by Lindsey Kelk
‘More fun than advertising?’
I reached out to run my hand along the cold stone wall of the staircase and kept going.
‘It’s different,’ I said, not wanting to start a row in such an enclosed space. ‘I know you don’t approve but I love working in advertising. It’s a different kind of challenge, though.’
‘Explain it to me,’ Nick’s voice sounded so close but I didn’t dare turn around to look at him in case I fell. The staircase was narrow and winding and stiflingly hot. ‘I want to understand.’
‘To me, both jobs are about telling a story,’ I said, turning another blank corner. Oh good, some more stairs. ‘With advertising, you have a blank page or fifteen seconds of airtime, and someone wants you to tell the story of their product as clearly and convincingly as possible. With photography, it’s the same. There’s a story in every picture and it’s up to you to tell it. It’s really easy for me to see a concept in my head, advertising or photograph, but to put it on paper or on TV and have everyone else get exactly what I was trying to say? That’s the challenge. And I love that.’
‘OK, I get that.’ There wasn’t even a trace of exertion in Nick’s voice. ‘But it sounds like a creative thing, not something you should be whoring out for a Pot Noodle.’
‘I don’t consider it whoring.’ I was concentrating too hard to make air quotes but I was still thinking them. ‘I consider it a challenge.’
‘Convincing people their lives aren’t complete until they’ve bought whatever you’re selling is a challenge?’ he went on. ‘Telling them they aren’t good enough until they’ve bought a new pair of trainers? I don’t think I’ll ever get that.’
‘Maybe I’m just not as precious about things,’ I said, my breath coming shorter, my thighs starting to burn. It was all very sexy. ‘And I don’t think about it that way. I’m just trying to do a good job.’
‘But you’re a photographer now, right?’ His transatlantic lilt came in at the end of the sentence. If I hadn’t been heaving for breath, I might have made a sarcastic comment. ‘Surely you can see that working in advertising eats away at the soul?’
‘Mm-hmm,’ I said, panting. ‘What if I haven’t given up advertising?’
He didn’t reply and I was fairly certain it had nothing to do with his being out of breath. Didn’t he say he’d been for a run this morning? How was he still upright? My legs were so heavy but I refused to give him the satisfaction of asking if we could slow down.
‘Are we nearly at the top yet?’ I asked.
‘No.’ he replied. ‘Not even close.’
I wondered how they would get my body back down if I died in the staircase. Hopefully, they would make Nick carry it back down to teach him a lesson but I assumed he would probably just chuck me out a window and leave me for the Alsatians. Except I hadn’t seen any Alsatians in Italy and I didn’t think I could cope with the indignity of being eaten by a group of dachshunds. So I kept on going. Sweating, heaving and staggering onwards, ever onwards.
Just as I was considering giving up on Nick, life and breathing in general, I turned the last corner and caught a glimpse of a painfully bright sky ahead of me.
‘Thank you Sweet Baby Jesus and all the angels,’ I whispered, scraping the sweat from my forehead and searching for something sacred-looking to kiss. Somewhere along the last one hundred steps, I’d gone from lightly glowing to looking like I’d been in a spinning class for fourteen hours. Which was actually a ridiculous thing to say – I mean, as if I’d ever been in a spinning class in my entire life?
‘Isn’t it amazing?’ Nick grabbed my hand and stepped in front of me, pulling me along a narrow walkway. I was so busy putting one foot in front of the other and waiting for the sparkles in front of my eyes to go away that it took me a moment to look up and realize where we were. ‘Milan might not be the most classically beautiful city in Italy but this is pretty bloody impressive.’
‘We’re on the actual roof,’ I said, my fingers tightening around Nick’s. ‘That is the actual edge of the actual roof!’
‘I know.’ He stopped in front of another, shorter but steeper, open-air staircase. ‘Where did you think we were going?’
‘Somewhere that passed health and safety codes?’ I suggested, pointing at the steps in front of me. ‘I’m not going up there!’
‘Yes, you are,’ Nick said. ‘Because you can’t sit down on this part; pretty easy to fall over the edge, too. That’s much harder up there. You can sit down when we get to the top.’
