by Mark Edwards
‘He’d better not ask me to pose like that,’ Isabel had said. ‘I don’t understand how it’s fashion photography when half these women aren’t wearing any clothes.’
Nina had laughed. ‘All right, Grandma. Look, he does a lot of respectable portraits too.’ She navigated to another section of the site, where lots of famous faces – their bodies fully clad – stared out, all of them appearing effortlessly cool, the kind of people who looked like they owned the world. ‘Please can I come along?’ she’d asked. ‘I’d love to meet him.’
‘Sure.’
Gavin Lawson’s studio was based on the edge of an industrial estate on the outskirts of Croydon. Isabel and Nina pulled up outside and looked up at the building. It was a Victorian red-brick warehouse with arched windows, the brickwork blackened in places as if it had succumbed to a fungal disease.
‘Not what I was expecting,’ Isabel said.
Nina was more impressed. ‘It’s gritty. Authentic. That’s his style.’
They got out of the car. It was freezing and Isabel hugged herself, shivering. Nina, apparently impervious to the cold, gave her a concerned look.
Isabel had told Nina about Darpak’s confession. Nina was furious with her brother and had wanted to have it out with him, but Isabel had stopped her. It would only make things more complicated, and she hadn’t yet decided what she was going to do. She and Darpak were in a strange, emotionally raw place. She wanted to both cling to him and push him off a high building. They were drinking a lot, fighting and having angry sex – the kind of sex that went against everything she taught. There was no slow build-up of pleasure here. It was fast, intense, destructive. Sex as a weapon that damaged both parties. Last night she had bitten him so hard she’d drawn blood.
And after the sex, which left her high but fractious, she would carry on drinking. On top of that, she couldn’t remember when she’d last managed to sleep without a pill. In the mornings, when she needed to go to work, the only thing that got her out of the house was a bump of speed, or a little pink pill that got her moving. Downers and uppers. She knew how insane it was but she didn’t have the strength right now to fight it.
‘Come on,’ Isabel said. ‘Let’s get this over with.’
Stepping into the building was like going through a door that connected the Arctic to the Sahara. Vast iron radiators pumped out heat, and she felt herself perspiring beneath her trench coat. Going up the stairs to the studio, which was on the fourth floor, footsteps echoing around her, Isabel had to stop for a moment. She was out of breath and all she wanted to do was go home, crawl back into bed. But she had to get through this. If only she’d brought some of the little pink pills with her.
They knocked on the door of the studio and it was opened by a skinny man with peroxide hair. One of Gavin’s assistants, Isabel presumed. He held it open a crack and peered out at them, like a butler opening the door of a creepy old mansion.
‘We’re here for a photo shoot,’ Izzy said.
‘Isabel Shah?’ He squinted at Nina. ‘Who’s this? Gavin doesn’t like hangers-on.’
How rude. Isabel was about to tell him to piss off when a booming voice from behind the skinny man said, ‘What the fuck is going on?’
It was Gavin. He barged past his assistant, pushed the door open and stood there, looking them both up and down. Isabel noticed how his eyes lingered on Nina’s body: a second on her legs, then her breasts, before he grinned broadly.
‘Ignore this little tosspot,’ he said in a loud voice. ‘Come in, come in.’
He hustled them into the studio and, to Isabel’s surprise, pulled her into a hug.
‘So good to see you,’ he said. ‘How’s it all going? Sorry I had to stop coming to your sessions. Been so busy, you know? It was bloody great, though. You’re a fucking guru.’
He was wearing a vintage Blondie T-shirt and ripped jeans, and had an odd smell: sweat and something else, a sour odour she couldn’t identify. He let Isabel go and threw his arms around Nina, squeezing her as if she were a long-lost friend. He wasn’t like this when he came to Mind+Body. But he was on his own turf here. Or maybe he felt that he had to be in character. The edgy, gregarious artist.
He turned from them to address the room. As well as the skinny blonde guy, there were three other people, two men and a woman. They were all young, hip, sullen.
