November 2014
James looks up at a wall of orange digits rolling, changing, buzzing with the same excitement as the incoming revellers heading out on this Saturday night to theatres, restaurants and parties. The next train to Hazelworth departs in twenty-six minutes, which is almost as long as the longest you ever have to wait for the next train to Hazelworth.
‘Shit.’
James really doesn’t want to wait around tonight of all nights, but he heads towards the large coffee shop in a glass box in the middle of the station. A girl with a doughy body and a low blonde ponytail looks at James expectantly. A black name badge has Nicola written in white chalk on a low breast.
‘Double espresso please.’
‘Drink in or take away?’
James looks through the glass up at the clock. Twenty-three minutes.
‘Here please.’
He could do with sitting down.
‘Would you like our special mountain blend?’
‘What’s different about it?’
‘It’s nuttier than the standard blend and costs just twenty pence more.’
‘OK then.’
‘Would you like a muffin or a cake?’
‘No thanks, just the coffee.’
‘Sandwich or fruit toast?’
‘No thanks, just the coffee.’
‘Anything else?’
‘No thanks, I just want my coffee. Please.’ Wide, exasperated eyes.
‘That’ll be £2.10 please,’ Nicola smiles, her perky tone jarring with her worn face and sunken eyes.
Once he’s paid, James finds his small white cup and saucer at the end of the counter and seeks a high stool in the corner, where he knows his photographic equipment will be encased safely by his feet and glass walls.
James rubs his eyes with the backs of his hands like a tired toddler. Treacly nutty bitterness bounces on his taste buds. It feels like midnight, not early evening. James was up at 5 a.m. and on the first train from Hazelworth, bright-eyed and excited to be shooting a Paralympian in training for next weekend’s Remembrance Day special for The Observer. His first newspaper gig, which will do his portfolio the world of good. Weddings and corporate headshots are good money-spinners, but they don’t carry the kudos of shooting for one of the UK’s most respected Sunday papers. James had to go into London and out again to Windsor to photograph Matty Weatherall swimming in the Thames, riding his specially adapted handbike, then putting on his carbon-fibre blades to do a lap of the track at a local running club. Matty was a Royal Marine Commando who lost both of his legs in a Taliban roadside bomb in Afghanistan. What James saw today made him feel humbled, pampered and lazy.
The day had started tetchily – Matty wasn’t overly keen to be tailed by a photographer, but as the hours passed and James quietly and thoughtfully got the pictures he needed without getting in the way of transitions and fuel stops, he won Matty over.
‘You know I’m not here to interview you, I’m just taking the pictures,’ James said gently, when he saw a scowl through the lens.
‘I know mate, it’s just I’m not doing it for all this. “The media circus” my mam calls it. I’m doing it for me.’
James put the viewfinder back to his eye and respected Matty even more.
In a pub on the river at the end of the long, draining training session, James bought himself a pale ale and a pint of lime soda for Matty. And then one shy guy asked another just one probing question.
‘What got you through it?’
‘My missus. I thought about her every day out there. I thought about her every day during my recovery back here. I think about her when I’m pushing the bike or putting these on my stumps.’ He looked down and tapped one prosthetic leg with the other, giving a light tinny ring. ‘I just wanted a normal life for us. A family. I’ve wanted to be a dad since I can remember. But as I got fit, I realised I could be better than normal. I always pushed myself, I suppose that’s how I got to be a marine, but I didn’t realise how far I could go. I’m gonna be a dad next year and Carly is as proud of me as I am of her.’
‘Oh congratulations, mate,’ said James, savouring his pint the way Matty savoured his water at every pit stop during his training earlier. ‘You should be proud of yourself too.’
‘I am. Every day.’
In the glass box, James turns the espresso cup around on its saucer and wonders what Carly looks like. How pregnant she is. How it would have been nice to take her picture too.
James unzips the laptop from its case to have a look at some of the images from today, but then he thinks of her and wants to shake off his feeling of laziness and inertia.
