The Note: An uplifting, life-affirming romance about finding love in an unexpected place

by Zoë Folbigg

  *

  James rubs two bleary eyes and tries to focus through the white swathes of mosquito net that surround his four-poster bed. Impaired by short-sightedness and rum, he rolls out of his side of the bed and perches on the edge, focusing on the white flip-flop lines on his bronzed feet beneath him. He looks across at the other side of the bed as he stretches and slinks across the villa to open the cabaña doors that look out to sea. The sun is only just rising and yesterday’s flat jade waters have turned grey and moody as waves bubble and foam towards the rocks of the cliff edge and the wooden parasol at the end of his own private promontory. Sea air offers regeneration and James stretches out his arms and inhales the taste of a heavy night. A chest expands, a heart sinks. James looks back into the pristine luxury of the suite he has sullied to see his camera sitting on the bed next to where he slept fitfully. It gives him an idea.

  With a wide mouth and a flat finger, James inserts contact lenses that also spent the night fizzing, then throws on faded maroon shorts, a pinstriped T-shirt and a pair of black Havaianas. With care and respect, James lifts his new camera, his first foray into digital photography with the SLR he bought for the trip, loops the strap around his neck, picks up his sunglasses and walks out of his villa. James winds on a limestone path away from the Caribbean Sea, blinking his lenses into place. He passes the infinity pool and meanders through the hotel to the restaurant. Staff are setting the breakfast tables for the early risers.

  ‘You want breakfast, sir?’ calls the soft tone of a beautiful Jamaican lilt.

  James looks over at the waiter and shakes his head. ‘Not now thanks, Rico, but do you know where I can hire a moped?’

  ‘Sure thing. Take mine,’ he says, patting James on the back and rummaging in the pocket of his perfectly pressed white linen trousers for a key. ‘No hire, just treat her like you would a beautiful woman huh?’ he smiles knowingly, having worked the late shift behind the bar last night as well as the early one this morning. ‘Here, lemme show you.’

  Rico leads James out under the fans and thatched roof of the open-sided restaurant to the parking lot beyond reception. Crisp shirt, pristine and white. Teeth so dazzling James remembers he hasn’t cleaned his own.

  ‘Take her. She’s full. All cool,’ he shrugs.

  ‘Thanks mate, I’ll be careful,’ says James, starting the engine and lowering Wayfarers over his lenses. James feels very English and very uncool, but manages not to wobble as he turns out of the sea-edge sanctuary down the winding road towards the tourist end of town.

  As James scoots, his foggy senses are awakened with the tut tut tut of the engine. Past wooden shacks with broken posts, painted in light blues, bright pinks, black gold and emerald green. He sees signs for jerk chicken, patties and Red Stripe, all painted with a thick brush and an unsteady hand. Conch shells sit by the roadside, giving James a satisfactory sense of being half a world away from the solitude of Hazelworth, away from the drudgery of MFDD, away from the shame he has felt since June.

  James looks out to sea, witnessing it transform with every revolution of the moped wheel, from grey to royal blue on the horizon. By the bottom of the hill, at the town’s one roundabout, the sea is now jade over a still and sandy seabed. James turns left onto the road that runs behind the beachfront hotels, along the back of the tourist strip. A portly man hoses down a hotel entrance. A white woman with dreads carries a trestle table. A moped piled high with crates of ackee overtakes James, a burst of colour peeping out of the slats in the wooden crate, wakening him further. Tourists sleep after a night of rum and reggae, and James leaves them behind as gravel stones jump gaily at his wheels and he zooms on the single lane highway out of town.

  The tut tut tut of the engine chugs inland, to a road shaded by a canopy of trees where ropey vines burst down. James sees two boys playing football in the road ahead and slows down cautiously, worried that one of them might run out in front of his bike were the ball to do the same. The smaller of the two boys points at James and laughs.

  ‘Neymar!’ he says. The other boy giggles. James stops his bike, lifts his Wayfarers and laughs. In an office on the other side of the world, Maya doesn’t know how James’s dimples have deepened right now.

  James is baffled. Charmed. Wanting to capture the boys’ laughter on camera.

