‘Really?’ Her eyes widened in surprise, making her look even more endearing. And all of a sudden he found he couldn’t be cross with her.
‘Yes, come on, I’ll show you.’
He got up, walked over to the desk and switched on his iMac, showing her some of the photographs he had taken last week and how he liked to edit them.
* * *
Although she had been dreading today, working with Daniel was turning out to be a lot easier than she’d expected. Spending the entire day immersed in the world of photography was like a dream come true. So much better than having to cram the thing she loved most into the slivers of space between her everyday life. Although Daniel had been terse with her at times, she’dseen flashes of softness in him too. But she also realised he was a complete perfectionist and she’d have to work incredibly hard to meet his expectations. Especially if she wasn’t going to go the way of his previous assistants. And that, she realised, was what she wanted to do. To impress him. She was going to do everything in her power to achieve that.
As she watched him explaining the software to her, she imagined how she could improve her own photographs, if she was ever allowed the chance, forcing herself to push away the feelings he aroused when they were leaning over the keyboard together. So close that they were almost touching. She wasn’t going to have a repeat of Mark.
She’d been attracted to Mark from the moment she’d first met him at her interview for the receptionist’s job at the gallery. He was smooth and sophisticated, and although she’d known nothing about art galleries, he’d made her feel important and worth something. She’d rarely felt like that before. At school she’d struggled with academics, much to her teachers’ consternation. The only thing she’d ever been any good at was art. From her art classes she’d developed a love of photography and from then she’d been hooked. Those classes had been the highlight of her school week, pitted against the frustration of not being able to understand most of her other subjects. She’d dreamed of doing an art foundation course, and even a degree, but then her mum had died and her whole life had changed.
Her mother’s death from a brain haemorrhage had been completely unexpected and all the more traumatic because of it. There hadn’t even been any signs that anything was wrong. One moment she was standing in the kitchen, laughing and joking, the next, she cried out in pain, holding her hand to her head, and then slumped to the floor. Anna flew to her, trying to get her to speak while their father rang for an ambulance. Her mum was already gone by the time the ambulance arrived, leavingthe whole family lost and in shock. Afterwards, her father went through the motions of running his plumbing business, but losing his wife knocked the stuffing out of him and he lived on autopilot. When he came home after work he would slump in a chair, watching mindless television programmes, without even seeming to take any of them in. At first Anna tried to tempt him to eat by cooking her mother’s recipes, but, rather than encouraging him back into the world, the memories of the food her mother made for him caused him to push his plate away. Anna then tried to find new recipes that were nothing to do with their mother, imploring him to eat. As if taking pity on her, and not wanting to cause her any more worry, he forced the food down, and slowly, very slowly, he began to heal and return once more to the head of their family. But without his wife by his side, he was never the same again — very much a shell of the man he’d been before.
In an effort to keep things together, and also to keep busy so that she didn’t have to deal with her own grief, Anna took on the running of the house — shopping, cooking, cleaning and doing all the laundry — as well as looking after her brothers. Jack was nine and felt the loss of his mother clearly, whereas Harry was only four and didn’t really understand. She tried to comfort them as best as she could, but she was ill-equipped to be a mother. Sometimes she’d get really angry with her mum, not only for leaving them so suddenly, but also because she’d done everything for all of them, and now she was gone it was all down to Anna.
She was so busy in the year after her mum’s death that she didn’t have time to put any effort into her GSCEs and, although she never expected to get good grades, she barely scraped through the exams. Luckily she managed to pass maths and English, and excelled in her art, having thrown herself into it as a means of escape. But she certainly didn’t have the gradesshe needed for the further education she dreamed of. Instead, she enrolled at a secretarial college to learn something practical that would get her a job at the end of it. On leaving college she managed to get a boring office job in a stationery company, but each day going to work had filled her with dread. She moved from job to job, trying to find something she enjoyed more, but nothing seemed to hit the mark. And then she saw the advert for a receptionist at a West End art gallery and knew she had to go for it.
