any of what had happened (or rather, not happened) last night got back to Liam, her humiliation would be complete.
‘You told me she was a news journalist,’ Sam said to Jacintha in a low voice.
‘She is. Was. Well, it was more war correspondence than . . . plain old news.’
Lee’s eyes met Sam’s again momentarily, startling them both, it seemed. He clearly didn’t want to be here any more than she wanted him here. Lee tried to think of a reason to cancel the shoot – setting off the fire alarms, perhaps, or breaking a leg. But she knew it would only delay the inevitable. This was the last portrait for the feature, it had to be done. As Bart was forever saying to her: ‘Bills, Lee!’
She saw both Bart and Jacintha were watching them, everyone picking up on the strange tension in the room between the two main players. The only way past this was going to be through it.
‘Right. Well,’ Lee said, weakly clapping her hands together. ‘Shall we get started then? I’ve already wasted quite enough of your time today. Let’s see if we can’t get the shot quickly.’
‘Here you go.’ Bart handed her the camera with a loaded look, but she refused to acknowledge it. Her heart was thudding against her chest so loudly she was convinced everyone could hear. Just point and click, she told herself. Get the shot and get the hell out of here. This could all be behind her in an hour if she was lucky, and then she’d never have to see him again.
She kicked off her Vans shoes so that she was in just her socks, and walked over to the high stool in the centre of the set. ‘Sam, if you’d just like to come over here?’
She pretended to adjust the exposure as he walked over, trying not to replay in her head everything that had happened between them only last night – the way he had tried not to kiss her, and then the way he had, how he had stepped away from her with effort, left without looking back . . .
He instinctively sat with both feet on the foot rail, knees splayed, hands laced together. It was a confident, relaxed pose. Most of her subjects perched nervously on the stool, one leg on the ground, their hands at a loss for where to be.
‘I’m so sorry I was late; did you hear what happened?’ she said with an absent-minded faux-cheeriness, loud enough for Bart and Jacintha to hear, as her eyes ran up and down him with a professional, almost doctorly indifference, taking in the composition of his pose, the drape of his clothes. ‘My bike was stolen.’
‘Oh.’ There was a pause as he took in her tone; he knew perfectly well what she was doing, performing an act of civility for the crowd. But he was no actor, his voice sounding awkward and stilted. ‘. . . Where?’
‘Prinsengracht.’
‘Bad luck.’
‘I know, right? I’ve had a run of that lately,’ she said distractedly, repositioning him slightly so that he wouldn’t be so forward-facing to the camera. He didn’t say anything, but sat perfectly still as she picked a red thread off the shoulder of his jacket, smoothed a wrinkle in the arm, pushed a stubborn curl back from his forehead that kept trying to fall over his left eye. ‘And you didn’t want hair and make-up today?’
He didn’t move his head but his eyes flicked up to her diagonally. ‘No.’ He seemed . . . bemused by the suggestion.
‘Good,’ she said, deliberately tracking her eyes over him busily, not daring to linger anywhere. ‘I much prefer shooting people in the raw.’
There was a small pause. ‘I hope that’s not a euphemism.’
Behind her, Bart spat out his coffee. ‘Sorry,’ he spluttered, laughing. ‘. . . Wasn’t expecting that.’
Nor was she. Lee was surprised by the flash of humour too but she didn’t acknowledge it. She would not laugh, she would not smile. They were not friends.
‘Well, talking of raw, we had an actor in here last week,’ Bart said confidingly as Lee made an adjustment to one of the rig lights. ‘Big name. Huge heartthrob. And by the end of the shoot, he was in the buff, head shaved and covered in mud.’
‘Who was it?’ Jacintha asked, when Sam didn’t.
‘Well, I really shouldn’t say . . .’ Bart protested feebly. ‘But seeing as you no doubt move in the same circles . . . Matteo Hofhuis,’ he mouthed.