Free The Summer Without You by Karen Swan Page B

are
always
tripping up.’
    She dusted herself down, her pride bruised again. ‘My left foot is a size bigger than my right, meaning I always catch it.’
    ‘You mean I got a real-life Big Foot lodging with me?’ he laughed, throwing an arm round her shoulders and squeezing affectionately.
    ‘Yeah, yeah, never heard that one before,’ Ro quipped, but with a smile. She doubted anyone could get cross with Hump.
    The studio was sparsely furnished inside with only a small battered desk, a chair and a laptop in Hump’s ‘corner’. (He had generously given Ro two-thirds of the space, even
though they were splitting the rent fifty-fifty. ‘I only need a place to make calls,’ he’d insisted.) There was a long, painted wooden counter and a tall tripod stool in hers.
    ‘I guess I should make a start on these boxes,’ Ro sighed, eyeing the stack wearily. It was only half past seven, but her body was telling her it was past midnight, and she’d
been up at dawn for her flight. She’d been on the go for nineteen hours straight, and frankly, those boxes were beginning to look like beds to her.
    ‘You look . . .’ Hump took in her salt-dried clothes and wild hair. ‘You look like you could do with a coffee.’
    Ro’s shoulders slumped. ‘Kill for one.’
    ‘How d’you take it?’
    ‘Just normal.’
    Hump looked at her, baffled. ‘You mean filter, full caff, dash of fat, double-shot espresso?’
    Ro furrowed her brow in return. ‘I think I do.’
    ‘OK. Well, I’m going over to Mary’s Marvellous – thataway.’ He jerked his thumb towards the highway behind him so she could see where he was going. ‘Back in
five.’
    Ro took a deep, galvanizing breath – caffeine was coming! – and tore open the first box. Inside was her edit of the best family portraits she’d photographed in London –
some in Richmond Park, others Barnes Common, some in a studio she rented, others at people’s homes – and had framed. She had packed twenty-two, unable to be any more ruthless than
that.
    She looked around at the long, bare walls – they were certainly big enough to take them all, but she’d need to get some nails and a hammer first thing. She bit her lip excitedly as
she saw her favourite one. It was significantly larger than the rest, taken of two young brothers, aged three and eighteen months. Their heads were tilted together and she’d come in so tight
on the shot their faces couldn’t be deciphered in isolation but became a composite of everything that babies are: rosy blushed cheeks, gappy milk teeth, shining eyes and lustrous, long
lashes. What rendered the image so captivating, though, was the mistake in it – they had been shooting outside and the wind had blown one of her own hairs in front of the lens the very moment
she clicked. It was too blurred to be identifiable in itself but lent a dreamy haze to the feeling of the picture. The mother had actually wept when she’d seen it for the first time. (And Ro
had learned to tie her hair back in a ponytail. She’d been lucky that time, but . . .)
    Ro smiled as she decided, mercilessly, to hang it immediately opposite the front door. She propped it against the skirting board, ready to hang, and arranged the others at spaced intervals. With
these images on the walls – and this one in particular – she could show customers exactly what she could do and win them over before she even opened her mouth – much less told
them her fees.
    She moved on to the next box. It was the heaviest, rammed with fully bound photobooks – the digital generation’s photo albums – which were tall, glossy and printed on thick
non-fade photographic paper. The ones she had brought with her – again, a tight edit of her entire collection – showed the gamut of her clients’ experiences: one depicted the life
story of an eighty-year-old university lecturer (and had taken over a hundred hours to edit), another a baby’s first year (almost as long, given the