‘Everyone,’ Gavin announced in that booming voice, his South London accent far more pronounced than it had been when she’d heard him talk before. ‘Everyone, this is Isabel. The Queen of Pleasure.’
She cringed, which made him laugh.
‘Don’t be embarrassed. What you do is amazing. Fucking amazing.’ He turned to his audience and said it again, loudly. Was he on something? She noticed a vein throbbing in his temple and wondered what he was taking and whether he’d offer her any.
Instead he said, ‘Martin, get these women a drink.’
Martin, a skinny man with cheekbones to die for, hurried over. ‘What can I get you? Vodka? Gin? Just a beer?’
It was midday. Isabel laughed, was about to ask for a cup of tea or a water, but heard herself saying, ‘I’d love a beer.’
Nina frowned and Gavin noticed. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘I’m driving. Can I have a coffee?’
‘Fuck that,’ Gavin said. ‘Leave your car here, get a cab. The newspaper will pay. Martin, give this gorgeous woman a beer. And one for me.’
Martin came back with three bottles of export lager and handed them out. Gavin held his bottle aloft. ‘To pleasure,’ he said.
They clinked bottlenecks and Isabel said, ‘To pleasure.’
Gavin winked at her. ‘Making you rich, eh?’
‘How’s Carmen?’ Isabel asked, ignoring what he’d said.
‘Who?’
‘Your girlfriend?’
‘Oh. Her.’ He laughed. ‘That wasn’t my girlfriend, just a model. I fancied seeing what it was all about and she was up for it so we came along. I have to say, it’s genius what you do.’
‘Thanks.’
‘I bet you get a lot of blokes wanting to come along on their own, don’t you? I mean, what a place to meet women who are into sex and don’t have loads of boring hang-ups.’ He guffawed. ‘Anyway, let me start setting up and we can show the world how beautiful you are. You’re going to have them queuing up and down the street after this.’
She smiled. ‘That’s the plan.’
‘Hey,’ he said, ‘I really want to ask you something – about your poltergeist.’
She was speechless.
‘Yeah, I found an old article about you online that said you had a haunting when you were a kid. Fucking scary stuff. Maybe when the shoot’s over you can tell me all about it.’
‘Oh, please, no.’
‘She doesn’t like talking about it,’ Nina said. ‘I don’t know why. I think it’s fascinating. It gives me goose bumps hearing about it all. The phone calls and the flying cups . . .’
‘Nina, please!’ Isabel needed to shut this conversation down. ‘Could we get on, please? I have to go to work after this.’
‘Yeah, sure.’ Gavin took a couple of strides away then stopped. He turned back and gave Nina the once-over again. ‘So you’re a model, yeah?’
Isabel expected Nina to roll her eyes, but she looked like this was the best thing anyone had ever said to her. ‘No, I’m just Izzy’s assistant.’
‘Yeah, yeah, I know you’re her assistant. But you must have done a bit of modelling, looking like that.’
‘No.’
He seemed genuinely shocked. ‘Not interested in showing the world what you’ve got, eh? Shame.’
Then he strode off, grabbing a camera and going into a huddle with two of his assistants. Nina watched him go, apparently contemplating what he had said about her being a model.
‘This place is pretty impressive on the inside,’ Isabel said.
It was a large, open space, with exposed brick walls. A plain white backdrop was set up at the
far end of the room, with huge lights on wheels positioned on either side. There were a couple of battered leather couches, piles of equipment all over the place – cameras and wires and light meters – and, on the walls, a dozen or so massive canvases. These canvases mostly featured pictures of Gavin with models, or women on their own, most of them semi-naked. The photos were familiar from Gavin’s website. There were also more sober, fully dressed photos of celebrities, plus a close-up of an elderly woman’s face. Isabel approached it, admiring the way he had captured the woman’s beauty, the lines in her face like a map of her experience. It was such a contrast to the other works, where all the women appeared to be under twenty-five. She had thought it when she’d looked at his site: if Gavin’s work was so gritty, why did all his subjects have such smooth skin? This one picture made her respect him as a photographer; as an artist.
‘That’s Gavin’s mum,’ Martin said, coming up behind her.
