The Photographer's Wife by Nick Alexander Page B

snarls.
    “They’re just for me,” Sophie says.
    “Fuck that,” Eddi Day spits. “That’s not in the contract.”
    “Calm down. This isn’t work,” Sophie says. “As I said, they’re just for me.”
    “They had better be,” Eddi says. “Or I will sue the arse off you.”
    Skinny turns to look at her now and nods exaggeratedly. “Me too,” she says.
    Butch shrugs. “I don’t mind,” he says, sending Sophie a wink. “Shoot away.”
     
    ***
     
    When Brett arrives at Sophie’s flat on Saturday morning, the screen of her twenty-seven inch iMac is filled with the gruesomely curled lip of Eddi Day.
    Brett hangs his coat up, then crosses the room and leans in to kiss Sophie’s neck. “Gees!” he exclaims, performing a double take. “Who’s that?”
    “Eddi Day,” Sophie says.
    “And who might Eddi Day be?”
    Sophie laughs. “You know Eddi Day even if you don’t realise it. You just never saw her like this before.”
    She clicks a few times on the mouse and finds an online advert for Noméa anti-ageing cream.
    “Oh, the face of Noméa, huh?”
    “Yep.”
    “And she’s moving into horror movies or what?”
    Sophie snorts and restores her stolen photo. “A bit of a shocker, right?”
    “A bit of an understatement. And she has wrinkles!” he says, pointing at the fine lines around her eyes.
    “She is thirty-five,” Sophie says. “I have to Photoshop them out these days.”
    “But she still does the adverts for anti-wrinkle cream, right?”
    “Exactly. That’s why I Photoshop them out.”
    "So, w’happen?” Brett asks, walking over to the kitchen and pouring himself a mug of coffee. “You hit the shutter button by accident?”
    “No, I’ve been mucking around. Looking for an angle, as you would say,” Sophie explains.
    “And?”
    “This is part of an idea I had. The hidden side of the fashion industry. That’s my big idea. Well, currently it is anyway.”
    Brett leans back against the kitchen worktop and smiles. “Nah, that’s not a big idea. That’s just you being lazy. Thinking you can take a few extra shots while you’re at work and call it art.”
    Sophie leans back in her chair and swivels gently from side to side as she studies the photo. She feels vaguely mesmerised by Eddi Day’s scowl, specifically by the blob of saliva in the corner of her curled lip. “Art is all about the explanation you put on it,” she says. “If you explain it in the right way, it becomes art.”
    “Hum,” Brett says, sounding sarcastic. “Now let me see. Didn’t a certain Anthony Marsden say something different. Wasn’t his catchphrase something about–”
    “Well, that was Dad being clever,” Sophie interrupts. “Saying that art wasn’t meant to be explained, that it was just meant to be looked at... well, that was Dad’s clever deconstructionist explanation of what art is, wasn’t it? It was a double bluff.”
    “If you say so.”
    “But seriously, Brett, look at this. There’s something magnificent here, don’t you think? Imagine this blown up to three by three. Metres that is, not feet. Or more. Maybe five by five. You’d be able to see every pore. Every blackhead.”
    “It would be awesome,” Brett says, “And she’d sue the ass off you.”
    “Her exact words, in fact.”
    “Uh?”
    “That’s what she said when I took the photo. That she’d sue the ass off me if I used it. Well, she said ‘earse’, actually,” Sophie says, doing a Liverpool accent. “She’s from Runcorn, not New York, so...”
    “So, you really can’t use it?”
    “Not this one, no. But I could probably get auth for some of them. Look at these.” She fiddles with the mouse until the screen is displaying the first of her three triple-profile photos, now converted to high contrast black and white. “Well, come on!”
    Brett sidles over and crouches down beside her and Sophie clicks through the three almost identical photos of the three models doing their makeup, the focus moving with each