Who the Fuck is Alex Turner?

The Part With the Text Message

“Nic, darling, nobody can see you!” Anne sighed impatiently and dropped the camera from her eye. “Come to the front.”

It seemed to be unclear to my mother that my poor positioning for the photograph was very much intentional. But I reluctantly obliged, my instinct to be hidden once again steering me around the danger of having a verbal confrontation with Anne. In this swarm of people, many things went unnoticed, however, unfortunately, my grumpiness succeeded in attracting the attention of several bystanders.

Leaning over rather unnaturally for the photograph, I joined my cousins in the little huddle they’d formed. Through years of forced posing, enduring the constant “straighten your back up Nicola,” or the charming “smile properly, what kind of smile is that?”, I’d perfected the art of the ‘genuine’ smile. And I pulled it off brilliantly.

This lovely little street we stood on, complete with buskers and the odd street vendor, was alive with swarms of people. Being a main street it attracted many tourists, and we were beginning to cause a blockage in the pedestrian traffic. Irritability was building amongst the people who were forced to stumble past us, yet my mother seemed removed from the tense atmosphere.

“Yes, yes that’s much better pumpkin.” Mum exclaimed delightedly, analysing the view from her camera lens and approving.

It was starting to become difficult to contain my disdain. The nature of my contention was such that I could not tolerate the falsity of the entire situation.  Anything artificially enforced felt wrong to me. I could not see past the irony of opening a photo album to flick through the ‘happy memories’ you’d supposedly had, only to look back and be reminded that at the time the photo was snapped, you’d been irritated well beyond the boundaries of your patience.

But this had never bothered Anne, not even in the slightest. She turned her head, nonplussed by the entire charade, and looked around her. Seeking out someone, her eyes settled on a man and she began to approach him. I suspected he was young, although probably still older than me. His face had a youthful charm, but also an allure produced by a set of pensive eyes.  He was casually clad in a black t-shirt and dark jeans. He had brown hair that reached just beyond his chin and bounced down over the side of his face. In the moment I’d been watching him, a lock fell into his eye and he brushed it away in an action I’m sure was almost involuntary. Standing alone, his arms were slung in his jean pockets and his eyes were searching out over the skyline of the city. Mum tapped him on the shoulder sheepishly.

“Excuse me young man, would you be able to take a quick photo for us?” She said, gesturing to the camera in her hand.

“Yeah, of course.” He said, turning around, seemingly broken from his trance. He spoke with a thick English accent, which I couldn’t quite place. Yorkshire, maybe? It was definitely Northern. Carefully giving him the camera, she hurried over to join us as we posed for the photo.

The man raised the camera to his face, and with the quick click of a button, he’d taken the photo.

Straightening out from my pose, I tore my eyes away from the stranger holding our camera and watched as a girl began to walk against the flow of the crowd in our direction. It seemed as if she’d materialised out of the crowd itself as she randomly emerged from the bustle of people. She appeared to be a teenager but could have been an adult. Her demeanour suggested she was the former, however I was unsure. She walked over to him, still holding our camera, in an oddly forced manner.

 “Alex!?” She beamed ecstatically, revealing teeth lined with shining, colourful orthodontic braces. “Alex, Turner?”

Startled by the girl, the camera slipped from his grip. The glass screen shattered violently as it met the ground, causing an utterance of shock from my mother as she watched the camera fragment into several pieces.