The Art of Living

[12] Picnic by the Serpentine

Wednesday noon had rolled around pretty quickly. As requested, Ellie had looked through her photo albums and compiled a small collection of her favourite indoor and night shots. Mostly from the recent months, since she had definitely improved her photography skills. Most of her older shots had been well composed, but blurry and often underexposed. Throw in the wrong aperture value and therefore insufficient depth of field and you had a picture that definitely could have been better.

In the recent months she had practised especially that. Her landscape photography had always been good, so in order to actually learn something, she did a lot of photography for gigs here and there, for parties, all for free. Her payment was the practice. And now she could use those pictures to show off to Brian and the others who were interested. Or.. something. Not that she needed to show off to Brian.

Still. After her course finished, she quickly stopped by a sandwich shop because she was hungry, before she made her way to the park with the bag with her lunch in her hand and the pictures in her bag. It were only a few minutes walk, and on the streets of London there was always something happening to keep her entertained. Whether it were ridiculously 'cool' guys, or girls in high heels tripping over the pavement, something was always bound to happen. If you were lucky you could even see someone chasing their dog through Hyde Park in order to get them leashed again. Walking through the city was amusing and Ellie never really minded it much.

However, her steps slowed down slightly the closer she got to the bridge. She wasn't looking forward to dealing with Brian. It would be exhausting. Because he always made such a huge deal of everything. If she hadn't been looking forward to seeing Lynn and Mary again so much, then she would have snuck off and walked home through the park. But she had promised Lynn, so she didn't run off. She saw the group standing slightly next to the bridge at the end, so they wouldn't block the way. Ellie quickly skimmed the group to see who all was there. It were indeed just Mike, Roger, Freddie, Brian, Mary and Lynn. Not the entire group that had been at Freddie and Roger's.

Ellie put on her smile and walked up to them. "Hey you guys, sorry I'm a little late."

Brian was the first of them to look at her with the biggest smile ever. Of course. How great.

"El," Lynn exclaimed and hugged her. "Glad you could make it. Thanks for not ditching us."

Ellie rolled her eyes a little. "I promised you, didn't I? I even brought the pictures you asked for," she told her as she hugged Mary too.

"You brought the pictures? Oh great, thank you. I hope you didn't mind that I asked for them." Brian's smile was unchanged. Was it glued to his face somehow? Ellie kept a polite smile on her face when she looked at him, and somehow it wasn't even all that hard.

"Oh you asked for them? Well.. Yeah." She didn't know why she had said that, because she had known that he asked for them. Maybe it would make him feel a little less special if she pretended not to care much. It was worth a shot.

But it didn't really help, unsurprisingly. Brian nodded, the smile on his face unchanged, and when the group started to walk, he was walking beside her. Great. "Yes, I did, I just remembered that you study photography."

"So... you just wanted to see some of my photos or what? Why do you want to see them so badly?" She asked and glanced at him, wondering when he would catch on to her less than enthusiatic attitude. She was trying hard to seem as unenthusiastic as possible, which was getting hard.

"You will see soon," Brian said, a small smirk playing around the corners of his lips.

Ellie just nodded and smiled a little, pressing her lips together. She had to try not to show any emotions. "Okay then, I will see."