my heart’s for you, it lies awake
for: amina @alototalk by: emily @hurrricanes a story about art, finding love, creating magic, selfish decisions, capturing moments, and remembering. word count: 7086 warnings: mentions of sex and nudity, language, death main pairing: harry/ofc
You’re all the things that fall from the sky,
The sun, the rain, the moon, the light.
***
When you see at least ten penises a semester, that don’t belong to men you’re about to sleep with, you become desensitised. Your first year of university is full of awkward classes, whether the models are female or male, where you’re blushing and giggling and the lads aren’t entirely sure where to avert their eyes. By second year naked bodies are routine, and by third year you’re wondering how you are ever meant to find them arousing again. By fourth year you’re starting to study the naked bodies you do sleep with, and by the time you graduate lovers start insisting you fuck with the lights off.
Or, that was the word on the street anyway.
By the end of the first month of my third year, a bone chillingly cold day that had me reaching for the extra warm coat on the rack by my front door, I was well and truly questioning if I thought naked bodies were as erotic as people made them out to be. There was no longer any mystery to the exterior of human body. Taking a drawing module had been a stupid idea for a painter to begin with, but I’d managed to make the choice even more ridiculous by making sure I was staring at naked bodies twice a week.
I was regretting my decision to broaden my horizons. Until the first day of October, that is. The day I first laid eyes on Harry Styles.
I saw his magnificently broad, muscled back first. It was enough for the heat to rise to my cheeks and for my tongue to press to the roof of my mouth in a lame attempt to keep a straight face. From his back I could tell he was beautiful, in a way that would have Greek gods envious.
His head turned in my direction when I knocked a box of pencils to the floor. Muttering to myself, I even down to pick them up. I had to get a grip; he was a nude model posing for a class, not there for my sexual gratification.
Our eyes met when I stood up and placed the box back of the side table next to my easel. I was winded by the magnetic pull that tried to drag me to him and when his eyes lit up, I felt like I really understood gravity for the first time. There was a gravitational pull that made me wonder if Isaac Newton had gotten it all wrong and it was people not the earth that gravity pulled us towards.
Even with the distance between us I could see the light in Harry’s eyes. I would later learn that there was almost permanently a glint of undiluted happiness that lived in his eyes, and that looking into his eyes could warm you from the inside out. You just have to be careful he doesn’t set you on fire and watch you burn as you lose yourself in him. I think I knew, even then when I didn’t know his name, that Harry Styles was easy to get lost in.
Our eye contact broke when the teacher clapped her hands and asked everyone to take their place at their easel. I sat, my eyes still fixated on Harry as he stripped off his pants. For the first time since first year, I blushed furiously at the sight of a naked man. Heat rose in my cheeks and my jaw went slack as I let myself appreciate his naked form. Harry, as with all things he did in life, was a magnificent nude model. Beautifully proportioned, he was muscular while still being soft and lean, Harry standing front on was quite the view.
I averted my eyes, not wanting my gaze to linger, and busied myself with setting up my station. Kadime leaned over from her spot next to me, a devilish grin on her face. “He’s well fit, wouldn’t mind taking him home for a spin.”
A feigned horror but nodded in agreement, because Kad wasn’t far off the mark. “Aren’t we supposed to be past this?”
“Babe, not many models look like that. It’s only natural to want to shag his brains out.” Kad glanced at Harry and giggled. “Besides, it wouldn’t be the first time either of us as shagged the model.”
My response was to shake my head and laugh. Twice, Kadime hadn’t even made it out of the art room before she got hot and heavy with the nude model. I wasn’t actually sure if there was a student who hadn’t made out with someone in one of the studios, and at least half had gone further than snogging. The room fell quiet then as the teacher called for our attention and explained what she wanted us to get out of today’s class. Mostly, she let us do our own learning and exploring, but some days she told us what to focus on. Today was a little bit of guidance before we started, and they were the days I liked best.
While the other students dove straight into drawing, I studied Harry for ten minutes before I picked up a pencil. I always acquainted myself with the nude models, learning their every curve and their every defining characteristic by looking them over again and again. I always wondered what lead people to signing up to be a nude model, most of the time they didn’t get paid for their services and it wasn’t often that we saw the same person twice. Usually, you could convince someone to do it once because it was daring and they seeked the thrill of the experience but doing it once was enough. You had to drink the person in while you could because the chances were, you would never lay eyes on them again.
