by Paige Toon
‘Johann has got nothing on you.’
He winces. ‘I don’t want to hear you say his name.’
I try to suppress a smile. ‘Are you jealous?’ I ask.
‘Wildly,’ he states flatly, then seems to shake himself. ‘Let me show you these pictures before I make a total fool of myself.’
The photographs he’s done so far are incredible.
‘It was a challenge to capture them in the light without getting reflections of eyelashes and stuff,’ Sonny tells me, leaning over my shoulder as I sit at his desk and click through the images on his computer screen.
The detail of the eyes is astonishing up this close. I can see what Archie meant when he said that a few were uncomfortable to look at. Some are beautiful, but others are bordering on grotesque.
I think I like the blue eyes the most. The threads spanning outwards from the central black pupil are clearer, more wispy and less of a solid mass. This one looks like a waterfall in reverse, as though the water is crashing outwards instead of falling into what looks like a deep central hole.
Another has feathery white patches like clouds or vapour trails in a blue sky.
And the threads on another remind me of a jellyfish, its stingers radiant in the watery blue.
This green eye has a wavy ring of creamy yellow threads circling the pupil, but as each thread spreads out they thin into a series of almost luminescent wiggly green lines. They look like underwater seagrass. I feel as if I could plunge my hands in, part the grass, and swim through the green depths.
Another green and amber eye reminds me of a flower, although the petals are indistinguishable from each other. It’s the way that it fans out from a central circle, like a sunflower.
And this one looks like something in space, a rim of fire circling the pupil and brightly lit fibres streaming outwards though they’re stars seen through light-speed.
Others have very little variation in colour. Like this one: it’s orangey-brown, like Mars, and it has lumps and bumps around the rim of the pupil, bringing to mind sand slipping into a black hole.
Some have patches of colour. This one looks like someone has spilt tea on a blue tablecloth.
And this one is tan-coloured and puckered and unappealing.
They are all so different.
I’ve been making comments and murmurs of approval as I’ve looked at the photographs because I’m genuinely stunned by the work he’s created. I’m in awe of how many shoots he has pulled off in the space of a few weeks.
‘How many more do you plan to do?’ I turn around to look at him.
‘I’d like to have twenty in the series,’ he replies, backing up to perch on the end of the sofabed.
‘So, what, you’re about halfway there?’
He nods.
‘Is Archie using a single image for the poster?’
‘Yeah, I thought we’d go with this one.’ He gets up and takes the mouse, clicking through the shots until he comes to the eye that looks like a flower.
‘Whose is that?’ I ask.
‘Mel’s.’
‘No way?’
‘Yeah.’
He’s already told me that most of his subjects don’t suffer with bad eyesight. That would have been too limiting. But they are all homeless and they all agreed to do it for charity.
A flood of warmth engulfs my stomach. ‘You’re so clever and talented.’ I beam at him. ‘I’m ridiculously proud of you.’
He kisses the top of my head. ‘Thank you,’ he says simply. ‘I’m proud of you too.’
I stand up and loop my arms around his waist, pressing a kiss to his chest.
He sighs. ‘I wish I didn’t have to go to London tomorrow.’
‘Yeah, I guess I should probably go home and let you get some sleep.’
‘That’s not what I was saying.’ He nods at his computer screen. ‘That’s the sort of photography I’d like to be doing. It’s hard to make a living out of it, though.’
‘Especially when you’re doing it for free,’ I add with a small smile.
He returns my smile. ‘But I’ve felt good about it. Much better than I’ve ever felt about fashion shoots.’
‘You’ll find your way,’ I say, believing it.
He dips his head down and kisses me.
Chapter 41
The next time I see Sonny is on Friday night after his session with Evelyn and Harriet. I’m in the kitchen when an unfamiliar car rolls down the driveway to the road. Harriet leaving, I presume.
Shortly afterwards, Sonny passes by the kitchen window, his head hanging low, his shoulders hunched.
I open the door seconds after he’s pressed the doorbell.