  ‘Mind if I take a picture?’ he says, raising his camera from around his neck.

  ‘For sure,’ says the smallest of the two, giving a little flourish of footwork over the ball as he does. Suddenly James remembers what it felt like to be five and not shy of showcasing your talents.

  ‘You know Messi?’ asks the older boy, more serious than his brother.

  ‘Not personally I’m afraid. I’m from England.’

  ‘Then you Rooney!’ laughs the smaller one, losing control of the ball as he giggles.

  ‘Nope, not as rich.’

  The boys stop playing football long enough for James to take a few shots. He shows them their pictures on the screen of his digital SLR. Both boys look with pride.

  James says thank you and bids them farewell.

  ‘I’ll look out for you boys in the Champions League!’ he says with a smile.

  ‘Bye Wayne Rooney!’ the boys shout in unison cheekily and laugh, clutching their bellies.

  James restarts the engine on Rico’s bike and heads further on the sun-dappled road under the lush green canopy.

  A rumble in his stomach reminds him what time of day it is and that he ought to get back for breakfast, for the final day of shooting Lena Molina for Femme. He drives past a wooden sign painted in thick black brush strokes. It says: Miss Delilah’s Great Tasting Patties. The word SECRET bursts out of a red love heart and James knows he has to stop.

  He turns off the engine, kicks out the stand, and walks into an open-sided building with a wood and tin roof. A large woman with short grey hair and pendulous breasts sitting atop the waist of a blue cotton skirt walks over to James.

  ‘You wanna eat or just coffee?’

  The smell of Blue Mountain coffee and fried plantains in Miss Delilah’s own kitchen out the back is too tempting for a rumbling rum-tainted tummy and James senses this is a place without a menu: you eat whatever the chef fancies making.

  ‘Whatever you’re cooking please.’

  The woman smiles and walks away.

  ‘Are you Miss Delilah?’ James calls out.

  ‘Yah,’ she says as she disappears through a multicoloured beaded curtain to start cooking James’s breakfast. The room is empty, and James sits on a turquoise wooden chair, silently scrolling through his photos from the trip so far. Maybe digital is better than old-school 35mm film.

  Pots and pans clink in the kitchen.

  Ten minutes later Miss Delilah walks back through the beaded curtain with a plate bursting with saltfish, ackee, callaloo and fried plantains. An oily sunburst of yellows and greens certain to give James his zing back.

  ‘Thank you Miss Delilah.’

  ‘You’re welcome,’ she sings in a smooth voice that dances up and down an octave. She walks away to fetch coffee then returns and pulls up a chair at James’s table. ‘Where you from?’

  ‘London.’

  Miss Delilah takes a sip of what looks like a glass of squash but is mango nectar.

  ‘What’s a handsome man like you doin’ out here on ya own?’

  ‘I’m here for work. Just having a little wander, taking some photos before we go back to the beach to do a photo shoot.’ James feels embarrassed about how easy his life is, given that his office today is a seven kilometre stretch of sand, but then he realises it is for most people who live around here.

  ‘Most boys like you come here on honeymoon but I don’t see no ring.’

  James blushes. ‘Nope, no bride.’

  Miss Delilah’s lined face crumples in surprise. ‘You don’t have a girlfriend?’ she sings.

  James shakes his head.

  ‘My niece Violet lives in London. You should see her – boom – she i
s beautiful.’

  James thinks the way Miss Delilah said all of the syllables of ‘beautiful’ was beautiful.

  ‘I’m sure she is.’

  Miss Delilah watches James eat. Her serene and kindly face makes him feel comfortable, not self-conscious. The lace tablecloth and ramshackle kitchen remind James of his grandmother’s house – although geckos don’t climb the walls at breakfast in Kent.

  ‘You wanna take a photo of me? Tell the world about Miss Delilah?’

  ‘I’d love to,’ James says, tucking into the mysterious scrambled-egg-like texture of a tropical fruit. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Great, when you’re done, we’ll do it in front of my sign. Take it to Violet, show her I’m healthy.’

  ‘Will do.’

