Lying for the Camera: chapter one

Chapter One

The last of the models pulled on her jacket, slung her satchel over her shoulder and grunted in response to Tom’s automatic, “I’ll be in touch.”

It would be a no. He’d seen more than enough six-foot-tall sulky teenagers to know that wasn’t what he needed for this shoot. They might appear fragile with their stick-thin limbs and barely-formed features, but their eyes were hard as nails. They had to be, to survive in the fashion industry. Not all of them survived, of course.

He cut the thought off before it could take hold. Today wasn’t about Lianne. Today was about moving on. After fifteen years photographing girls who got younger and thinner each season, Tom Metcalfe knew exactly how to find the provocative glint in the eye of the dullest coat-hanger of a model. But this wasn’t a fashion shoot. He wasn’t taking pictures to sell clothes or perfume or make up or any other overpriced and unnecessary frippery. This time he was selling himself. His own vision of the world. He had no idea whether anyone would want to buy it.

The gallery for his first exhibition was already booked. Most of his portfolio was ready but there was something missing. Initially, he had decided not to include any portraits. Everyone already knew he could shoot women. Where was the challenge in that? But when he had shown the preliminary portfolio to the gallery owner, she had skimmed through it and shaken her head.

“It’s too pretty.”

“Pretty?”

“Shallow. Decorative. Pretty. But there’s nothing of you in here, Tom. You can’t just be a spectator, dispassionately observing pretty bits of the world. Not for this kind of show.”

As soon as she said it, he knew she was right. He needed more depth, more emotion. For him, that meant people. Faces hiding feelings. Eyes telling stories.

That was the reason Tom preferred to be the spectator. He stayed behind the camera while the attention was on the girls in shot, and that was how he liked it. No one ever interviewed the photographer, asking awkward questions or intruding into matters he would much rather keep hidden. No one could see into his eyes and find out what he really was.

There was no way he would be taking any self-portraits for his exhibition, but the world he was trying to portray needed to be more than pretty and shallow. It needed to show depth. Complexity. Humanity.

For that he needed a model. He had to find someone who with that depth and complexity in a way he could capture in a photograph. He’d advertised an open casting, hoping to find someone a bit different from the girls he usually worked with, but none of the models who had turned up had caught his eye at all.

“Am I too late?”

The woman who was leaning against the door of his studio was more than a bit different. Bright, dyed-red hair, heavy dark make-up, a scarlet jacket that swirled out around her hips. She grinned at him, her blue eyes twinkling in a way that made him suspect she wore coloured contact lenses.

“I had to leave work early but I still missed the bus. Isn’t it odd how the one you miss is always exactly on time, while the one you have to wait for is always running late?”

Tom nodded, though she didn’t pause long enough for him to speak.

“Anyway, I’m Hattie Bell and I’m here about the modelling job. You said you were looking for someone out of the ordinary, so I thought it was worth a shot. You wouldn’t believe the amount of castings I’ve been to where they wouldn’t even let me through the door. And the samples!” She threw up her hands in horror. “Made to fit a Barbie doll. No, that’s not right. Barbie dolls have breasts and hips. So do I.” She gestured at her body.

“I can see that.” She had them in abundance, along with thighs, stomach and bum.

“So, what do you think?” Hattie gave him a twirl. “Have you already found someone? You have, haven’t you? Oh, well.” She made as if to leave, disappointment written all over her expressive face.

“I haven’t found anyone.”

“Really? Well, great.” She grinned at him and took off her jacket. “Where do you want me?”

Tom picked up his small camera and pointed to the backdrop. “This is just a test. To see how you look on film. Relax. Smile. Move around. Whatever you want.”

Under her jacket, Hattie was wearing a clingy floral top and a neat black skirt. She looked comfortable in front of the camera, smiling at Tom, blowing kisses and laughing as she posed in traditional – and some not-so-traditional – ways. He took shot after shot, entranced by her total lack of self-consciousness and her evident delight in the process.

Sex, he realised suddenly. That was what made her different. Hattie was sexy. She wasn’t a faux-innocent teenage Lolita. She was a grown woman, she was in tune with her body, and she was intensely sexy with it.

“Turn your back to me and look over your shoulder,” he suggested. “Yes, like that. Smile.”

She did more than smile. She winked. Then she laughed and tossed her head back, sending that extraordinary hair flying. Without thinking, Tom dropped his hand, so that he could watch her without the filter of the lens. She was gorgeous. Sexy and alluring and incredibly sensual.

What would she be like in bed?

Come-to-bed eyes were such a cliché. And yet there was no other way to describe Hattie’s expression. She would only have to crook her finger and Tom would be there, kissing those luscious lips, ripping away her clothes, revelling in the generous curves of her body. It was clear that Hattie enjoyed sex as much as she was enjoying modelling for him now.

“Are you just going to watch, or do you want to take more photos?” Hattie confronted him with her hands on her hips.

Tom stared down at the camera in his hand.

“Sorry.” He swallowed, finding his mouth unexpectedly dry. “I, um, I need to find a new memory card.”