‘That was quick,’ he comments, coming in and closing the door behind him.
‘Saw you from the window.’
He looks awful. His eyes are bloodshot and the colour seems to have drained out of his usually golden skin.
I step forward and he folds me into his embrace, holding me for a very long time.
I hate that he has to go through this. I hate it so much. My heart has swelled so fiercely, so protectively, that I feel like I’m going to burst. I barely think it before I’m saying it.
‘I love you.’
He lifts his head and stares at me, wonder lighting his formerly bleak expression.
‘I love you too. But that’s been evident for a while, I think.’
*
It’s Sunday morning and we’re on our way to Archie and Matilda’s. It wasn’t prearranged – Sonny texted Archie this morning to ask if we could pop over for a cuppa.
He’s decided to tell them. My heart is flipping out for him – he’s so nervous.
I’d thought he might opt to speak to Archie alone first, but I think he wants to get it out of the way all at once. He asked me to come with him.
Archie opens the door. ‘All right, guys?’ he asks chirpily, patting Sonny on the back. ‘This is a nice surprise. Come in.’
Sonny moves off into the kitchen to greet Matilda, leaving Archie free to say hello to me.
His hug is a little longer, a little stronger than normal.
‘Matilda told me about Anna,’ he says when he pulls away, his brown eyes brimming with concern. ‘I’m so sorry.’
I’m taken aback – with everything that’s been going on with Sonny this week, I’d almost forgotten Matilda was planning to share my own revelation.
‘Thank you,’ I say, emotion clogging my throat. At the same time, there’s a warmth in my belly because I can see how sincere he is, how much he cares.
He leads the way through to the kitchen. ‘Cuppa? Coffee?’
We sit at the dining room table with the doors flung open. It’s one of those airless muggy days that have the added insult of rain thrown in. And not even proper rain, but stupid barely there drizzle.
Sonny cradles his cup, his shoulders crowded together. Underneath the table, I place my hand on his knee.
‘So . . . guys . . .’ he starts, looking as though he’d quite like the Demogorgon from Stranger Things to appear right now and suck him into another dimension. ‘There’s something I thought I should . . . Something I wanted to tell you.’
Archie and Matilda are all ears, switched on, their full attention fixed on the wounded man in their midst.
How I love these people.
This is all going to be okay.
*
Something alters that week. There’s a shift in the fabric of our friendship.
On Tuesday I get a text from an unknown number and discover that Archie himself is checking up on me.
Matilda and I have lunch three days in a row, and Sonny joins us on one of those days. It’s heartwarming to see the change in their friendship, the mutual care and consideration they’re showing each other. It’s surreal to recall how down Matilda was on Sonny earlier this year – she is so different with him now.
I still can’t get the image out of my head of the way she hugged him after he confided in them,
his hand extended behind him, still firmly entwined with mine as Matilda squeezed him hard.
All of these things lift my spirits in ways I could have never imagined.
The weather has finally come good again and the weekend is supposed to be hot and sunny. We make a plan to meet at the Blue Ball, just the four of us, and choose to sit at a round table out at the front of the pub in direct sunshine.
Sonny is telling us about his latest photo shoot yesterday.
On Monday, as promised, he allowed me to accompany him to one of the homeless shelters. His subject was a tall lanky middle-aged man called Leonard, who was extremely uncomfortable, while at the same time claiming he was happy to be there.
‘Makes a change from the norm,’ was how he kept putting it.
I loved seeing the interactions between him and Sonny. They chatted the whole time. Leonard wanted to tell Sonny his story and Sonny let him talk, but he also asked him other questions, trying to get to the bottom of what he was like as a person, what made him tick.
It made me fall even more deeply in love with him than I was already.
I’ve loved him for a while, I’ve realised. It’s been creeping up on me slowly, but now that I’ve admitted it to myself, it’s all-encompassing. I think it’s the same for him. He looks at me with a new brightness in his eyes.
The oddest thing is that I’m hardly talking to Anna at all. It’s Sonny who I want to talk to.
