Chapter 12

Andrew lifted Moira off her feet and hugged her.

“I see someone still knows how to spectacularly fill a pair of jeans.”

She giggled

“Put me down you big child. What would my boyfriend think?”

A deep voice with a faint accent piped up.

“Come here and I will show you.”

The tallest man Andrew had ever seen bent down put his hands under Moira’s arse and lifted her squealing into his arms. Moira’s squeal of ‘Lars!’ was stifled with a kiss. Apparently whacks by women to men are universal. He lowered her back to the ground and stepped forward with his hand outstretched.

“Lars Hilmarsson, pleased to meet you.”

“Andrew McLeod, likewise.”

Andrew stared up for one of the few times in his adult life. Lars was at least 6’8”, he later found out that it was 6’9” and was broad and strong in the shoulders and chest. Andrew was right around 15 stone (just under 100kg or 210lbs) but Lars was huge next to him. When he discovered his height Andrew also found out Lars was more than 19 stone (120kg or 270lbs). Lord Barnes came through to the hall and just laughed.

“You two are not allowed to stand all night. We will get a crick in our necks, I feel positively Lilliputian.”

Andrew shook his hand as they were all ushered through. Freya came over and gave Andrew a hug and an air kiss on the cheek.

“Jim is right, come and sit down, and don’t get back up.”

Andrew looked around but it appeared to be just the five of them. Hmmm. Lars was a geology student at Oxford and he and Moira were a serious couple. They looked like Leslie and Julian as they snuggled close. Of course she was 5’6” and he was 6’9” but they were okay on the couch. They were serious enough that he was staying for Christmas at Moira’s and she was going to Reykjavik for New Years. Lars was very relaxed and easy going, the perfect complement to Moira. But he had also softened some of her caustic edges and they were a nice couple. Andrew did not get much time alone with them but when Lars thought that no one was looking his hand was on her arse. Moira knew what she had, dressed to emphasise it and had reeled someone in. As for the rest of the evening it made Andrew sad. Not through a problem or anything like that but the exact opposite. Jim and Freya, he never called Lord Barnes that but Andrew could feel his resolve slipping, treated him like they were his parents. Freya in particular seemed to be determined to sing his praises. While they were through in the kitchen plating the dinner Andrew asked Moira about it, if only to see if she was upset or uneasy about the way her dad was treating him.

“Beats me Andrew. Freya is a nice lady but she was only on the scene for a few months before I left to go to Oxford. I think Dad and her went out for a long time before he introduced her to me. So you know her as well if not better than I do. As for Dad, I am not going to get upset about the way he is now. The change in three years is amazing. He and Lars get on great, he assumed that Lars would be sleeping with me and didn’t even bother preparing a guest room. He looks and acts younger now than five years ago. Maybe he was having one of those mid-life crises that I keep reading about and now he is over it.”

Not much luck there then. After dinner Moira and Lars got ready to head into town to meet some of her friends and Andrew took it as his cue to leave.

“Stay and have coffee Andrew. No need to rush off so soon.”

So he stayed after hugging Moira farewell and shaking Lars’ hand. Rather than an interrogation it was a quiet friendly low key evening. They both expressed interest in life at Cambridge and Andrew talked about most aspects of his time there, although he kept the cancer ward volunteering private. He made no reference to the issues with his parents and so it was an anodyne version of life that he presented. He didn’t talk about his career as a wannabe glamour photographer with anyone so it never crossed his mind to mention it. He was surprised when they invited him to their Hogmanay party. This was the one that Mhairi had been excited to receive an invite to.

“That is very kind but, will I know anyone there? Even Moira will be away. Sorry that sounds very rude and I don’t mean it that way.”

“No, I understand. There are several people that would like to meet you, and you will know quite a few people there.”

Conspicuously there were no names given. Andrew couldn’t fake an imaginary party on the spur of the moment so graciously and gratefully accepted.

“Excellent. I presume you will be bringing a date?”

Andrew hoped Suzanne had not made any plans yet.

“Yes I will bring a date.”

He managed to escape after just after 10.00 but as he drove home Andrew was thinking that nothing good comes of momentary acts of weakness. If he hadn’t invited them to his party in the summer none of this would have happened. Bah. The flat was empty when he returned, with a note on the table by the door saying that Leslie had called and Suzanne had gone round to their flat. At 11.20 the phone rang and it was Julian letting him know that they two women had drunk two and a half bottles of wine and Suzanne was asleep on the couch. Andrew wished him good luck and went to bed.

