‘It’s fine,’ he says. He looks at me for a while, either waiting for me to apologise, or too mortified to speak. ‘Are you hungry?’
‘Not really. I’ll have a drink, though.’
‘I picked up some wine? Red, because… you bought red before. I don’t really drink but I got myself a couple of beers.’
‘What? And you’re going to watch me drink a bottle of wine alone?’ I roll my eyes, grab his fan, and brush past him as I head into a freshly hoovered living room, and plop onto the sofa. ‘You’re trying to get me drunk.’
‘No! No, I just…’
‘Well, have a glass of wine, then. Make it fair.’
He doesn’t own wine glasses （I don’t know what I expected） so I drink out of a small plastic tumbler, and watch him do the same, wrinkling his nose with every sip. He chatters. He doesn’t really like wine, he doesn’t really drink, he feels like a proper grown-up with this red. I make him have another before he switches to beer.
‘Can I ask you something?’ His eyes are big, and brown, like a cow’s.
‘No.’ He looks stricken. ‘I’m joking. Ask.’
‘When we met at the coffee shop, you asked me why I wanted to do this. But… Why me?’ he asks. ‘I mean, like… Why are you interested in me? For photographs, for anything?’
I knock back the rest of my wine and mull it over. There are a few possible answers: I like curly hair; I like weak men; you’re well behaved.
‘You’re really cute,’ I say. He doesn’t believe me. ‘You are! Honestly, I can’t believe you’re single.’ I smile. I’m half telling the truth – he seems like the kind of man whose girlfriends are perpetually younger than him. Like he dates fourteen-year-olds when he’s seventeen, eighteen-year-olds when he’s twenty-five – never enough that it’s illegal but enough that it’s weird. I can also see him with some bossy, frumpy pony-club type or an adult-emo with a dated haircut and a lot of Joker merch. He smiles, just a small smile, but then it drops, and he starts chewing his fingers.
‘Okay,’ he says. ‘If you say so.’
I ask him to show me his camera. He gets it for me, apologising as he does, because it’s just a hobby, and it’s his brother’s old camera, and it’s not very good, and neither is he. It’s a digital Nikon, maybe five years old. I’m a Canon girl, myself, and I tell him, prompting another apology. I flip it on, and immediately go to his photographs. A lot of squirrels, in black and white, and macro shots of leaves. There’s a shot of the Serpentine Sackler Gallery, so he must have taken these on a trip to London. They’re all a bit too dark. Like he’s tried to do something with the settings, but he’s just cocked-up the exposure instead.
‘This is Hyde Park,’ I say. He nods. ‘I used to live in London,’ I say.
‘I know. Your website says you went to Central Saint Martins and the Royal College? Amir – my brother – did London College of Communication. That’s like, the same uni group thing as Saint Martins. Isn’t it?’
‘Yeah. The LCC photography course always read as really commercial. Your brother does, like, photos of food and stuff, doesn’t he?’ And the checkout boy nods. ‘Mmm. I couldn’t do that. I mean, obviously I’ve done my share of freelance commercial stuff, but usually it’s fashion photography, so you get a lot more artistic freedom.’
‘Yeah, well.’ He shrugs. ‘It pays the bills for him, I s’pose.’
‘My work pays my bills,’ I say. ‘Not having a go, I’m just saying, like, I couldn’t do that. And, like, fine art photography can be very lucrative. So, you can make money and have some integrity at the same time.’
‘He hasn’t… sold out or anything it’s just… his job.’
It’s more than just a job, I think. But I realise I’m being hostile. He’s frowning at me, so I relax my face, smile, shrug. Hey, if he wants to take photos of M&S roast chickens, and he’s good with that, then whatever.
‘Do food photographers really microwave tampons to make the food look like it’s steaming? Like, does your brother do that?’ I ask. Eddie from Tesco colours at the mention of tampons.
‘Erm… If he has, he’s never mentioned it.’
‘Ask him for me.’
‘Okay.’
There’s a photo of the back half of a dead rat on his camera. Still in Hyde Park, I think, next to a clump of dandelions. Just its foot, its tail, with a clump of flies bunched at the edges of its flesh. It’s good. Well composed, and there’s the rat, the flies, the dandelions: all pests, all living and dying together. It’s also a bit A-level, but it’s like… edgy A-level, like you see that sketchbook and you think, aye I’d give this a B, that’d be fair.
‘This one isn’t bad,’ I say. I turn the camera to him. ‘It’s the first one where the exposure’s right.’
‘Ah. Amir took that one. He fixed the settings on it for me. He said I’d messed up the aperture, or something.’ He looks embarrassed, again. ‘It’s… stupid. I wanted it to be high contrast, so I… fiddled around with it, and I didn’t really know what I was doing. I’m a bit frightened to touch it now, to be honest.’
The rest of the photos are fine. A few more in the park, then a portrait of a man who looks like Eddie from Tesco, but a little older and quite a lot bigger. Bigger nose, bigger shoulders and, overall, not quite as good looking; he’s missing the cleft chin, the dimples, the freckles. Just a normal alright-looking bloke – he wouldn’t turn my head. Amir has a better haircut than his brother, though, it must be said.
‘Is this your brother?’ I ask. ‘Is he quite tall? He looks big.’
‘Yeah, he’s over six foot, actually.’ Eddie from Tesco clears his throat, shoulders hunching up to his ears. I watch his hands clench and unclench. He’s thinking giving me the camera was a mistake – that I prefer his brother now. I’ve seen Flo look like this before. She’ll introduce me to someone, then I’ll watch her get stiff and sad out of the corner of my eye, because now she’s the Ugly Friend.
‘Genetics are a funny thing, aren’t they?’ I say. ‘My mam’s only about five foot tall.’
‘Yeah… Our mum is tiny, too. I always used to say, when I was a kid, I used to say that Amir shouldn’t pick on me, because I’d be bigger than him one day and like… it just never happened,’ he says, forcing a laugh. ‘He still picks me up in front of people.’ He cringes. ‘I don’t know why I told you that.’
I smile. I go to tell him it’s okay, it’s cute, even.
Then he says: ‘Do you think you could pick me up?’ His voice cracks. ‘Not in a weird way, just…’ I make a face at him. ‘That was stupid. A stupid joke.’
I smile at him, and I think I do it wrong, because he shrinks like I’m glaring, or staring, and there is a long, heavy silence. I forget to keep smiling, because I’m watching him watch me. His eyes dart around, and he stammers, like he wants to speak but can’t. He mustn’t like being looked at, but he stares at me all the time. I like looking at him.