Free Fragile Lies by Laura Elliot Page B

slipped on her clothes and took her camera outside. The foreman was defensive at first, believing she had come to complain and was using the camera as a means of gathering some evidence of wrongdoing on his part. But she was persuasive and after consulting with the workers he gave permission. As she approached the crew she realised one of them was a woman. She worked silently alongside the men and paid no attention to Lorraine, who moved among them as unobtrusively as possible.
    When they stopped for a tea break she was still photographing them. They began to talk to her, the men striking macho or provocative feminine poses, asking if they were going to feature in a Playboy centrefold. When they heard she intended painting them they whistled and sang “Mona Lisa”, the woman joining in, a husky voice, one of the lads. She looked wiry and skinny against their hulking masculinity. Lorraine studied her tough face with its give-as-good-as-you-get expression. Did she suffer sexual harassment? Was her bottom pinched, patted, stroked? Had she been lewdly teased? She did not look like a woman who would suffer silently. Lorraine took their addresses and told them she would send invitations if the painting was ever exhibited.
    Bill Sheraton fretted about time-wasting. Lorraine fretted about missing the light. Lorcan, glowering and inflamed, fretted about her close scrutiny of his skin. Andrea piled clothes on the bed and fretted over the most suitable outfit to wear. A hair stylist and beautician attended to her hair and make-up. Tempers were frayed by the time the photographic session started.
    Lorraine photographed the family in the garden, grouped before a copse of blazing redwood trees, in the drawing-room, in the conservatory and at the foot of a curving staircase. Lorcan’s head jerked defensively whenever she approached him for a close-up shot. His bottom lip was cracked as if he had bitten down hard on it.
    “They want to play happy families,” he muttered. “I told them it was a sick idea but nobody around here gives a fuck what I think.”
    “Trust me. You’ll be pleased when it’s finished.” She tried to reassure him, hating her glib response but unable to think of anything else to say.
    “Will I?” His eyes rejected any comfort. “What are you going to do, airbrush out my face?” He glared at his mother whose lips were again receiving attention from the beautician. “Don’t bother inviting me to the unveiling.”
    He reminded her of Emily. The same angry struggle to break free from the decisions of adults. Following in the footsteps of a man who smelled his first million when he was eighteen was a hard burden to carry and Lorcan’s slouching posture revealed his determination not to try.
    In a clipped, cultivated accent Andrea questioned Lorraine’s fee, convinced that anyone who provided a service to her family was out to exploit their wealth. She fixed her rigid smile on Lorraine and suggested that, as she could work more easily from photographs than time-consuming sketches, surely her fee should not be so exorbitant.
    The temptation to walk away without a second thought from this elegant, spoiled woman was almost irresistible. Such an action would be gossip fodder for Andrea and her friends but what did it matter. Let them say what they liked. They had probably said it all anyway and she was far removed from the circles Andrea frequented. But, suddenly, it seemed important that she hold her ground. If she walked from this house she would do it calmly, on her own terms. “As it was your husband who commissioned the portrait, then you must make your views known to him. My fee is not negotiable. But if you decide to cancel the commission I’ll accept your decision.” She spoke crisply, reverting to the business-like attitude she always displayed when dealing with difficult clients and heard, as she expected, Andrea’s sigh of capitulation.
    “You’ve such a long journey ahead of you,” she said when