Chapter 11

After an early swim on the Wednesday morning Andrew drove the couple of miles over to Mortonhall. It had been more than two years since he had stood at the Garden of Remembrance where Faith’s ashes were buried. It might have been seven weeks later than the anniversary of her death but there was still a cold wind that cut right through him. He didn’t talk to Faith, it was not as if he had a one-sided conversation. He just thought about her, his skeletal, bald friend, the young woman who helped him face death but then never got the reprieve that he did. It was more than six years before but those 60 days or so in the hospital were still the turning point of Andrew’s life.

A Garden of Remembrance is a place of death, all dressed up but a place of death nonetheless. In five terms Andrew had seen countless children at Addenbrooke’s fade away, probably more than 100. It was his penance for his survivor guilt. Andrew stood there on that cold blustery day thinking about death; Faith that final terrible Saturday; Graham asking him why after breaking down in tears of despair; of Ron terrified his rage at the world and at the loss of his son would end up tearing his family apart. Three faces for more than 100 dead children. Andrew didn’t know what it all meant, he just stood there in a daze. He was all over the place. Faith, her parents especially Mary, his time at Addenbrooke’s, his own survival. They all flitted in and out of his mind. Maybe they had to, maybe Leslie getting married crystallised all of these disparate thoughts. Gradually Andrew’s mind calmed and everything settled down. He had one of those moments of ‘what would Faith do?’ and it made him smile that he still wanted to hear her thoughts all these years later.

Andrew stood for a long time, calm, thinking about Faith, her laugh, the one time she blushed as red as him, her grumpiness, her friendliness, all his memories of those two brief months. He had spoken to Leslie for hundreds of hours since Faith’s death, the same with Suzanne. They had guided him through his teenage years but they never talked about death. The issue that nobody would address for either of them was the core of their short friendship. And because nobody would talk to them about death they hadn’t shared it. The length of their friendship was only measured in weeks, yet the import was just as important more than six years later.

Andrew didn’t think about re-birth or resurrection or anything like that. It was more he thought of change and growth. Leslie and Julian getting married, the Trusts expanding, Julian starting to work with computers again. Even something as simple as Maggie and Tony being excited about the possibility of buying a house. Life carried on. It was how Andrew tried to live his own life, his way of fulfilling Faith’s dying wish. He had memories, moments such as these, that anchored his life, but Andrew charged forward, close to recklessly at times. Because he still had two lives to live. He would never forget Faith. But this was Leslie’s week, Saturday was to be Leslie’s day.

When he finally walked back to the car he discovered that he had stood there for nearly two hours. He had a moment of panic when he wondered if he had been thinking out loud, looking like Mr. Mad in the Garden of Remembrance. And then he shrugged. He wouldn’t have been the first person to talk there, he wouldn’t be the last. Andrew returned to the flat and called Helena confirming everything was fine for the next day. A call to Pete had his evening sorted out so he made another attempt to call Chiara in Milan, not really expecting to get hold of her. But that day she answered. The pleasantries were not really very pleasant, there was a stilted awkwardness to their call. She was all but a stranger to him and their interactions in Paris had been both good and bad.

“I am glad that we are finally able to talk Andrew. So many missed calls. I wanted to talk to you about our shoot in Paris, about the commercial they are making of it. I wanted to thank you for the way you treated me, despite my outburst before we even started.”

She sighed.

“There is a lot I would like to talk to you about, and not on the phone. But you are in Britain and I am in France or Italy.”

Chiara had spoken a lot but still not really said anything.

“Why is it important that you speak to me Chiara? You don’t know me?”

“My life has taken a different turn because of you Andrew. I don’t know if it is a better turn but it is different. But I am also more accepting of the passing of the years. I want to portray myself, not pretend to be someone else.”

Andrew had no idea what the hell all that meant.

“Oh merda, this is not easy. I wish that I could sit with you, see you when we talk.”

“Is this so important to you?”

He could hear the sigh down the phone.

“Yes Andrew it is.”

“I am going to be in Paris on the Monday after Easter. I can arrange to be there earlier if you can also be there. Would you be okay meeting on Easter Sunday?”