There was no sign of Suzanne when Andrew returned from the pool so he decided to head over and see his Grandma. Which was an almighty mistake. He could see it on his Grandma’s face as she opened the door. Andrew’s father was visiting and just for a moment Andrew was tempted to turn round and leave. But it was December 22^nd and he was supposed to be having Christmas dinner in three days with the extended family, so he went in. But it was a waste of time. His father didn’t even pretend to be pleased to see him.

“Gavin, stop it. What on earth is the matter with you?”

“Nothing is the matter with me. I don’t fawn over my son unlike the rest of the family. But then again I don’t go flashing my money about.”

There was no point in trying to get through to him. The fact that Andrew had money had turned his father into a bitter and twisted man, old before his time. Most of his dad’s issues had nothing to do with Andrew. He stood up, fed up and not prepared to listen to his father’s moans.

“That’s right, run off again.”

Andrew trudged back across the Meadows to the flat, fed up with his family. Suzanne had returned to the flat but had left a note saying she was at Warrender trying to purge the poisons from her system. Andrew sat quietly reading a textbook and Suzanne finally came through close to lunchtime.

“I think I need to stay off the wine for a couple of days.”

Andrew made an early lunch and then the two of them sat and studied for most of the afternoon. It was quiet and therapeutic. Andrew remembered about the party and asked Suzanne.

“I was asked to the Hogmanay party at Lord Barnes’ last night. Would you come with me?”

“Me?”

“Of course you. Who else would I ask?”

There was an awkward silence.

“Andrew, this is the sort of thing where we are very different. I don’t know that I would enjoy going to a high-faluting party like that.”

Andrew was taken aback at her refusal. His usual passive nature didn’t wheedle or plead and he was not going to force the issue but hoped that she would come round. He didn’t like spanking women but did it to Suzanne because she wanted it. He hated himself but was upset that going to a party was more than she was willing to do for him. He got up to make dinner and took his time in the kitchen and wallowed. Andrew was unhappy and upset at the world and his sense of stability, his sense of composure was missing. He maintained a façade with Suzanne, he wasn’t going to sulk and pout and after dinner drove her over to her home. He hugged and kissed her but his mind was elsewhere. When he got back to the flat he sat there unsure of what do. On the spur of the moment he called Nikki to see how they were doing and more importantly what they were doing. After chatting away to first Fran and then Nikki Andrew asked if he could stay for a couple of days.

“Can you deal with an engineering student for a couple of days?”

“Of course, you are always welcome. When would you like to come over?”

“Could I come on Saturday for two or three days?”

His voice was struggling to stay steady. After a pause.

“Saturday? For three days?”

“Remember how you came for Christmas dinner? I need you to return the favour.”

Nikki wanted to know what had happened but Andrew told her that she would get the full story at the weekend. They insisted that they had no plans for Christmas Day so he told them he would be through after lunch on the 24^th. His relief at having that dealt with was tempered by sadness that it had come to this, not even Christmas dinner with the family.

Thursday night was the low point, not helped by a lousy night’s sleep. But Friday morning when Andrew returned from swimming the mail had arrived. The first bright spot, and it was a real pleasure to receive it, was a Christmas card from Mandy, including a return address. Andrew would send a reply when he got back to College, but through her mother. He wanted this to stay a friendship and not veer into anything else. He called Pete and they agreed to meet at the Guildford at 10.00. Andrew wasn’t in the mood to study and needed to be mindlessly busy. He knew one place that would be pleased to see him, even if it was only for a few hours.

The warehouse was as cold and draughty as ever on a December day, it alternated between being a sweat box in the summer and an ice box in the winter. Neither Dave nor Gord were the least bit surprised to see him, they looked at each other with a ‘see I told you he would’ look on their faces. Andrew just slipped straight back into his old job, hauling the cases, bags and boxes of goods to the packing tables where they were split down into individual food bank parcels. By 2.00 he called it quits but told Dave he would try and be back at least a couple of other times while he was in Edinburgh.

Tony’s shop was busy when Andrew arrived, it was the 23^rd and men were just starting their Christmas shopping. For the first half hour he refilled some of the items that had sold well. The shop, like most independent stores, carried a wide range which meant there wasn’t much stock actually on display. Andrew refilled some of the empty spots for Tony while he and Stacey dealt with the customers.

