Sophie was working on a shoot with a family so annoying you couldn’t have made them up. Mind-blowingly wealthy, with homes scattered around the world, they were currently occupying the stunning penthouse apartment of a new hotel up on the cliff top overlooking St. Ives. Here in Cornwall for a week—squished in between visits to their villa in Cannes and friends who owned a palazzo on the banks of Lake Como—they’d decided to mark the occasion with a family photo shoot. As you do, apparently, when you occupy that kind of world.
“If the pictures are good enough, we might use one of them for this year’s Christmas card,” Julia generously explained. A rake-thin Californian in her fifties, she’d been surgically altered to resemble a waxwork model of a thirty-year-old. Her husband, a plump British entrepreneur, wasn’t remotely interested in being photographed but had been coerced into going along with it in order to keep the peace.
The two teenage daughters had expensive, drawly transatlantic voices with upturned intonations. They also had shiny curtains of waist-length blond hair and teeny tiny bodies that they kept loudly insisting were fat. A hair and makeup artist had been hired for the occasion, as well as their stylist, who’d arrived with armfuls of clothes and accessories from their London home. So far the preparations had taken three hours, and Sophie was still waiting to take her first shots of the day.
“Mom, my lashes still aren’t right,” whined the younger daughter, Jemini.
“Okay, honey, calm down.” Julia gave the makeup girl a blank look that would most likely have involved eyebrow raising if Botox hadn’t rendered such a feat impossible. “Can you please do them again?”
“Yes. Sorry.” The girl flushed and nodded, visibly mortified.
“Remember the time that one in Monte Carlo did my eyebrows all wrong?” The eldest daughter, Jezebel, spoke without glancing up from her crystal-encrusted cell phone. “It was, like, so annoying.”
Sophie exchanged a glance with the makeup girl, who was now battling through a fog of cigarette smoke in order to redo Jemini’s lashes. What a life this family led, yet they seemed so utterly bored with it. Having finished texting, Jezebel was now chatting on her phone to a friend. “No, I’m the size of a whale… I weigh, like, ninety-seven pounds.”
“Shhh, baby,” her mother protested. “Don’t tell everyone. We’ll get you some lipo; it’ll be fine.”
“Not the turquoise ones.” Jemini waved away the skyscraper-heeled shoes the stylist was showing her. “I wore those for last week’s shoot. Isn’t it your job to keep track of these things?”
The stylist looked as if she’d love nothing more than to stab her with a turquoise stiletto heel. Oh yes, this family was evidently a joy to work for. Sophie’s phone vibrated in the back pocket of her jeans and she stepped through the French windows onto the wooden wraparound balcony.
“Sophie? I need you to come over here and settle an argument!”
After enduring the whiny, nasal tones of Julia and her spoiled daughters, it made a nice change to hear Marguerite’s forthright voice.
“What kind of an argument?”
“You know the ash tree in my garden? The one with the wicker cocoon seat attached to it?”
“Okay, yes.” Sophie nodded, remembering the shoot they’d done last year for Marguerite’s Romanian publisher. Had they not been happy with the shots? “You need some more photos of you on the seat?”
“Not of me. There’s a bird nesting in the upper branches and I need to know what it is. Lawrence is insisting it’s a blackbird, but I’m sure it’s a Cornish chough, even though I know they usually nest on cliffs. Pyrrhocorax, that’s the Latin name. They practically disappeared from Cornwall in the fifties, but there’s been a bit of recolonization in the last fifteen years.”
“Right. Wow,” said Sophie. “I’m impressed. I had no idea you were such an expert.”
“One of my awful exes was a birdwatcher. He made me go on a bird-spotting vacation with him once. And only once.” The shudder in Marguerite’s voice was audible. “It was horrendous. Everyone had beards and wore chunky knits. Anyway, I’ve tried taking photos with my phone, but it’s useless. That tree’s thirty meters high.”
“You need a long lens,” said Sophie.
“I don’t. You do. Can you come over and see if you can get some decent shots of it?”
“Well, I can, but not today. Tomorrow’s pretty busy too.” Sophie mentally scanned her diary for the next few days. “But I could maybe squeeze in a visit between appointments…”
“I tell you what, just come over whenever you can. I’m going to be out and about a fair bit myself,” said Marguerite, “but it’s only the garden, so you don’t need me to actually be there. A couple photos good enough to identify the bird, that’s all I’m after. And please, God, let me be right and Lawrence wrong; otherwise I’ll never hear the last of it.”
“I’ll do my best.” Sophie smiled. “If all else fails, there’s always Photoshop.”
“Ha, that’s my girl. Excellent plan. Why be a failure when you can cheat your way to victory?” Marguerite gave a bark of laughter. “Joking, of course.”
“I’ll be over sometime this week.” As Sophie said it, a wail rang out from inside the penthouse apartment: “Aw, I don’t believe it! A freakin’ crystal just fell off my phone!”
With characteristic bluntness Marguerite said, “What a ghastly screeching noise. Are you watching Housewives of Orange County?”
“Actually, it’s one of my clients.”
“Good grief, poor you, she sounds a complete nightmare. I bet you wish everyone was as nice as me.”
Sophie heroically managed to keep a straight face. “Oh, I do.”
The preparations continued. Julia’s husband made endless business calls while the rest of his family readied themselves for the shoot. Julia was on the phone to her nail technician in Los Angeles, debating at length the shade of polish she should try next. Jezebel was noisily chewing gum—chomp chomp—and surfing the Internet on her iPad.
