Читать книгу The Exchange - Carrie Williams - Страница 5

We met on Facebook – where else? She came up as ‘Someone You Might Know’ and, though she wasn’t, she looked interesting. So I clicked on her name and added her to my Friends list. There was also the fact that her name was a little bit similar to mine: Rochelle Renaud, Rachel Reynolds. Not that it means anything, of course, but sometimes seemingly random things can have huge repercussions.

When I say interesting, I mean that she looked very different to me, or to any of my friends. The acquaintance we had in common, leading Facebook to suggest her to me, was a runner at an agency called Twist, specialising in offbeat, ‘characterful’ models. I still don’t know how he actually knew Rochelle. But it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that she piqued my curiosity, with her froth of blonde curls, her red sequin top and her mismatching pink feather boa, slung around her frail neck like the serpent from the garden of paradise.

She accepted my Friend request, but for a while that was it. We didn’t exchange any notes or leave any messages on each other’s wall. Then one day I did get a note from her, short and to-the-point.

‘Hey Rachel. It seems you are a photographer. What kind of images do you make?’

I emailed back, told her a little about my work, directing her to a few websites where it was displayed. Then, on a whim, I told her that if I ever came to Paris, perhaps I could photograph her? I didn’t say that I was captivated by her vulnerable beauty, the fragile edge to her. By then I’d browsed some of the photos of her in her Facebook albums and found her gorgeous but somehow damaged-looking, with eyes like shattered glass. Sometimes you look at a photo and you are desperate to know more about the person within it. Perhaps that’s what makes a successful photographic portrait. And so it was with Rochelle. I was curious to know more.

She emailed back to say that she didn’t think she’d be around for long, that she was talking about quitting Paris. She didn’t say why, but there was a glamorous world-weariness to her tone that made me quite envy her her wanderlust, however unfocused. Perhaps just to try to look as cool as her, I told her I had itchy feet too.

She live-messaged back: ‘What do you think about coming to Paris? And me to London? A swap?’

I sat back in my seat. It was radical, something that would never have occurred to me.

‘How long?’ I typed back after a few minutes.

‘I’m not sure. Six months? Longer?’

This time I messaged straight back, before the rational, practical side of me could kick back in. ‘Six months sounds good to me. I’d love to get to know Paris properly.’

‘And me London. So when shall we start?’

I was loving this. Rochelle was as impulsive as she looked. She clearly had a screw loose, but I liked that kind of madcap decision-making. It was so alien to me. And it was kind of refreshing to be steered by someone else, to be borne along on a tide of spontaneity.

I started to type that it couldn’t be for a good couple of months, because of this, that and the other. And then I erased it all and just wrote: ‘I’m ready when you are.’ None of my upcoming projects, I told myself, were time-sensitive. And if I needed to hop back to London, the trip was fast and easy.

‘Great,’ Rochelle fired back. ‘I’ll hand in my notice at the cabaret tonight. I can’t wait.’

‘You work at a cabaret?’

‘I didn’t tell you? I work as an exotic dancer.’

I wondered about that for a minute. Did she mean ethnically inspired stuff such as whirling or belly dancing, or was it a euphemism for erotic dancing? Was Rochelle in essence a stripper? I looked again at her picture, thought of her jaded tone. Was that what she was sick of: of showing herself for money? It seemed a legitimate thing to want to run away from – the kind of thing you fell into and then spent ages trying to dig your way out of. I doubted it was ever a career choice.

When I didn’t answer, she messaged again: ‘I live in Pigalle, by the way, close-by where I work. I hope that won’t put you off.’

That confirmed it: Pigalle, I knew, was famous for its sex shops and peep shows, for the Moulin Rouge and the Folies Bergère. To whatever degree Rochelle took off her clothes, her dancing was primarily erotic rather than exotic.

But I wasn’t put off, not by Rochelle’s trade or by her neighbourhood. I knew that’s what she was warning me about – the insalubriousness and potential danger of Pigalle itself, especially as a place for a girl living by herself. But I was used to looking after number one. One of my self-chosen assignments during my photography MA was a series of images of teenage drug addicts around King’s Cross, which involved lots of time spent wandering around the station and its murky environs, lots of approaching people who’d fallen foul of substances that made them unstable and desperate. As a project, it was hugely successful and even influential – it was subsequently published in The Big Issue.

In fact, the more I thought about it, the more it seemed that Pigalle was calling to me. Perhaps that was the reason for my recent restlessness – perhaps I was done with London, for the time being, just as I was done with Kyle. I was newly single after calling a halt to my three-year relationship with the latter, but perhaps it was more than a change of boyfriend I needed. Perhaps it was a new home.

‘Not at all,’ I typed back. ‘I’m fascinated by Pigalle. Shall we aim for a week today?’