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As she’d known it would, a rush of sensation hit her. The smell of her childhood, the reverence of handling her dad’s most prized cameras, photographs, of course, alongside the thick wedge of sympathy cards and the medal in its case. There was a unique scent to the box that time hadn’t diminished, something woody and intangible, a mix of the box itself, the possessions it held, and the man who’d owned and loved it. Alice vividly remembered countless occasions sitting alongside her dad, the box open on the floor in front of them. He’d allowed her to handle his cameras even when her hands were too small and clumsy to take the necessary care, and he’d made her the proudest kid in junior school when he’d given a talk to her class and allowed her to show her friends inside the box too. He’d taught her how to handle a camera, the intricacies of lens selection, how to best work with the light. He’d gifted her his practical knowledge, but far more than that, he’d given her his passion for capturing a moment forever on film, a fleeting expression, an undeniable emotion.
This wasn’t just a box. It was the next best thing to sitting alongside her dad again. Alice reached in and touched her fingers against the leather tan slipcase of her father’s Nikon, and automatically ran her nail around the serrated edge of the lens casing as she had as a little girl.
She’d shut all of her memories inside the purple leather box, and along with it she’d sealed any of her own aspirations to wield a camera for a living. Over the six months after her father’s death she’d spent less and less time at class, until it reached a point where her tutors could only despair at the fact that such a naturally talented student had turned her back on her vocation. She couldn’t separate her love for photography from the loss of her father, one tainted the other, and the only way she found to handle her grief was to reinvent herself. Being someone else had helped, in a way; at least it had allowed Alice to move on. Meeting Brad had inadvertently cemented Alice in her new role, because they needed her wage to support his acting classes and low-paid between-jobs. Somewhere along the way she’d allowed herself to believe her own spin, to forget how much she loved everything about the world she and her father had shared. She’d stopped constantly viewing the world through a thumb and finger viewfinder to find the best angle, so much so that she’d never felt able to tell Brad about her long-cherished dreams of a life in her father’s footsteps. Life was duller, but kind of easier. Well, no more. Having her world tipped upside down and shaken like a snow globe had left her sitting all alone on her backside in the snow without any footsteps beside her. Not her father, nor Brad. For the first time in her memory she was on her own, and the only set of footprints in the snow were her own. It was time to stand on her own two feet.
‘You’re going to break your neck up there.’
Robinson stood at the base of the tree and craned his neck to look up at the tree house above. He hadn’t seen much of Alice since she’d lugged her mysterious cargo out of the cellar a week or so ago, and it had seemed to rain incessantly in between. He’d spent his days watching god-awful daytime TV, and his nights trying out the various bedrooms in the manor in the hope of a decent night’s sleep. So far, he’d yet to find any real peace here. Maybe it was the drab, grey weather, maybe it was the otherworldliness of the manor, and maybe it was the fact that he was so far away from his real life that he felt completely alien. He’d almost reached the point of knocking on Stewie’s door for a beer and a tour of his wig cupboard. Almost, but not quite. The damn rain had finally knocked off this morning, and when he’d opened the kitchen door and heard banging he’d followed the noise and found Alice playing girl scout in the garden. He’d spotted her red wellingtons first and had to look twice to check she really was dangling from the branches of a large old oak at the far end of the garden. Close up, she was clad in denim jeans that looked sprayed on from this angle and a black sweater that hugged her curves.
‘Probably,’ she responded cheerfully, peering over the edge of the tree house. Her blonde hair had been tamed into pigtails that swung in the breeze and her pretty face was free of make-up.
‘You look about thirteen years old. Are you playing house up there?’
‘Something like that,’ she grinned and then disappeared. ‘Come up.’
Robinson tested the bottom of the rickety planks that had been fashioned into steps that circled the broad tree trunk and, finding it sturdy enough to stand his weight, he made his way far enough up the tree for his torso to poke through into the house above. The floor was strewn with tools and nails and a hand saw leaned against the wall.
‘Should I even ask what you’re doing?’
Alice laid down the lethal-looking hammer in her hand and puffed a stray strand of hair out of her eyes.
‘Probably not.’
He nodded, glancing around the interior of the tree house.
‘Teddy bears’ picnic?’
Alice shook her head. ‘Better than that.’
‘Grown-up picnic?’ As Robinson’s mouth formed the words, his brain conjured up images of very adult picnics indeed. The kind where you might eat strawberries from the navel of your naked lover.
‘Not exactly,’ Alice hedged, rubbing the booted toe of one wellington behind the ankle of her other. Was he imagining things or did both her face and her body language say shifty? He hauled himself fully into the tree house and took in his surroundings.
As befitted the manor, the tree house was larger than your average kids’ hideout. He’d had a variation on the theme growing up back home in Tennessee, and once he was holed up in there with Fitz and Derren it was pretty much full. Not this place. You could have fit all of the kids from his elementary class up here with room to spare.
‘You’ve had enough of Airstream living and are moving house again?’
He wouldn’t put it past her. Alice reached for the latches on the inside of the shuttered window and flung them wide, letting in a stream of warmth and sunlight that from behind gave her an instant halo. She was kind of angelic to look at, all peaches and cream, and it only made him wonder what lay beneath. Lena, and pretty much most of the women in his life back home, were fiery and direct; you knew what they were thinking way before they decided to open their mouths and let you in on it. He didn’t find that with Alice. She held herself in a reserved way that made him itch to scratch the surface and see what lay beneath.
‘Pass me that saw?’ she said, gesturing behind him and not answering his question. He did as she’d asked and then watched as she held a length of wood against a gap in the side of the tree house and marked it with a pencil she pulled from behind her ear.
‘Tools of the trade,’ he murmured. He’d spent ten years fixing up houses with a pencil behind his ear before he’d accidentally hit the big time when the guy whose house he’d been working on turned out to be a manager from Music City. Robinson had sung to pass the time while he built Donald Marshall’s porch, and it turned out to be the last job he ever worked as a carpenter. Marsh, as he was known in the business, had gone on to become one of his closest friends and his biggest supporter. Right about now he was probably regretting ever hiring Robinson Duff, either to fix his porch or to pack out stadiums.
Alice took the piece of СКАЧАТЬ