I was greeted with silence from the other end of the line.
‘Mum?’
‘If I wasn’t so annoyed with you I’d almost find that romantic, Benjamin Gilbert,’ she laughed, as it became apparent she’d been holding back her tears.
I was grateful to have won her over.
‘I rang Maddy earlier,’ Alice told me that night, as she grabbed vegetables out of the fridge to go into the dinner. The chicken was already in the wok, so we were halfway towards sitting down with our stir-fry with sweet chilli sauce – I was ravenous, it already smelt amazing.
‘Oh, really?’
Maddy and Alice talking on the phone wasn’t something that happened all the time, but the two of them had managed to grow quite close over the years – hardly surprising seeing as we were all hanging out together every weekend. It would have been weird if they weren’t friends.
‘Yeah,’ she continued, plonking a pepper, carrot and some baby sweetcorn on the kitchen side to be chopped and sliced. ‘Well, I suddenly thought – remember that lovely shoot she did with that couple last year, when they got engaged?’
‘Yeah …’ I said slowly, concerned as to where the conversation was going.
I remembered the shoot – Maddy had taken the couple down to the river and snapped some great pictures of them together while they gazed lovingly into each other’s eyes as though they hadn’t a care in the world. I liked them. I thought Maddy had done a wonderful job. I mean, they were cheesy beyond belief, but I don’t think it’s possible to do such a shoot without a little bit of Cheddar being thrown in. All those lovey-dovey looks and smug faces as you congratulate each other on finding ‘the one’ – it’s definitely not for the cynics out there. That’s for sure.
‘Well,’ Alice grinned, looking pleased with herself. ‘I thought we could do that.’
‘Really?’
I was far too negative straight away, screwing my face up in horror. Alice was quite taken aback by the reaction, instantly becoming defensive.
‘All right, not if you don’t want to.’
‘Huh?’
‘If you think it’s a stupid idea then we won’t,’ she huffed, picking up the pepper and aggressively chopping it into chunky rings before chucking them into the wok and stirring them in.
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘You’re being all hesitant and weird,’ she said, brushing her fringe out of her eyes with the back of her hand.
‘Am I?’
I was. I knew I was. I can’t deny it.
‘Yes. It doesn’t matter if you don’t want to do it,’ she said dismissively, picking up the carrot. ‘It was just a thought.’
‘Isn’t it a bit cheesy?’
‘You didn’t think so when she showed us them, in fact you really liked them.’
Like I said, I did. I couldn’t argue with that.
‘Won’t it be weird having Maddy do it for us, though?’ I suggested.
‘She’s your best friend, Ben. How many photos has she taken of us over the years?’
‘True,’ I mumbled.
‘I just thought it would be a nice thing to do. Give our parents some lovely pictures of us,’ she muttered, her face falling with disappointment. ‘It’s no big deal.’
‘You’re right,’ I nodded enthusiastically. ‘Let’s do it.’ There was no way I could possibly get out of it and I didn’t want to upset Alice if it was something she really wanted to do – it was only taking pictures, after all.
‘Really? You mean it?’
‘Yeah. Why not.’
‘Great,’ she smiled, banging on the kitchen side with delight.
‘So, what did Maddy say?’
‘She said she’d love to – she was in the middle of something when I called, but she said she’d get back to me later on with some dates.’
‘Marvellous.’
Maddy
Twenty-four years old …
I’d been sat on my backside in the rather dead art shop when Alice called. It wasn’t manic and I wasn’t busy. I just felt the sudden urge to get off the phone to her and call her back when I was mentally prepared.
Of course, I’d taken hundreds of photos of them before, they were all over my Facebook page, so it’s not like I was averse to them being a couple or shied away from picturing them together. But taking photos of days out or when people are drunk and giddy is quite different to doing a shoot based on their love for each other. It’s not that I felt I couldn’t bear to see Ben and Alice together, or like I was worried feelings would start stirring in me again, more that I felt like I would be a big fat fraud taking the photos for them. That was my problem.