It was all I needed to hear. Shoving him out of the way, I scrambled up the last twenty steps and emerged on the glowing white roof of the cathedral.
‘It looks a bit like a sci-fi Houses of Parliament,’ I said, staggering along the slanted roof and sitting down on the first stable-looking surface I could find. ‘Don’t you think?’
‘No.’ Nick sat down in front of me and pulled out his phone.
‘Well, I’m not in a rush to go back down.’ I leaned backwards and stared up at the sunny sky while my leg muscles tried to relax. ‘I’m knackered.’
‘Don’t worry,’ he said, pointing his phone directly at me. ‘We’ll take the lift. Smile for the camera.’
‘The lift?’ The few muscles that had managed to calm down tensed right back up. The camera phone clicked and Nick grinned. ‘Delete that immediately, it is not my best angle.’
‘I’d have to agree,’ he replied. Thankfully, I was already so red in the face from my climb, he couldn’t tell I was blushing. ‘So what, you’re not a big fan of heights?’
‘Not the biggest,’ I said, still pissed off about the lift revelation. It was a bit of an understatement, but I didn’t want to embarrass myself, like I had the time Amy made me go on the big wheel at the village funfair and they had to stop it to get me off, mid-panic attack. Not even slightly humiliating for the sixteen-year-old me. ‘But it is nice and quiet up here.’
Nick held up one hand and started ticking things off. ‘You don’t like motorbikes, you don’t like heights, you don’t like climbing stairs—’
‘I didn’t say I didn’t like climbing stairs,’ I interrupted, my chest still heaving.
He didn’t even bother to say anything, just raised his eyebrows and carried on.
‘You don’t like the opera, you like a drink – but from what I can tell, drink most certainly does not like you – you’re jealous, impulsive and can’t walk in high heels for more than five minutes.’
‘Quite the catch.’ I pulled my knees up under my chin, tucking my skirt around my thighs so as not to show all the statues of saints my knickers and wrapped my arms around myself. ‘I’d totally go out with me.’
‘Last night you said you wanted to talk about stuff,’ Nick shoved his phone back into the pocket of his jeans. ‘So, stuff. Go for it.’
‘I’m not very good at talking about myself.’ I dropped my eyes, partly because it was so bloody bright on the roof of the duomo and partly because I didn’t know if I could talk to him and look at him at the same time. ‘Can you give me a brief or something?’
‘You could sell me three different kinds of kitchen cleaner but you can’t tell me what you’re thinking?’ he asked.
I shrugged. ‘You’re the professional question asker, I think you should start.’
‘Tess Brookes …’ He cleared his throat and held out an imaginary microphone. ‘If you could be anywhere in the world, doing anything at all, with anyone at all, where would you be and what would you be doing and who would you be with?’
‘I think I’d be here, doing this,’ I replied, surprised at my own answer. ‘I think I’d be with you.’
‘Not with the mountain climber from London?’ he asked, something difficult to read crossing his face.
‘You mean Charlie?’
Nick pressed a finger against a seam in the roof. ‘Charlie … sounds like a solid sort of bloke.’
‘He – he is.’ I felt sick, talking about him with Nick. Charlie didn’t even know N
ick existed. Nick didn’t know I’d slept with Charlie a week ago. I couldn’t think of a time when I’d felt more like Vanessa, even when I was pretending to be her. ‘He’s brilliant. But things change, don’t they?’
Nick flicked his head in an indeterminate gesture, as though he couldn’t decide whether or not to agree, and looked out over radiating streets of Milan.
‘People change,’ I said. ‘Sometimes I think they don’t know they’re changing until it’s already happened, though. You get so used to being one person, its weird when you wake up and everything is different.’
‘Do people change though?’ He turned back to me, the sky making his eyes seem more blue than grey today. ‘Can people fundamentally change who they are?’
I rested my chin on my knees and felt a trickle of sweat down my spine. ‘I don’t know,’ I admitted. ‘But the things they want can change, even if they’re the same person deep down.’
