Lying for the Camera

Chapter One

The last of the models pulled on her jacket, slung her satchel over her shoulder and grunted in response to Tom’s automatic, “I’ll be in touch.”

It would be a no. He’d seen more than enough six-foot-tall sulky teenagers to know that wasn’t what he needed for this shoot. They might appear fragile with their stick-thin limbs and barely-formed features, but their eyes were hard as nails. They had to be, to survive in the fashion industry. Not all of them survived, of course.

He cut the thought off before it could take hold. Today wasn’t about Lianne. Today was about moving on. After fifteen years photographing girls who got younger and thinner each season, Tom Metcalfe knew exactly how to find the provocative glint in the eye of the dullest coat-hanger of a model. But this wasn’t a fashion shoot. He wasn’t taking pictures to sell clothes or perfume or make up or any other overpriced and unnecessary frippery. This time he was selling himself. His own vision of the world. He had no idea whether anyone would want to buy it.

The gallery for his first exhibition was already booked. Most of his portfolio was ready but there was something missing. Initially, he had decided not to include any portraits. Everyone already knew he could shoot women. Where was the challenge in that? But when he had shown the preliminary portfolio to the gallery owner, she had skimmed through it and shaken her head.

“It’s too pretty.”

“Pretty?”

“Shallow. Decorative. Pretty. But there’s nothing of you in here, Tom. You can’t just be a spectator, dispassionately observing pretty bits of the world. Not for this kind of show.”

As soon as she said it, he knew she was right. He needed more depth, more emotion. For him, that meant people. Faces hiding feelings. Eyes telling stories.

That was the reason Tom preferred to be the spectator. He stayed behind the camera while the attention was on the girls in shot, and that was how he liked it. No one ever interviewed the photographer, asking awkward questions or intruding into matters he would much rather keep hidden. No one could see into his eyes and find out what he really was.

There was no way he would be taking any self-portraits for his exhibition, but the world he was trying to portray needed to be more than pretty and shallow. It needed to show depth. Complexity. Humanity.

For that he needed a model. He had to find someone who with that depth and complexity in a way he could capture in a photograph. He’d advertised an open casting, hoping to find someone a bit different from the girls he usually worked with, but none of the models who had turned up had caught his eye at all.

“Am I too late?”

The woman who was leaning against the door of his studio was more than a bit different. Bright, dyed-red hair, heavy dark make-up, a scarlet jacket that swirled out around her hips. She grinned at him, her blue eyes twinkling in a way that made him suspect she wore coloured contact lenses.

“I had to leave work early but I still missed the bus. Isn’t it odd how the one you miss is always exactly on time, while the one you have to wait for is always running late?”

Tom nodded, though she didn’t pause long enough for him to speak.

“Anyway, I’m Hattie Bell and I’m here about the modelling job. You said you were looking for someone out of the ordinary, so I thought it was worth a shot. You wouldn’t believe the amount of castings I’ve been to where they wouldn’t even let me through the door. And the samples!” She threw up her hands in horror. “Made to fit a Barbie doll. No, that’s not right. Barbie dolls have breasts and hips. So do I.” She gestured at her body.