She splurged some of the housekeeping money on a new suit and was a bag of nerves as she approached the gallery. But Mark soon put her at ease. After being offered the job, over the next few months, he brought her out of herself, making her believe that she did have skills and talents, and that she could be really good at her job if she put her mind to it.
He became a lifeline to her then, and so it was little wonder that she fell in love with him. And to her amazement he seemed to reciprocate her feelings — for the first six months of their relationship she felt happy again. But he never took to her family or they to him, and more and more Anna began to feel as though she was playing piggy in the middle between them all. He resented it when she put her family first, and they thought he was too smarmy and not to be trusted. Despite Mark’s protestations about how much time she gave to her family, and that he should have her whole attention, Anna refused to give in. Their arguments were followed by painful periods of Mark completely ignoring her, as though in punishment for caring about people other than him. And then one day, when Anna walked into the office, she found him in the arms of Jemima, their boss’ daughter. And her world once again imploded.
‘So what I try to do when I’m editing is to first look at the focus of the picture, and what I want to direct the viewer’s eye to.’
Anna was brought out of her reverie at the sound of Daniel’s words. She quickly pushed all thoughts of Mark from her mind. He was in the past. This was her present and she was going to do her best to make it her future too.
Chapter Six
Daniel took a cold bottle of beer through to the living room and sank down into the plush white sofa. Today had been hard work. Spending all day showing Anna the ropes had forced him to concentrate on the things he did that he usually took for granted but, apart from one point where it looked as though she’d drifted off, he felt she was keen to learn. She certainly seemed to pick things up quickly enough, though only time would tell. On Friday he was doing a photo shoot forVoguein a central London hotel — that would be the real test of whether they could work together. By the time he went back into the kitchen to make himself something to eat, he was feeling optimistic that this might work out after all.
After finishing the omelette he’d made and stacking the dishwasher, Daniel switched on his laptop to find some places to take Ben at the weekend. Beeston Castle was a current favourite — Ben was obsessed with knights and battles — and Daniel was delighted to find a medieval re-enactment was taking place at the weekend. He couldn’t keep the smile off his face as he booked the tickets. He knew it could never compete with Disneyland. Ben couldn’t stop talking about the rides and the wonderful characters he’d ‘met’, and while Daniel was pleased Ben had enjoyed himself, he just wished he didn’t feel he was in competition with Lucinda and Axel. He also hated that he only got to spend time with Ben every other weekend. Daniel sighed as he shut down his laptop. The saying that you only really appreciated something when you didn’t have it anymore definitely rang true. He often wondered if he could have done more to prevent it from happening, but thinking that way was a sure route to madness.
The truth was, Ben’s arrival in his and Lucinda’s life had changed everything. Daniel had met Lucinda when he’d goneto a weekend party on a country estate with Charlotte. Several other guests were invited, including Lucinda, who was part of that Cheshire set. At the time he was busy building up his photography career and didn’t have the time for a long-term relationship, and certainly not one at a distance, but on first meeting Lucinda he fell head over heels in love. The rest was out of his control. She had beautiful long dark hair, which rippled down her back in a glossy sheen. Her oval dark-brown eyes had stared at him intently, making him feel as if he was literally melting. She had exquisite bone structure too. His first instinct was that he wanted to kiss her, followed very closely by the desire to photograph her. And he did plenty of both. She was naturally photogenic and knew just how to pose in front of a camera to get the best results. Later she admitted that she’d always had a desire to become a model and had practised these poses in front of her bedroom mirror from when she was a little girl. She was delighted when his photographs launched her into a modelling career, and readily moved to London. For a while they were the golden couple, his blond good looks contrasting with her darker ones, and both of them successful and becoming rich in their own right. They ate out at the best restaurants, danced in the most expensive clubs and jetted off on luxury holidays whenever their schedules would allow.
Now, Daniel remembered those early days with a pang of regret. They were some of the best years of his life and he’d thought they’d never end, but of course they had.
