock start; then you’re done – unless they want a re-shoot of Haven, the “new Billie Eilish” girl. I know there’s not supposed to be any editorial interference but her management can be very tricky . . .’ He pulled a face.

  ‘Ugh.’ She used to creep through jungles and over burnt-out cars to show the world images that mattered. How had she ended up pandering to the ego of an eighteen-year-old singer who hadn’t even been alive when she’d bought her coat?

  ‘Bills, Lee,’ Bart murmured, reading her mind.

  ‘. . . Yeah.’ She sighed and turned away again.

  ‘Talking of which—’

  ‘No!’ she called over her shoulder, knowing exactly what he was going to say: the gallery again. She was in a good mood, but not that good. ‘See you tomorrow, Bart.’

  The doors closed behind her and she stepped back outside. It was dark already, the city lamplit to an amber glow and looking postcard-perfect in its night-time guise. It always fascinated her how the city, with such a mannered masculinity by day – all lean lines and sombre colours – switched to a more expansive mood by night: lights glowing on the water, threaded through the trees, arching with the bridges and pooling on the cobblestones, the famous narrow, multi-windowed buildings now as pretty as gingerbread houses.

  She unlocked her bike, giving her daily prayer of thanks to the Bike Gods that it was still there, and pushed off over the cobbles. The air was crisp, the first notes of a frost beginning to lace her breaths, and she felt her cheeks grow pink, her good mood bloom further as she pedalled. The cold was still something of a novelty for her and maybe always would be; it had been one of the things she had missed most in her old life and part of why she’d been drawn back here. She had swapped red dust for rain and slush, quite deliberately. She had wanted an opposite existence to her old life.

  She glided past the townhouses’ overly large windows like a shadow, silent but for the whirr of her wheels, feeling lighter than she had on her way in this morning. It was a struggle for her to feel accomplishment after these intense days in the studio, to feel that any of this glossy, airbrushed reality she helped create actually mattered. Today had been different though; she had captured something real through her lens and made contact – a transitory but honest connection – with another human. It wouldn’t change the world but it had shifted hers, just a little.

  She smiled, the gold streamers Jasper had begged her to buy at a Christmas market last year fluttering and flapping from the handlebars like a cheerleader’s ribbons as she rode with her usual languid grace and
unflinching aggression, using her voice and not her bell, cheerfully shouting at people to ‘Move!’ as she approached. She would not be made late for her child by ‘influencers’ trying to get a shot.

  Twenty minutes later, she and Jasper were home again and she closed the front door behind them with a sigh of relief. Another day was done. Jasper gave a shout of joy to be home – she felt much the same herself – and, throwing his bag down, he pulled off his shoes and tore up the stairs to the open-plan kitchen and living area on the first floor. Lee put on the three bolts and two chains on the door and carefully slid his little trainers to the wall, out of the way, hearing his socked feet pounding on the wooden floors above her and echoing through the three-storey house. Going straight into the utility room at the back of the house, she switched this morning’s laundry load from the washing machine into the tumble dryer and double-checked the back door was locked. The guest bedroom was across the hall from the bottom of the stairs and she stopped in the doorway, as she always did, checking there were no signs of disturbance.

  The curtains were drawn, naturally – she would never subscribe to the Dutch preference for unobscured windows; she rated privacy (and security) above light – and she switched on the light, trying to appraise the room with fresh eyes. She rarely actually came in here, but she knew it wasn’t the most successful space – the double bed was fitted without a headboard, the lamp shade was a cheap Ikea rattan number that looked more like a lobster pot and the pillows were different thicknesses so the turquoise kantha quilt lay on a slope. Still, she had painted the walls a rich blackish-green, which felt luxurious, and a thick creamy imitation Moroccan rug felt good underfoot.

  She turned out the light again and pulled the bedroom door to, and was about to walk up the stairs when someone rang the bell. She turned and stared at it in shock. It was half past five. She’d said eight. Surely—? She stood there for several moments more – it could just be kids messing about, tourists wanting directions, someone with the wrong address . . . She walked over, but just as she was about to look through the spyhole, she heard a cough.

  It stopped her in her tracks, her heart rate accelerating into a gallop. She would have known that sound anywhere. She didn’t need to look through the spyhole to know what she would see: a square-jawed face, possibly getting a little jowly now, salt-and-pepper hair, expansive ever-smiling mouth and dark, soulful eyes pleading for forgiveness.

  She froze, not daring to move, willing him to go away.

  ‘Fitch, I just saw the light go off. I know you’re there!’ he called after another few moments, making her jump again.

  Oh God, Jasper. The neighbours. Jasper. She didn’t want him hearing any of this.

  She took a step back, onto a cracked floorboard. It creaked. She froze. He couldn’t have heard that.

  But an immediate soft sound against the door, a hand perhaps on the wood, told her otherwise. ‘I know you’re there, Fitch.’ His voice was low, quieter, closer. He was talking straight through the door to her. So close. ‘Please. Please just open the door.’

  Her heart pounded as she continued staring at the door, feeling rooted to the spot, flooded with panic. With his voice came so many other sounds, so many memories. She put her hands over her ears but it was no good. She couldn’t block them – him – out. They lived inside her head.

  ‘I just want to talk to you.’

  She scrunched her eyes shut, willing him to go away. Just turn around and leave. She had made her feelings perfectly clear. She ignored every letter, every card, every text. He knew she would never open the door, she never did.

  ‘Please, Fitch. You can’t keep ignoring me for ever.’