“Give me a shout if you need anything brought through, okay? I will prop the studio door open so I can hear you.”

“Will do, thanks.”

Before Andrew reviewed all the prints from the weekend he developed the four rolls he had taken with Suzanne, the two where she was clothed and posing away, and the two where she rolled around naked, hidden only by a sheet. He left the negatives to dry for a while and took all the packets of prints from the previous weekend through to the studio. There were three packets of prints, 72 shots in all from the two locations beside the train tracks. He had seven packets of prints from the beach, a mixture of 24 shot and 36 shot rolls. All in all there were just over 200 prints from their trip north, with only 12 from Glenfinnan, the rest at the beach.

Maggie had a nervous excitement in the first shots at the airport. It was clear that she was distracted waiting for the train. Andrew had taken better shots, Maggie had been better in shots, from other shoots. Once she was naked beside the track she appeared more relaxed. But there was a shot where it was incredibly obvious that Tony had just shouted out to them. The change in bearing, the change in posture, she managed to be both more nervous and yet calmer at the same time. Andrew had one close up of Maggie’s face before he zoomed out to get both her and the train in the shot. A seven year old waking up on Christmas morning to discover a huge pile of presents couldn’t have looked more excited.

Technically it was clear that Andrew needed to work on capturing the shot. The moving train in the background was not crisp, he was going to have to shorten the exposure. He knew from reading and experience that he would have depth of field issues. He would walk with Nikki to the library while in Glasgow and do some reading. Maggie was in perfect focus but he would have to work at getting both her and the train with the same clarity. One thing that had been a shock was Maggie’s relaxed attitude to posing. Andrew had not even been aware of it, he had been too busy working on getting the train in the picture. But Maggie was standing with her legs significantly further apart than he had ever seen before. Her lower lips, never before seen, never mind photographed, were distinctly visible. The second set of shots with the southbound train were a little better technically but there was still plenty of room for improvement. As a first attempt they were serviceable, nothing more than that. Technically the shots at the second trackside location were better but there was something missing in Maggie’s demeanour. Andrew hardly wasted any time on them.

Andrew couldn’t initially explain why the shots at Camusdarach Beach were so meaningful to him. It was Tony later that night who came up with the analogy. If you lived close to the beach where they shot Bo Derek running in ‘10’ you would want to go and shoot there. Neither of them had a clue where that scene for ‘10’ was shot but it was the best they could come up with. Local Hero was a small little movie that happened to be set in northern Scotland. To photograph Maggie there was important. Andrew was not prone to praising himself, it was not his nature, but as he flicked through the prints several stood out. There was an extra crispness to them, there was nothing distracting in the shot. Of the 120 or so shots on the beach seven were great. Andrew put them aside. When Andrew looked through the prints of the two rolls in among the rocks the word that came to mind was the same one he had talked about with Suzanne earlier in the week. Naughty.

There was an air of naughtiness to Maggie in among the rocks. Andrew was much closer to her than when they had been posing on the beach, that was part of it. Part of it was the changes Maggie was making to her style of posing. There was nothing forced, nothing uncertain to her poses, to her looks. She was a different model than at the start of the year. Of the 60 shots three were standouts. One of those three was the one where Maggie was in a much more typical glamour pose, much more open than ever before, but Andrew had captured the smile and wink. Of the stroll up the beach to Roddy four told the story. Maggie walking towards him and the look on his face, the kiss on his cheek, Roddy looking back up the beach as she carried on walking, and then the 80 year old man looking at the camera with a cheeky grin that wouldn’t have been out of place on someone 65 years younger. Andrew put these four aside as well.

Tony was still busy in the shop and Maggie hadn’t finished work so Andrew printed the photographs he had taken of Suzanne. He knew he couldn’t look at them objectively so once they were dry he just stuck them in the back of his camera bag. He would look at them later. Andrew was back in the studio tidying up all his prints. He had thought about leaving them out to look at with Maggie and Tony but he didn’t know if the studio was booked or not. He had them all safely away and was checking there was nothing left lying around when someone knocked on the back door. The studio had a separate outside entrance as well as the door through from the shop. Andrew wandered over to see who was there. He was surprised to be shoved aside as a young woman entered the studio with a large bag.

“Hello. Can I help you?”