‘It’s an incredible picture.’
‘Yeah. He dotes on her. He says she’s the one woman in the world he truly respects.’
He drifted away before she could respond – the one woman? – and she went over to Nina, who had snapped out of her trance.
‘Gavin’s amazing, isn’t he?’ Nina said.
‘I don’t know about that.’ Isabel took a swig of her beer. The heat in the room was making her feel faint. This was not her natural environment. Again she thought of her bed back home, the smooth sheets, her soft duvet. She had an unopened bottle of Bathtub gin too. She sipped her beer, wishing she’d asked for something stronger.
Gavin came jogging over to them, rubbing his palms together. His only female assistant – who he presumably didn’t respect – stood beside him. She had auburn hair, similar to Jessica’s, and was wearing a tight T-shirt and ripped jeans. There was a red dragon tattoo on her forearm, breathing fire that licked at the back of her hand.
‘Right. Izzy. Do you want to go with Amber here to choose some clothes for the shoot?’ As he spoke, Gavin put his hand on the small of Amber’s back and leaned in to her, so close she must have been able to feel his breath on her bare arms. She didn’t respond in any way.
‘What’s wrong with what I’ve got on?’ Isabel asked. She was wearing a black cashmere top and loose-fitting trousers.
‘It’s a tad boring,’ Gavin said. ‘Come on, you’re all about sex and pleasure. We want the pictures to reflect that. We should show a bit of skin.’
Isabel gestured to a nearby canvas, showing a young woman on all fours on one of the leather couches, her legs apart, with Gavin kneeling behind her, fully clothed. In the photo he was grinning, his tongue protruding, like a grotesque horny gargoyle.
‘You want me more like that, do you?’
He snorted. ‘Nah, you’re too classy. But you can still be classy and sexy.’
‘I’m a businesswoman. Just because my business involves sexual pleasure, that doesn’t mean I need to flash the flesh.’
‘Yeah, but—’
‘I’m not going to show any skin, Gavin.’
He sighed. ‘All right, all right. But can we at least do something with your hair and make-up? Mess it up a bit.’
‘Like I’ve just been fucked over the boardroom table?’
His eyes lit up. ‘Exactly! Amber, you can do that, can’t you?’
He patted Amber’s backside as she walked away, leading Isabel to a small room at the back of the studio. Isabel sat down in front of a mirror and Amber began to rifle through trays of mascara and lipstick.
‘I don’t really want to look like I’ve just been fucked,’ Isabel said.
Amber paused. ‘You’ll piss him off.’
‘I really don’t care. In fact, I want to look more corporate in these pictures, not less. A professional woman. Can you do that?’
A shrug. ‘Sure. If that’s what you really want.’
As Amber worked on her hair, Isabel said, ‘Are you and Gavin in a relationship?’
‘What, you mean like boyfriend and girlfriend?’ She laughed. ‘Gavin doesn’t do relationships.’
‘But . . . don’t you mind him touching you? I saw what he did.’
‘What, patting my arse? That’s nothing.’
‘What do you mean?’
Amber didn’t reply, but Isabel pressed.
‘It’s just something you have to put up with if you want to work with him. He’s a genius. It goes with the territory.’
‘Oh, you’re kidding.’
Amber stepped back, letting go of Isabel’s hair. ‘I’m a photographer too. And I want to get on, be as successful as him. When I came to work with him he told me that he couldn’t work with prudes or people who aren’t comfortable with physical contact. It’s fine. I can deal with it.’
Her tone was flat.
‘What about the models he works with?’ Isabel asked. ‘Does he touch them too?’
‘I can’t talk about it.’
Isabel shuddered, thinking about Gavin at Mind+Body, the way he used to glance around the room, what he’d said about it being a great place to meet women. Her flesh crawled. She had made a mistake allowing him into that environment. And she’d made another mistake coming here today. Because she’d suspected he was a creep, hadn’t she? And she’d ignored her instincts.
Nine times out of ten she might have stayed – because of the need to be polite, professional. But she wasn’t going to do that today. Maybe it was because of the crap she was going through with her cheating husband, but she wasn’t going to tolerate any more bullshit from scumbag men.
