‘No! Of course not!’
‘I’m joking, Tils. You just looked decidedly shifty when I mentioned it. It’s fine if you don’t want to do it, anyway. It’s not compulsory.’ I grinned, before turning my attention back to the contents of my bag. A tampon sat proudly in the middle of the pile. I chewed my lip for a moment, and then snagged the item out and put it to the side.
I noticed Tilly watching me.
‘So, we can edit what’s in there?’ she asked.
I raised a brow. ‘I don’t think the world needs to see my emergency sanitary items. There’s sharing and there’s over-sharing.’
Tilly waited a beat before grabbing her own bag and turning it upside down on her own desk.
‘Holy crap, Tils!’ I laughed. ‘How do you even carry all that without tipping over?’
‘I keep meaning to clear it out and never seem to get around to it.’
‘Apparently. Well, why don’t you take this as an opportunity? Sort out what you want in there and then we can just post the “after” rather than the “before”.’
Tilly pulled a face. ‘I’m not sure you should be paying me for sorting out my handbag.’
I waved her protest away.
A grin slipped onto Tilly’s face. ‘OK.’
For the next twenty minutes, there were several exclamations of the ‘Bloody hell, I’ve been looking for that forever’ and ‘Oh, I wondered where that had gone!’ variety. By the time she had finished, Tilly’s bag was about half a tonne lighter and the nearby waste-paper basket was overflowing. Artfully arranging each pile to look specifically unartfully arranged, but in a pleasing manner, we moved the lights over to the desk and photographed each one – the contents in sharp focus with the handbags themselves slightly out of focus in the background. Tilly emailed me her copy for the post, listing the items her bag now contained and their significance, if any, which I then added to my own piece, before quickly typing an introduction about the hashtag. Finally, I copied and pasted a bunch of hashtags we commonly used for blog posts, and added the #whatsinmyhandbag tag to the bottom. With the photos loaded, I ran the spellchecker then gave the text a final scan as a triple check. Satisfied that there were no errors, I pressed submit and the post went live on my Brighton Bellelifestyle blog.
* * *
‘Do you still want to try that photo shoot on the beach tomorrow morning? I’ve just checked the weather, and it’s looking good.’
Tilly and I were scanning the list of planned blog posts we’d compiled for the next few weeks. These were flexible to a degree, which allowed us to comment on any hot, relevant topic that came up, but planning was an essential part of running the blog. It didn’t tally too well with the glamorous ideas that some people had of what I did for a living, but it was most definitely a necessary part. Like a lot of jobs that people only saw a small part of, there was a much bigger, far more mundane part to it.
‘Ideally.’ I nodded as I scanned my calendar. ‘So long as you don’t mind coming over early? I can get everything ready and packed in the car so that we can just go straight there and hopefully catch some good light, as well as beating the crowds.’
‘Fine with me. I think it’ll be fun! We’ve always stayed around the marina for pictures before, so I think it’s good to try and incorporate some more of Brighton into the shoots. And who doesn’t like the beach?’
‘Great. Thanks, Tilly. Hopefully it’ll all go well. With a bit of luck, we might even find we’re naturals at this whole “on location photo shoot” thing.’
* * *
We most definitely weren’t naturals. I heard the wave first. And then I saw it. Briefly. Very briefly. It was, in fact, just long enough for me to open my mouth, ostensibly to make some sort of noise signifying surprise, but in actuality it just ensured that I swallowed what felt like a third of the English Channel before the force of the water overtook me and unceremoniously washed me up onto the beach like some bit of old shipwreck detritus. Opening my mouth had definitely been a bad move.
‘Libby!’ Tilly’s panicked voice came to me through the gurgly water sounds now filling my ears.
Spitting out seawater and goodness knew what else, I quickly stood, the shock of the cold water propelling me to move. Pushing my hair back from my face, I made to step forward, inelegantly wobbling on the uneven pebbles. The next wave crashed into the back of my legs and, unbalanced, I took another tumble. Thinking that a gradual ascent to standing might be more successful, I pushed myself up onto my hands and knees. From the corner of my eye I saw a nearby windsurfer, out for an early morning sail, fall head first off his board. At least I wasn’t the only one taking an unexpected dip. Although admittedly, he was more suitably dressed for the water than I was. The pebbles of Brighton beach dug into my knees and I made ouchy noises as I got myself fully upright once more.
‘Are you all right?’ My assistant had now made her way to me and was staring. I could only imagine what I looked like but I did know it certainly wasn’t the look we’d had in mind for this photo shoot. ‘You have… umm…’ Tilly hesitantly pointed at my head.
I looked back, blankly. ‘What?’
‘In your hair.’
‘What? What’s in my hair?’ My voice kicked up an octave. I didn’t especially want to know what was in my hair. But neither did I want what was in my hair to remain there. I put my hand up warily and felt around. Nothing.
‘Can you get it?’
Tilly shook her head. ‘I can’t. I can’t touch it!’
‘What? You can’t touch what? Where is it?’ Visions of hideous things crawling about on my head now filled my mind. I bent over and shook my head but nothing obvious plopped out on the beach. I looked back at Tilly, hopeful.
