hung up her coat and headed for the coffee machine. She had never been called ‘bouncy’ in her life, and she wasn’t sure she liked it. Nevertheless, she was in a good mood this morning, she couldn’t deny it. Last night had done what she’d needed – given her a brief escape. ‘Want one?’
‘Got one, thanks,’ he said, watching her suspiciously. ‘. . . Anything you want to share?’
‘I’m not giving you my coffee. I just offered you one.’
‘No, I meant – agh, forget it.’ He gave up, knowing perfectly well she was being obtuse. She knocked back the coffee shot and took a moment to enjoy the hit before walking over to him. ‘Okay, so where are we at?’
‘Well, I think you’ll be pleased.’ Bart took a folder from the top of his paperwork pile and slid it along the bench to her. ‘Which is not the same thing as saying the client’s management will be. Apparently he’s just signed as the lead in some Viking epic, and hair – preferably long hair – was taken as a given.’
‘Why? Were there never any bald Vikings?’ she grinned. ‘Relax. It’ll have grown back in a couple of months. When are they beginning shooting?’
‘Next month.’
‘Huh. Well, he should have said, then.’ She opened up the file and stared into the eyes that had been locked onto hers only a few hours previously in her spare room. Echoes of the connection that had tugged between them through the lens yesterday vibrated through her again now. The electricity crackled on the page; it was what gave the images their vibrancy, magnetism. But though she could read it, she no longer felt it. Like the diminishing toots of a stream train puffing out of sight, the feeling was distant already. He had been precisely what she had needed – but she had only needed it for a few hours.
‘Mmm . . . The lighting’s a bit sharp in this sequence,’ she murmured, putting on her eye loupe and scoring out three whole rows of images with a red cross. ‘And I don’t like the angle in these here, do you?’
It was a rhetorical question. Bart knew Lee never doubted her instincts on her own work. She could ruthlessly edit herself without any need for input from anyone else, and had many times thrown out entire shoots, refusing to hand over the images to the client if she wasn’t absolutely happy with them. It made her a nightmare to work with but it was also what made her desirable; no one had higher expectations of her than she did of herself and her very perfectionism and uncompromising vision was the reason the bookings kept coming.
She went through the contact sheets with brisk efficiency, eliminating scores of images (mainly the early ones) on account of an awkward pose, a forced look, a ‘too perfect’ symmetry, so that by the time she’d finished, they had perhaps a dozen left from an initial count of one hundred and eighty.
‘Yes.’ She stepped back, looking at the survivors with a critical hawk-eye. She famously never retouched her images and it was in her contract that her clients were forbidden to alter her work in any way. ‘Give them those. I reckon there’s a good three cover options there if they want them. That I’d choose, anyway.’
‘Yep.’ Bart nodded in agreement. It wasn’t unknown for the publications to go out with multiple covers in limited-edition runs when she’d spoilt them for choice like this. He shuffled the edit into a new pile and took them back to his desk.
She sank onto her high stool, flicked quickly through the post and checked her emails. It was the usual depressing mix of marketing spam and domestic miscellanea – her studio insurance was coming up for renewal, her Life magazine subscription was about to expire, a dispatch note for the new inner tubes she’d bought for her bike.
‘So are you going to call him, then?’ Bart asked from across the space, his eyes on his screen.
She clicked on an email for dinner arrangements at her place with Noah, Liam and Mila tomorrow night. ‘Who?’
‘Matteo!’ He swivelled around on his chair, pointing a finger at her. ‘And don’t even try to deny it! It was pretty damn obvious there was something between you. I can always tell with you.’
She gave a groan. ‘He’s an actor, Bart. Easy on the eye, perhaps, but—’
‘He’s never going to save the world?’ he finished for her, knowing her too