Bad Girls (13 page)

JC swung round to face her, resting his arms along the balcony, his green-tipped asymmetric fringe of hair swinging over his face and coming to rest along the right side, just as he’d styled it to do.

‘I’m dumping Rudy,’ he announced gloomily, in one of the sudden mood swings with which Petal was all too familiar.

‘Really? Why?’ Petal didn’t really care about JC’s latest fling; they never lasted longer than a few months.

‘He’s a little starfucker,’ JC informed her. ‘It wasn’t about me, it was all the famous people he might meet. You know?’ He sighed gustily. ‘I’m not saying we had to stay in every night and watch TV like boring
marrieds
. But he
barely
wanted to be alone with me. Apart from fucking, of course. The rest of the time he was doing his makeup and asking what new hot club we were going to tonight and who was going to be there? I mean, I picked him up at
Starbucks.
This was all the biggest thrill of his life. But he shouldn’t have made it so clear he was only with me for the celebs, you know?’

Petal pulled as much of a face as she could. ‘I’m sorry, JC,’ she said.

‘Yeah.’ He sighed again. ‘I know. It’s tricky, isn’t it? I mean, at least you and Dan, he’s got his own thing too. If KillBuzz keep going like this, they’re going to be
huge
. You’re so lucky. I mean, he’s not just in it because of your daddy or your famous friends.’

Petal winced.

‘Sometimes I’m scared it’s the other way round,’ she admitted frankly. ‘That I’m sort of tagging onto him, you know? I mean, what do I actually
do
?’

JC’s carefully lined eyes widened in shock and horror. He pushed off the balcony and came back into the huge open-plan living space where Petal was sitting at the kitchen counter, the foil on her head matching the entire chrome-and-steel décor of the room so perfectly it might have been a fashion shot.

‘Petal! You have a column in
Downtown
! You did that Secret Agent campaign last year! Accessorize wants you to do a limited-edition handbag line for them . . . and didn’t Rimmel want to name a lipstick after you?’

‘I keep missing the appointments,’ Petal confessed. The foil rustled as she ducked her head in shame. ‘I was talking to this agent woman who wanted to take me on, but I’ve been caning it so much lately I just wake up feeling like shit and take something to make me go back to sleep, and then it’s five or something and I’ve missed going in to see the Accessorize and the Rimmel people, and I get too embarrassed to ring them up and schedule a new appointment—’

‘
Petal!
’ JC was horrified. ‘This isn’t all fun and games, you know! Your dad may be famous, but if you don’t do stuff on your own, people will burn out on you after a while!’

It was more truth than Petal could handle. She bridled angrily. Luckily for JC, the entryphone buzzed just then, and he hurried to cross the wide expanse of shiny wooden floor to admit Tas from the little vestibule.

As soon as he was out of sight, Petal jumped up, went to the fridge and pulled a bottle of Absolut Pear out of the freezer, pouring herself a long slug in a heavy tumbler. JC would lecture her about starting to drink this early if he realized; it was only five. With any luck, he’d think this was a glass of water. She drank some down, a warm hazy rush flooding through her immediately at the perfumed taste of the spirit; it was like an alcoholic version of Appletiser. Immediately, her anxiety about the missed Accessorize and Rimmel appointments, her insecurity about whether she really had enough to keep Dan interested in her, ebbed away.

I’m Petal Gold, she told herself. Everyone knows my name and my face. I can get into any club I want. My spare bedroom’s piled with freebies I haven’t even opened yet, I’m going out with one of the coolest guys in London, and, unlike JC and Tas, I don’t have to work for a living, ’cause I’ve got a ginormous trust fund and this amazing flat . . .

‘Hey, Tas!’ she said brightly, taking another drink of her vodka as her friend stormed into the room, her big makeup box slung under one arm.

‘What’s all this about not going to your Accessorize appointment?’ Tas said bluntly. ‘You’ve got to do that stuff, man! It’s for all of us, you know, not just you! It’s to make us all famous, yeah? That’s the fucking
point
!’

Petal set her glass down, empty, and pushed it discreetly to the side of the chrome bar. Alcohol lent her tongue wings. She said smoothly: ‘Chill, Tas. I was just waiting till I got this new hair colour. I’m going to walk in there with my yellow hair and my fab clothes and they’ll be totally blown away and give me my own campaign. And they’ll hire you to do a limited edition set of colours, and L’Oréal will get JC to do their latest look-book, and we’ll all be rolling in it!’

