Back The Gaps Save as PDF
Chapters (30)
  1. COVER PAGE
  2. TEXT LOGO PAGE
  3. ABOUT THE BOOK
  4. DEDICATION
  5. CHLOE
  6. NATALIA
  7. CHLOE
  8. NATALIA
  9. CHLOE
  10. NATALIA
  11. CHLOE
  12. NATALIA
  13. CHLOE
  14. NATALIA
  15. CHLOE
  16. NATALIA
  17. CHLOE
  18. NATALIA
  19. CHLOE
  20. NATALIA
  21. CHLOE
  22. NATALIA
  23. CHLOE
  24. NATALIA
  25. CHLOE
  26. NATALIA
  27. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  28. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  29. PRAISE
  30. NEW MARKETING PAGE

‘I’m a lazy tiger girl,’ she says. ‘I’m too lazy to do my homework, I’m too lazy to think about the future, I sit in my bedroom and do nothing all day.’

Natalia sets Bochen up on her bed and piles textbooks and stacks of paper around her. She finds her old Nintendo Playstation in a box under her bed. She brings up donuts and dirty plates from the kitchen and we arrange them around the bed as directed, along with our empty plastic cups.

I was worried that she was being kind of withdrawn once the others arrived, but Natalia is surprisingly meticulous when it comes to creating the set and she seems to enjoy being in the background for a change.

I start clicking and Tiger Bochen slumps on the bed with the Playstation controls in one hand and a half-eaten donut in the other. She looks hilarious.

‘Feels so gooooooooooood.’ She pretends to cram the donut in her mouth.

‘We got it!’ I say, after I’ve shot enough. I have no idea what Adut is going to think of these photos, or the other proper grown-up artists, but I’m having enough fun not to care. Yet.

Cherry has spent most of Bochen’s shoot locked in Natalia’s bathroom getting ready and when she emerges she is in full Snow White costume, Disney-style, with blue bodice, yellow skirt, puffy sleeves and bobbed black hair. The sanitised pretty movie version, not the disturbing Grimm’s version I’ve always liked.

‘I look pretty, don’t I?’ is the first thing she says and I immediately go into freefall about how we’re going to make this work. Natalia wears her scepticism plastered right across her face.

Cherry and Bochen tip out the seemingly dozens of bags they brought with them; plush animals of every colour and size and condition tumble out onto Natalia’s bed.

‘We got a bulk deal,’ Bochen explains.

Cherry pulls a giant pair of plastic novelty scissors out of the last bag.

‘I’m Snow White,’ she says, ‘if Snow White hated all the animals and chopped their heads off.’

Natalia looks like all of her Christmases have come at once.

For Cherry’s shoot we set up in the spare bedroom that Natalia’s sister has been staying in. Plush toy carcasses pile up around the room, mixed in with Olivia’s mess of black clothing, piles of novels, cigarette packets and old coffee mugs. Fairytale Cherry sits in the picturesque bay window holding up a severed rabbit head triumphantly. She is truly, truly scary. I don’t know how I missed this fact at school.

The more Cherry smiles the scarier she looks.

‘Don’t mess with the princess,’ she keeps saying.