Simon Beckett - Owning Jacob - SA

“Thank God for that,” she said, as they set off. “I thought I’d have to listen to that wanker whining all the way home. Mind if I smoke?”

Ben did, not liking even the smell of stale joints in his car, but he always felt picky saying so. He told her to go ahead.

She lit up a St Moritz, offering him one which he declined. She put her head back on the seat as she inhaled, gratefully. “He doesn’t like models smoking when they’re in his ‘creations’,” she told him, making a parody of the last word. “Says he won’t have them smelling of ashtrays. I mean, I know he’s the designer, but come on! God, what a tosser.”

Ben smiled noncommittally. He had learned never to engage in slanging sessions with people he worked with. Particularly not when the subject was the one paying his fees.

The girl took another languorous drag of her cigarette, turning her head to look at him.

“A friend of mine worked with you last year,” she said. “You shot a piece on young British designers for Vogue. She was one of the models. Black. Tall, looks sort of Egyptian.”

Ben blanked, then recalled the shoot she was talking about. It had run over several pages in the magazine, and involved several models. It disturbed him that he couldn’t remember one of them. A year ago, that was all. It seemed an age. Back in prehistory, when Sarah had been alive, and Jacob had been their son. A year ago he’d had a family. He felt his stomach drop. “Oh, yeah. Right.”

“She said you were pretty good.” The girl took a final drag of the cigarette, wound the window down an inch and slid it out. It was whipped away in a flare of sparks by their slipstream.

She closed the window and moved around in her seat, so that she was half leaning against the door, facing him.

“I saw about you in the news,” she said.

Ben felt his stomach drop some more.

“They warned us at the agency not to say anything. They didn’t want anybody putting their foot in it and annoying you, but it seems like a lie, sort of, to pretend I don’t know, doesn’t it?”

Ben didn’t want any part in this conversation. He gave a shrug, hoping she would take the hint. She interpreted it as agreement. She nestled down in the seat, settling herself into the topic.

“You must have been really upset. Some of the things they said. I mean, I thought they were really horrible.”

“That’s the press for you.”

“I know but, you know... it seemed so unfair. I don’t know how you could stand it.”

I didn’t have any fucking choice. And when he had he’d made the wrong one. “It’s past now.”

Her hand shot to her mouth. “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—” She put her other hand up with her first, so it looked as if she were praying with clenched fists. “Shit, I shouldn’t have said anything, should I?”

“It’s okay.”

“I just thought... well, I don’t know what I thought. I just wanted to let you know that I knew about it, and... shit, I’m doing it again, aren’t I? Look, I’m really, really sorry. Just ignore me, okay?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“No, but you must think I’m really callous, or stupid, or something...”

The assured pose had left her now. She looked so contrite and young that Ben felt old and shopworn, which didn’t help.

He sighed. “It’s all right. Forget about it.”

She subsided for a while, then asked, “What made you want to be a photographer?”

Christ. He stifled his impatience, knowing she was only trying to be sociable. “I was studying fine art, and started experimenting with film. It went on from there.”

“I didn’t want to be a model. I wanted to be a dancer. But I was too tall and couldn’t dance.”

Ben smiled dutifully. She took it as encouragement, and for the rest of the journey chatted about herself, telling him about her background, her childhood and her favourite foods.

Practising for all the interviews when she was rich and famous, he thought. But at least it didn’t require much input from him. He switched off, nodding occasionally to give the impression he was listening while his mind went off on its own track.

He dropped her outside the house she shared with two other girls, parts of whose life histories he had also been treated to en route.

“Do you want to come in for a drink?” she asked, stooping slightly to talk to him through the open passenger door. “Or there’s a good pub on the corner. Irish. Serves great Guinness.”

“No, thanks, I’ve got a lot to do.”

She said that was fine, she would see him tomorrow.

It was only when he was almost back at his own house that it suddenly struck him that the girl wasn’t just being friendly, that there had been, if not a come-on, then a shy offer behind the invitation. His first reaction was surprise, not so much that it had been made, but that he should have missed it.

His second was dismay that he wasn’t interested anyway.

For a time he’d been able to convince himself that the utter lack of arousal he’d felt since Sarah had died was only normal.

Or, if not normal, then at least understandable. It had only been five months, and it wasn’t as if he wanted to go to bed with anyone else. He still missed her too keenly. By the same token, he didn’t like to think that he might be permanently dead from the waist down.

He could excuse the episode with Zoe as a drunken fiasco.

The guilt and disloyalty he felt for even thinking about such things no doubt added their own contribution. Even so, he knew his own body, and if five months was short in terms of grief, it was still a hell of a long time to go without a hard-on.

On a couple of occasions he’d deliberately tried to provoke a response, but they’d seemed seedy and furtive. The faces and bodies of models and past partners he’d pictured all blurred and became Sarah, and he would feel that he was somehow desecrating her. When he tried remembering the two of them making love, the sense of loss would overwhelm him.

Even the purely physiological reflex, the morning glories, the hangover erections that would pulse in time to the painful throb in his head, seemed to have deserted him. It was as though the sexual side of his nature had been cauterised. If he didn’t even notice any more when an attractive girl more than ten years younger came on to him, he thought, sourly, as he unlocked the studio, it must have been burnt out altogether.

He was planning to make an early start the next morning, but one look at the way the rain was sheeting down told him there was little point. The fashion designer shouted and swore when he called and suggested delaying the shoot until the afternoon, but finally agreed after convincing himself it was his own idea.

Ben phoned Zoe to tell her the new arrangements, then made a flask of coffee and some sandwiches. He couldn’t say if the idea of going to Tunford had presented itself to him before or after he’d decided to postpone the session. He wasn’t even sure why he wanted to go, since it was a weekday and they would probably all be out. But it was better than sitting in the house by himself.

The rain cleared before he reached the town, although it was still overcast. Ben parked in the usual place and headed for the oaks where he’d hidden the previous time. As he neared them he saw two men walking a dog up ahead. He cut deeper into the woods, letting them get well past before dropping down to his hiding place.

The wind and rain had stripped some of the leaves from it, but enough remained to conceal him. He looked down towards the Kales’ house as he gave the branches a shake, dislodging the rain in a silver shower. The garden was empty, but someone was apparently home because the back door was open. He pushed into the trees and sat on the low, collapsible fisherman’s chair he’d brought with him this time.