he’s gorgeous,’ Jacintha breathed, losing some of her composure. ‘Did you really shave his head?’
Lee shrugged. ‘He was game. He had some gumption, unlike a lot of people.’
She felt Sam’s gaze flicker towards her briefly but she didn’t care if he felt the barb; she put the camera up to her eye and began to walk slowly around him, seeing how he looked in the frame. It never ceased to amaze her how the whole world fell away when she looked through the lens, anything outside the shot cut out so that her focus zeroed in entirely on the subject. Like looking through the crosshairs of a rifle, there was nothing beyond the target. It was as though the world was put on mute.
Unlike Matt, Sam didn’t try to engage with the lens; there was no provocative eye contact as she moved slowly – moving the camera up, moving it down, not snapping yet, not committing to an image, but getting a feel for him. Seeing how he moved, how he stayed still. The angle at which he naturally rested his head, the upward tip of his chin, the straight line and then gentle flare of his nose. His really was a face that had been eight hundred years in the making. It was classical, noble . . .
He blinked rapidly, several times, and she realized he was feeling the weight of her scrutiny; in spite of his outwardly relaxed demeanour and loose hands, he either wasn’t used to having his photograph taken, or he felt uncomfortable in her gaze.
She was in front of him now and she still hadn’t clicked the shutter, not yet taken a single image, unable somehow to commit to the process of capturing him. He was looking into the middle distance ten degrees past her right shoulder, her covered gaze gliding over the sweep of his shoulder, the cut of his jaw, the smooth blow of his cheekbone—
She felt his line of attention shift and found he was looking straight at her. Like faces either side of a window-pane, he filled her field of vision, his gaze directly on hers like a missile on lock. She felt held – caught – as he stared right through the glass to her; right through to her glass heart.
And in that golden silence, the shutter clicked.
Chapter Eight
Her old boss had bagged one of the velvet sofas by the window, the city laid out behind her six storeys below. They had arranged to meet at Soho House – it was suitably central and chic for Dita’s needs. After so many years living in war red zones, her tastes now ran to the extravagant, by way of recompense.
She was wearing her usual uniform – a navy tunic with matching wide-legged trousers that she would dress up, when required, with a vibrant scarf. Today’s was bunched up in her handbag, a green and orange abstract print that looked like it could (when unfolded) be a Matisse print. To anyone passing by, they would have guessed she was a former art teacher, rather than bureau chief of one of the biggest press agencies in the world.
‘How are you, old woman?’ Lee asked, coming to stand by the table, Dita engrossed in something on her phone.
‘Lee!’ Dita looked up with a pleased smile, tossing the phone away casually. ‘You made it.’
‘Well, it was touch and go, the traffic was a bitch,’ she quipped.
Dita laughed and the two women hugged, not in the social air-kissy way, but with pressed fingertips and closed eyes. Their clothes might be freshly laundered and their hair smelling of shampoo today, but they had embraced each other covered in dust and blood before now. They had seen other worlds and lived other lives before this one. They were neither of them fooled by the pretty artifice of their surroundings.
‘When did you get in?’ Lee asked, sinking into her seat and ordering a black coffee and croissant.
‘Knocking on midnight, in the end. Another air traffic control strike. I swear to God, it’s easier getting out of Beirut than Paris these days.’
Lee grinned, crossing her legs and sitting back in the chair as Dita cast a critical eye over her. She always did this when they were reunited; at twenty-six years her senior, her old boss was an unspoken mother figure too. ‘Hmm, I really thought you’d be fatter by now.’
‘Well, what’s the culinary equivalent of being green-fingered? Because whatever it is, I don’t have it.’