  Chapter Forty-Two

  ‘I put myself on the line there, Maya. Being photographed in a size 24 swimsuit isn’t something I would do just because I want three million women to see how fat I am…’ Olivia jabs at her computer keyboard with a sharp talon as she tries to get her machine to restart. A kaleidoscopic pinwheel of doom enrages her further.

  ‘I know, Olivia. You’re a brilliant, beautiful, fierce woman – and Cressida can’t handle you. She doesn’t know what to do with all that sass of yours. It was a brave suggestion.’

  ‘It was a fucking refreshing suggestion. Good for Alex. If sales of FASH+ clothes are going through the roof, then at some point Cressida is going to have to start acknowledging the fact that big girls are our customers too – and big girls need representing on the home page!’

  Maya types in her password and opens up ‘Trending Trousers’ – the file she had been wanting to work on for the hour and a half she was stuck in the meeting, going round in circles again with Cressida.

  ‘I know. But Cressida’s a body fascist, she won’t ever get it.’

  ‘But it’s dangerous, Maya. I’ve seen the way she looks at Emma lately, as if having a baby is disgusting.’

  Maya couldn’t help but notice too – since Emma has been looking pleasingly pregnant, Cressida has made a few comments about her size and how she ought to ‘rein in the whole eating for two thing’.

  ‘I’ll talk to Lucy,’ says Maya, leaning over to press a shortcut on Olivia’s keyboard that gets everything working again.

  ‘You’re a genius,’ Olivia winks. ‘What would we do without you, Maya?’

  *

  James sits on the beach watching pale gold sand trickle through the gap between his big toe and its neighbour. Once the last of the grains has trickled through he starts all over again, scooping a pile up onto his toes and watching it slide away.

  He puts a hand on his brow to his eyes while he gazes out to sea, much calmer than it was at sunrise. Flat, clear, turquoise once more.

  Lisa and Yoshie are drinking colourful cocktails as they sit on the seafloor in the shallows, grateful to James and Dominic for giving them the best hair and make-up gig anywhere in the world right now. James is comforted by the distant sound of their laughter but doesn’t listen to what they’re saying to each other. He hears a familiarly ungainly gait approach from behind.

  ‘He’s just left for the airport, the mother of all hissy fits.’

  James’s gaze is unbroken, he keeps looking out to sea.

  ‘He said he was used to my sniping and bitching, but when you gave him shit, enough was enough. He’s the talent apparently, and he doesn’t like being questioned.’

  ‘Fuck him then, I’ll take the photos,’ says James, snapping out of a daydream. ‘Joe can assist. I was just suggesting a better angle. And if I know you can’t shoot a portrait straight into the glaring sun and Pez doesn’t, then he’s not much of a talent.’

  Dominic’s little circle of a mouth sits open in shock. He’s never heard James be so feisty at work. Or out of it.

  ‘And we’re not paying him, he’s been nothing but a pain in the arse. He walked out on the job. He didn’t fulfil his part of the contract.’

  Dominic nods and sits down next to James on the sand. ‘Where’s Lena Molina?’

  James looks back out to sea. ‘When Pez stormed off, Lena realised she ought to have a tantrum too, so I guess she’s gone to powder her ego.’

  ‘What happened with you two anyway? Why will she only deal with me today? She’s barely talked to me all trip. Until now. Although she’s still calling me Damian…’

  ‘She couldn’t understand why I didn’t want to take her back to my cabaña last night.’

  ‘James, why the fuck didn’t you take her back to your cabaña last night? When will you ever have the chance to sleep with a supermodel again?’

  James’s soulful chocolate eyes look back down at the trickling sand between his toes.

  ‘I saw her Dominic. It put me off.’

  ‘Saw her? But have you actually seen her? She’s so fucking beautiful, I’m too intimidated to look her in the eye, let alone tell her I’m not called Damian.’

  ‘No, I really saw her. When I’m photographing someone, what I sometimes don’t notice in real life I see through the lens.’ Sand trickles. ‘And when I looked through Pez’s lens yesterday to check his shot I… I saw her. And I just didn’t like her.’

  Dominic exhales exasperatedly and slaps his own forehead with a meaty palm.

  ‘That’s why Pez had a strop, you kept checking his shots!’

