About a Girl (26 page)

‘Calm down,’ I whispered to myself, closing my eyes and breathing deeply. ‘All that really matters is that you take a good photo tomorrow.’

I opened my eyes and felt a stillness that had been missing. Hands clamped onto my Canon, I looked around for a suitable subject. A little way down the bay, sitting next to an unlikely-looking surfboard, was Al. He was too far away to shout to but close enough to snap. He looked deep in thought, his tanned face creased into a dignified mask of lines and wrinkles. Underneath his big white beard, his profile was strong and regal ? he looked like a lion of a man. I was sure he must have been ridiculously handsome when he was younger, but at that exact moment, caught on camera, he just looked so sad. I wondered if he was thinking about his wife. Or his job. Or if he was thinking about all of it at once, like me.

‘
Aloha
, Vanessa,’ he shouted, still staring out to sea. ‘Get any good pictures?’

‘Um, I did actually,’ I shouted back, walking as quickly as I could on sand to where Al was still settled. ‘Sorry. That was really rude of me.’

‘An artist finds her inspiration in many strange places,’ he said with a welcoming smile, patting the sand beside him. ‘And who am I to stand in the way of art?’

‘Thank you.’ I folded my legs underneath me, careful not to show my new old friend my knickers, and nodded towards his board. ‘Been surfing?’

‘I have,’ he nodded. ‘I think it keeps me young. My son thinks it will get him his inheritance sooner. So how is it all going? The photo shoot?’

Wincing, I stroked my camera and shrugged. ‘I haven’t actually taken any proper pictures yet. Lots of random stuff, but there’s been a bit of a cock-up with the job and so we’re waiting for everyone to sort it out. I’m supposed to do the shoot with some models tomorrow and I’m bricking it.’

‘You don’t like models?’ he asked. ‘That’s got to be hard for a fashion photographer?’

‘I have a confession.’ I rested my camera on my bare knees and wrapped my hands under my legs. ‘I haven’t actually ever worked with models before.’

‘Oh.’ Al had the decency to look concerned, but his eyes were still sparkling and I had a very strong feeling that he was about to laugh. ‘So you really haven’t been back in the photography game for long?’

‘Not that long, no.’ I looked at the screen on the back of the camera and flicked through the shots of Al. It was easier than looking him in the eye. ‘I was in advertising. And I lost my job. And now I’m here.’

He really didn’t need any more details than those.

‘You didn’t want to get another job in advertising?’

‘Um, this came up quite suddenly,’ I said, not strictly lying. ‘So I thought I’d give it a shot, no pun intended.’

‘Let me see those pictures of me.’ He held his hand out for the camera and, once again, I handed it over. He scrolled through quickly, umming and ahhing, occasionally shaking his head and then nodding. ‘Did you love your old job?’ he asked, passing the camera back to me. ‘Were you good at it?’

‘I loved it,’ I said. ‘And I was
so
good at it. But I got made redundant. No reasoning behind it. It didn’t make any sense.’

‘Well, that is hard,’ he replied with a thoughtful look. ‘I do understand how you must be feeling.’

‘It’s just shaken me a bit,’ I admitted. ‘I’ve always known what I’ve wanted. Or I thought I did. There was a plan. Now I don’t know.’

‘Perhaps it’s time for a new plan,’ Al suggested. ‘Maybe it was just time for a change and you didn’t realize. I know I said this yesterday, but your pictures really are very good. You’ve a talent, Vanessa ? you’re a very bright girl.’

‘I don’t feel that bright at the moment.’ I took the camera back and nursed it in my lap.

Folding his arms and stretching out his legs, Al clucked and tutted. ‘I feel like that all the time ? everyone does. You’d think things would get easier as you get older, but they don’t.’

‘Have you made a complete cock of yourself over a rubbish man as well?’ I asked, only wondering afterwards as to whether or not I should use the word ‘cock’ in front of my Hawaiian granddad.

‘Sort of. Probably not in the same way, though.’

‘It’s so embarrassing.’ I rested my head on my knees, unable to look directly at him. ‘I can’t believe I fell for it.’

‘This is a man here on the island? Not someone back at home?’ he asked. I nodded. ‘Holiday romance, then?’

‘Something like that,’ I replied, still face first into my own knees. ‘I thought I could do the whole fling thing, but turns out I can’t. For some reason I keep on thinking I can do things and then it turns out I can’t.’