“Really? This is fantastic. I will be in Paris before Easter and can stay rather than fly back here.”

There was no hiding the happiness in her voice. For whatever reason she wanted to meet him. After arranging to meet in front of the Louvre at noon Andrew finally was able to finish the call. He had given up trying to figure out what it all meant. He would fly into Paris on Easter morning for a couple of days and try and get his crazy modelling life under control. He replayed that last sentence in his mind and once again shook his head, a very common reaction to it all.

Spending an evening with Pete, chatting away, and listening to a not very good band was a nice counterpoint to everything else going on that week. It was small talk about their lives, just a couple of old mates catching up. The big drama in Pete’s life was his on again off again relationship with Melody. He bitterly regretted giving up his room in Andrew’s flat and had a chance at a two bedroom place in the area, allowing him to ditch his arsehole flatmates. He was trying to convince Melody to move into the second bedroom, with limited success so far. But he was happy at the prospect of only one more term in his present place. Pete was the only guy in Andrew’s year from school that he still kept in touch with. Other than Don White, he had not been close to many other guys, friendly rather than friends. Pete was his oldest friend, the only person he had been even slightly close to before cancer.

Thursday was a day of contrasts, to put it mildly. Stacey’s friend Glenys worked in a shop and was going to start at lunchtime so Andrew met her right at 9.00 at the studio. If she didn’t like the look of him then she was going to walk away, if she thought it would work then the shoot was going to happen immediately. Andrew never really got an answer as to why women were more okay working with him rather than Tony. There were two sides to it, complete opposites. They thought that he was unlikely to hit on them since they were so much older, in some strange way he was safer than a man their own age. But the other side of that was that most of these women were mothers and Andrew wasn’t that much older than their own children. He was only three years older than Elspeth’s oldest son for example. Andrew assumed that there would be awkward mental connotations. But as long as he didn’t look like any of their children the women seemed okay with it. And so it was with Glenys.

She was his first divorcee, doing the shoot for herself. Her husband had left her for another woman and she wanted to feel feminine and desirable. The shoot was very similar to the one with Sheelagh. There was going to be lingerie, underwear, but she wasn’t going beyond that. It was a very relaxed and enjoyable two hour shoot. Glenys knew what she wanted, and how far she was prepared to go, and Andrew just captured it. It was glamour photography in that he worked to make her feel glamourous, as opposed to getting her naked.

Glenys was gone at 11.10, clothes carefully repacked and off to her job at a shop, the mundane reality of her existence. Andrew was just getting ready to start developing the rolls of film when Stacey called through to him. She was holding the phone.

“Can you talk to this lady please Andrew.”

“Can I help you?”

“Yes. I am clearing out my parents’ old house and my father had a room full of photography equipment. I want the house cleared as soon as possible. I need someone to come and make me an offer for it. Today.”

The lady sounded like a right stuck up bitch. A typical entitled idiot who thought her shit didn’t smell. Andrew wanted to hang up on her but managed to quell the impulse. Tony was down talking to Mhairi about the house in Fife so Andrew got the address. He even remembered to stop at the bank to get some cash before arriving at the large old house. As he looked at the place he realised this was old money Edinburgh.

The lady was no nicer in person than on the phone. Her father had actually died 12 years earlier and her mother had passed away less than a week before. Andrew couldn’t even tell if they had buried her yet. But the key thing was that the woman wanted all her father’s old ‘junk’ out the house. Her mother had not got rid of anything for sentimental reasons. There looked like a clear winner in the ‘worst daughter of the year’ competition.

When Andrew started to actually look at the stuff he begrudgingly agreed with her assessment, a lot of the stuff was junk. And there was a lot of it. But the one thing he noticed was that there were endless amounts of old boxes of photographs and albums. Their volume easily exceeded the equipment.

“Have you had a chance to go through all the photographs? Take out anything that you wish to keep for the memories?”

“I am not going through all that stuff. It is going out in the rubbish.”

