Divas (64 page)

Before she knew it, she was booked in for surgery. Very minor, the tiniest of corrections: they would take just a sliver of cartilage from behind her ear, whence its absence would never be
noticed, and implant it onto the bridge of her nose, to make it perfectly straight. And they might put an equally tiny drop of Juvéderm into her lower lip, to make it just a little bit
fuller, balance out her upper lip perfectly . . .

Hmm. The surgeon had noticed that Melody’s chin wasn’t
completely
round; they could just tidy that up during the nose surgery, even her out. Not to worry, it was all
ridiculously minor-league stuff; it wouldn’t even be visible to anyone after the bruising had faded. She would simply look like herself, but now she would be perfectly symmetrical, that was
all. Melody baulked, and the surgeon showed her before-and-after pictures of some of his famous patients, women who she would never have dreamed had had plastic surgery. Gazing in amazement at the
photographs, Melody couldn’t think of a celebrity name that didn’t seem to have had work done. Men as well as women, though the latter outnumbered the former three to one.

But she still wasn’t sure. She’d been voted Most Beautiful and Most Sexy in the UK, her looks – though obviously, as had been extensively pointed out to her by now, they
weren’t completely symmetrical – had been valued highly enough to have her cast as Cathy, as Juliet, and have her summoned from London to audition for Wonder Woman. Surely she
didn’t really need to have a plastic surgeon take a scalpel to her?

And then Brad came down hard. He was going to make her a star, catapult her onto the A-list in one go, put her on the cover of every single magazine in the world – and all he was asking in
return was a minimal amount of cosmetic surgery! To tidy up some very small imperfections! Did she realise how ungrateful she was being, how much effort he had put into burnishing her image
already, how lucky she was to have been handpicked by him to be a
goddess
. . .?

The producers took Brad’s side. Even her LA agent said that she couldn’t see why Melody was making such a fuss about such a small procedure; her agent was so Botoxed that she could
barely move her face, had the tell-tale overarched eyebrows and nose wrinkles, so she wasn’t in the position to make the strongest case. Still, Melody felt overwhelmed. Everyone back home in
London was either deeply impressed at her huge career opportunity – apart from her fellow actors, who were insanely jealous. Henry Cavill had been picked from
The Tudors
TV series to
play Superman, and there wasn’t a male actor of his age in the UK who didn’t envy him, just as there wasn’t an actress who didn’t envy Melody.

The only dissenting voice was James. And Melody didn’t dare to tell him, because she knew that he would be on the first plane over to insist that she come home at once and not let anyone
touch her face with a knife.

So she didn’t tell him. She had the surgeries, just as Brad wanted. And they finalised the
Romeo and Juliet
decision for her; she was much more sore than the doctor had promised.
Much too sore and bruised to contemplate flying back to London and throwing herself straight into rehearsals.

I knew earlier than I admitted that I wouldn’t do the play
, she acknowledged to herself.
I was so committed to the film by then – the training, the schedules.
She had
Skyped James to tell him, and the sight of her face, post-surgery, had upset him as much as the news that she wouldn’t be playing Juliet opposite his Romeo had infuriated him. She had let him
down utterly, broken their pact. He had told her it was over, and though she had begged him to reconsider, she had known that he wouldn’t. Sir Trevor Nunn had promptly cast Priya Radia,
another up-and-coming actress with a youthful face and body, as Juliet.

Melody had put all her eggs in one basket. So, when Brad told her that the costume designers were very concerned that Melody wouldn’t be able to carry off the costume, that her boot camp
regime and gymnastics work had slimmed her down so much that her breasts had shrunk, and that he thought she should have implants – just to take her from an A to a B cup, nothing vulgar or
huge – she had agreed to it without too much protest.

By then, I wasn’t even myself any more
, she thought now, looking down at her newly shrunk chest.

The surgeon had favoured Brad’s wishes over hers. Melody had woken up with a D cup, not a B: breasts that bounced, as Aniela put it, like a porno doll over the top of the corset.

I was so upset I was hysterical. But I still knew the film would be good. The script was amazing, the lines were brilliant. I knew I’d be able to make all the one-liners sing, I was
counting on that to keep me going . . .

It hadn’t been until principal photography had started that Melody had realised that Brad had done a major rewrite of the script. Every single witty touch and flourish had been pruned away
by his red pen, leaving a sexploitative, corny shell. Melody had cried, screamed, pleaded, tried to enlist her agent and the producers, but by then Brad had the reins firmly in his hands and no one
could, or would, interfere with what he called his artistic vision. Melody had been in no way powerful enough to insist on final script approval in her contract; she was forced to stagger through
months of a shoot for a film she had come to despise.

She and Brad fought constantly on set. Things got so bad that a video, made by a key grip on his mobile phone, of Brad screaming at Melody that she was damn lucky he hadn’t made her blow
him to get the part, and that she should keep her fake lips tightly shut so he didn’t change his mind, was posted on YouTube and had racked up millions of hits. Brad had got what he wanted,
made Melody into a pornographic image, and now that he didn’t need to charm her any longer, he had had no hesitation in bullying her instead.

Wonder Woman
tanked in its opening week. Rotten Tomatoes gave it an 8% and described it as the worst comic-book adaptation ever made. ‘By comparison,
The Green Lantern
looks
like
Iron Man
,’ it commented. Melody’s plastic-surgery-enhanced face, her bouncing bosoms, were mercilessly mocked on the internet and in the press, and two film parts for which
she’d auditioned before shooting
Wonder Woman
, and which she’d thought were locked down, went to other actresses with more natural faces. Her LA agent dropped her. Melody’s
big break had left her broken.

Licking her wounds, her career in tatters, she’d fled back home to the UK. Nobody knew where she was; she’d told her family and friends she’d gone to be alone in Mexico for a
while. The decision to have her surgery pre-Christmas had been absolutely deliberate;
this way, I can hole up in total privacy and try to fix the damage I’ve done
.

And now she found herself thinking of the nurse who had just left her, who was neither pretty nor slim, but who clearly was completely comfortable in her body. Aniela didn’t have
Melody’s beauty, her fame, or the money that would allow her to pay for Dr Nassri and the Canary Clinic, to hole up in five-star luxury while she recovered, and yet Melody found herself
envying Aniela with every fibre of her being.

Aniela has a job she knows she’s good at, a proper profession which isn’t based on how she looks or how much she weighs. Aniela would never be stupid enough to get plastic surgery
done, to mess up her face and body so she barely looked like herself any more . . .

Melody heaved a deep sigh. She’d taken a very wrong turn; she’d been too stubborn and headstrong to listen to the man she loved, and now she was paying for it, literally and
physically.

Please God, I end up with my imperfect face and my small boobs – and my old career, and James back with me. Please God, I get the chance to start all over again.