When was it?
As James downs his coffee shot he remembers all the furniture of Kitty leaving him. Mid-summer. Long days.
The note was in my backpack that day.
James closes the lid of his laptop as quickly as he opened it and wakens his phone by punching in a code. He goes to the sent items in his email. He can’t remember when it was exactly but he remembers her name.
Search: Maya Flowers.
Do I still have her email address?
Sent items show James the email when he told Maya Flowers he had a girlfriend. Last May. Kitty would already have been in a relationship with Simon but this doesn’t make James sad. He feels the pang of hope and yearning as his thumb hovers over the screen of his phone, before he looks up at orange digits and realises he needs to pack away his things and head to platform 10.
He zips up the laptop case, puts it in his backpack and slings it onto his back, then closes it. The long thin bags of the tripod and the lighting reflector rise out of the backpack, crossing over above his shoulders like the swords of a ninja.
Camera case in one hand, James lifts his phone off the table with the other. He looks up and sees Maya Flowers through the glass, walking past, heading out for the evening. He is so close, but if he called her name she wouldn’t hear him. If he banged on the glass wall that separates them, the man with his arm draped triumphantly around Maya’s shoulder probably wouldn’t notice either.
James looks back down at his phone and presses the button that sends it to sleep.
*
Maya gives the clock in the top right-hand corner of her monitor a quick glance: 5.31 p.m.
I’m outta here.
She throws on a belted wool coat and slings her bag over her shoulder. It is Wednesday and all day Maya has been anxious about whether the column will run today, as it did last week, or Thursday as was originally planned. So far today there haven’t been any outrageous gasps or whispers in the canteen, or people walking apace through the glass double doors and around the quadrangle of the building towards Rich Robinson’s office.
Maybe tomorrow.
Just to be sure, as she heads out of FASH HQ, Maya picks up a paper, from the vendor on the corner of Portman Square. She tucks it into her bag and walks with haste to meet Nena at Liberty. Ankle boots click as Maya thinks about the wedding accessories she’s about to help Nena pick out. Hair jewels, purses, shoes, stoles. Maya thinks back to last weekend and how she made a grown man cry. She thinks about what next week’s column should be about. Week one was an introduction to a fashion empire and a few key characters, but mostly the Horrible Boss who belittled her own team and said her favourite pastime was to unfollow people on Twitter. Week two is more about the fashion vernacular. The terms Fifi Fashion Insider hears on a daily basis and how, well, fluffy her job is. That took Maya longer to write than she thought it would because she couldn’t use any of the terms FASH actually use, or the looks, trends or campaigns she herself created at work, so it was like doing her job twice over. Maya did come up with ‘Hell Yeah Partywear’ and wished she could nick that in real life. But it made for a more fun, less bitchy column, which Maya enjoyed writing.
As she turns off Oxford Street onto Argyle Street and sees the monochromatic castle in front of her, she decides to hold that thought, maybe ask Nena for column inspiration after they’ve sorted out her wedding kit and caboodle.
The doors revolve and Maya snakes through the beauty hall to where Nena is sitting in a chair while a make-up artist strokes her face.
‘You’re having a makeover?’ Maya asks, stating the obvious.
‘I won’t be long, I just realised I need someone to show me how not to do my make-up like a clown. I can’t get away with red cheeks and glittery green eyes on my wedding day.’
A woman dressed head-to-toe in black smiles politely but carries on putting taupes and beiges and neutral shades over excited eyes.
‘This is my friend who works in fashion,’ says Nena, as if they’ve already been talking about Maya. ‘She’s helping me sort out the rest of my outfit, so I don’t end up in my ballet Blochs.’
Maya laughs. ‘Do you think your dad will walk you down the aisle en pointe?’
Nena gives a punchy cackle, unsteadying the steady hand of the Laura Mercier girl.
‘Sorry.’ Nena says through pursed lips.
The make-up artist smiles and swipes a peach gloss over a naturally raspberry pout, then breaks her silence.