‘Whee!’ JC said, clapping his hands happily. ‘I can’t
wait
! Let’s rinse your hair, sweetie!’

‘Do you think Dan’ll like it?’ Petal stopped momentarily, suddenly nervous again.

‘Of course he will,’ Tas said, rolling her eyes.

‘Who cares if he doesn’t?’ JC said, pulling up a kitchen chair in front of the sink for her to sit on. ‘Straight boys! What do they know?’

I really want Dan to like it, Petal thought, crossing her fingers tightly so that neither of her friends could see. I’m always nervous he’ll realize how many other girls are prettier than me. After all, if KillBuzz get really big, he could have anyone he wants. What if he wakes up and realizes that I’m just Gold’s skinny little daughter with bright yellow hair, not pretty enough or talented enough to be famous on my own? All I can do is get dressed up and act outrageously so the paps’ll take pictures of me . . .

JC tipped her head back and started pouring jugfuls of water on her scalp, cooing to himself at how well the colour had come out.

Now I’ve talked myself into a total confidence downer. I’m going to have to get
so
tanked up to cope with tonight, Petal thought gloomily. She reached her hand down to her hip, where a wrap of coke – three grams – sat plumply in that little extra jeans pocket which she’d never known what to do with until she’d developed a drug habit.

We’ll get through that tonight, no probs. Thank fuck for coke. At least it always makes me feel cool
. . .

‘
I
t’s bad, Amber,’ Jared said in his hoarse smoker’s croak. ‘I’m not going to piss around here. It’s bad.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Bad! Bad!’ Jared said impatiently. ‘What about the word “bad” do you not understand? How many sodding pills did you pop this morning?’

‘I . . .’ Amber stuttered.

‘You need to come into the office,’ Jared ordered.

‘What,
now
?’

Amber had been watching TV with her mother when Jared rang. They were cosily ensconced in the kitchen, silently sipping diet Lucozade, Slava crocheting lace, happily settled in for the day. Amber had been planning to go for a walk later; she always tried to do a constitutional in Hyde Park for about an hour, stroll around the Serpentine and over the bridges.

‘Yeah, now! There’s something you need to see!’ Jared said impatiently. ‘Don’t piss around like you usually do, OK? Now means
now
, not three hours’ time!’

But that was impossible for Amber, trained since birth by Slava never to leave the house without looking her best. Especially for a meeting with her agent. Her hair had to be straightened, her foundation flawlessly blended, her eyes accented with a careful mix of no fewer than three different pencils in shades of brown, copper and jade, her lips invisibly lined and shined, her body dusted with subtle golden powder. Though she was dressed in the off-duty model’s uniform of T-shirt and jeans, there was a polished, European-sexy gloss to her that the British girls didn’t have; Slava’s old-fashioned, glamorous ideas of what a woman should look like were clearly in evidence. The jeans clung to Amber like stretch leggings, and her T-bar Louboutins were four inches high.

‘No point telling you to dress down,’ Jared sighed as she entered his office. ‘But hey, that’s why you’re such a success on your dates, I suppose. More on that later.’

At fifty, Jared had had so much plastic surgery that his mother would probably not have recognized him. He certainly didn’t look fifty; his skin was as shiny as a stripper’s pole, his eyes were unnaturally large due to a series of eyelid tucks, and an implant in his jaw gave it a masculine squareness that contrasted oddly with the rest of his soft, pudgy face.

‘Sit,’ he said, gesturing to the chair on the other side of his desk. ‘And look at this.’

He swivelled the monitor of his computer, a state-of-the-art Apple sitting on the equally white surface of his marble desk. On the screen was an image of Amber from the shoot she had done last week for the swimsuit catalogue. She was wearing a tiny suede bikini and high gold stilettos.

‘Your body’s perfect,’ Jared said. ‘And no one cares. Because look at your damn face.’

Reluctantly, Amber’s gaze turned to the screen. And despite the cocktail of prescription medicines that kept her calm, she flinched, the leather of the spring-loaded chair creaking as she did so.

Her eyes were dead. There was no denying it, no blaming bad lighting or an incompetent photographer.

Numbly, she heard Jared say: ‘Like a fish on a slab with ice packed round it! I had red snapper for lunch today at J Sheekey’s that had more life in it than you do!’