Two years into their relationship, they’d married, at Peckforton Castle in Cheshire, surrounded by all their friends, family and countless hangers-on, followed by a honeymoon in Antigua. When they’d returned home they’d continued their life and careers as normal. Until one day, Lucinda announced that she wanted to stop modelling and become a mother. Daniel wasn’t keen. He didn’t want to give up the lifestyle he hadfor the responsibility of caring for a child, but when he saw how much it meant to Lucinda, he caved in to her wishes. He could never deny her anything and he was actually delighted when a few months later she announced she was pregnant. But that’s when everything changed. She suffered horrifically with morning sickness and mood swings, which lasted well into the pregnancy. Although he was sympathetic to what she was going through, and did everything he could to make it better for her, he didn’t really know what to do, and everything he tried always seemed to be wrong. He kept telling himself this was just a stage and things would change when Lucinda had the baby, and they did. For the worse. Caring for a newborn was completely out of both their comfort zones. They were exhausted, constantly snapping at each other, and Lucinda’s mood swings, if anything, were worse than before. Then she stopped caring for both herself and Ben.
Bewildered and inexperienced, Daniel tried to look after both of them. It was Charlotte who suggested Lucinda go to see a doctor, where she received a diagnosis and medication for postnatal depression. Gradually Lucinda started to improve and Daniel returned some of his attention back to his business, which suffered during her illness. He had to work hard to build it back up again, to fund the lifestyle they were used to and Lucinda didn’t want to live without. Over the next months she finally bonded with Ben. But, as if trying to overcompensate for those early days, she went completely the opposite way. She wouldn’t let Ben out of her sight and wouldn’t let anyone else in, including Daniel. He retreated to something he understood — photography — and worked as much as he could to overcome the feelings of being shut out.
Thinking back to those times, that was what Daniel regretted most of all. He should have persevered to be part of his wife’s and his child’s lives. Work had become a habit he’d founddifficult to break, and Lucinda had been on her own most of the time with Ben. Daniel had been in such a state of denial that he’d been genuinely shocked when Lucinda announced she was leaving him. She’d hated being alone in London and had wanted to go back to Cheshire where she would be surrounded by family and friends. He’d understood why she would want to do that, but had known he couldn’t move with her. His career was here. He’d nearly lost it once and he wasn’t prepared to lose it again. And so he’d let her go. She hadn’t seemed bothered by that. In fact, she’d seemed relieved to be out of their marriage, and that had made him feel doubly rejected. But he’d never anticipated how much living so far away from Ben would affect him. His life was here, but his son was in Cheshire, and he couldn’t figure out how he could possibly combine the two.
Chapter Seven
Anna watched in fascination as Daniel photographed the models. He seemed to know instinctively which poses would suit their faces and their bodies, and he charmed them with gentle words to get the right reactions, ones that Anna knew would look good in the glossy magazine they’d end up in. She concentrated hard on making sure she had all the right equipment to hand — she’d memorised where everything was so that she could find things quickly. On the whole the day was running smoothly, but that didn’t stop him barking instructions at her when she didn’t get it quite right. She envied the models for the way he spoke to them, with a soft caress in his voice, and wished he would speak to her like that.
They worked hard all morning, barely even stopping for a coffee. Her body ached from moving equipment and backdrops, and she realised how little physical activity she’d done in her old job. But she was enjoying the experience, and just by watching Daniel — the kind of lighting he used, which camera angles and lenses worked best — she felt as though she’d already learned so much, things that would benefit her own work. With the exception of the photographer in question, this was the perfect job for her.
By the time they finished the shoot at three o’clock, she was exhausted but elated, and a rather gruff, ‘You did well for a first big shoot,’ from Daniel had her spirits soaring.
‘Let’s get packed up and this lot back home as soon as possible,’ he said. ‘I’m going up to Cheshire this evening, so I’d like to get on the road as soon as possible.’
‘Of course.’ She immediately started to pack up the equipment. ‘Doing anything nice up there?’
He stopped what he was doing for a minute and stared at her, frowning. She wondered if she’d overstepped the mark.Throughout the week, he hadn’t said anything about his personal life.
‘I have a house there,’ he said. ‘My son lives in Cheshire with his mother and it’s my weekend with him.’
