Divas (61 page)

It wasn’t a surprise that Melody had been voted Most Beautiful: her ethereal face, with its almond-shaped blue eyes and white skin, framed by a cloud of naturally jet-black hair, was
hauntingly angelic, and her lithe body was elegantly slim, the figure of a twenty-four-year-old lucky enough to be able to eat anything she wanted, as long as she went to the gym on a regular
basis. Winning
GQ
’s Sexiest Woman of 2010 had been more of a feat, as Melody had resolutely refused to do any of the men’s magazine covers or photoshoots that were usually the
road to winning that particular accolade.

‘I’m not taking my clothes off and letting my naked body be projected onto the House of Commons,’ she’d said firmly to her very disappointed agent. ‘I’m not
putting on a bikini and Perspex heels and squatting down with my finger in my mouth. I’m not lying on a bed in lingerie sucking a lollipop, not even for Agent Provocateur. I went to RADA,
I’m a serious actress – if I do
one
shoot like that, it’ll haunt me for the rest of my life. I want to play Juliet at the RSC, not the hot-pants-wearing heroine in
Transformers.
’

‘But you were a Bond girl!’ Anthony, Melody’s agent, had complained.

‘
Exactly
,’ Melody had said passionately.

She’d been picked straight out of drama school for the Bond girl part: she’d been cast as Angel Malone, a gorgeous burlesque dancer who made her entrance onstage in a tiny sparkling
costume and huge feathered silver wings. After her night of passion with Bond, Angel was thrown off the turret of a French chateau by the villain’s henchman. It had been a dramatic death, the
white silk dressing gown she had worn photographed to billow out behind her like the wings she’d worn for her costume, her black hair blowing in the wind. Bond, in the courtyard of the
chateau, had helplessly watched her fall and vowed vengeance as the villain commented sarcastically: ‘Not all angels can fly.’

‘It’s
because
I was a Bond girl that I have to be extra-careful,’ Melody had insisted. ‘People will expect me to sell sex. I’m not taking my clothes off for
anyone.’

God, and look at me now
, Melody thought miserably, staring at her reflection in the floor-to-ceiling window of the luxurious apartment in which she was holed up. It looked directly over
the Thames, whose grey-brown waters were murky and dismal in this cold London winter, dappled by big, heavy drops of December rain that was gradually turning to sleet. Just down the curve of the
river were the skyscrapers of Canary Wharf, their glass and steel gleaming through the falling water, a cluster of the tallest buildings in the country, the Citigroup red umbrella shining through
the mist. At night, lit up, the towers dominated the panorama, glittering with ruby, diamond, emerald lights; Melody would sit in front of the window and gaze out, down to South Quay, looking at
the halogen strips that picked out the whole length of the Pan Peninsula building, wrapping around its sides like ribbon, turning it into the most expensive present in the world.

But by day, with the mist blurring the view, the glass became a kind of translucent mirror, and what it mainly showed Melody was her own splinted and bruised face.

The doorbell rang. Melody turned to look at the clock; in keeping with the five-star designer luxury with which all the apartments in Limehouse Reach were decorated, it was projected onto the
high pale living-room wall, an elegant shadow tracery between the twin Damien Hirst dotted lithographs that hung over the Ligne Roset white leather sofas. It read 11 a.m. precisely: the new nurse
was clearly very punctual. The last one had wandered by whenever it suited her, well aware that Melody was – as it were – a captive patient.

Wincing as she went, constricted by the bandages round her chest, Melody crossed the living room and made her way down the hallway, which was lined by sleek striped wenge-wood cupboards. She
didn’t even bother to look through the peephole: she only ever had one visitor, apart from the room service brought by the Four Seasons hotel next door, whose waiters could access the
apartment building through a custom-built tunnel that connected the hotel’s kitchens to the Limehouse Reach service elevators. She’d already had her breakfast – egg white omelette
and berries – and wasn’t due for her smoked salmon, beetroot and pea shoot salad till one.

The nurse had a surprisingly impressive presence. Melody’s instincts as an actress acknowledged that immediately. It was like walking into a rehearsal room and instantly becoming aware
that there was another actor present who would give you a real run for your money. Calm and centred, the nurse stood stolidly in the hallway, her white uniform perfectly ironed and starched, her
dishwater blonde hair slicked back smoothly, not a hair out of place. She wasn’t good-looking: her figure was square and solid, her features blunt. But her eyes, light blue and very clear,
were full of intelligence and focus.

