by Karen Swan
‘He’s getting on Amerigo!’ he pointed, oblivious to the fact that she couldn’t see over most people’s shoulders. Being almost five foot ten didn’t mean much when everyone else was that – or taller – too.
‘Great!’ she cried back, wondering if this would mean they could wrap it up now and go get a hot chocolate with marshmallows somewhere. She was beginning to lose feeling in her fingers and toes. ‘Well, listen—’
But he knew her tone of voice too well. ‘I want to see him on the horse!’
She squeezed his leg again, still unable to see Sinterklaas directly. ‘But that’s probably as good as it’s going to get, Jazz. He’s got all the other kids to see now, hasn’t he? And you said Zwarte Piet saw you, right? So we’re good for him coming over. So why don’t we—?’
The sound ripped through the crowd – sharp, shocking. They startled as one, the collective gasp like a muscular contraction, everyone looking left and right for the source of the noise. Everyone except her. In one fluid movement, with a strength she didn’t know she possessed, Lee had Jasper off her shoulders and in her arms and she was running. Sprinting, in fact. Pushing through the crowds, her arms over her child’s head, she cut a line through the bodies that only moments before had seemed so impossible to navigate. She heard words carry through the air but she didn’t stop.
‘Mama, wait! Stop!’ Jasper cried, his voice muffled against her coat as she kept on going, turning off the main drag onto the smaller side streets, one, two, three back . . . Within minutes they were alone, just a dog walker and a couple of cyclists either side of a small canal, chatting away easily with that relaxed stance that marked out the locals from the tourists.
Lee put her son down on the cobbles and looked him over, her eyes frantically roaming for blood, dust, signs of injury . . . He blinked back at her, still, silent, trembling, as she realized she had a stitch. As she realized he looked frightened. As she finally processed what the man beside her had said to his wife in the moment immediately after the ‘bang’.
‘It’s just a groundcracker.’
Chapter Two
Thursday, 26 November 2020
‘I love you.’
‘I love you, mama.’
‘Give me a kiss.’ He reached up with a rosy pucker and planted a kiss on her lips. Her hands clasped his face for a moment, her gaze raking over its lusciousness: those plump cheeks, the thickly fringed long lashes, glossy chocolate-brown eyes. He was such an utterly perfect miniature human, even after five years she still couldn’t quite believe that he was real – well, until she saw the state of his bedroom every morning. ‘Now run along. And when you go for your walk later, try not to send any more cyclists into the canal, please. Pigeons aren’t actually that exciting when you catch them, and I can’t afford the dry-cleaning bills.’
‘Okay,’ he sighed, looking despondent at the prospect of good behaviour.
‘Hmm,’ she replied, staring into those eyes for another moment, before pinching his chin lovingly and straightening up. ‘Off you go, then. I’ll see you later.’
Jasper turned without further prompting and ran up the steps into the kindergarten building, his backpack jostling up and down on his narrow shoulders, his jeans rolled up at the ankles, flashing his Spider-Man socks.
She stood there for another moment after he had disappeared inside, just in case he popped his head back around the corner again – even though he never did – and after another pause, she turned and walked back to the bike she’d left propped against the railings. It always felt strange getting back on it without his bulk and weight on the passenger seat in front of her, the whistling emptiness between her arms as she began pedalling reminding her of life before him. Her life before.