I was only halfway to being done when time was called and Harry shifted from his stool. Normally, models race to get their modesty back but I watched Harry as he stretched his stiff limbs. Sitting completely still for two hours was more exhausting than people would think. Kadime offered me her goodbyes as she rushed out of class so that she could make it to her textiles class on time and the classroom quickly emptied leaving Harry and I alone. I paid him no attention, not even a quick glance when he turned around to grab his pants, instead focusing on getting a light outline onto paper while the image of Harry’s naked body was still fresh in my mind.
“Mind if I have a look?” The sound of his voice startled me. I blinked at him passively as I searched for an appropriate response. He had pants on but there was still so much of him exposed, all skin I had the urge to reach out and touch. I kept staring as he introduced himself, not finding my voice until he prompted me for my name.
“Um, Greer.” My voice was rough, as though I hadn’t spoken in a week because I’d been struck with the flu. But I hadn’t had the flu, I had a case of really bad nerves. “Um, it’s not finished.”
“Oh.” Harry scratched his head. “Want me to sit back down? The studio is free for the rest of the day.”
I frowned. “Don’t you have somewhere to be?”
“Nah.” He whipped his pants off before I could respond, and I could feel the heat rising to my cheeks again as I realised how close I was to his semi-erect penis. We never got this close to the nude models. Never. “Ah, bollocks! Sorry, I guess you can see I think you’re fit. Bit hard to hide it when you’re naked, innit?”
“Oh.” The word came out in a rush of air. “I’ll take it as a compliment, then?”
“Sure, love.”
Harry went back over to his stool and sat down. Everything was quiet for a few moments as I evaluated where I was with my drawing, and where I wanted to be. “Thank you for staying.”
“You’re welcome. Though, I’ve got to admit I have a bit of an ulterior motive.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Is that so?”
“Yeah. You see, you’ve got perfectly symmetrical bone structure and I’ve got one last series to give for my degree. I want you and your symmetry to be the subject of that series.”
“Me and my symmetry.” I repeated his words back to him and he nodded ever so slightly. I focused my eyes on my work, mulling over his offer. I’d done some shoots before, my best friend was always in need of a model while she was studying at Central St. Martins and a few acquaintances were photography students at my uni, but nobody had ever asked me to be the central focus of their final portfolio. “Why do you want me and my symmetry?”
He started to shift but froze, guilt flashing across his face. His questioning gaze met mine and I have a sharp nod, indicating I wouldn’t berate him for moving off the stool. “Why should I let you into the secret circle? I’m the only one who knows about my project, you know.”
“Why should I believe that you’re a photography student? I mean, you’re today’s nude model.” I sucked in a sharp breath of air as Harry walked towards me, his hands covering his crotch in an attempt at modesty. It was unnecessary really, given I’d already burnt his entire form into my memory. Harry’s body wasn’t one I would be forgetting in a hurry. I could already see the ways I could paint it.
“It’s a hobby, photography is my lifes work.” He labelled it a hobby so casually before mentioning his work, as if it was normal to consider getting naked for strangers. Like biking or reading in your spare time.
I scoffed and Harry seemed slightly offended. “Getting naked for people is a hobby?”
“You know, you’re awfully snarky for someone who is getting a little one on one time with the nude model.” He sounded miffed and I rolled my eyes at him. It shouldn’t have been alarming that I wasn’t easily believing nude modeling was a hobby. It made me wonder if he was a bit of a weirdo; the kind that should be avoided at all costs. It seemed unlikely though, unless he was very good at hiding his strangeness, because one quirk did not a weirdo make.
“You’re awfully cocky, but I guess it shouldn’t be surprising given how beautiful you are.”
Harry smirked, one eyebrow cocked. “You think I’m beautiful?”
“Yes,” I sighed. I wasn’t ashamed to admit that I appreciated Harry’s appearance. I found every human body beautiful because they were all unique and they were all something to behold, but there was something about Harry’s that had first year blush creeping back onto my cheeks. “But a beautiful exterior is easily tarnished by an ugly interior.”
“I really am a photography student.”
“I believe you, photographers tend to have giant egos.” Harry’s brow furrowed and I rolled my eyes. “I’m joking! Lighten up.” His head tilted to the side and his body relaxed, his arms falling to his sides. He gazed at me with curiosity, as if he couldn’t quite figure me out but he really, really wanted to.