‘My mum always told me, I want never gets,’ he said with a rueful smile. ‘I think she just meant biscuits at the time but Christ Almighty, that was an important life lesson.’
‘My mum told me a lot of things,’ A montage of tellings-off and head shaking and disappointed expressions ran through my head to a sad soundtrack. ‘Turns out I probably shouldn’t have been listening to her quite so much. What was it you wanted that you didn’t get?’
‘We’re doing you now,’ Nick said, skilfully avoiding the question. This was why he was the professional question asker. ‘So the Charlie thing, you’re telling me you were in love with a man for ten years, you shagged him, he rejected you and now you’re totally over him?’
‘When you put it like that, it does make me sound like a bit of a shallow twat,’ I pointed out. ‘But in a nutshell … I don’t know what to think. I love Charlie; he’s one of my best friends. But maybe that’s all he was meant to be. Someone I love, not someone I’m in love with.’
He pulled a pair of Ray-Bans out of his shirt pocket and slid them over his eyes, even though he had his back to the sun.
‘Because you’re in love with someone else?’ he asked.
Even though I’d said it once, said it and meant it, I opened my mouth and the words wouldn’t come out. I shut it quickly as my stomach flipped, just in case something did come out. Something I liked to call … vomit.
‘Excuse me, could you take our picture?’
A tiny Asian woman tapped me on the shoulder and handed me a camera without waiting for me to agree. A little befuddled, I stood up, wobbling on the slanted roof, and tried to focus on the happy family in front of me.
‘Sorry it’s taking so long,’ Nick shouted. ‘She’s a professional.’
‘Professional what?’ the father replied as everyone in the photo chuckled.
‘Assassin,’ Nick answered and their laughter stopped abruptly. ‘And pastry chef. And do you still babysit on weekends?’
‘Here you go.’ I handed back the camera as the father snatched it from me and hurried his family away from us as quickly as possible, which, given the steep slant of the roof, was not an easy escape. ‘Do you like making people feel uncomfortable?’
‘Me?’ He looked surprised. ‘Yeah, actually, I think I do. I spend so much time trying to make them feel comfortable and getting them to spill their guts, it’s fun to mess with someone a little bit.’
‘Ah …’ I sat back down carefully, combing my damp hair over one shoulder and out of my way. ‘You like manipulating people.’
‘Says the girl who convinces people to pay over the odds for hand sanitizer.’
Ooh, I’d touched a nerve.
‘I’ve never worked on a hand sanitizer campaign,’ I replied as coolly as possible. ‘I was just making an observation.’
‘This is the problem,’ he said, eyes hidden behind the safety of his sunglasses, ‘you don’t really know anything about me.’
I didn’t reply right away but sat staring at him, without a tinted barrier of my own, and thought about my conversation with Paige the day before. I didn’t know him. I didn’t know his favourite film; I didn’t know his middle name or where he grew up or what his dad did for a living. But that didn’t change the way I felt.
‘What do you want me to say?’ I asked. ‘You’re right. I know everything there is to know about Charlie, from his shoe size to when he lost his virginity, but I never felt this way about him. Or anyone. It’s not based on what you like to eat for breakfast – and God knows it’s not an intellectual decision that I’m making. It’s just how I feel. When I’m with you, I feel like me.’
Nick took a deep breath in and breathed it out heavily, rubbing his temples, tanned forearms flexing. ‘I’m older than you, you know.’
‘Good God, no,’ I flung my arm against my forehead in mock horror. ‘Someone call the police!’
A couple nearby looked startled and the man pulled out his phone.
‘Oh no, no,’ I shouted, flinging my arms out wide. ‘It was a joke. No police. No polizia.’
The woman reluctantly lowered her husband’s hand, giving me a ‘just say the word’ look before staring at Nick like she wanted to turn him into stone.
‘I’ve been through this before.’ Nick, oblivious to the drama unfolding around us, carried on talking about his favourite subject. Himself. ‘And it’s all well and good to have feelings but attraction isn’t enough to make a relationship work. What happens when the sex burns out? What’s left then?’
‘The feelings?’ I was confused. ‘Aren’t they separate to the sex?’