He turned back to his case, searching for the unnecessary memory card while he took a moment to compose himself.

“No problem. You know, if you’ve already decided you don’t want me, you only have to say so. No point wasting both our time.”

He fitted the new card and stood up. “I want you.”

“Really?” A huge smile spread over Hattie’s incredibly expressive face.

“Really.” Tom nodded. She wasn’t what he’d had in mind. She was even better. Different, interesting, intelligent, unexpected. He would never have found her on a fashion shoot, but for what he was planning, Hattie was ideal.

She threw her arms around him. “Thank you! I was beginning to think no one would ever give me a chance. I mean look at me.” Hattie stepped back and waited until Tom did as she instructed. “Do I look like I should be working in an office all day?”

“No. No, you don’t.” Tom had limited experience of working in an office but he couldn’t imagine colourful, vibrant Hattie in that kind of bland environment.

“Exactly. I always knew I should be in front of a camera. But I can’t act to save my life. Or sing. So it had to be modelling.”

“Right.” He knew he was shaking his head.

“I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking I don’t have the figure for modelling.”

“You could do plus-size modelling,” he offered.

She shook her head. “Those castings I told you about? They were all for so-called plus-size models. When the fashion people say plus-size they mean average in the real world. I’m too fat.”

Tom didn’t bother to contradict her. None of the plus-size models he’d worked with had breasts like Hattie’s. They didn’t have double chins, either, or fat which spilled over the top of their skirts.

“Life modelling?”

“Done that. It’s not bad, though it doesn’t pay too well. I couldn’t make the rent. Besides, they don’t like you to talk while you’re doing it and I’m not very good at keeping quiet for hours on end.”

“So what did you think you would do?”

“I don’t know. I just knew that I would get a break eventually. And now I have.” She beamed at him.

“Look, Hattie.” Tom ran a hand through the back of his hair. “Don’t get too excited. I can only offer you a few days work. A week at the most.”

“Brilliant. I’ve got some holiday left. Just let me know when. And with this on my CV, who knows what could come of it? I mean, you’re seriously famous, right? All the girls want to have a shoot with Tom Metcalfe. Vogue, Marie-Claire, Elle…” She waved expansively. “The sky’s the limit.”

“I’ll do you some portfolio shots, if you like, but this isn’t going to be a fashion shoot, Hattie.”

“What kind of shoot is it? The advert didn’t say.”

“Art.” Tom cringed inside as he said it. The decision to expand outside his commercial work had been a hard one and he still hadn’t quite got used to the idea.

“Does that mean naked?”

“No!” Tom stared at Hattie, for an instant imagining her naked. “No, it doesn’t. Probably not. It just means art. In an exhibition. At a gallery.”

“Okay. But just so you know, if it did mean naked, that would be fine with me.”

“Right.” He took a deep breath. “Right.”

“I did the life modelling, remember.”

“So you did.” Tom busied himself with packing his camera gear away. He wasn’t going to bother with any more shots today.

“I’m not embarrassed by my body.”

“Good to know.”

“You know, you’re nothing like I was expecting.”

“Uh huh.”

“Aren’t you going to ask what I was expecting?”

“No.”

Hattie laughed. “You don’t give a lot away, do you?”

“There’s a reason I like to be behind the camera.”

She stepped closer, head tilted to one side, and examined him. “I wonder if you’ll ever tell me the reason, Tom Metcalfe.”

He drew a sharp breath. She’d obviously hit a raw nerve. Hattie desperately wanted to ask him again but she didn’t dare take the risk. Not when the man had just offered her the biggest break of her life. There was still time for him to change his mind, after all.

“So,” she said, stepping back, “When do you want me?”

He eyed her measuringly, his cool grey pupils seeming to dissect every inch of her. “How long will it take for the hair to grow out?”

Hattie blinked in surprise. “Um, about a month, I guess. You don’t like the red?”

“Not for this shoot. You’ll need to lay off the make up, too. And the contacts.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “How could you tell?”

Tom’s lips quirked up a little at one corner. “I’ve been in this industry for fifteen years. I can tell all the tricks. What colour are they underneath?”

“Still blue.” She reached up to remove one of the lenses. “Just not quite so blue.”

“Better,” he said. “Much better. I want the real you, not the fake one.”

Hattie nodded slowly. “Fine. If that’s what you want.”

“If you need any make up or styling on the shoot, I’ll sort it out.”

“Of course. So what kind of pictures will you be taking? I mean, I’ve seen all the editorials you’ve done and the ads and things, but you said this was art.”

Tom hesitated. He folded his arms across his chest. “It is. I’m having an exhibition and I need something different.”

“So?” Hattie smiled encouragingly. “What sort of different?”

“I haven’t decided exactly. Part of it will depend on you. How you react in different settings. How I can get the camera to go more than skin deep.”

She bit her lip. “More than skin deep? That sounds painful.”