  ‘I suppose it’s why, in eleven years, I didn’t take many pictures of Kitty. She was beautiful. She was photogenic. But what I saw through the lens made me sad.’

  James drops his Wayfarers from his head onto the bridge of his tanned nose to shield his eyes.

  ‘Mate, you seem quite melancholic still. Are you OK? All this trouble-in-paradise craziness aside… I know we don’t really talk about that shit, but are you OK?’

  James looks at Dominic in his sun-cream-stained off-white T-shirt and black and white board shorts and smiles. ‘Yes mate, totally. I’m going to be all right. It was absolutely for the best.’

  ‘What about that bird on the train who gave you the note?’

  James thinks of a gently freckled face. The curve of a smooth collarbone in a carriage full of spring optimism.

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘Does she still get your train?’

  ‘I don’t see her so much. Actually I think I saw her standing further back down the platform the other day.’

  James’s brow furrows as he wonders why Maya Flowers moved now when she hadn’t changed carriage before, but he doesn’t say it out loud.

  ‘Well she’s probably embarrassed. Who wouldn’t be? Plus if you’re not gonna sleep with a supermodel I’m guessing a stalker on the train might not be up to scratch either.’

  James suddenly feels uncomfortable and shifts his position on the sand. ‘What about you and Josie anyway? While we’re getting all giddy on ourselves and talking about girls. How are things with you?’

  ‘Ah, you know she’d love it here,’ Dominic says, swerving the question.

  James looks at him, expectant. He can see through Dominic; they have played, pitched and swerved together since they were eighteen.

  Dominic looks back, knowing he is transparent.

  ‘Well, you know I did want to run something past you but didn’t want to bring you down when you’re feeling a bit, you know…’

  ‘Go on…’

  Dominic scratches his head with a sandy hand. ‘I’m thinking of asking Josie to marry me. Is that weird?’

  James smiles and stands up, opening his arms. ‘This is the part where I give you a manly hug. Don’t leave me hanging.’

  Dominic stands and loosely pats James on the back before James lifts his stocky friend off the ground.

  ‘Soppy twat,’ Dominic scolds.

  ‘I think it’s a wonderful idea. Do it.’

  Arms relax around each other and James and Dominic laugh.

  Lena sashays back across the sand in a white string bikini.

  ‘Knock it off guys, is this what your problem is?’
she shoots at James.

  He looks back at her despairingly and holds his palms up to the sky.

  ‘OK let’s get back to work,’ commands Dominic, buoyed by his friend’s enthusiasm. ‘Joe!’ he beckons to the beach bar. ‘You’re assisting James. Lisa, Yoshie, can you just look at Lena again, give her a quick refresh. We only have a few hours left here, let’s make them count.’

  Chapter Forty-Three

  October 2014

  Cressida sits across the long oval table and looks at Olivia, Chloe and Maya on the opposite flank. For some reason, the three of them feel like they’re in trouble.

  ‘Hmmm,’ Cressida ponders, her index finger tap tapping as she stares at the mood boards. ‘It’s not really working for me. Chloe, the design is too downmarket. You’ve taken good still-lifes and made the clothes look like… like… market-stall clobber, I think they call it. This treatment isn’t working.’

  Eager eyes widen in shock.

  ‘And Olivia, these girls you’ve used, surely FASH didn’t shoot them. Did FASH shoot them?’ she asks in horror.

  ‘Yes Cress. They’re all from the autumn/winter lookbook.’ Olivia likes how Cressida winces when people call her Cress.

  ‘Well they look fat. Someone needs to have a word with the model booker.’

  Olivia looks down, pulls at her oversized jumper and wonders whether Cressida really is that insensitive.

  ‘I think that’s a bit harsh, Cressida,’ pipes up Maya, outrage overriding intimidation, knowing that under Maya’s direction, Chloe and Olivia have been pulling some serious late nights to get these designs to Cressida on deadline. Chloe and Olivia silently cheer.

  ‘Excuse me?’ Cressida’s razor-cut cheekbones raise with her hackles. Maya doesn’t reply. ‘Maya, if this isn’t working then I’m not putting my name to it. We have to make FASHmas work harder. In fact I think it’s indicative that we need to totally switch FASHmas up this year.’