  But she could. She had done it for six years and she would do it for six more. And then the six after that, and the six after that . . . She waited, forcing herself to breathe deeply and slowly. He would go. Eventually. He’d have to. The freezing temperatures would drive him away, if nothing else.

  ‘Fine, then. I’ll do it here.’ She heard his sigh through the thick wood. ‘There’s something I have to tell you.’

  She didn’t care. She didn’t care. She didn’t care—

  ‘Gisele’s pregnant.’

  Lee’s hands dropped down from her ears, her eyes wide. She felt the floor tilt beneath her feet as the words settled like rocks in her stomach. Gisele was pregnant. She was surprised – and she wasn’t. This day had been bound to come. They had been married three years now; she was young. It made sense she’d want to start a family, to have his child.

  Did he really think she cared? Was that what had prompted him to come and stand on her doorstep in these temperatures? Did he think it somehow made him a better human being, now that he was going to be a father? Wasn’t it rather too late for that? She felt herself harden, wet clay to concrete, anger to action. She turned away and walked back up the hall, up the stairs, his voice receding at her back, her heart hammering in her chest.

  ‘Please, Fitch, just let me come in. Five minutes, that’s all I’m asking . . .’

  She walked into the vast open-plan kitchen and living area, drenched in light and sound. She turned down the dimmers slightly. Jasper was on his hands and knees on the floor, playing with the remote-control car his godfather Noah had given him, ‘just because’, a few weeks earlier. Star Wars was playing on the TV in the background, thankfully throwing out enough galactic noise to drown out Cunningham’s mournful pleas.

  ‘Hungry?’ she asked, walking to the cupboard and hoping a dinner she’d forgotten to buy ingredients for would miraculously emerge before her. She was what she called a cupboard cook, using whatever happened to be on the shelf – nothing was ever planned, rarely was it successful, but somehow she and Jasper got by on her strange concoctions. Jasper’s favourite was her sausage noodle bake, which never tasted the same, no matter how often she cooked it.

  ‘Starving!’ Jasper proclaimed dramatically.

  ‘Okay, well . . .’ she said, staring into the fridge like it was a maths equation. There had to be an answer in there somewhere. It might be only just after five thirty, but it was supper time, and their lives ran according to the clock of Jasper’s stomach. ‘Spaghetti arrabbiata?’

  ‘We had pasta at lunch.’

  ‘Oh well, that’s a first-world problem, my darling,’ she shrugged, reaching for the diced pancetta. ‘There are worse things than having pasta twice in one day.’

  She put on a pan of water, rummaging in the cupboards for a ready-made tomato sauce and hoping she wouldn’t have to water down some ketchup like last time. Whilst the pasta cooked, she lit a fire in the baroque marble fireplace, and when dinner was ready, they went straight into a spaghetti-sucking contest. Afterwards, they shared a bath and then flopped on the sofa for some telly-watching before bed and a story. It was their usual Thursday night routine, and identical to the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday routines too. Nothing ever changed in their lives because there was no need for it to. That in itself was a luxury, she knew. There were no potential ambushes to outfox on the way home; no bombs tearing through the sky as they cycled to the shops. Life here was quiet, repetitive and predictable. It was safe. It was everything she had promised to give him.

  ‘I love you, Jazz.’

  ‘I love you, mama,’ he said, the duvet tucked all the way up under his chin.

  She stroked his cheek, feeling its padded velvety softness against her own skin, which felt so rough by comparison; she had spent too many years scrabbling through rubble to ever have the soft hands of TV advert mothers. ‘Give me a kiss.’ He puckered up his rosy lips and she planted a kiss on them. Her hands clasped his face for a moment as she marvelled at the miracle of him. He was the image of his father. ‘Sleep tight, little man.’

  ‘You too, mama,’ he said, his eyes burning intensely, anxiously.

  ‘I will, darling. Don’t worry.’ She tapped the end of his nose with her index finger and winked.

  She navigated her way expertly over the scattered Lego
– her newly domestic equivalent of crossing a minefield – and closed the door softly behind her. She stood there for a few moments, hearing him shift position onto his side and say something quietly to Ducky, his beloved cloth toy, before walking down the hall to her own bedroom. The bed was still unmade from the usual rush this morning but she didn’t bother making it now. What was the point, when she’d only be getting back into it to sleep again in a short while anyway?

  She stepped out of her bathrobe and pulled on a pair of black loose trousers and a black jumper with a deep V; there was no point in putting on underwear at this time of night either. Twisting her damp hair into a rough bun, she padded barefoot back down to the first floor that housed her enormous kitchen and lounge. If the space was extravagant, its furnishings were not. She had spent most of her savings on the construction work when she had first moved back – the timber piles supporting the house had rotted and needed to be replaced with concrete ones, which had also meant replacing the lower-ground-floor parquet; and converting the first floor into one giant room across the front section of the house had been fiddly, ergo expensive, as the builders had had to take extraordinary care not to damage the intricate rococo plasterwork that trailed on the panelled walls and ceilings.

  With the bones of the house intact, she had kept everything else simple – white walls, black free-standing kitchen units made for her by a carpenter friend of a friend. Mila called it ‘classic’, but it wasn’t her style that was questioned, just the scarcity of it. She didn’t have enough furniture, apparently; friends kept telling her she needed to get more stuff, but it struck her as somewhat grotesque to have extra possessions purely for the purpose of filling a space. She had sufficient chairs for friends to sit on, a large enough table for them to eat and drink at, beds for her, Jasper and mythical guests who never came to stay, a couple of sofas, some bookcases . . . really, what more did they need? They had ‘enough’ and she had lived for too long in too many places in the world where enough counted as a feast.