She cycled with her usual lackadaisical manner, rolling languidly over the small humpback bridges and giving way to the trams but not the tourists. The city was still teeming with visitors, none of them yet put off by the cold wind and icy cobbles when there were illuminated Christmas trees, festive shop windows and pretty lights to admire. She almost looked forward to those first bruisingly cold, bitterly bleak months of the new year. It was the only time, it felt, when the locals briefly had their town to themselves again, before spring washed in the first influxes and the tourist cycle geared up again. Amsterdam was beginning to sink under their numbers, that much was certain. Just like the city’s seventeenth-century Golden Age, there were too many people and not enough terra firma to go round. The new mayor was making noises about turning the city car-free, but as far as Lee was concerned, it wasn’t cars that were the problem. The locals hardly used their vehicles in town anyway, everyone by far preferring to get around on foot or by bike or boat. No, it was the tourists and the Instagrammers, all idly walking around down the middle of the cobbled streets, with no concept of moving traffic heading towards them, that drove her mad. People didn’t walk down the middle of Bond Street or the Champs-Élysées or Via Montenapoleone, expecting the traffic to swerve around them, did they? The self-absorption was incredible, the desire for a good selfie overriding even personal safety. Was this a new mutation in human behaviour, she wondered, was it where the human race was heading – the glorification of the ego, the adoration of the ‘I’ transcending everything else? Not for the first time, she figured peace had a lot to answer for. From what she had seen, it bred insularity, selfishness, contempt for community . . .
She tugged her hat down over her ears and tightened her scarf around her neck, feeling the first drops of sleet that were trying to be something more. It was still only November but they were into a hard winter already, with a wet, windy autumn succeeded by a succession of hoar frosts, and there were already reports of first snows falling in the countryside. The canals were beginning to look ever more sluggish and thick as the temperatures stayed low, the trees bare-armed against the northerly winds, and she knew it wouldn’t be long before the sea ice crept through the city too, like mercury bleeding through veins.
She wheeled around the myriad narrow streets, ringing her bell authoritatively at anyone stepping into her path – she had right of way and she would use it – gliding past the handsome black-bricked townhouses whose large square windows still glowed with breakfasting lights, people moving within them like puppet vignettes. Like the tourists, she couldn’t help but glance in. It was one of the city’s quirks that its inhabitants never drew their curtains, living their lives in plain, unabashed view of the neighbours, and this had been one of the hardest things for her to adjust to when she had first come back here. The instinct to scurry and hide, to tunnel down for safety, had become so ingrained that it had felt provocative and downright perverse to just . . . live freely and openly. In plain view. After five years here, she still couldn’t do it.
Her studio was only an eight-minute commute from Jasper’s kindergarten and she hopped off the bike with easy grace, triple-locking it securely through the back wheel and rear triangle against the stands opposite. This was her third bike already this year, and she now approached bike security like Bear Grylls on a picnic.
‘Lee!’ her assistant Bart said with evident relief when she tumbled through the door a few minutes later, shaking out her long, autumn-blonde hair as she pulled off her slouchy black woolly hat. Jasper had chosen it for her for Mother’s Day last year (aided by his overindulgent godfather, Noah) and now she refused to wear any other. It had little black cat ears on it and often prompted amused looks from the tourists as she cycled past, but she couldn’t care less; besides, it was hardly the most eccentric artistic expression in this city. ‘It’s the gallery,’ he said, the phone in his hand, his palm blocking the receiver. ‘Wondering if you’ve reconsidered on the guest list? They’re getting a lot of calls from management agents; the interest is there, Lee—’
‘We’ve already discussed this. It’s still no,’ she said in brusque Dutch – she made a point of only speaking English with Jasper, although most of the city was bilingual anyway and sometimes they all drifted into a for
m of ‘Dutlish’ (sentences in half-English, half Dutch) without even noticing. She shrugged off her thick dark-green-and-black tartan coat and unwound the navy scarf that was double-wrapped around her neck.
‘But the exposure would be off the scale—’
‘Yes, but for all the wrong reasons. I already told you, I don’t want a bunch of C-list celebrities piggybacking the show just to get their faces in the social pages and further their careers. It goes against everything this exhibition is about – authenticity, resilience, truth.’
Bart gave one of his dramatic groans and she looked back at him, tall and rangy with bulging blue eyes behind round-rimmed glasses, once-red hair that had been bleached to the colour of pale swede. She hung up her coat on the hook. They argued the way most people chatted; sometimes she wondered if he even remembered she was technically the boss. ‘I know that, but don’t you think it could all come off as a little . . . dry? Those images are so powerful, nothing’s going to dilute the message. It wouldn’t undermine what you’re trying to say just because there’s a few celebs in pretty dresses milling about.’
