“I’ll have the family lawyer take a look and get back to you. Will tomorrow be enough time for your father?”
“I’m sure that’ll be fine.” She fished a card out of her wallet and passed it to Mum. “If they have any problems, get him to call Gordon and Associates.”
“Of course. I’ll give him a ring right now.”
I watched Jen smile and Mum get to her feet and Dad sulk, and wondered at what point they were going to engage me in any of the process.
“Is anyone going to talk to me about this?” I said. It was interesting to hear silence settle around the room, to see Mum’s movement and Jen’s smile falter. “Anyone at all want to check with me if I want this job? See what my schedule is like? Ask if I have the right equipment?”
“Dad’s more than happy to spring for some more gear. That lens you had your eye on. The Zeiss—” Jen said brightly.
“Kira, dear, this could be such a great opportunity for you. You could—”
“Of course, you’ll take the job,” Dad said, not even bothering to look at me. “Who else is going to come knocking at your door?”
“God, Ki,” Jen said as I walked her out, the cool evening light a pleasant alternative to the artificial glare of Mum’s dining room. My stomach squirmed, fighting with the meatloaf I’d managed to get down, and as if in counterpoint, something skittered away at the corner of my eye. “I’m sorry. I thought this would be an awesome opportunity.”
It was. There was no freaking way a little stock photog would be allowed access to the A-list type events that Jen’s dad threw periodically. Like seriously, it was as if my fairy godmother had arrived and insisted I would indeed be going to the ball.
But I don’t want to go, I thought mulishly.
Didn’t I? I’d been to some of Jen’s parties before, and it had been positively alienating. There was this whole scene that descended on the family compound from time to time, with A-list musicians and professional hangers on, groupies of both genders, dealers, schmoozers, models, actresses… Basically every beautiful man or woman that could make me feel inadequate, with their terrifyingly symmetrical faces and shining eyes, cheekbones you could cut glass with, and flowing locks of every colour. My fingers twitched, even poorly remembered beauty enough to make them long for a camera.
Because that was my life—I was one part country mouse, shying away from my betters, and one part cool, clinical eye, wanting to manipulate those beautiful bodies until they sat in just the right pose to create the kind of impact that took the breath from your lungs and made the viewer feel as if they were catching a glimpse of the gods themselves before they turned them to stone.
Jen loves you. She’s trying to get you some independence from here, trying to help with the problems you’re always whingeing about, I thought, and when I looked up at that moon bathed face, she shone like the stars themselves.
“Hey, I’m sorry. Mum, Dad…”
“I know, love,” she said, enfolding me in a hug. She smelled like sunshine and citrus and something expensively smoky. “I thought—”
“You thought right. Forget all that, if you can. When do I need to be there? What kinds of photos is your father looking for?”
We ambled over to my cottage, and I made us both a coffee before we sat on the veranda that ringed my place, staring up at the night sky. It was a plum job. Not just glamourous spontaneous shots for the gossip pages, Jen’s father wanted it to be a huge launch party. The theme was the Garden of Eden, and he was using it to introduce the world to his series of concerts. One tour for each of his headline acts, crisscrossing the world and bringing luscious, decadent Bacchanalian type events in every genre of popular music, culminating in Crewefest—a massive music festival he was going to hold on the old family estate. His home would be crammed with those who wanted to see the beautiful people and those who wanted to be seen, and I was to record the whole thing.
“I-I should be the backup photographer,” I stuttered the words out, putting the coffee cup down before I broke it. “God, I’d settle for being a gear bitch and working as an assistant to someone experienced.”
“Nope.”
“Jen, I do not have enough experience to pull this off! This is a multimillion-dollar event your father is launching! You can’t just shoehorn a friend into this and expect it all to go well!”
“Ki…” She put her hand on my arm and smiled. “Take a deep breath.” My jaw tightened, but she just watched me, her elfin face smiling until I finally let out a long sigh and then drew in a prolonged breath. “You won’t be the only photographer there, there’s a bunch of you. Dad has a photo booth set up with some portrait photographers for when people arrive, and the rest of you will be assigned to one of the acts. The news rags and the paps will come down to see the moment Vanessa Raleigh pukes and has to have Sienna Jones hold her hair back for her. You don’t have to carry this event, but you can do something they can’t. This party, the theme is the Garden of Eden, harking back to a time before the Fall. For a short few hours, it’ll be complete freedom from guilt, stress, responsibility, and inhibitions. I didn’t tell Daddy I wanted my best friend to shoot the event, I showed him a whole lot of different portfolios, and he picked yours. You do mood so well.”
“Yeah, if your aesthetic is Kate Bush circa Wuthering Heights.”
“You have more than misty and eerie in you. I know you do. You can do this, Ki. People will finally see you and what you can do, and you can get the hell away from this place. There’s a whole world out there beyond Gisbourne. You just need the opportunity to discover it.”
“This is just you wanting us to go to Bali, isn’t it?”
“Well, I do look spectacular in that white bikini.”
“You’d look amazing in a hessian bag,” I said, slinging an arm around her. “It doesn’t matter what you wear.”
“So is now a good time to talk about the fitting we’ll need to attend tomorrow?”
4
I drove up to the Rutherglen estate the next morning to find it in the midst of being transformed. Like some kind of alternate reality or the fading of one dimension into another, the already grand grounds of the stately home were being worked on by a phalanx of gardeners, caterers, sound technicians, artists, and designers. Glittering apples in gold and red were being hung from the boughs of existing trees, snakelike ropes of fairy lights were wound around trunks, and a massive stage was set up on the grass beyond. I’d had to park between several tall trucks that people were ferrying trolleys of stuff in and out of, then got stopped by security on my way in.
“This is Miss Leigh,” Mark said, hustling over when I struggled to get past a wall of black suit clad men. Obviously, new people had been put on for the proceedings, and Jen had neglected to tell them about me. “She’s on the guest list and is one of the photographers for the night. Familiarise yourself with the list we provided you with.” When those grey eyes switched over to meet mine, I almost stepped back. There was something…intense about Mark. Just doing his job, I thought to myself. He has to focus with all this crazy going on.