And unlikely. Hattie didn’t let anyone see beneath her carefully constructed surface image. Even she didn’t look very often, not liking what she knew was hidden there. Still she had spent so many years hiding herself in plain sight that one week with Tom Metcalfe couldn’t be too difficult to manage. She would smile and flirt with him and the camera and he’d forget to look for anything but the surface.

“You’ll be adequately compensated,” he said dispassionately.

He laid out the terms of the contract he was offering. Hattie nodded happily, pleased with the generous fee.

“Great, so if you give me your contact details, I’ll send it along in a couple of days for you to sign.”

Hattie handed him a business card with her details on the back. Tom turned it over, as she knew he would. She waited a heartbeat then, on cue, his jaw dropped.

“Like it? One of the artists at the life class did it. I bought it from her, scanned it in and had the cards done.”

For the small business card, she had cropped the image, so that it only showed hints of her figure: her cleavage, her waist, her thigh. But the artist’s clever use of coloured pastels gave an extraordinary depth to the picture which Hattie had responded to. It wasn’t erotic and it wasn’t even especially revealing. It was, however, incredibly sensual and very intimate.

Hattie sucked in her breath as Tom stroked a finger across the card.

He was thinking about touching her like that.

She was thinking about him touching her like that.

“I want to see.” His voice was deeper than before, a little husky. It suited him.

Hattie nodded and reached for the hem of her top.

A warm hand closed firmly around her wrist. “I meant the picture, Hattie. I want to see the picture.”

She blushed. Hattie couldn’t remember the last time she had blushed. But with Tom’s hand on hers and the embarrassment of her misunderstanding, not to mention the flood of desire, she blushed.

“Oh,” she managed. She let the fabric drop and Tom took his hand away.

“I’m sorry,” he said with half a smile. “I should have been clearer.”

And she shouldn’t have presumed.

Hattie forced a smile. “Of course. I’ll bring it with me to the shoot, shall I?”

“I’d like to see it before then, if I may.”

“It’s at my flat. You can come and pick it up whenever you like. Or I can send it. Whatever’s easiest.”

She would have agreed to anything he asked. Tom Metcalfe was going to photograph her, Hattie Bell, for an exhibition. In a gallery.

This was her chance to really prove them all wrong. Everyone who had told her not to be so ridiculous, girls like her didn’t become famous. This, now, with Tom Metcalfe smiling at her and offering her a job, this was Hattie’s dream and she was grabbing it with both hands and never letting go.

“This evening?”

“Sure. Give me a ring when you’re on your way.”

After Hattie had gone in a swirl of colour, kissing his cheek and bubbling with excitement, Tom sank down at his desk. She was… extraordinary.

Which was a good thing, he reminded himself. He wanted extraordinary. He needed it for what he had in mind.

He slid the memory card into his laptop and began to flick through the images of Hattie. There was warmth in every shot. Warmth, humour, and sizzling sensuality. Just looking at them made Tom smile again. Hattie could teach the models he usually worked with a thing or two about being comfortable in your own body.

His finger paused over the mouse button for an instant. He flicked on, then back again. He zoomed in, so that her face filled the entire screen.

There it was.

The key to the whole exhibition lay in Hattie’s eyes. Behind the blue contact lenses there was something he hadn’t expected to find. The make up, the dyed hair, the confident chatter were all a mask. In her eyes, Tom saw the fragility she was trying to hide.

His mind whirred, reviewing all the pictures he’d already taken. That was the theme he hadn’t been able to find in amongst the pretty, decorative images: the fragility of life. All those delicate soap bubbles glistening with the colours of the rainbow, ready to burst as soon as they came into contact with anything else. The unfurling buds of a rare orchid. The moment of a sunrise, transient, fleeting, fragile.

Now Hattie. Bold, cheerful, confident Hattie with eyes that told a very different story. He would dress her in strong, powerful clothes, and then capture the chink in her armour. He would make her a modern-day Cleopatra, facing down her Marc Antony, then seduced by the snake that would be her destruction. He would give her walls to build and let an intruder in through the back door. Those pale blue eyes would open in shock and the lurking fear he had glimpsed earlier would betray her.

Someone had hurt her. Badly. He didn’t know how or why but he could see that Hattie was scared of being hurt again. Tom knew all about being hurt. He hid his own vulnerability behind the lens of a camera. Disappearing into the background, deflecting attention onto others, he’d perfected his own protective techniques over many years. Hattie had her own way of covering up her weaknesses with her make up and clothes, and her proud appropriation of her own body. Yet her fragility still showed if you looked hard enough, behind the glossy smile and the flirty wink.

The photos Tom had in mind were going to strip away that façade. It would be his job to break down every barrier she had. With the click of a camera he was going to expose her very soul. He held Hattie in his hands, as delicate as a glass bauble. He could ring her now. Tell her he’d changed his mind. Protect her, even though he was certain she wouldn’t see it that way.

Or he could go ahead. Take the photos that would cement his reputation as a true artist, and in the process, destroy all Hattie’s protective barriers. The cruelty of art had never been clearer to him.

Tom took a deep breath. He was going to have to break her. She was going to hate him for it.