She pinned him with a withering stare. ‘Bart, please don’t be suggesting that people can only understand the horrors of assault and battery if Helena Christensen stands beside the pictures of it.’
‘I’m not saying that,’ he protested. ‘I’m suggesting the chances of people getting to know they have an opportunity to understand the horrors of violence will be markedly increased if someone like Helena can bring a spotlight to it.’
She shook her head wearily. ‘So we can’t process grit without glamour? Is war going to need celebrity endorsement too? What the hell is wrong with this society? Don’t you see what’s happening to us? If even war can be trivialized, human suffering diminished . . .’ Talent she respected, but vacuous celebrity, fame for fame’s sake, made her shake with frustration.
‘Lee, you know I admire your principles, but we’ll be suffering too if we can’t pay our bills and afford to eat. You do actually need to sell the images too, as well as exhibit them.’
She stared back at him.
‘A few famous faces would just help with word of mouth and raising the show’s profile. It’s about getting punters through the door, not cheapening your message.’
‘You just said the interest’s already there.’
‘Ugh.’ He rolled his eyes as she tripped him up with his own words.
‘The answer’s no, Bart.’ As far as she was concerned, the conversation was over. She walked over to the coffee machine and pressed the buttons with practised familiarity, closing her eyes as she waited for the tiny cup to fill, trying to ignore the fatigue that feathered her consciousness after another night of only four hours’ sleep. She could only ever sleep in short blocks of oblivion before one horror or another reached out from the past and crept into her dreams.
‘It’s a maybe. I’ll call you back,’ she heard Bart murmur into the phone.
She pretended she hadn’t heard, too tired to take him to task further. She always needed a double dose of caffeine before her day could begin. Even the strongest coffee she had been able to find here couldn’t give her the hit she was used to; she’d spent too many years drinking coffee that could have powered tanks to scale back to the mild blandness of the domestic stuff.
She downed the coffee in a single gulp, pressing the back of her hand to her mouth for a moment, as though feeling her life force gather, before turning back to the room. It was a vast space, with thick timbered beams and a concrete floor. Light poured in through the south-facing windows, creating pools of brightness when the skies were clear. Not today, though. The sky was thick with tumbling clouds, muffling the light; it was like peering through a gauze veil, everything softened and diffused.
Bart walked over to her officiously. ‘While I remember, I’ve booked the car to collect you for the opening night from your place at eight.’
‘Okay.’
‘And ditto for the Hot dinner two weeks Friday.’
‘Okay,’ she mumbled.
‘. . . Are you even listening?’
She was looking around flatly at the space, the centre of her working life now, so different from the landscapes she used to work in. A charcoal linen sofa and a rustic wooden coffee table were set by the far wall and a bolt of black canvas was draped from an overhead arm in the middle of the space, creating a mobile backdrop; a three-legged bar stool was set in the centre. Everything was light, bright, minimal – architect friends called it ‘urban’, but urban to her was rubble, a sinkhole and twisted metal.
She narrowed her eyes slightly, falling into concentration (and a numb despair) about the day ahead of her. For the past two weeks and into the next, she was shooting a select number of assorted new stars who had broken through this year to the upper ranks of stardom, for cult magazine Black Dot’s Hot List. It was considered the touchpaper to the zeitgeist, the kingmaker, and everyone who wanted to be Someone wanted to be in it. Forget running through Sniper Alley in Beirut, this was nearer her idea of hell, but it was a prestigious gig and they paid her an obscene sum to do it. She had sworn this year would be her last time at the helm – but then she’d said the same thing last year and the year before that too, and Bart had taken to teasing her that she was ‘pulling a Daniel Craig’ – feeling tainted by her association with something so unashamedly commercial, but not quite able to turn down the money . . .
