Seeing RED

Clare's past had left her hurt and angry but was it time to move on?

Mum, this is Ellie.’ Jamie flashed a wide grin. Ellie, I knew the name. He’d avoided her for years in school. One of the

popular girls, she’d led a pack of nine. They’d laughed at my son, called him Ginger Nut and threatened to join his freckles up with a marker pen. They are things you never forget.

‘Hello, Ellie. I’m surprised to see you here. I assume you’ve heard the news. Did you see it online or in the local paper?’

‘What news, Mrs Cromer?’ She was smart to play dumb but I knew

the reason for her sudden interest in my boy.

‘The photoshoot news?’ I stroked a hand down my own red hair. I’d always blamed genetics for the amount of teasing Jamie suffered. At last, his looks had proved an advantage.

‘The trip to the Canary Islands and Iceland,’ I went on. ‘The other ticket? The plus one who can tag along?’

Jamie, with a little help from me, since his dad had left years ago, had sent in some photos to Simon Williams Stewart, a photographer working on a big coffee table book. The Beauty of the Redhead, he called it. He put a big ad in a national newspaper and online, asking for redheads to send in photos of themselves.

A few weeks back, I received a call. Simon, in his cut-glass accent, told me that Jamie had potential beyond the book.

‘I know a modelling agency who’s interested,’ he said. ‘Jamie might be on a Paris or Milan catwalk next. Your son has such an other-worldly look.’

Jamie was always a blue-eyed angel to me. Only, then blonde, Smelly Ellie turned up, smothered in perfume. I knew her game. If you grab onto an angel, you can fly using their wings. I narrowed my eyes at her.