Andrew got the lot for £500, more than the old equipment was worth. But there were a lot of photographs, and he thought it was worth taking a chance. He had borrowed Tony’s car, it had a lot more space than his Golf, and he traipsed in and out of the house for an hour until he had the old study empty of all the equipment and pictures. The room looked stark and empty, a poignant reminder that the person who had inhabited the space was gone. Rather than be grateful the woman huffed ‘finally’, signed the bill of sale, took the money and closed the door in Andrew’s face. His thoughts about the stuck up bitch occupied him on the drive into town.

Back at the shop Tony helped Andrew empty the car while giving him shit for paying £500 for the equipment, he doubted it was worth half that. But as more and more boxes of prints came out of the car he recognised that the deal had been okay. There would be many days and weeks of reviewing what they had bought to see if there was anything worth keeping.

“What made you go and see this woman. She sounds a right piece of work.”

“She had that entitled, snobby vibe to her but she also came across as someone who wasn’t going to get her hands dirty looking through stuff like this. When I got to the house she just reinforced it. She wanted the house empty as quickly as possible, I don’t know whether to sell it or to move in herself, but this was a room full of junk and needed to be dealt with. It seemed pretty clear to me, based on her attitude, what she had been moaning to her mother about for more than 10 years. She now had the chance to get rid of it all. I just think there could be something in this lot. The equipment is old and worn out, but it was quality stuff in its day. He seemed a serious photographer, but from 20 or 30 years ago. No specific reason just an instinct. She struck me as the kind of woman who would go through her mother’s clothes and especially her jewelry with an eagle eye yet would happily throw away something more valuable because it was ‘old junk’ of her father’s.”

Andrew shrugged. It was just as likely that they would get £100 for the old equipment, waste hours and days looking through all the photos and they would all still end up being junked. It was a gamble. But here, he and Tony thought the same way. Tony nodded.

“Can’t argue with that. I will get the equipment cleaned up and sold as quick as I can. All these boxes will take some time but we’ll get it done.”

Tony updated Andrew on his meeting with Mhairi.

“She will get an appraisal of the property and work with Hillier’s to assess the junkyard. We just have to wait. And she reinforced what you said. This is unlikely to happen. But she also agreed that there are precious few other places where you get the size of house and size of lot without it costing a lot of money. I just have to be patient, and try and keep Maggie calm as well.”

The later sounded more of an issue than the former. Andrew would see them on Saturday evening but he needed to go and collect his date. Helena arrived with an impressive amount of luggage for a weekend, it might have been easy to sneak out that morning but getting it back into her house on Monday night would be a challenge. But not Andrew’s worry. He had Helena there in Edinburgh for four nights. Hmmm. But his first challenge was not appearing as the flashiest git in Edinburgh. He had to collect Julian’s car and because of going to buy the old photography equipment had screwed up the schedule. Helena seemed surprised that they were getting a cab.

“I thought you had a car Andrew, a Golf you said?”

He closed his eyes for a second. Shit.

“I do. But I need to stop somewhere on the way home. You’ll see.”

10 minutes of city centre traffic had them at the showroom and Andrew contemplated Helena’s luggage, what if it didn’t all fit?

“Why are we here?”

“Because I have to pick up Julian’s wedding present.”

Helena just started laughing.

“You bought him a car?”

Andrew nodded sheepishly. Her laughter just got louder.

“You bought him a Jaguar as a wedding present?”

Ten minutes of final paperwork and it was all set. The Sales Manager smiled his marginally less fake smile at Andrew and led him back to the concourse. Andrew heard the car before Julian’s present came round the corner. Bloody hell, it was beautiful. And also not designed for people Andrew’s height. If it had been a roadster his head would have been above the windshield line. So Helena Innes got to drive a Jaguar E-Type back to Andrew’s flat, in a city she had never been in before. That shut her up in a hurry.

“You want me to drive this back to your flat?”

“You have to, I don’t think I can physically fit in the driver’s seat. Volkswagen had to remount the seat back several inches for me on the Golf. It is a three seater as no one can sit behind me with the seat pushed back like that.”

Other than a couple of stalls, the clutch was heavy on these old cars, they got home without incident. Finally Andrew was able to welcome Helena to the flat.

