The Beginning of Everything by Jackie Fraser

Author:Jackie Fraser [Fraser, Jackie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2023-09-26T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

Gethin orders a print of the photo of us standing together on the bridge. He finds a frame for it and stands it on the mantelpiece in the dining room. I come home from work one day and there it is, among the other things: the carved wooden elephant he bought in Thailand, the fallow deer antler we found on a walk, the George VI coronation mug I bought for fifty pence from a charity shop.

I look at the photo for ages, the pair of us grinning at the camera, hair and faces wet with rain. It’s a good picture, a nice moment to have captured, and unexpected to see, because nowadays no one buys prints. I look at it and remember how I felt, our faces pressed together, his arm around me. I purse my lips at the Jess in the photograph. She doesn’t look like an idiot, but I know better.

“You got a copy of that photo,” I say later as we eat our dinner.

“Yeah, I thought it was a good one,” he says. “You don’t mind, do you?”

“No, of course not.”

“I remembered in one of the shared houses I lived in we had a whole wall of pictures of us—the housemates, I mean.”

“A whole wall might be a bit much,” I suggest.

He laughs. “What about if we had one blown up, you know, poster size.”

“I really don’t think I need to see a poster-sized photo of myself,” I say, slightly horrified.

“Ha. With faces bigger than our actual faces?”

“Let’s not do that.”

“No, you’re right, I don’t think I need to see my crow’s-feet at one and a half times real size.”

“Pah, you barely have any wrinkles, do you. And if you did, that would just be craggy.”

“I know craggy’s kind of a compliment,” he says, “but I don’t think I’d care to be described like that.”

“I don’t think you have that sort of face.” I look at him, considering. “Or not yet, anyway.”

“Happy to put it off, to be honest.”

“At least no one minds when men look older. I mean, I expect Vanessa has to look younger than her colleagues.”

“Yeah, she’s got a whole plan,” he says, reaching for another potato. “You know, a tuck here and a tweak there. Eyelids, chin.”

“What a ridiculous world.”

“I know. I don’t really think…well, it’s a personal thing of course, and there’s all sorts of pressure, isn’t there, with expectations and notions of beauty and everything. But getting yourself jabbed with poisons or sliced up for nonmedical reasons. I don’t like it. We had a big row about Botox once.”

“Really?” I don’t know why I’m so fascinated by insights into Gethin and Vanessa’s life together.

“Yeah. It was awkward. I mean, she was right that it was none of my business. But I didn’t like the idea, and it took me a while to get used to how she looked afterward.”

“Was it very noticeable?”

“No, I don’t think so, not really—not to anyone else. She did look…younger, I suppose. Smoother. I don’t know. The lines on your face are…I don’t know.

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