‘I’m probably not very good at giving young ladies advice on the modern man,’ Al said, patting my shoulder in an awkward dad way that was oddly reassuring. ‘I was married for a very long time and I wasn’t much of a cad before my Jane, but I can’t see what good it’s doing you walking up and down the beach at sunset crying over someone after three days.’

‘I know you’re right,’ I said, looking up and running a finger under each eye. Why was today the day I’d decided to experiment with eyeliner? ‘I’m just being stupid. Maybe I’m still jet-lagged or I have pineapple poisoning or something. It’s probably just that I’m stupid, though.’

‘Never call yourself stupid,’ he said, looking stern. Or as stern as it was possible for a man with a big white beard to look. ‘What would your dad tell you to do?’

‘I honestly don’t know,’ I shrugged. ‘We don’t really talk. Haven’t seen him in years.’

‘I didn’t talk to my son for a long time,’ Al said with a sympathetic smile. ‘He was always much closer to his mother.’

‘Are you close now?’ I asked, twisting my curls into a long ponytail and fluffing the ends. ‘With your son?’

‘I wouldn’t say close,’ he said. ‘After his mother died, we didn’t seem to have an awful lot to say to each other.’

‘It can’t be easy, being a parent.’ I was trying to be diplomatic, but really I couldn’t imagine someone not loving having Al for a dad. Mine had always been more interested in his football and
Star Trek
than me and my sisters, but then mine was a bit shit.

I watched as Al scooped up a handful of sand and let it run through his fingers. ‘It isn’t easy. But it’s not easy being the child sometimes either, is it?’

The powdery white sand filtered back onto the beach and I was sad for a moment that he would never be able to pick out exactly the same handful ever again. Rubbing my dry, sandy fingertips against my temples, I was starting to think I might be missing the bigger picture. My life had been so tiny and so utterly consumed by Charlie and my work that I’d let everything else slip past me without even noticing. I even used worrying about Amy as an excuse not to worry about myself. Now, sitting here on the beach with my stand-in granddad a million miles away from home, it was much easier to see that what had really changed in all of this was me.

‘Ahh, look at that,’ Al sighed as the sun finally tipped over the horizon, blending the pretty teal sea into the deep, dark blue sky. ‘Beautiful. How can we be sad when we’re looking at that? Now, let’s see if we can’t put a smile back on your face.’

‘I’m just being stupid.’ I looked up at the sky, already streaked with red and pink and dotted with stars starting to sparkle. My head was beginning to hurt from too much thinking and not enough mai tais. ‘Like you said, it’s only been a couple of days. How upset can I really be over someone I’ve known a couple of days?’

‘I asked Jane to marry me a week after we met,’ Al said, stroking his beard. I couldn’t say why but it really did seem to give his statement more gravitas. ‘I knew right away that she was the one for me.’

‘You proposed after a week?’ I blew a stray strand of hair away from my face and smiled. ‘That’s incredible. You just knew? Both of you?’

‘Well, she didn’t say yes right away.’ He laughed like Brian Blessed and it made me so happy. ‘It took me another three months to wear her down.’

‘What made her change her mind?’ I asked, trying to imagine a young Al courting his sweetheart. Nope, couldn’t do it. All I could see was Santa down on one knee in front of Mrs Claus.

‘She said she’d never met anyone who made her so angry and so happy at the same time,’ he said with a wistful smile. ‘And really, I didn’t give her a lot of choice. Once I set my mind to something, I don’t let it get away. Life’s too short for dilly-dallying.’

‘Isn’t it a bad thing when someone makes you angry?’ A memory of my mum and dad screaming at the kitchen table while I tried to eat my spaghetti hoops in peace popped into my mind. ‘I mean, aren’t you supposed to marry your best friend?’

‘She was my best friend,’ he replied with a firm nod. ‘Doesn’t mean we always agreed on everything. But we understood each other. She brought out the best in me, challenged me to keep going. You’ve got to have that spark, that little kick, otherwise it gets boring.’

I wrinkled my nose and wondered whether or not he was right. Amy always said the reason she and Dave didn’t work out was because they were too alike, that she was bored; but that was what made me love Charlie so much. I loved that he could finish my sentences; I loved that he knew how I wanted my tea without having to ask. We never fought. He never made me sad. Well, not intentionally. Charlie always told me how clever I was, how he was so impressed by whatever I was doing. He knew everything about me and I knew everything about him. We were the perfect fit. But now, with Nick … I couldn’t think of anyone who made me so mad so easily. He clearly thought he was much more intelligent than I was, that he knew better than I did, that he was some sort of sexual superman. But I wanted him so badly. The idea of him and Paige together at the waterfall made my skin crawl. I could live with knowing he wasn’t mine, but the idea of him being with someone else, right now, was another thing altogether. I looked down at my hands, curled into tight little fists. All the better to punch him with.