“I think you’re a little bit wild, as most artists are,” Harry commented. He shifted his stance so he was standing straight as a nail, his arms down the front of his body so his hands cupped himself. The muscles in his abs were tight, but there was a soft pudginess to his sides that made me want to reach out and poke him. “I think you and I could create a little bit of magic, you know. We have chemistry, the kind that makes for incredible art and mind blowing sex.”
Knowing he felt the current that flowed between us, the indescribable pull that made me need to know him better. The overwhelming urge to learn his secrets, good and bad, and know his routine was hard to ignore. “It’s usually one or the other, don’t you think? Good sex or good art. You can never seem to have both.”
“I think there are exceptions.”
I slid off my stool, my eyes locked with Harry’s. My fingers found the button that was keeping my tartan skirt around my hips and I undid it in a swift motion, letting the skirt fall down my legs and bundle around my ankles. Harry licked his lips as my fingers grasped the hem of my jumper, his eyes focused on my torso as I lifted the jumper, along with the shirt underneath, over my head and dropped it to the floor.
“Maybe you’re right,” I said softly, focusing my gaze on Harry’s hand. I wanted him to move them, to let me see him in all his glory. “Maybe we should test that theory.”
My eyes trailed up his body, taking in the tightness in his abs and the erratic rise and fall of his chest. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed, and his locked jaw was defined. I stepped towards him but stopped in my tracks when he held one hand out in front of him. His face contorted as though it pained him to say the words that came next. “But not here.”
A little embarrassed, I shied away from Harry and scrambled to put my clothes back on. I was confident enough in myself to make the first more, and secure enough in loving myself to appreciate my body with its flaws, but rejection in the slightest form was enough to send me running. Harry saying ‘not here’ was enough to pull me out of the heady lust that had drenched my thoughts, and now the switch had been flipped to off, I couldn’t believe how forward I’d been. I grabbed my work off the easel and slipped into into my black portfolio case. Harry was buttoning his shirt when I turned to him and spoke. “I appreciate you staying, but I don’t think… I’m just going to go. Thanks again.”
I raced over to the door, disappointment washing over me when my hand was on the doorknob and Harry still hadn’t said anything to stop me from leaving. I felt him before I heard him, his hand grazing my back and heat radiating off him. I didn’t know it then, but Harry ran at a high temperature constantly. “Greer! Don’t be daft. I just don’t think it’s wise to fuck someone in the studio when anyone might come back in. The guy over there who forgot his book, or the girl at the back who left her hair clip on the top of the easel.”
“Oh.”
“I’m comfortable with nudity, but I’m not someone who gets off on public sex, yeah?” Harry reached for the door and swung it open with a gesture for me to walk through ahead of him. “Besides, I’m bloody starving and if you agree to have take-away with me, I might tell you about my project.”
Harry and I agreed on a vegan restaurant around the corner from his flat, one that I’d been dying to try and he was a regular at. I text my flatmates his address in case they never heard from me again and told them not to stay up, because I had no intention of being home before they went to bed. My wounded ego from Harry’s ‘not now’ had recovered and I was going to make another move, to see if the chemistry was limited to initial physical attraction or if there was more. The connection I felt during class, when I was studying and drawing his naked body, had inspired my best work in that class, and so I had hope that the connection translated.
When he spoke about his photography that night, I could see his passion. It was in his tone of voice and his body language, the subtle changes in his body when he mentioned something he was working on or something he wanted to shoot. I learnt that overexposing the lense to light was his signature style, and that he wanted to explore the grittiness and romanticism of underexposure. He was advised not to mess with his style in his final year, and definitely not for his final project, but he was itching to create magic with darkness. In his own words, he wanted to show that love and light could be found in the shadows.
So I asked him to get his camera out, then I told him to start and that was the beginning of everything.
***
His fingers traced indecipherable patterns on my back and he gave me a lazy smile, the one he always did when he was thoroughly spent. As we had been for most of the week, we were naked in Harry’s bed. A sheet that had once been tucked in was bunched in the corner and the duvet had long been kicked off onto the floor, but even in the cooler October temperatures, we didn’t need bedding. Cuddled close to Harry I was warm enough.
“Don’t move.”
“Mm.”
Harry scooted off the bed and I wasn’t surprised to hear the shutter of his camera go off. He’d been pulling his camera out to capture moments ever since that first night when I posed as Harry’s nude model while he messed around with underexposure. Moments were important to him, he needed them on film as a physical reminder that it happened. He didn’t trust memories to, claiming the brain was wired to let us remember them with blinkers on. Cameras let you capture raw moments exactly as they were, no tampering or forgetting.