‘Are they?’ Nick asked.
‘Wow!’ I felt my eyes widen, combined with a sudden need to punch him really hard. ‘It sounds to me like you’re saying I have an irrational teenage crush on you because you’re good in bed and you’re just in it for the sex.’
‘That’s not what I said.’ He looked away, rubbing his knuckles over his stubbly chin. I shifted around from cheek to cheek. Sitting on a hard, hot roof was not comfortable. ‘But you tell me, what is all this really based on? How can it actually work?’
I closed my eyes and tried to come up with an answer that didn’t involve physical violence. When I was a kid, Amy and I were obsessed with Disney movies and I had always been cynical of how quickly the princesses fell head over heels in love. Yes, Prince Eric was a hot piece but really, Ariel, you’re going to give up your entire life and the ability to breathe underwater to shack up with some bloke you barely know at sixteen?
But with Nick, I felt something I’d never felt before. Not the irresistible urge to make a deal with a sea witch, but there was a pull, a friction. Something that got under my skin and made me want to be near him, even though I sort of wanted to slap the taste right out of his mouth at the same time. And when I was with him, I felt different: calmer and more grounded but still like fireworks were going off in my brain … and in other places. When I was with him, I felt more like myself than I ever had before.
And that was what I wanted to say to him, up there on the roof of the duomo while he patronized me about his advanced age. But instead, I felt myself go hard and cold and pulled away.
‘Someone really fucked you over, didn’t she?’ I heard the words come out of my mouth before I really thought about saying them. ‘Doesn’t being so damaged get exhausting?’
‘That would be an easy answer for you, wouldn’t it?’ Nick replied, laughing. ‘That I had a bad experience with some other woman, that it’s nothing to do with me and you?’
‘You didn’t have a bad experience?’ I asked. I knew that he had, he’d already told me. I just didn’t know the details but I was bloody well going to get them.
‘You’ve got no idea what you’re talking about,’ Nick said. ‘And thanks for proving my point.’
I could feel my temper starting to get the better of me. I’d let him call all the shots so far and enough was enough. What was the worst that could happen? Apart from him breaking my heart and me throwing myself off the roof of a cathedral?
‘No way!’ I leaned forward on my knees and snatched the sunglasses off his face and chucked them behind me.
Somewhere on the level below, I heard a rattle, a clunk and a couple of yelps but nothing sounded fatal so I carried on.
‘Fuck you, if you think you can say something like that and walk away,’ I said, shoving him hard in the chest. ‘I’m sitting here, trying to be honest and talk about actual feelings that I’ve never even had before and you think you can put your Top Gun shades on and laugh at me and treat me like a kid? Fuck off, Nick!’
‘You owe me a pair of Wayfarers,’ Nick said. He was staring at me like I had lost my mind. And I was worried that I might have. ‘I can’t believe you just did that.’
‘Did you miss the part where my mouth was moving and sound was coming out?’ I asked, waving a hand in front of his eyes. ‘Because I can repeat myself if you need me to?’
‘I got the “fuck you” part,’ he said. ‘Was there more after that?’
I blinked back into the moment and looked around at the small audience we had gathered. As soon as they saw him staring, they all looked away. And looked right back again when he turned his attention back to me.
‘I don’t believe you,’ I said while trying to get to my feet with a modicum of grace. ‘One minute you want me, the next minute you’re laughing at me. You want me to tell you the truth and then you don’t want to hear it. I’m not the one who can’t be honest, Nick. You’re so busy covering up all your shit, that you can’t even hear what I’m saying. You can’t see me because you’re still obsessed with something else but I don’t know what that is. I’m going, I can’t do this.’
‘Oh shit!’ He pushed himself up to his feet, Converse proving themselves much more adaptable to a slanted cathedral roof than leather-soled flip-flops, and grabbed my arm. ‘Fine, sit down. I’m an emotionally dead dickhead – is that what you want me to say?’
‘No,’ I said, shaking off his grip. ‘I want you to tell me what you’re thinking without a bitchy comeback or a patronising bag of wank coming out of your mouth.’