She got out of the chair and headed for the door, turning around at the last moment. She expected Amber to look shocked, or at least surprised, but she stood there with a raised eyebrow, clearly amused.
‘You shouldn’t have to deal with it,’ Isabel said. ‘You should tell him where to stick his job. Go out on your own. You don’t need him.’
Amber blinked at her like a cat.
‘Oh, sod this,’ Isabel said, heading out into the studio. Martin stood nearby, examining the screen on a camera. She marched up to him. ‘Where’s Nina?’ she demanded.
‘Your assistant? She’s in Gavin’s office.’ He pointed across the room.
The door was shut. Isabel rapped on it and yanked it open without waiting for an answer.
Nina stood in the centre of the room, which was plastered with Gavin’s work, while the famous photographer walked around her, nodding, a lascivious grin on his stupid face.
‘Nina, we’re going,’ Isabel announced.
Both Nina and Gavin said ‘What?’ at the same time.
Isabel addressed Nina, refusing to look at Gavin. ‘I’m not working with a creep like this. Come on.’ Nina didn’t move. ‘Come on.’
Finally Nina followed her out of the office, with Gavin a step behind. ‘What the fuck are you playing at?’ he said. ‘This is all arranged.’
‘Consider it unarranged.’
His grin had well and truly slipped. ‘I was going to make you famous,’ he said.
‘Whatever.’
It felt so good storming out of there. Standing up for herself, standing up for something she believed in. Refusing to work with a man who represented everything she despised. The only woman he respects is his mother. Well, screw him. She finally felt like herself again, after weeks of being in a drama with no script. Things were going to change. And she’d just taken the first step.
Chapter 30
Jessica sat in front of Will’s computer. Olivia was in bed, Felix was in his room watching his iPad and Will had called her to say he needed to work late. And here Jessica was, a day after her conversation with Ryan, scrolling through the photos of Izzy, preparing for her conversation with her husband. After talking to Ryan she had made up her mind. She was going to tell Will what had happened while he was away. She was going to look into his eyes as she told him. She was confident that she would be able to read his reaction, to see if he looked scared or guilty. And if he did, then she wou
ld go to the police.
She didn’t savour the prospect of telling them a story involving ghosts and seances, so she was searching through the computer for some scrap of evidence. What did they call it? A smoking gun. Something she could take to the police, that might prevent her having to mention all the woo-woo stuff that would get her laughed out of the station.
Will had worked on Izzy’s site throughout December, but it had dragged on into the new year, even into February. Jessica had a vague recollection of Will telling her they needed some photos of Izzy for the site, as well as a video on which Izzy was, according to Will, ‘going to demonstrate the power of Blissful Massage’. Izzy had originally planned to use some pictures that were going to be taken by that fashion guy, Gavin Lawson, but she’d fallen out with him. Jessica had asked her why and she’d said only that he was a creep.
So, anyway, Will had decided he was going to take the photos rather than wait any longer. He wanted to get the website done and off his desk. She remembered he seemed stroppy about it, like he was only doing it as a favour. Did that mean he and Izzy had fallen out around then? Had their affair turned sour? Or was it an act? A way to throw Jessica off the scent?
Had Jessica been an idiot for not seeing it back then?
It was impossible to look at these pictures of her sister in the same way as before, but she couldn’t stop flicking through them. There was one photo in particular that transfixed her. It was a close-up of Izzy, showing her in profile. She had her eyes closed. How could anyone take a picture of a face that serene and beautiful and not fall in love with it? Not desire to kiss those lips?
There was another photo, equally transfixing, in which Izzy was gazing into the camera, her pixie haircut exposing her neck, and she was wearing a low-cut T-shirt so her collarbone was on display. She was standing on the balcony, the one from which she’d fallen – or rather, been pushed. Izzy was in sharp focus while the background was blurred and, despite everything, Jessica couldn’t help but admire Will’s technical skill.
But there was no evidence here. No smoking gun.
She heard the door open and close downstairs. Will was home.
