She had read everything she could find about managing nausea in the first trimester, which was: eat small things often, avoid strong smells, keep ginger and sweets on your person at all times, and accept that your body has temporarily become a hostile negotiating partner with no interest in your professional commitments.
She did all of the above and was still, at ten weeks, spending approximately twenty minutes of every morning in conversation with the bathroom floor.
This was manageable.
What was not manageable, in theory, was the brand preview booking that fell on a Tuesday in her tenth week, a Tuesday when the nausea was, by some meteorological alignment of bad luck, worse than it had been in days.
She went anyway.
The booking was with a sportswear adjacent brand called Fennic.
Much smaller than Kova, more editorial in its aesthetic, the kind of brand that hired models who looked like they actually moved through the world rather than existed purely to be looked at.
Carla had submitted her on the strength of the Kova shots.
The rate was better.
The photographer was someone new to Lina, a man named Raymond who shot in natural light where possible and had opinions, loudly held, about the overuse of digital correction.
Lina arrived with ginger biscuits in her coat pocket, peppermint oil on her wrists, and an expression of total composure that cost her more than anything she had worn into any Cole estate event.
She got through hair and makeup without incident, which she considered a moral victory.
She got through the first setup without incident, which she considered a miracle.
She got through forty minutes of the shoot before her body decided it was done being reasonable.
“Two minutes,” she said to Raymond, calmly, and walked at a pace that was technically not running off the set and down the corridor to the bathroom she had located on arrival, because she had located the bathroom on arrival as a specific tactical precaution, and she was in and out in four minutes and back on set in six, face unchanged, and she stood in her mark and Raymond, who was discussing lens choice with his assistant, looked up and said, “Ready?” “Ready,” she said.
She shot for another two hours.
✦ ✦ ✦ During the lunch break she sat outside on a low wall in the weak spring sun and ate three plain crackers and half a banana and called Maggie.
“How bad?” Maggie said, without preamble, because Maggie had apparently decided that their new relationship involved fewer formalities.
“Manageable,” Lina said.
“I just needed a moment.” “Did anyone notice?” “Raymond’s assistant might have noticed I was slightly paler when I came back.
She gave me a look.
I gave her one back, and she moved on.” “Are you eating?” “Crackers and a banana.” “That’s not a…” “It’s what I can manage right now, Maggie.
When this is over I’ll eat a full meal.” A brief silence.
“I made soup.” “I’ll come by tomorrow.” “It’s in your building.” A pause.
“I left it with your neighbour.
The woman on the second floor.
I said I was your aunt.” Lina looked at the cracker in her hand.
“Maggie.” “She seemed lovely.
She has a cat.” “You left soup with my neighbour and told her you were my aunt.” “Yes.” Lina was quiet for a moment.
Then, unexpectedly, she laughed.
Short and genuine, the kind that comes up from somewhere that hasn’t been used in a while.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Eat the crackers,” Maggie said.
“Then drink some water.
Then go back in there and finish the job.” “I know,” Lina said.
“I know you know.
I’m saying it anyway.” Lina finished the crackers and the water and went back inside.
Raymond had set up a new background.
It was deep grey, and simple.
He was looking at his light meter with the expression of someone who was about to have an opinion about something.
He looked up when she came back in.
“You’ve done this before, haven’t you,” he said.
Not a question.
“The catalogue with Kova was my first.” He shook his head.
“That’s not what I mean.
You’ve been in front of crowds.
Events, something like that.
You know how to hold a room without being asked to.” She thought of thirty years of Lucien’s business dinners again.
Of the particular skill she had developed of being present without being a presence and of taking up precisely the right amount of space so that no one felt crowded and no one forgot you were there.
“Something like that,” she said.
“Hm,” he said, and went back to his light meter.
She booked the follow-up campaign two weeks later.
Raymond requested her specifically.
✦ ✦ ✦ She did not, at any point during the Fennic shoot, think about Lucien.
She thought this later that evening, standing in her bathroom cleaning off the remnants of set makeup, and recognised it as notable.
She had spent three years in the Cole estate thinking about Lucien almost constantly about where he was, whether he would come home on time, what he had meant by a particular silence, whether today would be a day he looked at her warmly.
He had occupied so much of her mental real estate that there had been almost no room for her own thoughts.
She had been gone for just under two weeks.
The amount of space in her mind was astonishing.
She stood in the bathroom for a moment and simply thought.
About the shoot, about Raymond’s comment, about the editorial card in her bag and about whether the radiator was going to click tonight and if she was finally beginning to sleep through it.
Not about Lucien.
Not about the estate or the will or Ivy’s face at the end of it all.
She turned off the bathroom light and went to bed.
She slept eight hours, which was the most she had slept in two weeks.
The radiator clicked every forty minutes.
She didn’t hear it once.