“Your skin looks incredible at half four in the afternoon,” he told me as the camera went off again. Harry liked to work with film, preferring the process of developing negatives and then choosing to digitalise them later if he wanted to. “Every day, it always looks beautiful.”
“You’re too sweet,” I yawned. My stomach rumbled as Harry knelt on the bed next to me and lined up his next shot. “But your compliments aren’t enough to sustain me. Feed me, please, before I waste away?”
“You’re always bloody hungry, you would utterly fail at being a starving artist,” Harry complained. “Give me a second, I just want to take a few more, then I’ll make us a green smoothie.”
Harry was all about organic, fresh foods that were good for you. While I enjoyed a good vegetable and I tried to eat healthily, I was also partial to cod and chips on a Friday night. A Friday night tradition I’d forgone this week for sex and steamed chicken and vegetables with Harry. Which had my friends completely aghast, because I’d never missed Friday night cod and chips but some things were worth it. The orgasm I had that night was one of those things.
“Or, we could crack open that punnet of raspberries and have them on yoghurt?” I’d never gotten on the green juice or smoothie train, preferring my drinks not to look like bile. Unsurprisingly, Harry loved them. He embraced the artist stereotype wholeheartedly. “You done photographing my arse in the glow of the setting sun yet or?”
“Yes,” Harry sighed. He put his camera down on the bedside table before flopping down on the bed, letting his head rest on my stomach and his arm wrapping around my torso. “You’re so grumpy when you are hungry.”
“Another good reason why you should feed me,” I pointed out. I was playing with his hair, which was long and usually fell around his shoulders in little ringlets, but was splayed over my tummy. “You could go develop that film you were talking about yesterday and I can go to Morrison’s to get supplies.”
Harry agreed and I left his flat with a reminder not to buy much fresh fruit and vegetables because the farmer’s market was tomorrow and Harry wanted to go. I spent an hour walking around Morrison’s, buying far too much for two people but not caring because walking up and down the aisles was oddly clarifying. My head was full of clouds of lust whenever I was around Harry, I made impulsive decisions and chose to stay in bed with him over almost anything else. I’d known him a week and I had no idea if it was going to lead anywhere, but it didn’t bother me. We were having fun, and nobody was getting hurt.
I didn’t see Harry again until I had cooked and gotten halfway through the second Bridget Jones’ Diary. He came out of his dark room with the broadest grin plastered on his face and his eyes danced with the kind of glee usually only found in children. “I told you we could make magic happen.”
He held his hand out for me and I hit pause on the remote before grabbing his hand and standing up. I followed him through to his dark room, my eyes taking a moment to adjust to the red light. 24 photos were hanging from the drying line, and Harry lead me towards them for a closer look. It didn’t take long to see what he meant by magic; our chemistry translated into tangible photographs. They say the best photographs happen when the photographer loves their subject, but simply having chemistry is damn close.
“Harry, these are incredible!” I gushed, squeezing his hand as I leant into his body. I was wearing nothing but one of his shirts, which was a little tight around my chest but hung loose over my hips. Harry’s hand slipped under his shirt to rest on my waist, and goosebumps broke out over my skin even though his touch was warm. “I don’t care what your mentor says, you need to work with underexposure. This… this takes talent.”
There was an unspoken agreement that the photos Harry took of me were personal. They weren’t for his project or for a collection or series. They were for us, a physical snapshot of the time we spent locked away in Harry’s flat. We knew we couldn’t sustain it forever, we’d either go our separate ways or things would progress, but it was the way we were for now. People could talk about it in an ugly way, my friends were already starting to, but the photographs shows something beautiful and magical; something that should be treasured for what it was. An undeniable connection to another human being that lit fire to your insides and consumed you in all the right ways.
“Thank you, Greer, thank you.” Harry’s words were dripping in sincerity but in case his words weren’t enough he also showed me. His lips were moving against mine before I could catch my breath, his hands lifting his shirt over my head as he pushed us back towards the wall. He lifted me up and I wrapped my legs around his waist, and I was gone then. I could feel myself falling further and further into Harry’s world, one where I was not ornamental or an afterthought. I’d been the trophy girl and I’d been the just in case girl, but I’d never been the sun and I’d never had someone who wanted to bask in my warmth the way Harry did.
