The Golden Locket (Unbreakable Trilogy, Book 2) by Primula Bond Page B

perfume reaches me before she does. Her slim arm winds round my waist as I finger the tail of a jade-green sea horse.
    ‘I know the factories on Murano,’ I say. ‘I saw them blowing glass in Venice when I was there. Did you know that the glassmakers’ craft was considered so valuable that they were kept prisoner on the island under pain of death, to stop them giving away the secrets of their skills?’
    She inclines her head. ‘Venice is the city of secrets, isn’t it? Our palazzo on the Grand Canal is the perfect place to showcase them. One day I’d love you to come visit. Carnevale in February perhaps? But those naughty nuns in your photographs! You got right behind the grille when you were there, didn’t you? I would love to prise open the hushed world of the convent like you did. You have a real watcher’s skill there, Serena.’
    I blush and step as politely as I can away from the array of glass before I break something. I open the French windows to let more of the clear but shaded north light flood in.
    ‘Well, today I’d like to try something fairly formal, classic, you know, but using natural light? Just your face and shoulders, Mrs Weinmeyer, looking out from these shadows into the garden.’
    ‘It’s mighty chilly out there, sugar, but whatever you say.’
    Mrs Weinmeyer does as she is told and leans dreamily in the doorway, resting her head on one upstretched arm. I remember reading somewhere that she used to be a model, or a dancer, which would explain the leopard-fit physique.
    I step outside onto the terrace and try not to shiver as I set up my tripod, but the light today is perfect. There’s a layer of snow-heavy cloud flattening the light so it’s bright but matt. There’s something of the Singer Sargent in Mrs Weinmeyer’s Edwardian-lady persona. She keeps her eyes trained just past my ear as if she is staring out to sea, her pink lips parted, her pale limbs totally still.
    ‘I must say, Mrs Weinmeyer, you’re an incredibly easy subject.’
    ‘And you’re an incredibly easy artist.’ She keeps her face still. ‘We wouldn’t rest until we had you over here to do these shots, Serena. We absolutely loved your work. See? We have a couple of your Paris shots right there.’
    She tips her head slightly and sure enough hanging on the wall beside the fireplace, among an artfully crowded collection including several Hockneys and a Warhol, are three of my monochrome ‘Lovers’ series, an homage to Robert Doisneau but far more sexually graphic. In the first picture the couple seem to be the only people in the world, just the two of them kissing passionately, open-mouthed with greed, tongues pushing between each other’s lips as they tangle on a bench beside the Seine.
    I remember that hot day so well. I was crossing the Pont Neuf and saw the couple oblivious to the passing
bateaux mouches
full of gawping tourists. They had abandoned their half-eaten baguettes in ripped paper bags, put down their bottles of beer and were totally unaware of the tramp who was waking up from under a pile of newspapers in an alcove in the wall behind them.
    In the second picture the boy has the girl on her back, her little floaty skirt up round her hips, and he’s leaning over her, his leg pushing between her bare knees. Her blonde hair trails onto the dirty ground, catching in the litter, pecked at by passing pigeons.
    I had to use my zoom, which is what gives the pair that distant, isolated air, but manages to pick out the tramp sitting bolt upright on his stone bed, greedily eyeing not the lovers but their abandoned picnic.
    In the third picture another girl has approached. It looks as if the first girl hasn’t noticed, because her arms are flung above her head as the boy opens her blouse, and her eyes are ecstatically closed. The boy has his free arm round the knees of the second girl, pulling her so that she is about to fall on top of the first, but the composition means that all three subjects are frozen in