“Sorry about that. I didn’t think when I was organising pick up that it clashed with your arrival. Thank you for driving it home.”

Helena was almost bouncing with glee.

“In addition to going on about the Duke of Roxburghe, do you know what else my father loves?”

All Andrew did was go and grab his other camera. Screw losing the parking spot. It was only 15 minutes but he had a roll of film of Helena posing beside the Jag, sitting in it and then driving it round the block a couple of times.

When they got back up to the flat Andrew started to explain he would get the roll of film developed in the morning but was shushed and led through to his bedroom. Helena undressed him before undressing herself. The look she gave Andrew just before she sank to her knees was sultry and his dick twitched in reflexive anticipation.

It was Pavlovian now. Andrew was sure he never lasted more than two minutes with Helena and most times it was well under a minute before he was popping. Lying in bed she would talk about the power of the act, it was not degrading or disgusting to her. She knew how Andrew felt about her, she knew how he loved her acting, but it was the same for her as it was for him. It gave him pleasure and therefore she wanted to do it. If Andrew tried to sum up Helena’s approach to sex in one word, it would be spirited. Helena liked sex, was good at sex, and knew that the more you put in, the more that you got out. So with her it was never ‘let’s get it over with’ but instead much more ‘let’s see how I can torment Andrew today’. There was only ever going to be one outcome and it arrived too soon as usual.

When Helena stood Andrew lifted her into his arms, supporting her under her bum. They kissed for a long time before he turned and threw her down onto the bed. It was now his turn to kneel on the floor and he pulled her slender legs towards him until they were draped on his shoulders. Andrew’s bed was probably twice as high as the one at College, he was more upright as he knelt of the floor and had better leverage over Helena. Who was even more excited than he had been, if that was possible. Helena’s pussy was oozing with desire. HIs first bold lick had her squirming and moaning and it was as easy for Andrew to make her come as it had been the other way round mere minutes earlier.

What was different about that day was his bed. Helena loved his bed, the height, the width, the possibilities for her imagination. As Andrew’s fingers grazed back and forth over her g-spot, with not quite enough pressure to let her finally explode, she put her feet on his shoulders, the leverage was better for her as well, almost in preparation for the end of the teasing. It was as if Andrew pushed her hips up off the bed, firm pressure, just as she craved, across her g-spot and Helena was strung up like a marionette, her feet on his shoulders and her own shoulders pushing off the bed, a perfect convex arc of orgasming woman.

Knowing he had only a few seconds until Helena was back to earth Andrew stood, wrapped as quickly as possible, before bending Helena into an ‘L’ shape. Legs straight up his torso, back flat on the bed, and his arms across her thighs. Utterly impossible to do in College beds, all way too low to the ground, and so something new for them. The look of startled surprise on Helena’s face was over in a flash. He could see her mind catching up to this new position and her smile was radiant. She flung her arms wide and just let him fuck her, confident in her own body and knowing that he loved looking at it. And it was that mental connection that was so good with them. Fucking someone is a physiological act, with all the sensations in your body, but the best sex, for Andrew, had that additional component. Allison, Helena and Suzanne all were mind-shattering fucks but the mental was as important as the physical.

Helena’s right arm snaked between her legs and he knew that she just needed a little clit stimulation to orgasm again. And the tightening, grasping, fluttering of her pussy pulled his own orgasm from him; he went from in control to coming in a matter of seconds. Andrew stepped back and Helena’s legs flopped off the end of the bed. He stood beside her, his hands on the bed, getting his breath back. As always, Helena bounced back in a freakishly short time and lay there looking up at him.

“Come and lie down so that I can get comfy.”

Yes dear. Andrew tied off the condom and sprawled out on the bed, Helena lying on him in a flash.

“I have to get a bed like this. Did you have it custom made?”

He shook his head.

“No, we were at the store looking for a bed and just discovered it by accident. It was Suzanne that saw the potential when she had me stand beside it. I have to bend me knees slightly when we do it like that but it is the perfect height for doggy.”

Helena’s smile got wider.

“I can’t wait.”

