‘They’re a bit of a force of nature en masse,’ I remark later, in bed.
‘They’re great. How brilliant that you’re still all so close.’
‘Yeah, I’m very lucky,’ I say, thinking, inallways I am. I’m so lucky that things turned out this way.
Kim says I’m ‘glowing’ and any residue from that awkward lunch has long gone. I haven’t seen Esther since then, and James and I haven’t talked about getting us all together again.
Once, I feel, was quite enough.
So it’s a bit of a shock when I’m enjoying a lazy Sunday morning at James’s, sipping coffee while curled up on his sofa – and the door opens suddenly and Esther breezes right in. ‘Oh, Lauren! Hi!’ As if she’s amazed to find me here. She’s all smiles but her eyes are flinty.
‘Hi, Esther.’ I jump up and we hug stiffly. ‘How are you? How’re things?’
‘Oh, great, great!’ she enthuses.
We stand and look at each other for a second. ‘Still working with the jewellery people?’ I ask.
‘Yeah.’ She nods. ‘Yeah. It’s going great …’
‘That’s great!’ How many times are we going to say ‘great’?
‘Hey, Est. I’ll be down in a sec,’ James calls out from upstairs. He’s been having a shower. Thankfully he won’t bound down naked.
‘Okay, Dad,’ she calls back sweetly.
I’m feeling a little panicky now, dressed as I am in James’s towelling dressing gown with nothing on underneath. Of course the belt won’t untie itself and the thing won’t flap open. It’s just that same vulnerability you experience when you’re wearing a lightweight skirt in high winds. Something about Esther’s presence induces a fear in me that I’m going to be exposed and look ridiculous.
Will italwaysbe this awkward between us? The vibe she’s emitting suggests that I shouldn’t be wearing a dressing gown at all at 11.30 a.m. – and especially not her father’s. By this hour, her brittle smile says, I should be fully, respectably attired. If I excuse myself by saying, ‘I’m just going to get dressed’, will that highlight how very undressed I am? Fortunately James appears – wearing jeans and a sweater – which gives me the opportunity to squeak, ‘S’cuse me a sec,’ and beetle off.
Bloody hell, what’s wrong with me? I’m usually so relaxed here and love nothing better than flopping around on a weekend morning with coffee, if not in his dressing gown, then in one of his soft, roomy T-shirts and my knickers.
I could’ve been worse, I tell myself as I pull on my jeans and top in his bedroom, and take a deep breath before rejoining them downstairs. By now Esther and her dad are chatting away. Or rather, Esther is talking – alot– and James is sitting next to her on the sofa, listening. Apparently, things with the jewellery people haven’t actually been ‘great’ at all recently. ‘They say they want one thing, then they want another,’ she tells him. ‘I don’t knowwhatthey want, Dad …’
‘Well, are they giving you any kind of suggestions or direction?’ James asks.
She shrugs, looking quite anguished now. ‘They’re saying my pictures are too dingy.’
‘Too dingy?’ he repeats.
‘Yeah.’ She nods glumly. ‘They’re not sunny enough, they reckon. Not in the spirit of lightness and joy that they want to evoke …’ She sighs heavily and shakes her head. ‘What does that evenmean?’
Erm, that they should be less dingy?‘What d’you think, Lauren?’ James asks, turning to me.
‘Oh, I’m not sure,’ I reply quickly, catching Esther’s startled look which seems to say:Why are you asking her?In fact I could offer suggestions, having checked out her Instagram again recently. Although she still looked beautiful – it would be impossible for her not to – her recent pictures tended towards the arty and dark; all low lighting and shadows and, I have to agree, not an awful lot of sunniness. But saying anything would feel way out of line.
‘It’s just, with Lauren being a photographer,’ James adds, ‘I just thought—’
‘Yeah, but don’t you photograph food?’ Esther cuts in with a frown.
‘Yes, I do at the moment,’ I reply. ‘But I’ve done all sorts over the years.’
‘Oh.’ She seems to consider this. ‘What d’you think then?’ Almost reluctantly she shows me her Instagram feed. (Naturally, I pretend I’m not intimately familiar with it.) Here’s Esther draped on a cerise chaise longue, black wall behind her, dimly lit from the glow of a tarnished antique lamp. Now she’s sprawled languidly across a dark green satin throw, then curled up on a deep blue velvet cushion in a tiny cave-like room, or possibly a cupboard; and now perched on the kitchen table, looking pale and depressed with a huge abstract painting behind her – blood red splattered on brown, as if someone had an accident on it. Finally, she’s lying on a grey shag pile rug with her mouth slightly open and skin deathly pale as if, well … dead.
While there’s jewellery in these pictures, it’s certainly not shown off to its best effect. And there are no smiles, no ‘lightness’; just moody stares into the middle distance. I can imagine that these photos aren’t quite in the spirit of the Balinese jewellery brand, from the way she’s described it.
‘So,’ Esther says, ‘what d’you think?’
I bite my lip. ‘I think, uhhhh … they’re very evocative,’ I reply.