She felt a disdain for her subjects, all chasing fame as though it meant a damned thing – popularity, talent, success – when in fact it was pure vanity and ego. None of the stars sitting for her even objected to being cast as a redux of someone else already famous and so far she’d done the ‘new Naomi’, the ‘new Tarantino’, the ‘new Ronaldo’, the ‘new Ellen’, the ‘new Trudeau’ . . . Today they had the ‘new Kit Harrington’, though she didn’t go in much for TV herself. What was his name? Max something . . .
Whatever, she already knew today was going to require juggling his ego (her role) and his PR’s nerves (Bart’s). A high-profile shoot like this, for a publication like Black Dot . . . these were his first steps into the big time and he was going to want the fantasy – the fawning, the prepping, the flirting. They all did. Her only nod to that was getting Bart to buy the king-size, traditionally baked stroopwafels from the Lanskroon Bakery on his way in.
‘So remind me – this guy we’ve got today . . .’ she asked Bart, walking over to the set and picking up a speck of lint that would glow like a firefly against the black drapes.
‘Matteo Hofhuis.’
‘Hofhuis, right.’ She clicked a finger as though in recognition, though her eyes remained blank. A frown developed. ‘And who is he again? Why do we care?’
‘Played the lead in the Netflix series Liar Liar and now the object of housewife fantasy across Europe. Supposedly Barbara Broccoli’s eyeing him as the new Bond.’
Lee emitted a small groan.
‘And he’s just been announced as a new Unicef ambassador.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Oh God, of course he has,’ she muttered.
‘Bills, Lee.’ Bart gave a shrug every bit as cynical as her words. Lee walked back over to the two-metre-long workbench where she saw he had left Matteo’s file open. She grabbed her heavy-rimmed glasses and studied the headshots again – black-and-whites, slumped on a chair, muscular legs long and splayed, his shirt half-open to reveal gym-honed muscles, aggressive eye contact with the camera. He was good-looking and he knew it. She looked at the other images. Tuxedo looks. Barefoot in jeans with a chunky jumper. So far, so clichéd. He was the handsome stranger, the boy next door . . . She glanced across at the rail of clothes the stylist had sent over – some well-cut suits, crisp shirts, an overcoat, a fine roll-neck sweater. Everything was manicured, precise, so very tasteful and safe. His managers clearly wanted her to stay on message.
The sound of voices in the hall made her and Bart both look up. They could hear the PR’s shrill voice as she issued directives. He
was here already? He was twenty minutes early. Christ, he really was keen. The rest of her own team – hair and make-up – wasn’t even here yet.
‘Pastries?’
‘Done,’ Bart murmured, jerking his head in the direction of the Sub Zero fridge just as the door burst open and a young twenty-something redhead in black skinnies, boots and a grey blazer led the charge.
‘Hi! Lee?’ she asked, almost breaking into a run at the sight of her standing by the bench.
Lee shook her hand, forgetting to smile for a moment. ‘Hey.’ She pushed her glasses further up her nose, feeling extra tall and mannish in her battered boyfriend jeans, slouchy polo neck and hi-tops compared to this petite waif. It wasn’t a particularly unusual feeling for her, nor an unwelcome one.
‘I’m Claudia, Matt’s PR.’
‘Hi, Claudia. Lee.’
‘We’re so pleased this was booked. It’s been a personal ambition of Matt’s to work with you. He’s a huge fan of your work.’
‘Oh. How kind.’ Lee knew the ‘work’ in question was her commercial stuff, the images where she was paid to flatter, not reveal.
‘No, really – he says you’re a visionary. That your eye is completely unsurpassed. He says no other photographer—’
‘—can get to the essence of someone the way you do.’
She looked up to find the man himself standing there. His hair was longer than in his photographs, a five-day beard getting to the point where it was soft and not scratchy (Lee knew beards). Only his eyes remained true to the pictures she had seen – beautiful, arrogant, imperious. She was expected to fall in love with him, she already knew, even though he had to be eight, ten years younger than her.
As he came over with his hand outstretched, she saw him realize he was only an inch or so taller than her. They stood toe to toe, almost eye to eye, hands clasped. ‘It’s a real pleasure to finally meet you, Lee.’
‘And you, Matteo.’