He smacked her arse gently.

“It will give you something to think about all night while we are at Leslie and Julian’s.”

“Phooey.”

It was his turn to laugh.

“I am not a young man any more, I need time to recover.”

Andrew’s twitching prick brushing against her thigh gave lie to that comment and they both laughed.

“What are the plans?”

Andrew caressed Helena’s arse and kissed her before explaining the weekend.

“Sorry I got distracted for a second. So tonight we are having dinner with Leslie and Julian at their place, which is two minutes away. Tomorrow during the day is free then there is a rehearsal dinner tomorrow evening, which is about 20 people I think. You will meet both sets of parents obviously as well as Suzanne, who is Leslie’s maid of honour.”

Helena’s eyebrow raised slightly but she said nothing.

“The wedding is at 2.00 and will be just the two of them, both sets of parents, Suzanne and me. No guests. There is a wedding every 15 minutes so the whole thing will take 10 minutes, if that. Then it is photographs in the gardens of the hotel where the reception is being held. That starts at 6.00 and is the main event of the day. Dinner is supposed to be at 7.30 and after that it is the standard reception, dinner, speeches, dancing.”

“Will I come with you to the wedding ceremony and the photographs?”

“I would like you to, but it is up to you. From what I understand there will be a couple of hours between the end of the photographs and the start of the reception. You are welcome to stay here and I will come back and get you if you would prefer. I would love it if you came to the city centre with me, played tourist for 20 minutes and then spent the afternoon with us for the photographs. I will be in maybe half of them so there will be a chance to chat.”

“I would like that too. If it is cold or boring then I will go to the bar at the hotel and meet you there.”

“Deal. Right, you can have the first shower.”

And so 50 minutes later Helena fired up the Jag, her eyes sparkling.

“I can’t believe I get to drive this Andrew. So cool.”

The traffic lights were in their favour and it was literally only 90 seconds later that she parked the car in the drive of Leslie and Julian’s house.

“A two minute drive and yet it is so different.”

“I know. The cemetery is the big barrier, the transition zone between student central and suburbia.”

They hadn’t even made it to the front door when it was flung open and both Julian and Leslie came out, trying to be polite hosts but focusing on the car.

“Andrew.”

Statement and question all in one. Helena tossed the keys to Julian and went and stood beside him. Julian caught them instinctively and looked down at them and then back over at Andrew.

“I had to get you a wedding present.”

It was Leslie that reacted first, when she burst out laughing. She came over and hugged him and then Helena.

“Helena, good to see you again. Once my husband-to-be manages to get his brain back into gear he will come over and say hello.”

Julian sheepishly stepped over and hugged Helena.

“Julian Strong, nice to meet you. Normally I have better manners and am capable of joined up speech but this is, is, just.”

Exactly. When you buy someone a present, flustered stammering is the perfect reaction.

“Go on, the two of you. 10 minutes no more.”

And Leslie and Helena headed back into the house. They didn’t need to be told twice and Julian shoehorned himself into the driver’s seat and then pushed it back as far as it would go. He was the perfect size for the car. He looked round at Andrew.

“You let Helena drive it?”

“I had to, I couldn’t fit. Even with the seat all the way back my thighs were still hitting the steering wheel and I was crunched up. It wasn’t so much uncomfortable as dangerous. So yes, she had to drive it back from the garage this afternoon and then over here just now.”

“Giraffe.”

And they were off. 15 minutes of boyish whooping later they walked back into the house. Helena was sitting at the kitchen table, a glass of wine to hand, while Leslie pottered back and forth stirring and checking the food. They looked like they had been friends for years.

“Only five minutes late, I thought it would have been more.”

Julian merely kissed her smiling face and got wine for the two of them. It was a perfect relaxing evening. Andrew could tell both Julian and Leslie wanted calm, knowing that the next two days were going to be hectic. Over the course of the meal there was lots of talk about families, both of them explaining to Helena who would be there, as well as listening to Helena talk about her own family. Andrew had mentioned to Leslie earlier in the week that Helena now knew about the companies and the money so that they didn’t have to skirt round the issue.