‘Did you see that thing in the Standard last week about the girl who works in fashion?’
‘No I didn’t,’ Nena lies, giving her friend a sideways look from the vice-like grip of brushes and a gloss wand.
‘Oh it was proper funny. A girl who works for FASH or Garment Guru or wherever, she was spilling the beans on what it’s like to work there. My friend who works at Walk In Wardrobe said it was spot-on. All these models walking around in rollers and thongs while she tries to book a courier. And a really mean boss.’
Maya laughs nervously and deftly changes the subject. ‘You must get some real characters walking through here?’
The make-up artist looks away from her canvas for the first time since Maya arrived.
‘Oh definitely. Some good celeb spots too. I’ve done a few famous faces. Actually you look a bit familiar,’ she says, turning back to Nena.
Maya breathes a sigh of relief. She’s not sure if she can do this beyond the four weeks Tiffanie Doyle commissioned, it’s stressing her out enough as it is.
*
‘What do you think?’ Nena asks in the duck-egg and glass grandeur of the second-floor cafe.
‘Really?’
‘Really.’
Maya hesitates while she chooses her words. She finds it harder than Nena to be candid.
‘I don’t think you look like… you.’
Nena looks disappointed and pouts. ‘Oh. But this is the classy, ladylike me. Nena 2.0.’
‘But Tom wants to marry the Nena he fell in love with. It’s as if that make-up artist took all the natural brightness out of your face and toned it down in a veil of beige.’ Maya feels bad. ‘Glitter doesn’t look ridiculous on you when your blank canvas is so amazing in the first place. It just accentuates an already existing sparkle.’
Nena blushes, mutedly.
‘Right, so what did we get?’ asks Maya.
‘Nothing for me! But I love your hair jewel, and the stole is gorgeous. But I think I need one too. A bride with her baps out does not look cool on a brisk December afternoon.’
‘Well here, try the one I bought, if you like it, you have it and I’ll find something different.’
‘You’re so sweet, Maya. But don’t be silly, you found it first.’
‘You’re the bride. Surely the bride gets first dibs.’
Nena clicks her fingers and whips her neck, pretending to be a diva. Hair piled high in a confection-like bun comes undone from its own twist and swooshes into perfect position. Black, straight, shiny.
The girls laugh as a disinterested waiter arrives with two pink lemonades. Happy that the wedding is bringing them back closer together.
‘Anyway, I need to know, are you bringing a certain “plus one” to the wedding? Tom and I are doing the seating plan tonight. Do we save a place for Kisschase Boy on the top table?’
Maya winces apologetically.
‘Just think of the cost saving,’ she offers sheepishly through gritted teeth.
‘Oh no! What happened?’
‘What didn’t happen, I think is more accurate.’
‘What didn’t happen?’ Nena clasps hands to her face, enormous disappointed eyes waiting above them. Maya sighs. Nena groans. ‘But Kisschase Boy sounded so romantic!’
‘It was romantic. When I was eleven. But he was a bit stuck back there.’ Maya stirs her pink lemonade with a stripy straw. ‘Stuck in a time of kiss chase and drawing my face on Wonder Woman’s body… we didn’t really have any spark in the here and now.’
‘How did you end it?’
‘He brought me to the theatre on Saturday night,’ Maya says, nodding in the direction of Covent Garden. ‘The Lion King – which was amazing – but he was watching my face all the way through, the way he did when we watched the film as kids. I dunno, it felt a bit… creepy.’
‘Oh Maya!’
‘I know, I know, I feel bad.’ She takes her stripy straw and sips through small rounded lips. ‘He cried.’
‘He cried? After what, three dates?’
‘Four.’
‘Well now I don’t feel sorry him. What a pussy! And yeah, that’ll save Felipe and Victoria a hundred quid. Go Maya.’
Maya can’t help feeling like she’s let the side down. She did really try.
‘I haven’t told Clara yet – she’s going to be really miffed.’