Maybe a week wasn’t long in the real world, but in Harry’s flat it was enough for me to realise I’d been living my life in a fog, and I never wanted to go back to the dull haze again.
***
Three weeks of what was promising to be the most fulfilling relationship I’d ever had with a man came undone in the space of two hours. When Harry left me at half ten in the morning I was still half asleep and naked in his bed, too tired from broken sleep to get up and have breakfast with him. I didn’t have class that day and neither did Harry, but he had managed to score a meeting with a gallery in Brixton that was interested in displaying his work. When he got back from his meeting, shoulders squared and his face lit up like Oxford Street at Christmas, I was sitting on his sofa working on a sketch I’d started when we were in bed two mornings before. They wanted to show his work, and it would be a rush job pulling it together because the only spot they had for the next six months started three days after his meeting, but what mattered was that they wanted Harry. It was a huge step at the start of his promising career.
“They loved what I’ve got to offer.” They were the words that came out of his mouth before he kissed me and we celebrated right there on the sofa.
We cancelled all our weekend plans, including selling our tickets for The Neighbourhood’s gig, and all of Harry’s time and energy went into pulling together his work. Nobody, not his best mates, his sister, or myself, were allowed to see the final series and Harry spent 72 hours locked away. I ensured he was fed, he drank enough water, and slept more than an hour at a time. It was the first weekend like this that I would have with Harry, but it certainly wouldn’t be the last. Over the course of what would be a 10 year relationship, there were many weekends where Harry had to lock himself away with his creativity in order to put the finishing touches on magic. They were hard weekends but I understood, mostly because I knew the frame of mind well. I slipped on my own creative blinds when I was working on my own art.
By the time opening night, a Tuesday of all days, rolled around I was bursting to see the final version of Harry’s series. His work with underexposure had taken him outside of his flat, and it was the work that had caught the attention of the gallery owner. He’d seen a few photos on Harry’s website and reached out, which was unheard of. Artists were usually begging to have their work shown, especially in the early stages of their career. The Tuesday afternoon was spent naked with Harry in an attempt to distract him and calm his nerves, and the early evening was taming our wild manes of hair and removing a food spill on Harry’s suit jacket.
I didn’t know it when we were standing in his doorway kissing, but it had been days since Harry had screwed everything up. Those two hours he was gone for the meeting had changed everything and set us on the path to destruction.
I lasted at the opening for seven and a half minutes before I left with my stomach doing flips and tears running down my face. I tried to hide my hurt when we first walked in and I saw my naked body from many, many angles all over the walls. I tried for Harry’s sake, because I didn’t want to fight on what was a massive night for him, but I failed. He immediately noticed the change in my disposition and questioned why my mouth was pressed into a thin line instead of a beaming smile. I brushed it off as a nervous stomach for him and the moment he was ushered away by the managing director I made my great escape.
I was comfortable with my body and I was okay with Harry taking photos of my naked body, but I wasn’t okay with those photos being shown to the public. I felt violated; he’d taken my trust and snapped it in half with the same lack of care that goes into snapping twigs for kindling.
I’ve never dwelt on the days that followed the opening. I cut myself off from Harry; my friends ensured I was inaccessible to him and when we didn’t attend the same university it was easy to avoid him outside of class. Those days where I was nursing a shattered heart and trying to glue the fractured pieces of my life back together were some of the hardest of my life. I never thought that I would face anything more heartbreaking. To 23 year old me, Harry’s actions were the most humiliating act of betrayal.
For six long days, we came to a gut wrenching end before we really had a chance to begin.
All it took was for me to find Harry crying on the steps of a pub for us to kick start again. I’d been out with my friends and I was leaving without them because they’d found their hookups for the night but I couldn’t even look at another guy without comparing him to Harry. Getting back on the horse had been the idea, but it wasn’t right. I stumbled over a body when I walked out the door, and it took me all of two seconds to realise who it was.
“Harry?” I tilted my head and squinted as I tried to make sure the curled up figure was in fact Harry. “You alright?”
“M’fine,” came the muffled response. He was curled up in a ball with his head tucked between his legs and his chest. “Don’t worry ‘bout me, Greer.”
I sighed. “Look at me, you daft sod.”
Harry lifted his head and I sat down on the step next to him. I reached out to wipe his wet cheeks, shaking my head at the way he was pouting. “I’m so fucking sorry, G. They only wanted shots of you, they saw the magic, and I got so caught up in the whirlwind I didn’t stop to think about what I was doing. Please don’t hate me.”
