The Little Teashop in Tokyo by Julie Caplin Page 0,7

photographer but I’m really excited to see these pictures, although they’ll probably depress the hell out of me. Looking at all that talent. Does it do that to you? Or does it inspire you to go and be better?’

Lines creased his brow and it struck her that he knew nothing about her. He certainly hadn’t bothered asking her any questions about herself and yet had been arrogant enough to assume she knew who he was at the airport. The thought made her feel inconsequential and for a moment she shrivelled a little, but then a little line of anger trickled down her spine, like the flash fire along a fuse. She’d come all this way, taken a risk, been prepared to step away from the handrail and he didn’t seem to know anything about her. Had he even taken the trouble to read her application to the competition or open up the file of photos that went with it? She was proud of those and, she acknowledged bitterly, she still wanted his approval. Craved his praise. Because he was a professional, she told herself, and not in the way she’d wanted it at eighteen when she’d been desperate for him to notice her. A touch of anger stirred in her twenty-eight-year-old self, older and a lot wiser. Surely looking at her application would have been a basic courtesy both to herself and to the person he’d taken over from. What was the point of half doing the job? Was he really that egotistical that he just didn’t care?

‘Have you even seen my portfolio?’ she asked with sudden sarcasm. ‘Read my entry?’

He held up his hands. ‘I’m sorry. No. I didn’t.’

You had to admire someone who didn’t try to lie their way out of trouble and faced it head on but even so … ‘No surprise there. I had you down as a flake.’ Oops, not quite the word she’d been aiming for and judging by his scandalised affront, completely the wrong thing to say. She had a habit of doing that.

‘Excuse me? A flake? How on earth do you figure that? You don’t even know me.’

‘Yeah.’ Except she did know him. ‘You’re the sort of guy that does what he wants.’ She knew that from his perfunctory attempt at teaching a class when most of the students had been too dazzled by his celebrity status to complain and, truth be told, she had been one of the worst offenders. But no more. She was here to learn. Two short weeks were all she had to nail the exhibition which would give her a foot in the door of an exhaustingly competitive industry. ‘How did they con you into taking over Araki’s gig then?’

‘There was no con involved.’ He bristled and glared back at her. ‘Now, if you want to maximise your time here, I suggest you make a start. I’ll meet you back here in three hours.’ Before he could say another word, he wheeled around and walked away, leaving her standing with her mouth open and doing a very passable impression of a goldfish.

The … the … had he just dumped her here? What sort of mentoring was that? With a huff she turned around and walked into the museum, grateful for the English signage everywhere. It would be better without him, she decided.

***

And it was. With five floors of galleries, there was so much to see and it felt positively self-indulgent to glide about at her own pace, skipping the things that didn’t interest her and pondering for much longer the pictures that did. Recently, she’d decided that life was too short to spend time on things you didn’t have to, like finishing books that didn’t appeal, watching the end of a film that wasn’t your thing, and studying every picture in an exhibit.

Enjoying the quiet, serene atmosphere with hushed whispers and soft footsteps, she turned a corner and walked into a new section where she came face to face with a Gabriel Burnett. It was the picture that caught her attention first rather than his name: an arresting image of a beautiful Japanese woman buried in cherry blossom petals, her limbs carefully arranged in a sea of the flowers with one graceful arm held out, the hand in supplication, catching a frothy pink, out-of-focus, falling blossom. At first when Fiona saw the picture she could admire the technique, the lighting and the way the edges of the flowers blurred, but as she studied the picture, so much