‘You’re part of my journey now, part of my memories of London. And I like to capture my memories on my travels, as many as possible: countries, places … people.’
I felt oddly flattered I might be part of that gallery. ‘Okay,’ I said slowly.
He got me to stand in the archway of the porch and asked me to rest a hand against the soft, pale stone. Moments before, he’d been smiling, full of easy bravado, but now he looked at me with a single-minded focus that made my heart stutter. Yet I didn’t go rigid, as I often did when someone yelled ‘cheese!’ in my direction. I felt completely at ease.
When he finished, he showed them to me. Who was this woman staring into the lens with such confidence? She was practically glowing.It made me wonder if that was what he had seen too when he’d pressed the shutter.
He began to collect his belongings, stuffing the camera into a padded bag full of lenses and other mysterious equipment. ‘That’s me done here now,’ he said. ‘I’m away to the next location.’
He was going? ‘Next location?’ I asked, keeping my tone light and airy, as if I wasn’t already considering turning into a stalker and ‘accidentally on purpose’ bumping into him there.
‘Yup,’ he said, as he collapsed the legs of his tripod. ‘I’m doing a series of photos around the theme “Secret London”. I’ve got a couple of ideas of places to go to, but after that I’m just going to wing it, see what I can find.’
His kit was now all stowed away, but he made no move to leave.
‘I … I might be able to help with that,’ I said, surprising myself with my boldness.
‘Funny you should mention that,’ he said, his expression becoming suddenly serious. ‘I was thinking it’s probably not wise for you to be alone just now.’
My eyes widened. ‘It isn’t?’
He shook his head. ‘There could be a delayed reaction to that sting. I think someone should probably keep an eye on you for … oh, at least an hour or so. And it just so happens there’s a great little café tucked away—’
‘Just around the corner,’ I finished for him, a smile breaking out on my face. ‘Déjà Vu. They do the best iced lattes this side of the river.’
He slung his camera bag over his shoulder and made a wide gesture with the other arm. ‘Please … lead the way.’
But, Lili …the little voice in my head warned.You haven’t—
Yes, I know,I whispered silently back as we made our way out of the garden.But the whole disaster of my life will still be there in an hour, won’t it? I’ll make a decision then.
Chapter Two
THE DAY WAS certainly not going the way I’d expected it to when I’d left the house that morning, ready to mope around London in an attempt to decide whether to chase my dreams or tell destiny to take a hike. But it seemed destiny had a trick up her sleeve, and it had come in the form of a rather tall Scottish man with a camera.
His name was Ben, and he was a travel photographer. We’d gone for a coffee, where he’d told me all about the few ideas he had for unusual places to visit in London, and I’d thrown a few suggestions into the mix. He’d told me his first stop was the Mithraeum, an underground Roman temple where they were supposed to have sacrificed bulls and all sorts of unmentionable stuff. I said I’d never been. He’d joked that if it was really creepy, he might need someone to hold his hand. I had volunteered. And that had been that.
And at some point during our perusal of the carefully lit ancient artefacts, we’d decided to spend the rest of the day together. Not by spoken agreement, just …
To be honest, I didn’t know how we’d done it. It was merely that we seemed to be in tune with one another, like we could communicate on a secret wavelength the rest of the world couldn’t tune into.
What was I doing? I wasn’t this girl – impulsive, impetuous, prone to dropping everything and just heading off somewhere at the drop of a hat. But, as I strolled the streets of London, my hand still joined with Ben the Photographer’s, I’d started to wonder if destiny knew what she was doing.
It wasn’t quite three, yet we’d been all over the city. After the temple, we’d gone to Leadenhall Market, where Ben had been entranced by the colourful Victorian cast iron and glass structure. Then he’d taken one of my suggestions, and we’d headed off to the conservatory at the Barbican. He’d snapped away when we got there, completely in his element, muttering between shots about the juxtaposition of delicate and exotic plants with the stark concrete of the Brutalist architecture. Then it had been the hidden tunnels of Piccadilly underground station, and now we were wandering through the narrow streets of Soho, still hand in hand, scouting for hidden sculptures on buildings.
Someone Ben had got chatting to while we’d toured the tunnels under Piccadilly had mentioned that an artist had placed stone noses all over the city in protest at the rise in use of CCTV cameras. While most had been removed, seven were still tucked away on various buildings in Soho and Covent Garden. It was a bit of a cult thing to try and find them all, apparently.
We’d already found numbers one to six, the last couple found in Dean Street, and then we turned into Meard Street in search of the final one. ‘There it is!’ Ben exclaimed almost immediately, pointing to a white plaster nose high up on the red-brick wall of a Georgian townhouse.He let go of my hand and pulled his camera out of his bag, then spent a good five minutes experimenting with different angles, crouching down low, looking at where the light was coming from and then working both with it and against it to see what produced the most interesting shot. I could have watched him work all day. When it came to creativity, he was unfettered, limitless.
During our conversations, I’d also revealed I was a creative sort of person, although music was my thing, not the visual arts. I didn’t know if that made it different. I couldn’t just create something in a perfectly captured moment and then email it to someone. For me to ‘create’ I had to be present, along with my violin. I always found it terrifying.
Besides, while Ben chose what to photograph, used his imagination to see things the way no one else saw them, I just played the notes someone else had written. It was hardly in the same league, even if one teacher had called me ‘prodigiously good’. That’s how I’d ended up spending the previous year at one of the most respected music schools in the country.
And it had been a year of utter hell.
But spending the day with Ben was making me see things in a different light. I wondered if I could learn from him, absorb some of his bravery, and if I could, maybe my second year at the London Conservatory could be different. If I decided to turn up for it, of course. I was still on the fence about that one, despite the deadline I’d imposed on myself that morning to stop avoiding the issue and choose one way or the other.
‘How do you know what angles to take the photographs from?’ I asked. ‘Can anyone learn?’