“Okay, so we’re starting to narrow it down now.” Julia yawned, midconversation with the nail technician. “The pale green Dior, the Chanel peridot, or that dark shimmering one by—”
“Aaaaarrrgh!” Jezebel jackknifed upright and began making dramatic retching noises. “Oh my God, that is so gross!”
“What? What is it?” Jemini gestured at the hairdresser to move back so she could lean across and see the hideous grossness for herself. “Oh jeez, that just makes me want to barf… It’s like something out of a horror movie.”
“Oh. Maybe it is from a movie.” Jezebel, her face still contorted with distaste, looked at Sophie and demanded, “Well? Is it?”
“Sorry?” What were they on about now?
“This!” Jezebel held up the iPad so she could see. “Is it, like, all done with makeup?”
Sophie studied the screen and realized that Jezebel had been exploring her website. Having scrolled through pages of sample photos, she’d stopped at one of the most recently added.
Elizabeth Sharp had been so proud and delighted with the end result of their visit the other week to Mizzen Cove that she’d posted her favorite photo on her personal blog. Word had soon spread, a local journalist had contacted her, and Elizabeth had ended up being featured in several newspapers, with the picture attracting yet more attention and widespread praise. When Sophie had asked if she could include it in the photo gallery on her website, Elizabeth had said, “Darling, of course you can! My pleasure!”
There was no hint of pleasure on Jezebel and Jemini’s faces. Jemini was shaking her head in disbelief.
“Is it special effects?” Jezebel evidently couldn’t contemplate the possibility that the photograph might be real.
“Her name’s Elizabeth. She’s a history teacher,” said Sophie. “She had breast cancer and she’s celebrating still being alive.”
“But…but look at the scars! And her breast is, like, totally gone. She’s all flat on that side.” Jemini’s glossy upper lip curled in disgust. “Why would she let them do that to her?”
Sophie said evenly, “To get the cancer out.”
“But why didn’t she make them do a reconstruction?”
“As far as Elizabeth’s concerned, it’s not a priority.”
“Well, I’m sorry, but it’s totally gross. And she’s naked. Some people have no pride,” exclaimed Jezebel. “I mean, look at how old she is. And as for her body, what kind of a state is that to get yourself into? She’s all fat and round and…urgh, saggy!”
Jemini pointed to the screen. “And she’s got cellulite.” She exhaled a stream of smoke and narrowed her eyes at Sophie. “Like, not being funny or anything, but you’re the photographer. Shouldn’t you have Photoshopped all that stuff out?”
“It’s like she’s just flaunting all the icky stuff,” Jezebel chimed in. “Why would anyone want to do that?”
Sophie’s jaw was aching from keeping her teeth gritted. “Actually, she’s a friend of mine.”
“Are you serious?” Jezebel twisted around to gaze at her. “And you put her on your website looking like that? If she’s your friend, what kind of photos would you take of someone you didn’t like?”
“What kind of photos is she gonna take of us?” murmured Jemini.
“Don’t worry.” Sophie shook her head. “You’re not going to get the chance to find out.”
Everyone stared at her. Jemini said, “Huh? What’s that supposed to mean?”
It was no good; there was no going back now. After the things they’d said about Elizabeth, Sophie knew she couldn’t go through with the shoot.
“I told you she was my friend and you just kept on saying that awful stuff. Trust me, you wouldn’t be happy with any photos I took of you.” She was dimly aware of the stylist and the makeup artist surveying her with a mixture of envy, horror, and glee. “Besides, I don’t want to take them.”
“You’re canceling? You can’t do that!” Jemini shrieked. “We’ve spent all this time getting ourselves ready!”
“You have phones. You can take photos of each other. It’ll be fine.”
“Okay, this is crazy. Mom, tell her she has to do it!”
“I don’t have to and I’m not going to.” Sophie moved around the sitting room, collecting her equipment. She wouldn’t get paid, but sometimes you just had to make a point. Luckily, she was busy enough with other projects to be able to stand the loss.
“Daddy, you have to stop her!”
Sophie said, “He can’t.”
“Oh, just you wait,” bellowed Jezebel. “He’s so gonna sue your ass!”
“Your fat ass,” Jemini added; it was evidently the worst epithet she could think of.
“Guess what?” Sophie smiled equably at the sisters as she flicked shut the locks on the metal equipment trunk. “Me and my fat ass can’t wait.”
The girls’ father caught up with her as she was packing the equipment into her car. Sophie forced herself to stay calm. “If they say anything publicly about me backing out, I’ll tell everyone why I did it.”
The poor harassed man shook his head. “I’ll make sure they don’t. And I won’t sue you. Look, I’m sorry. I’ve worked so hard all these years to make money.” He gestured helplessly up at the hugely expensive penthouse apartment. “To give my family the best life I could. And you know what? I sometimes wonder why I bothered. They’ve lost touch with reality. They see a flaw and it has to be fixed. The people they mix with, they’re all the same.”
He might not have had face-lifts, but his teeth were astonishingly even and white, like mini marble tombstones. Sophie felt for him. “Well, I’m sorry too. I’ve never walked out on a job before, but you know…”
With the weary sigh of a man only too aware that he was somehow going to have to sort things out and make alternative arrangements, Jemini and Jezebel’s father took out his phone and said, “I do know. It’s okay, I understand.”