The Morning After

There was an old saying about cameras never lying. But, being a professional model, Annie knew this to be an utter untruth. Cameras could and did lie—all the time.

But this camera wasn’t lying. The camera that took these pictures was so glaringly obviously telling the truth that no one—no one who looked at these images in front of her could even begin to doubt that what was being shown was the truth.

Two people about to marry each other.

Two people decked out in white and gazing into each other’s eyes with such a bitter-sweet intensity that it was as clear and clean and spiritual as the smile on the minister’s face in the background that these two people were madly, blindly in love.

‘But I didn’t even know then,’ she whispered to herself in thickened dismay.

‘I did.’

With a shaken gasp she spun around to find César leaning in the open doorway to the balcony.

Dark colour flooded into her cheeks then drained away again, leaving her pale and shocked by what he had just said.

‘Why didn’t you tell me about these?’ she asked shakily.

He had his hands stuck in the pockets of his grey trousers. She couldn’t see his face because the sun was right behind him, but she saw a broad shoulder lift and fall in a lazy shrug. ‘There never seemed to be an—appropriate moment,’ he replied very drily, referring, she presumed, to the fact that they’d started fighting almost from the moment he’d come into the room. ‘Do you still want to leave here?’ he asked suddenly.

She shook her head, tears blurring out her vision.

‘Good,’ he replied, but his tone was oddly flat and reserved. It held her back from running to him as she wanted to do. And there was a decided reticence about the slow way he straightened himself then came further into the room.

‘Those pictures are the reason I was away so long,’ he explained. ‘I had to go to London. To see your half-brother. We—talked,’ he said, after a small pause which suggested that they’d done a whole lot more than just talk. ‘About you, mainly. But also about the Cliché launch.’ Another pause, and again she received the odd impression that he was telling her all of this with constraint.

Was he still angry because she’d rejected him a few minutes ago? she wondered. Was he waiting for her to apologise, beg forgiveness?

‘Hanson had those mock-ups done for his first issue, but if you don’t want it splattered all over the world then we won’t do it.’ Another shrug and he had reached the end of the bed. ‘But…’

Ah, Annie thought, and stiffened, the cynical side to her nature recognising that there was usually a big ‘but’ to most things.

‘I had trouble convincing him of a few—provisos of my own before I would give permission.’

‘What provisos?’ she asked warily. She didn’t like this—she didn’t like any of it. She had just experienced the absolute beauty of discovering that the man she was in love with loved her too, yet the whole thing was being so thoroughly dampened by his manner that she was already beginning to doubt what her own eyes had told her those photographs claimed!

‘There are two envelopes on the table, Angelica,’ he pointed out.

‘Two?’ She glanced back at the table, then made a sound of surprise. He was right, and there were two! She hadn’t noticed.

‘It has to be sheer fluke that you opened the right one first,’ he then said drily. ‘Or I don’t think you would be standing there eating me with your beautiful eyes as you have been doing.’

Sarcasm, dry and taunting. It hurt.

‘Open it,’ he commanded.

She shook her head. She didn’t want to. There was going to be something horrible in that other envelope, or why else would he have said what he’d just said?

‘This is it, Angelica,’ he stated quietly. ‘The point where you learn you were right not to trust me. Open it,’ he repeated. ‘Open it.’

Reluctantly she pulled the other envelope towards her. Lips dry, fingers shaking, she opened the flap then slid the contents out.

No mock-ups this time, she noted on a sickly hot wave of disenchantment, but glossy seven-by-nines. Professional photographs—of Susie. Susie in white, wearing rubies. Susie in gold, wearing emeralds. Susie in black, wearing the most beautiful diamonds…Tears flashed across her eyes as slowly, shakily, with the silence growing thick all around her, she looked at each photograph in turn—a half-dozen of them in all.

‘No sapphires,’ she murmured finally.

‘No,’ he confirmed. ‘No sapphires.’

Hurt blue eyes flicked around to search out his. ‘Why not?’