Mo Hayder: Pig Island

In London spring was on its way. There were winds and floods. Half of East Anglia and Gloucestershire was under water and Londoners sat glued to the television, watching cars floating down high streets like driftwood, thanking God they lived in a city civilized enough to have a flood barrier. The back gate had been forced open again. I put it down to the high winds, but the neighbours said it had happened in their gardens too, and probably a tramp was living in the neighbourhood. Nobody had seen him, but they were sure he was there. Everywhere he left trampled lawns, scraps of tissue and Twix wrappers that had to be picked up on gardening forks. He was using the back alley to sneak into gardens at night, trying to find a warm place to sleep. Some of the other gardens had the locks broken off their sheds.

The world didn't seem real to me. With Dove gone, it was like the plug had been pulled on my life. The tiredness thing wouldn't let up. I slept long stretches, nine, ten hours, but I'd wake up tireder than before and end up asleep at my desk, hands flopped on the keyboard, sending long strings of letters on to the screen. It crossed my mind to see a doctor, but I kind of guessed what the answer would be — Have you been under any stress recently, Mr Oakes? And then it would come out — Lexie dead, the way I didn't feel better that it was all over, worry about the book. Before I knew it I'd be in counselling, clutching a Seroxat script. So instead I kept going, pushing forward like I was under water, ignoring this perpetual drag on me.

After ten long days I got the manuscript off to the editor. The publishers' art department had been sending us visuals of the dust-jacket and now they'd arranged a photo session for Angeline in some studio in Brixton. This was something Finn and me and Angeline had spent a long time talking about — how to show her to the world. She wasn't going to let the deformity itself be photographed, so we'd decided on a still from the video, and for a modeller who worked for a medical-supply company to make and photograph a fibreglass cross-section of it. The publishers were going to send her up to Pig Island later in the month to get some shots of her at the chapel, but they wanted some studio portraits too. Just head and shoulders. It happened on the first Monday in March. The beginning of spring and, looking back at it now, it turned out to be the beginning of another kind of change in the air.

'Well?' I said. 'How do you feel?'

We sat in the makeup room looking at each other. She hadn't taken off her outdoor clothes: she still had on her coat and a knitted stripy beanie pulled over her hair. I'd brought the JD with me and now I opened it, poured her some in a plastic cup and handed it to her.

'You going to be OK?'

'I don't know.' She took it and shivered, shooting an anxious look at the door. We'd been let in by the janitor to an empty studio, but now the others were arriving. We could hear voices out there. 'They've seen the video. I wonder what they're going to think. Of me.' Her eyes went across the room at a rack of dresses pushed into the corner. They were covered with Cellophane but you could see the long skirts trailing the floor. She'd been fitted and measured for these, specifically so nothing would show. 'But whatever I wear, it doesn't matter. They'll still know.'

'You can change your mind,' I said. 'I'll have Finn tear up the contract. You only have to say the-'

'No. No, really.' She gave a small, nervous laugh. She pulled off her hat and ran a hand through the short curls, raising her eyes cautiously to the mirror, getting a shy look at her face, bare and colourless. 'I'm going to do it. Of course I am.'

When the makeup girl came in I left them to it and wandered into the studio, thinking about what she'd said: What will they think of me? The studio was in a warehouse with polished concrete floors, ceiling cross-braces painted black, and big, unlit studio lamps standing like sentinels in the dark corners. A roll of white paper hanging from an overhead brace had been pulled down to the floor and a small swivel stool placed in the centre. An assistant wandered around setting up lights, snapping open diffusers, all the time chatting in a low voice to the photographer, who was bent over the top of his camera, peering into the viewfinder. The photographer was in his early twenties and looked like he wrote for an alt music mag like Mojo or NME, with his faded print Bob Marley T-shirt and his jeans hanging round his arse. They didn't see me come in so I got quite close and I'd listened to them for a few minutes before I sussed they were talking about disabled people modelling.

'There's this whole, like, obsession with it at the moment. Marc Quinn and that pregnant bird, Alison Lapper.'

'Yeah, and Aimee Mullins…' said the assistant. 'Both totally cool.'

'And personally, I'm, like, this is 50, you know, so about time too.'

'I know.'

'It's so overdue, it's just not funny. It's time they-' The photographer broke off suddenly and straightened, looking far off into the corner of the studio. Me and the assistant both turned to see what he was looking at. The dressing-room door had opened and Angeline was there, blinking shakily in the studio lights. She was wearing some silver number that had a neckline half-way down her stomach and looked like it cost half my yearly salary, and she was a totally different person: the makeup girl had slicked her short curls back against her head like a black helmet, fixed false eyelashes on her, and outlined her mouth in lipstick like red plastic. Her hands were shaking but her face was as composed as a shop-floor dummy, almost glassy it was so perfect. She swallowed, then began to walk, slowly, sort of tentatively, putting one foot in front of the other, like she thought she might fall. No one breathed while we took her in and the studio went totally silent, just the sound of her heels clicking on the floor echoing round the high roof. She got to the edge of the lights, hesitated, then stepped on to the paper, walked quickly to the stool and sank on to it like it was a life raft.

'Fuck.' The photographer let out an amazed whistle. Just soft, under his breath. 'Fucking hell.' He shook his head, then tugged up his jeans and went to stand on the paper about two foot in front of her, looking at her curiously, like he was asking a question. There was a long pause. Then he goes, all surprised, 'You're beautiful, Angeline. You're totally fucking gorgeous.'

At first she stared at him, like she couldn't work out what he'd said or who he was. Like he might be telling her off, maybe. Then something inside her sort of cracked open and all this colour spilled out under her skin and her cheeks went pink. 'Thank you,' she whispered shyly. 'Thank you.'

He gave a disbelieving laugh, still staring at her. 'You,' he said, 'are totally, totally welcome.'

Not taking his eyes off her, like she might run away if he did, he walked backwards to the camera. He lifted up his hands — the way you'd pacify a skittish animal.

'Don't move,' he said, glancing down at the viewfinder. 'Don't move.' And before she knew what was happening he'd taken a photo. The flash fired and he was winding on the camera.

Angeline blinked at him. 'Did you do it?'

'Yes,' he said, switching the camera to display and squinting at the screen. He looked up at her. 'See how easy it's going to be?'

It was so weird that afternoon to stand there, outside the lights and watch her kind of… I don't know the word, but expand, maybe. Like she was growing under the attention. It was like each time the flash fired the muscles in her face relaxed a bit more until the doll look softened and she looked, even I have to say it, awesome. And no one was treating her weird or patronizing. No one was stupid about the way she had to sit, half tilted over because she was never comfortable on a stool and had to grip the sides of it. Instead they were treating her like she was something cool.