“I don’t hate you, H,” I whispered, the choking emotion make it hard to talk. “I’m disappointed, I’m hurt, I’m angry, but I don’t hate you.”
“I took them back, I said I’d get them something better. I wouldn’t let any of the sale go through or anything,” he told me, his eyes pleading for forgiveness. “I know it’s probably too late, and I know the damage is probably already done, but I’m sorry. I want to fix it.”
“I’m the foolish one for letting a guy take naked photos and not making sure you knew they were for our eyes only.” My housemate had pointed that out on day three post opening. It was the harsh reality of nude pictures.
“No,” Harry shook his head. “I should have spoken to you about displaying them instead of assuming you’d be flattered and love the idea. You trusted me implicitly and I broke that trust. What we did… it was so raw and intimate and it was fuckig magic Greer, but it’s magic whether the world sees them or not.”
I reached for Harry’s hand then and nothing felt like home the way his hand clasped around mine did. The only time in my life when my permanently cold hands weren’t icy was when they were encased in Harry’s sweaty warmth, and that freezing night on the first night in November I’d never needed to be home so much in my life. “It hurt the most because I thought you knew me enough to know I’d never want that. But… it’s been four weeks and how could you know me? I got too caught up in how natural we felt to remember that we were nothing but a blip in a very, very long life.”
“Time is not a measure of love, substance, or worth.” Harry pressed his lips to my forehead and sighed. “The fact remains that I was a selfish twat who heard high commission and future wall space and jumped into it. I should have checked with you and I’m sorry I didn’t. I’m going to burn the photos and the negatives so nobody ever gets their hands on them again.”
He yelped when my fist collided with his thigh. “Don’t you dare! Even if they are just for us, they are too good to be reduced to ash.”
“If I promise not to burn them, will you let me photograph you again? Fully clothed this time. I’ve got an idea.”
I hesitated for a moment because we were sitting in the freezing cold on pub steps at two in the morning after days of not talking and it seemed to simple to resolve the fight in a ten minute conversation. That forgiving him already was too easy.
“Look, I won’t burn them either way but if you decide to say yes, I’ll be at the park on bonfire night. Meet me there at nine, yeah?” Harry stood up and offered me his hand. We hugged when I was standing and then we both ordered an Uber. As we climbed into the cars Harry said he hoped to see me on the 5th of November. I had no idea if I would go to meet him when I got into the passenger seat of my Uber, and I don’t think I did know until the night of.
The moment I spotted him taking photos of the crowd I knew I’d made the right decision. A calmness settled over me that wasn’t there without Harry in my life, and I was instilled with a sense of security. The kind we all crave in another human being.
Harry seemed surprised to see me when I tapped him on the shoulder, and the surprise quickly turned to relief and then utter glee. We stood together while the bonfire was lit, Harry standing behind me with his arms wrapped around my shoulders. Selfies on his iPhone captured the moment and looking at them years later, I could see that even then that love was blossoming between us. Harry’s dire need to capture moments proved to be a blessing as life went on.
It was bonfire night that year where ‘An English Girl’ started. Under the flickering orange light of a bonfire Harry captured something that I didn’t really know existed within me. A series of complex contradictions were brought to life with underexposure and hazy, darkness. They are the images that made Harry’s career, and the ones that inspired 10 years of dedication to one subject. For Harry, like his love for me and his passion for life, ‘An English Girl’ was never complete. For years, it has been thought that Bonfire Night was the start of Harry’s obsession with documenting and capturing his girlfriend/fiance/wife, but it started weeks before in an art studio and then in his flat where we found a level of intimacy we’d never reached before.
Bonfire night was the world’s magic, but that dingy flat with a leaky roof and squeaky bed was our magic. They were the days we fell in love and discovered each other. It was where we lay the foundations that we built our life on and maybe we didn’t have an eternity together, but we still had our happy ending. For that, I am entirely grateful.
***
Moments in time are a funny thing. They are fleeting and can feel so insignificant when they happen. A moment can morph into something memorable with hindsight, or it can be so easily forgotten that it’s easy to question whether the moment even occurred at all.
Harry Styles, and many moments with him that followed the day we met, was memorable. I couldn’t forget him if I tried; not the way his eyes were a deeper green in the dim light of my flat, not the way his thumb would always stroke whatever part of me he was touching, not the way his rising star peaked too soon and burnt out before he had a chance to revel in his success, and certainly not the way he loved to passionately and unconditionally. He was a man who left his mark, leaving a flurry of important and heartfelt moments in his wake as he moved through life.
