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this
poor journalist.”
    “ I’m so
sorry, I didn’t realise you had feelings under that hard
exterior.” He laughed.
    “ That’s it. Mock me.
Don’t know why I bother calling you...”
    “ Yeah, well, you didn’t
have much choice. It would be well harsh using some other
photographer for a job two floors away from me,” he joked as they
headed to the lift.
    “ As if
I would. You’re, my only photo boy: you’re my bitch.”
    Craig was drawn into her
playfulness. It was these times that bemused him. “Yeah, just don’t
you forget it!”
    The doors squealed shut behind
them and the lift jerked into life shuddering up to the next floor.
Craig watched Vicki stand close to the doors, aware of her
claustrophobia. As the lift slowed to a stop Vicki bobbed on her
toes impatiently and jumped into the safety of the corridor before
the doors had fully parted.
    She quickly found her
confidence again and nodded down to his side. “Is that semen you
got in your hand?” She smirked.
    He looked down to the
mobile phone she referred to and laughed. “ Siemens ,” he corrected. “Yes it is. I told you I
was getting this phone.”
    “ And I told you I was
going to wind you up about it, so we are even. A word that is an
‘i’ away from being a reproductive fluid is a dodgy product
name.”
    “ Yeah?
All this coming from the girl whose initials are VD. ”
    Vicki looked genuinely
shocked. “Bitch!”
    They reached the door to the
Chambers’ flat and Craig quickly pocketed his phone.
    She prodded the doorbell.
“You’ll get brain cancer putting it down there.”
    Craig cocked his head near to
Vicki’s ear while they both stood facing the door, waiting for it
to be answered. “Ha-ha. Don’t – my balls are like plums as it is.
Haven’t had it for ages.” Years actually. He wasn’t into one night
stands. He blushed at his own laddish posturing, he wasn’t like
that but he hoped she didn’t know just how unlucky he had been.
    “ Ooh, big boy!” She
smirked.
    “ Enough for a handful.”
He winked playfully, riding the yearning tension within him. He
arched an eyebrow tauntingly. “Want to test my theory?”
    “ If that’s a pass, it’s
original.” She jumped back in before he could answer. “Anyway. I’m
every man’s dream.” She looked to him. “Small hands.” She held them
up and waved them in his frowning face. “Makes everything I hold
look bigger.”
    Before Craig could pursue their
verbal foreplay the door was opened by a woman who appeared frail
for her probable thirty-odd years. Her bobbed brown hair was untidy
as if she had been asleep moments before their arrival. Her pink
cardigan sagged from her frame, like flesh that had been left
behind from a severe loss of weight, her white tee-shirt appeared
creased and lived in, tucked into her jeans to neaten her
appearance. Her eyes were young, but they stared out from lids
puffy from crying and a face gaunt and exhausted, a face that was a
mask that added years to her. It was hard to believe she was the
same woman he had photographed at the press conference.
    “ Mrs Chambers.” Vicki
greeted. “Hello, again. It’s Vicki Day, we have been talking on the
phone. This is my photographer, Craig Digby. You called us the
other day?” Vicki’s voice was pleasant but professional.
    “ Oh,” the woman exclaimed
as if it had slipped from her memory. “Please, come in. I keep
losing track of the days.” She let Craig and Vicki pass her and
then gave a cursory look of suspicion into the corridor before
shutting the door and joining them in the hall. She asked them to
call her Claire.
    Craig looked about the hallway;
it opened into the kitchen on the left with the lounge ahead of
them. To the right the hall travelled down further to the second
bedroom and was capped with a bathroom door. The master bedroom was
off the lounge. It was tidy but the curtains were still drawn on
the large windows of the lounge leaving the room in a gloomy
yellowish haze