Her perfect lips parted, but no words came out. Jared tapped on his mouse and another image of her popped up, this one of her in a snakeskin swimsuit with cut-outs, her head thrown back, curls cascading, hands on her hips. Everything was flawless: her skin, her hair, her features. She had found the light and turned towards it, and on first glance, she looked superb. Until you looked into her eyes – because you always, always looked into a model’s eyes – and saw nothing there at all. Just two green voids, blank and empty, as glassy as if she were a reanimated corpse.

‘Same again! Look! You look like you’re in a coma and they propped you up and took your picture!’ Jared said mercilessly. ‘How many pills did you pop before the shoot? The only decent photo’s in profile, so you can’t see your eyes, and you can’t make a living being shot only in profile, can you? Did someone tell you it was a Rohypnol chic shoot for
Vogue Italia
?’

He tapped again, closing the image of Amber.

‘They’re scrapping the whole thing,’ he said. ‘Booking the whole shoot again. You have any idea how much that costs? It’d’ve been better if you had cellulite. Or spots. You can’t retouch someone not sodding
being there mentally
.’ He rested his elbows on the desk, staring hard at Amber. ‘They’re not paying you, of course. Which means they’re not paying me. Which means that you’ve not only wasted the client’s time, but you’ve wasted mine too.’

‘I’m sorry—’ Amber began, but Jared waved a small, plump hand, cutting her off.

‘Not interested. Not interested in what models have to say at the best of times, definitely not interested in “sorry” when it’s too sodding late, OK?’

Amber crossed her legs nervously.

‘So now you think I’m going to drop you, right?’ Jared predicted. He looked at her almost pityingly. ‘Your pictures have been borderline for a while, Amber, you know that. If you were younger I’d say, let’s send you off to the Priory and try to sort you out, but that costs a ton, and it’s not like you’ve got a career waiting for you at the end of it to pay off the investment, is it? What are you, twenty-seven?’

Amber nodded wordlessly.

‘So forget modelling,’ he said frankly. ‘That’s a dead end for you now. Word gets around, and this is a biggie. No one’s going to book you any more. Not for shoots, anyway. But hey, there’s still plenty of money to be made. Much more than whatever you could get from modelling at twenty-seven, which, let’s face it, is practically
geriatric.
’

He clicked once more, and the screen filled up with an image of Amber, a still from the famous
Sports Illustrated
shoot the DVD of which Tony loved so much. Light in her eyes, a genuine smile on her lips, everything the swimsuit shoot should have been. Years ago, on that Californian beach, Amber had been fully connected with the camera, and it showed.

‘
This
,’ Jared said complacently, ‘is
gold
. I send this to anyone, they’re going to want to get with that girl. You still look fantastic, you make yourself up and do your hair like you’re in Miss Universe. I got no problems telling anyone that sure, when you turn up, they’re going to get the girl in this photo.’ He jabbed at the screen for emphasis. ‘And you have a great time on your dates, don’t you? They take you to the best places, they treat you like a princess?’

Thinking of her recent stay at Bovey Castle, of the matched luggage set Tony had given her, of the compliments he paid her and the care he took to make her happy, Amber nodded again.

‘So wouldn’t you like more of that?’ Jared asked, as if he already knew the answer. ‘More trips? More presents? More money?’

‘I definitely need to make money,’ Amber agreed, thinking of what her and Slava’s futures would be like without the kind of income to which they were accustomed. Rent, shopping for clothes, the doctors’ bills – Slava did all the bookkeeping, she always had done, but Amber knew their lifestyle couldn’t continue without the kind of money a top model could bring in.

‘Exactly!’ Jared said triumphantly. ‘So here’s what I’m going to suggest. You go off to Dubai for a week with some other of my girls. All expenses paid, of course. Major, major luxury. You just have to lift a finger and say what you want and they bring it to you on a solid gold tray. And forget what you’ve been making on your weekend trips. This is the big time. We’re talking a good five-figure sum for a girl with your kind of pedigree. Maybe as much as fifty grand. They pay hundreds of thousands for ex-
Baywatch
actresses over there, you know that?’

Amber shook her head, and Jared named a couple of famous names that made her eyes widen.

‘So what do you say?’ Jared said, fizzing with enthusiasm now. He rubbed his hands together. ‘You make money, I make money, you get to lie around a pool in Dubai and work on your tan. Sounds great all round, doesn’t it?’