My life and soul were forever shaped by the man who loved me so completely and so honestly that losing him nearly broke me irrevocably. But the thing about life is that it is constantly moving and it will leave you behind if you do not pick yourself up and push on. So that is what I did; I lived a life without him. A life that was sadder but no less full of love or light, for Harry was with me everyday in our daughter’s eyes and our son’s laugh. He was gone but we carried on because our hearts still beat and our lungs still filled with air. We were the living, and we had to live.
I am not saying I did the best job of living, but I did the best I could. There were days where the heartache left me halfway through a box of tissues on the bathroom floor and other days where the neighbours fed the children because I couldn’t remember how to turn on the stove. Death and grief does that to the living. It erodes our minds and washes away our ability to do the simplest of things because it’s too busy holding onto all the memories we are desperate not to forget.
I lost the greatest love of my life suddenly and in what feels like the most cruel way. One moment he was telling me he loved me and that he would be home to put the children to bed and the next he was the victim of someone else’s stupidity. That moment, the one where he said ‘I love you, Greer. I’ll be back before the kids go to sleep.’, was so inconsequential at the time. It was something he had said a hundred times before but with hindsight, that moment is now so important. The last thing he said to me was so routine and ordinary that it took days for me to remember what he said. I still question what his exact wording was, and I’m almost certain that I will never be entirely sure because it all happened so fast and when the words came out of his mouth I didn’t think they were important enough to store away in my long term memory. I’ll never stop wondering exactly how that moment played out but my solace is that we have many, many more moments that I do remember with such stark clarity I often forget they are the past and not the present.
My hope, for you all, is that you find someone who colours their world in a way that compliments the way you colour your own. Many of you never knew my husband but you appreciated him for his talent and the light he brought into the world. I’m sure it would not take much for you to imagine how brightly his world was coloured, and how magnificently his married up with mine.
It has been a trying year in my world, and I find comfort in all of your messages. I am so grateful to you all for sharing the ways Harry touched your lives. It is heartwarming to be reminded of how loved and cherished he was, even by people he had never met. If he was here he would be giving you all a dimpled smile and thanking you for your kindness.
I like to imagine that’s what he’s doing up there and I hope you do too.
I thought it was fitting to share the story of how we met, and how the photo series that defined his career transpired, on the anniversary of losing Harry. ‘My Heart’s For You, it Lies Awake’ is a collection of memories I’ve committed to paper, with the intention of never forgetting. I hope by writing our story down it transcends the limitations of life and death, and that it lives on to maybe people come to a better understanding of ‘An English Girl’ and why Harry dedicated his life’s work to photographing one person.
This is for you Harry. You woke me up from a fog I didn’t know I was in and together we had a life I couldn’t have dreamed of. My love for you will never die, it burns brighter each day I live.
Yours eternally,
Greer
Greer Styles: Columnist, author, painter, widow, mother, girl in those photographs, and completely disorganised basketcase. Back in the pages of your Sunday paper whether you like it or not.
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From the Editor:
In honour of the life and work of photographer Harry Styles, his wife Greer has chosen to showcase never before seen photographs. Taken in the early days of their relationship, the images are raw and intimate and capture the passion felt in the first few weeks of a new relationship. The short story, ‘My Heart’s For You, it Lies Awake’, is a written account of how the couple and photographs came to be and will be released in pocket book size to accompany the exhibition. An excerpt accompanies Greer’s column this week to mark the anniversary of her husband’s passing and the return of Greer to the pages of the weekend paper.
As a long time friend of the Styles family, I’ve witnessed the past year for them. The pain they felt when they lost their husband and father, and then the resilience of a strong family unit who found a way to survive after tragedy. I asked Greer how she did it one day and her answer was simple: ‘Harry lived by the words strength through adversity. We grew stronger as a family in the face of the hardest time of our lives.”.
We could all learn a little something from Harry Styles, even a year after his passing.
The real life story of a couple whose love and passion has been documented so thoroughly is not to be missed. Book on sale next month and tickets for Harry Styles: A Legacy of Love are on sale now. Do yourself, and everyone you know, a favour and get down to see a magnificent exhibition.
Kadime Yze
Arts and Culture Editor, The Sunday Times