I’ve moved from being addicted to his aftershave to being well and truly addicted to him. He’s spent every night at mine this week and somehow we’ve managed to keep our romantic entanglements at a PG level.
Okay, sometimes they go up to a 12A, and there might’ve been a couple of 15 moments, but we’re saving 18 X Rated for when I get back from Australia.
And I am coming back. I’m certain of it. I’ve even told Charles I’ll be sticking around in Cambridge for a while. He was ecstatic – it made his week, he said, when he called me from the port in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
Umeko was delighted. My trip to Australia is going to cause a bit of a headache because she’s not sure how she’ll get temporary cover for me, but she says they’ll find a way around it.
Abbey has offered to take up some of the slack. In fact, she’s asked if she can be trained up as an optical assistant so she can handle preliminary tests and glasses fittings sometimes. I’ve never seen Umeko look so pleased. This will also give me time to do volunteer work, something which I hope will be another piece in the puzzle that helps me to feel more complete.
‘How are things going with wedding planning?’ I ask Matilda when we’ve exhausted the photo shoot topic.
Matilda groans and even poor Archie looks disheartened.
‘Did I say something wrong?’ I ask.
‘I still don’t know what I want to do,’ Matilda admits, glancing at Archie across the table. She turns to Sonny and explains. ‘I’ve always imagined I’d get married in a church, but I thought my dad would be walking me up the aisle. It’s something that I’ve found hard to get past over the last couple of years.’
Sonny’s brow furrows. ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
Archie is staring into his pint.
‘Arch just wants to get married.’
‘I’d marry you tomorrow if you’d let me,’ he mutters, his lips pulled into a straight line. He takes a gulp of his pint.
‘It’s been a bit of a tough few weeks,’ Matilda confesses in the spirit of us being friends who don’t hold back from each other any more.
‘Matilda grew up picturing a fairy tale wedding,’ I tell Sonny. ‘It’s something she’s dreamed about for years. But then her dad passed away . . .’
‘So your wedding has gone from what you’ve always thought would be the happiest day of your life to a day that’s going to make you feel desperately sad,’ Sonny muses.
‘Hit the nail on the head,’ Archie says.
Matilda stares at him disconsolately before speaking. ‘The stupid thing is, I know that the day is supposed to be all about us, not my dad. I’m trying to recalibrate my thinking so I don’t feel sad all the time. I can’t even pick a wedding dress.’
‘Do you have a date set yet?’ Sonny asks.
‘Nothing firm,’ Archie replies. ‘Sometime around Easter next year.’
‘Which you are definitely going to be around for,’ Matilda says with a smile at me.
‘Definitely.’ I meet Sonny’s eyes across the table.
‘People put so much pressure on weddings,’ Sonny muses. ‘I still remember how stressed Jackie and Harriet were. And Christ, my mum . . . You would’ve thought she’d learn from the stress she felt with Harriet when it came to Jackie’s turn, but she was as bad, if not worse. When I get married, I want it to be as simple as possible, completely intimate, just my very favourite people.’
‘Amen,’ I say in my best American preacher impersonation.
Sonny grins at me.
I still remember all those weeks ago, right here in the Blue Ball, when I asked if Rochelle was Sonny’s wife. Archie made some wisecrack about Sonny and marriage being too much of a stretch for his imagination. No one mocks him now.
Poor Archie is still looking miserable. ‘That sounds like my idea of heaven,’ he says, tracing his finger across the grain of the wooden table.
‘Maybe I need to tear up the fairy tale,’ Matilda starts. ‘It’s not going to be a fairy tale anyway without my dad, right?’
Archie looks at her, a spark of hope in his eyes.
‘How about if you imagine it as a big party, like, a joint birthday – your fortieth or something,’ Sonny suggests. ‘What would you do?’
‘Probably hire out a pub,’ Matilda replies.
‘Like this one,’ Archie adds.
‘God, yeah, can you imagine the beer garden all lit up with fairy lights?’ Matilda asks. ‘We could have a sausage sizzle or something. And halloumi burgers.’ She grins at me. ‘And ice buckets full of Prosecco.’
