My phone made a clown car noise that signified I had a WhatsApp message. I picked it back up and clicked on the icon.
?? Hello you. Flight was good, thanks. One of the flight attendants was very chatty… reminded me of you.
He followed this with a winky face.
?? You’re welcome to use any of the shots I took. Not worried about credit, Libs. I’ll just put everything in a zip file and send it over and you can see if there’s anything you like. Hope you’re having a good day. Bloody sweltering here!
I tapped out a reply.
?? Thanks, Charlie. You’re a star. Sorry to hear about the temp – people don’t realise how tough having such a jet-setting lifestyle can be!
I returned the compliment of the winky face.
His reply came straight back.
?? Ha ha! Mind you, I suppose having changed my screensaver to that photo of you on the beach might be helping push up temperatures…
?? Smart arse.
?? Touché!
Tilly saw me smiling.
‘Everything all right?’
‘Yes. Charlie’s just being a smart arse. It seems he hasn’t quite forgotten about the surprise contents of that file from Saturday.’
‘It’s hardly the sort of thing a bloke would forget in a hurry!’ Tilly laughed, and then remembered that she had been instrumental in Charlie seeing it in the first place. ‘I mean…’
I shook my head. ‘He’s just saying it to wind me up.’ I pulled a face.
Tilly smiled.
My email notification sounded and I glanced at it. ‘It looks like Charlie’s sent the file of photos. He said just choose whatever you like and not to worry about credit, but I definitely want to make sure he’s credited properly, and all the copyright stuff is on there.’
‘Absolutely.’
‘I’ve got some stuff to look at this afternoon, so would you mind going through these? Just choose what you think and I’ll have a quick look before it goes into the queue for upload. I don’t think it really needs much wording, but you know what you’re doing with these posts so I’ll leave you to it. I’ll forward you his email with the attachment now.’
We returned to the relative coolness of the living room and went back to work. With news of the Glam deal filtering through, my blog was getting more and more hits and I had now been approached by several more companies interested in working with us. I wanted to sit down this afternoon and start looking at some of their proposals. Searching online for some more information on one of the companies, I glanced up and caught sight of Tilly’s face.
‘What’s wrong?’
She snapped her head up. ‘Wrong? Nothing! Nothing at all. I was just looking at these photos of Charlie’s. Libs, they’re amazing! He’s really, really talented!’
‘I know. He takes some lovely landscapes. I’m thinking about asking him if I can get a couple of prints for in here actually.’
‘You should. Totally. But you know he doesn’t just do landscapes, don’t you? His portraits are pretty amazing too.’
I smiled. ‘Well, he did seem to manage to coax a little crab out to have his photograph taken, so I guess it’s kind of portraiture.’
Tilly twisted her screen around to show me the one currently displayed on it. It wasn’t the crab. The image was a black and white shot of me standing on a rock, one hand reaching up to the crown of my hat as the breeze ruffled it. My other hand held a bunched-up handful of skirt fabric as I looked down, navigating my way to the next rock.
‘Did you pose for this?’
I shook my head. ‘No. I didn’t even know he’d taken it.’
‘I love it. Can we use it on the blog?’