‘I am Aniela,’ she said simply, her accent Eastern European but her English careful and precise. ‘I will be on duty over the holiday period. Siobhan should have told you
yesterday that I was taking over the shift.’

‘Yes, she did,’ Melody said, moving her sore and swollen lips with care.

‘Hello, Melody,’ Aniela said, bobbing her head in a formal greeting. ‘May I come in? I need to check how your surgery is doing.’

‘Of course.’

Melody turned away, letting Aniela follow her into the apartment. In the gleaming glass window, she saw Aniela’s figure shutting the front door, coming down the corridor, the white
nurse’s uniform widening her hips, the clumpy white orthopaedic shoes making her feet look even bigger.

‘I need to check to see if I must put more gel dressing on your chest area,’ Aniela said. Melody couldn’t help mentally filing away Aniela’s accent in case she needed to
use it for a part in the future:
that is
, Melody thought miserably,
if I ever get a decent part again . . .

Melody obediently sat down on the only dining chair that she ever used, one of a set of six around the glass table. Aniela placed her nurse’s bag on the table and, very carefully, helped
Melody slip off her pewter cashmere and silk cardigan wrap, and then the button-front T-shirt which allowed Melody to get undressed without having to reach her arms over her head to pull off
clothing. When the wrap and T-shirt were removed, it was clear why lifting her arms should be avoided wherever possible. Melody’s breasts were mottled with bruising at each side, small curved
scars outlining the lower quadrant.

‘Oh, very good,’ Aniela said, nodding, her expression very concentrated as she knelt down to check out Melody’s scars from below. Melody looked down at Aniela’s head, at
her blonde hair sleeked back into an almost painful-looking bun at the nape of her neck; everything about Aniela was impressively professional.

‘These are healing very well,’ she continued. ‘You should be happy. It has been only a week since your surgery, correct? This is good progress.’

‘Will the scars show?’ Melody asked, her voice faint.

‘You will have to ask Dr Nassri,’ Aniela said. ‘He will be back after Christmas. It is hard for scars to disappear, but I can tell you that you are healing very well –
the wounds are completely closed, you don’t need any more of the gel dressing. Soon we will give you Vitamin E oil and rosehip oil, to help the scars go.’

She drew a small packet from her bag, ripped it open and produced a sterilised wipe; cleaning her fingers with it, she then blew on their tips to make sure they were warm enough, and, with great
gentleness, ran them over each scar in turn, something the previous nurse had never bothered to do. Melody felt her body respond, not sexually, but with desperate gratitude at having this moment of
human contact.

How pathetic am I
? Melody thought bitterly.
I was a movie star – I played Cathy in
Wuthering Heights
, Ophelia for the Royal Shakespeare Company. I was half of the hottest
young power couple in Britain, I had a boyfriend I loved with all my heart, I was surrounded by people doing my hair, my make-up, costume fittings, glossy fashion magazine shoots. And now
I’ve got tears in my eyes because some agency nurse comes to visit and actually touches my skin, gives me the warmth of another body against mine for thirty seconds . . .

‘You had implants removed. It’s much harder to take them out than to put them in,’ Aniela said, her gaze concentrated on Melody’s wounds. ‘But these scars are
already a little flatter. You are lucky, your skin heals well. I cannot promise that they will not show a little. But I think they will be smooth.’

‘Which means they can be covered up with make-up,’ Melody said with huge relief.

‘It is a shame you had the implants,’ Aniela said with brutal frankness, smoothing a little cream onto the scars. ‘Like this it is better. You are in proportion.’

Melody looked down at her tiny breasts on her slim frame.

‘I know,’ she said wistfully. ‘But I can’t help missing my D cups a bit. They weren’t even that big, really.’

Melody was the size 8 that leading actresses were now required to be, and D cups on a barely 30-inch back weren’t the enormous melons of a curvier glamour model.

‘I didn’t even want to get them, but after the operation, I used to hold them a lot,’ she confessed to Aniela, surprised that she was telling her something so personal.
‘You know, just put my hands there and feel them. They were so nice. I never had boobs before.’