‘And walk home,’ Archie says.
‘No, canoe home,’ Sonny chips in. ‘Hannah and I could canoe you. In fact!’ he says, getting into the idea. ‘You could get married at a register office in Cambridge, then we could canoe you back up here, have some fizz on the boat, chill out a bit just the four of us, and the rest of your congregation could take the bus, or even walk, I don’t know. They’d be waiting with shedloads of confetti for when you enter the beer garden.’
‘I’m loving this idea,’ Matilda says dreamily, leaning forward and propping her chin on her hand.
Archie stares at her. ‘You are?’
‘Aren’t you?’
‘Christ, yeah.’
‘You could buy your flowers from the market,’ I interject. ‘I could get them for you even. We could arrange them on all the tables, get drunk and put together a playlist of your favourite songs to blare out of the pub’s speakers. We could have candles everywhere.’
Matilda has a far-off look in her eyes. She nods. ‘And I could just go and buy a pretty dress off a hanger somewhere.’
‘Do we really have to wait until spring?’ Archie asks.
She grins at him. ‘How long do we need to organise this?’
‘Make it soon so the river doesn’t flood,’ Sonny says.
‘How about this October when Hannah gets back?’ Matilda asks.
We all look at her. I don’t think any of us has truly believed this is anything other than whimsical speculation until this very moment.
‘I’m serious,’ she says.
‘Are you?’ Archie asks distrustfully.
‘I am actually serious. I’m sick of feeling so torn up about this. I want to marry you, Arch.’ She reaches across the table and takes his hand in hers. ‘I want to spend the rest of my life with you. If we did something like this, something I’d never dreamed of, it’ll be ours, just ours, a day that doesn’t come with any expectations. Just you and me, saying I do.’
Sonny raises his eyebrows at me. He’s
smiling. I beam at him, my eyes pricking with tears.
‘I’m going to ask if we can book the beer garden out in October,’ Archie says, jumping to his feet.
‘I’ll come!’ Matilda chirps, sliding out from the table.
We watch them go, laughing.
‘Wow,’ I say. ‘I wonder if this will happen?’
‘I bet they pull it off.’
While we have the table to ourselves, Sonny reaches across and laces my fingers through his, brushing his thumb over the back of my hand.
Archie pops his head around the pub door. ‘You guys want a drink while we’re up at the bar?’
‘Sure,’ Sonny says, lifting up his almost drained pint glass.
‘Same again?’ he asks us both.
‘Yes please,’ I reply as Sonny nods.
We go back to smiling at each other like lovesick fools.
‘I like those sunglasses,’ I say. ‘I still remember the day you turned up at Umeko’s. I saw you standing outside on the pavement. You were talking to someone on your phone.’
‘Was I?’
‘You don’t remember?’
He frowns, casting his mind back. ‘Oh,’ he says, nodding. ‘Rochelle, I expect.’
‘How are things going with her?’
‘Much better,’ he replies. ‘She’s really happy with Phil, her boyfriend, so that helps.’
‘Have you met him? What’s he like?’
He nods. ‘He’s a good guy. The girls like him, which is the most important thing. I’m glad Rochelle and I have finally called a truce after all these years.’
‘Did you ever tell her about us?’
He nods and smirks, downing the last of his beer.
‘What?’ I ask with a grin.
‘She was fine. She claimed to not be surprised in the least.’
Archie and Matilda return to the table, Archie with beers, Matilda with gin and tonics.
Sonny lets go of my hand and, at the same time, I realise we have company.
‘Well, well, well,’ a nasty all-too-familiar voice says.
I look up to see that Nessa has come up the steps. ‘So you’ve succumbed, have you?’ she asks me.
Right, that’s it.
‘Back off, Nessa,’ Matilda snaps, beating me to whatever retort I was going to make. ‘Sonny’s in love with Hannah, she’s in love with him, get over it. And quit being a bitch. It’s unbecoming.’