‘Tell me about the photos you’ve been taking.’ Al interrupted my reverie with a cough and a question. ‘You must have got some beauties around the island?’

‘I have,’ I nodded. ‘This place is gorgeous. But I am not looking forward to tomorrow.’

‘Ah, the models.’ He pulled a thoughtful face. ‘Well, won’t that be interesting?’

‘It will be interesting,’ I confirmed. That was an understatement. ‘The art director has this ridiculous concept planned … I don’t know. It feels weird to me. But what do I know?’

‘You are the photographer,’ Al reminded me. ‘So I should imagine you know quite a bit?’

‘This is true,’ I said, taking a breath. ‘I am Vanessa the photographer. Good point.’

‘I do like you, Vanessa,’ he said, giving me another blast of his booming laugh. ‘You’re a little bit odd, like all the best people.’

‘Thank you.’ I laughed back and felt myself relax just a fraction. ‘Let’s hope the models feel the same. I’m starting to panic a bit. Pre-shoot nerves, I suppose.’

‘You’ll be fine. You know you will. You’re definitely someone who doesn’t walk away from something until it’s right, I can tell,’ he said. ‘Takes a perfectionist to know one.’

‘I guess.’ He would definitely have been right about me once upon a time. I bit my lip and looked him right in the sparkly old eye. ‘I just … I don’t know. I’ve had so much stuff go wrong lately. I really, really need this to go well. It’s like, if I can get this right, maybe everything else will be all right as well. If I can just make one thing perfect, I can get the rest of my life back on track.’

‘That’s a lot of pressure to put on one photograph,’ Al said. ‘I don’t want to worry you, but I’m not entirely sure that’s the way life goes.’

‘Well, in that case,’ I said, breathing in through gritted teeth, ‘let’s just hope the models don’t tear me to tiny little pieces.’

‘Models.’ He made a noise that sounded a bit like a cat throwing up. ‘I’ll never understand it. Such a funny thing. Women are odd creatures.’

‘Models?’ I asked. ‘I don’t think they actually count as women. They’re a different species. I honestly think it must say so on their passports.’

‘It just never made sense to me,’ he said with a chuckle. ‘Male models aren’t as rich as female models because men don’t want to look at a better version of themselves in a jumper they’re about to buy. And yet women insist on putting these perfect-looking creatures in clothes that have been pulled and pinched and altered beyond all recognition and then spend six months out of the year starving and crying because they don’t look like the model in the dress when they buy it. Of course they don’t look like the model! No one looks like a model. You’re all mad.’

‘No, I’m with you.’ I couldn’t really argue with the man ? he was perfectly correct. ‘Fashion magazines are not my friends.’

‘Really?’ He looked at me and smiled. ‘I’d keep that to myself tomorrow if I were you.’

I blushed and nodded. I wished there was a Wisdom of Al app for my iPhone. If nothing else, maybe I could just record his laugh and play it whenever I got a bit down.

‘Now, I’ve got to go and see a man about a dog,’ he said, jumping up and yanking his surfboard out of the sand. I made a mental note to enroll in yoga classes when I got home and hoped he hadn’t heard my knees crack as I staggered to my feet. ‘And I imagine you have to go and do some fabulous fashiony photography things.’

‘Not really, but I could pretend I have if that would help?’

With a surfboard under one arm, he gave me a scouting salute with the other. ‘Have a lovely evening, Vanessa. I do believe this chat has given us both quite a lot to think about.’

He was not wrong.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Starving, emotionally exhausted and without a drop of booze in the entire cottage, I called the main house in search of something to eat and lots of things to drink, but instead of sending down dinner, they sent down my fairy gayfather. Fifteen minutes later, Kekipi had selected me an outfit from the clothes Paige had left, brushed my hair out into loose waves and waited patiently while I cack-handedly applied as much make-up as I knew how. If I was going to hag it up in Hawaii, I was going to do it properly. I knew I’d achieved the look we were going for when I emerged from the bedroom to a double thumbs-up from Kekipi.