‘Then why did you take out the implants?’ Aniela asked with paralysing directness. ‘If you were so happy? You had no marks from the surgery. They put them in through your
belly-button, very clever. Let me look at your face now.’

She pulled out another chair and sat facing Melody, very close now. The nurse smelt of soap and water. Her white skin was devoid of make-up, not even lip gloss; she didn’t tint her blonde
eyebrows and lashes.

She doesn’t have a scrap of vanity
, Melody thought sadly.
If I’d only been a little more like her, I wouldn’t be in this mess now.

Aniela leant in, squinting closely at Melody’s face.

‘The bruising is also good,’ she said, surveying the twin black eyes that were now fading. ‘I looked at the photographs Siobhan took three days ago before I came this morning.
There was a lot of purple then, but now it is all gone, and almost all the green is gone too. When it is just yellow, you only have a few more days before it stops to show.’

‘It’s still really swollen,’ Melody said in a small, frightened voice, reaching up her hand to touch her cheeks. Aniela promptly removed Melody’s hand, placing it back in
her lap. It was a swift, efficient gesture, detached and professional, and it made Melody feel surprisingly relaxed: this nurse knew what was best for her, would have no problems at all telling her
exactly what to do.

And that means she’s not lying to me about my recovery going well. I can trust her not to sugar-coat things.

‘Pff! You have had major surgery, of course it is swollen!’ Aniela said, shrugging dismissively. ‘Remember what Dr Nassri says? Eight to ten days for the bruising to fade, but
twenty-one for the swelling to go completely. You were in surgery for nearly five hours. He had to file down your nose, take out the cartilage implant, put cannulas in your cheeks to suck out the
fat the doctor in Los Angeles injected into them.’ The nurse raised her near-invisible eyebrows. ‘You were
very
lucky that doctor didn’t use fillers,’ she observed.
‘Once they go in, you cannot take them out because of the risk of nerve damage. If they move, there is nothing you can do. They are very bad.’

‘I
know
,’ Melody said devoutly, thinking of some of the A-list actresses she’d met in LA, whose faces had been irretrievably damaged by fillers. Injected high on the
cheeks, to plump up a face and give it the youthful, rounded contours that savage dieting had removed, the fillers inevitably sank from where they had been placed, dragged down by gravity. And then
more fillers were needed to compensate, balance out the shape of the face . . . Once you started, you couldn’t stop.

She shivered, thinking about it.

‘That’s why the doctor used my own fat,’ she said. ‘He said it was the only kind of filler he’d use.’

Aniela nodded.

‘The work done on you was good,’ she agreed. ‘But so much! I was surprised to read your notes.’

She touched Melody’s chin, also bruised and swollen, and then started to untape and lift off Melody’s nose split. Despite herself, Melody flinched a little; the nose was the most
sensitive of all, even more than her breasts.

‘Chin implant, nose implant, face fillers, your breast enlargement,’ Aniela listed, looking at Melody’s nose and nodding in approval at how it was healing before replacing the
splint with great care and smoothing down the tape again to hold it in place. ‘And now Dr Nassri has taken it all out for you. This is much harder, you know. Much harder to give you back what
you had before, and to make it look natural, than to just make you prettier or younger. Natural is the hardest thing of all, the doctor says.’

‘I know,’ Melody said, tears pricking at her eyes. ‘That’s why I came to him. He’s supposed to be the best.’

And he was certainly expensive enough
, she thought ruefully.
Hollywood may pay you a ton of money, but after the agent, the lawyer, the publicist, the stylist, the plastic surgeon and
the make-up and hair people have all taken their cut, it doesn’t leave you rolling in it.

The nurse stood up and crossed to the open-plan kitchen, all white and gleaming chrome, from its DuPont Zodiaq glass worktops and splashbacks to its porcelain-tiled floor. From one of the
custom-built cupboards she extracted a mug – Vera Wang for Wedgwood, white bone china with a wide gold rim. The Limehouse Reach rental apartments were furnished impeccably: only the very
best. Aniela dropped a camomile tea bag into it and held it under the Quooker tap that gave instant boiling water.

She put the mug in front of Melody.