Nicci French - Until it's Over

‘I don’t know. Perhaps not. You’re doing most of the talking: I’m just letting you.’

‘Oh. Well, I won’t say anything else, then.’

But he took me by the wrist, pulled me to a halt again and stared at me in the streaming rain. ‘Listen. You know you said I didn’t even see you. It’s not true. I see you. Here, look at your cheekbones, you could be from Lapland. Your eyes are set wide apart. You’ve got quite a sharp collarbone’ – with one finger, he traced it – ‘and strong arms and a flat stomach. On your shoulders, under your shirt, you’ve got small prominent knots of muscle. But then you’ve got these full breasts and -’

‘You’re talking about me as if I wasn’t here. I don’t like it. Stop it.’

‘I’d like to photograph you.’

‘I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.’

‘All the contradictions.’

‘Didn’t you hear me? I’m not one of your subjects.’

‘A beautiful object, an object of desire.’

‘Oh, please.’

‘Black-and-white. By a window.’

‘I don’t think so.’

He put his hands on my shoulders and looked at me. ‘I’d like to photograph you, Astrid,’ he said softly. ‘Please?’

‘I tell you what. Let me look at your other pictures and then I’ll see.’

‘Come on, then.’

He set off at a stride, and I had to almost run to keep up, the heavy bag bumping against my shins. We got to the house and he took it from me, then helped me out of his sodden jacket. There was the tinny sound of a radio coming from the top floor, but otherwise it seemed empty. We went up the stairs together. He opened the door of his room and looked at me.

‘Now?’ I asked, running my hands through my dripping hair and feeling my jeans cling to my legs.

‘Unless you don’t want to.’

‘Of course I want to,’ I said crossly. ‘I’m just wet through and – oh, never mind. Show me.’

Owen’s room looked different now, in the daytime, when I was fully conscious. The previous tenant, a friend of a friend of Miles, had been called Annette. She was an insomniac accountant who used to make cakes in the middle of the night, and who’d left to move in with her boyfriend when she got pregnant. She had almost parodically female tastes: the walls had been pink, the curtains lilac, with a frilly valance round the bed to match; there was a dressing-table with a folding mirror in the corner – I hadn’t known anyone of our age ever had things like that – and several soft toys heaped up in the armchair. It was very different now. The pink had been painted over with pale grey; the bed had been replaced by a futon, there were dark blinds instead of curtains; a dressmaker’s dummy stood in one corner, draped with scarves, and photographs hung on the walls.

‘Yours?’ I asked Owen.

‘Only that one.’ He pointed at a black-and-white picture of a swimmer, her body almost entirely submerged; the water, and the light that bounced off it, distorted the figure into a series of impossible angles, so that the image became almost abstract. ‘The others are by friends.’

There were photographs leaning against every wall, and more stacked on the table under the window. I felt apprehensive and self-conscious.

‘Why don’t you sit there?’ he said, gesturing to the chair by the side of the table. ‘Here, rub your hair with this towel.’

I sat down awkwardly. Owen picked up a stack of photographs and put them in front of me.

‘This is some of my more recent work,’ he said formally.

I stifled the impulse to giggle or run away. ‘Right,’ I said.

‘I’ve been working on them during the last couple of weeks. I’m trying to put together a portfolio.’

I turned the first one and was relieved: it was simply of water, full of ripples and glancing light – like the image on the wall, but without the human figure. Then I felt a quiver of shock run through me. It wasn’t just water after all: there was a face beneath the dislocated surface, barely visible, eyes staring up, hair spread out like weeds. Like a suggestion of a drowned woman’s face.

I turned over the next one. A naked woman was lying on a stained mattress, as white and flawless as a marble statue, her long hair rippling over her face so that it was only possible to see her open mouth. One hand was flung over the mattress and open, with writing on the palm that I couldn’t decipher; the other was between her legs. It was both erotic and impersonal and I shivered in my clammy clothes.

‘Your women don’t have faces,’ I said.

Owen didn’t reply, just turned over the next picture for me.

A stubby thorn bush in winter, looking as unyielding as metal. That was all right.

Another naked woman – the same as the first? – this time just standing very straight and letting herself be scrutinized by the camera lens.

The same woman, her hands tied with rope, a calm smile on her face.

‘Who is she?’ I asked.

‘Her’s name’s Andrea. We studied photography together.’

I felt a jab of something. Was it jealousy? ‘Does she have a problem doing these?’

‘Why?’ said Owen. ‘Would you?’

‘I don’t know what to make of them,’ I said. ‘I mean, they’re powerful, but I don’t know.’

‘They’re just exercises,’ said Owen, pulling out another print.

A foot, twice the size of real life. You could see every detail – the chipped nail, the hairs on the toes, the tiny specks of dirt.

Like a slap in the face, a sudden flamboyance of colour and life: an ordinary street scene, but Owen had made it look like an exotic carnival, as if Hackney was Brazil. I smiled.

Black-and-white again. A woman sitting by a window, her back to the camera, her head completely bald, her spine running in a knotted track up her smooth back.

The same woman close-up and facing the lens, with her eyes unnaturally wide. In them I could clearly see the reflection of the photographer. I put out a finger and touched it.

‘You,’ I said.

‘Self-portrait.’

Another tree, charred but with shoots growing from its blackened stump.

‘Trees, water and naked women,’ I said. ‘Lots of your photographs don’t look like photographs.’

‘What do they look like?’

‘Paintings. Sculptures. I don’t know.’

‘Do you want to see any more?’

‘Bring it on.’

He put several more prints on the table. I worked my way through them, and it felt like work, under his unblinking gaze. I laid the final one aside and swivelled round in the chair.

‘Well?’ he asked.

‘They’re troubling.’

‘They’re meant to be troubling. At least you didn’t just say they were nice.’

I pulled my shirt over my head. ‘No,’ I said slowly. ‘They’re not nice.’

I unclipped my bra and dropped it on the floor. Owen was looking at me with an intensity I’d never seen before, even from him. I kicked off my shoes and peeled off my wet jeans and knickers.

‘You want me to photograph you?’ he said.

I shook my head.

Afterwards he lay beside me on the bed, stroking my stomach.

‘So is it still a no?’ he said.

‘That’s right.’

‘Don’t be such a prude.’

I shook myself free of his touch, got out of his bed and started to pull my clothes on. I had the impulse to shout at him but I resisted it and when I spoke it was in a calm tone. ‘We live in the same house, but until yesterday we’d scarcely exchanged a word. Then in the last twenty-four hours we’ve – what? We’ve fucked. Three times, though the first time it was like a fight and the second time you had your eyes shut all the way through, and then there was this. I have no idea what you think of me. Maybe you dislike me. Maybe you have contempt for me. Maybe you don’t think about me at all. I would feel really uncomfortable letting you stare at me through the lens of your camera in the way you’ve stared at these other women.’