The Look (20 page)

“Yes!” Eric says. “More of that. Challenge me!”

I glare at him. I imagine he’s Cally, rabbiting on to her posse about my “insane-asylum hair.” He grins. He loves it.

“Tina was so right about you,” he says.

Tina was right about a lot of things. She was the only person to explain that the camera is focusing on what’s inside my head. I love the sense of control I get — telling the story using just my eyes, the angle of my shoulders, and the power of my imagination. Even though we’re not talking much, it feels as though Eric and I are working as a team. He’s certainly taking a lot of photographs.

Then, suddenly, he looks up and flashes me a smile.

“Great! I think that’s it. Thank you,
chérie
.”

And five minutes later, Ava and I are back on the street, heading for home.

“Well,” she asks, “what do you think? It seemed like he liked you.”

“I liked
him
,” I admit, “but who knows? This is what it’s like after go-sees. You’re never sure till your booker tells you.”

Ava grins. “You sound like
such
a model.”

“Do I?”

“And you totally fancied him.”

“I did
not
,” I say hotly. “We just had a lot in common.”

“Look at you! Your face is burning. You just go for guys with rumpled hair who talk about light levels. Don’t fight it, Ted, it’s sweet.”

Oh, God. I am see-through and predictable and, worst of all, “sweet.” And I did fancy Eric, just a little bit, although he’s about ten years too old for me and based in New York, so it’s not exactly relevant. And there are other people I’ve fancied more. Much more.

I continue to deny it strongly, and Ava continues to tease me about it, for most of the journey home.

W
hat’s happening may not be normal, but it’s good. This time when I call Frankie, she says Eric liked my “killer look” and “instinctive approach.” I’ve been optioned! We shoot
i-D
in two weeks. She’s even organized castings for me with Miss Teen and Roxy in the meantime.

By the time I get to the Miss Teen casting, I’m starting to feel less like a freak, and more like a girl with a chance. They need someone to model their key looks for next season, to go in an in-store magazine and on enormous posters behind the registers. Only a few girls are invited to their headquarters to try for this job. They get me to pose in a couple of outfits to see if I can show them off properly, and the clothes are gorgeous. Soft leather boots, embroidered coats, wide belts, and high-necked shirts in earthy colors. There’s a sort of warrior theme to the collection, which must be why they were interested in my new test shots. Now they’ve got me interested in embroidered coats and belts. They would need my hair to be a little bit longer, but it will have grown to the perfect length by then. The whole casting experience is wonderful. Then I get optioned. AGAIN.

I don’t get the job at Roxy, but Frankie tells me they wanted me to know that they liked my look and they’ll keep me on file. Ava was super-impressed when I told her about Roxy. They do the coolest surfing gear. I’d never have guessed that being “on file” could be so satisfying, but it is.

The
i-D
shoot with Eric takes place over fall break, in late October, so I don’t have to miss any school to do it. Mum comes with me this time, and is treated like a queen by everyone who meets her, and assured how fabulous I am. It turns out they want me for the cover. The cover of
i-D
! Oh my God. Even Mum is impressed.

I even feel like a cover girl. My hair has been recropped, tinted, and gelled to look like a supersmooth swim cap. I’m wearing a variety of voluminous skirts and capes by, funnily enough, Laslo Wiggins, and having seen the catwalk show, I understand how he intended them to be worn. Eric wants the warrior princess look every time. Having seen it, he’s obsessed with it. No problem. I spend the day imagining he’s Cally Harvest with a French accent. He admits that he’s already told his boss in New York how “extraordinary” I am, and that I might need to pack a suitcase soon. I pretend that Tina hasn’t already told me her master plan about the hush-hush fragrance campaign, and that I have no idea what he means. But I’m starting to believe there is nothing in the fashion world that this woman cannot do.

A few days later, she calls from Moscow.

“SEE? I TOLD you. They ADORE you. Of course they do. Aren’t I a megastar?”

I agree that she is.

“Eric’s shown your pictures to Rudolf. They were as good as I’d said they’d be. Expect a call any minute. So what are you going to do with all the MONEY, baby girl?”

“What money?” I thought
i-D
didn’t pay much.

“The Miss Teen money, my darling. Ten thousand British bucks. Not bad for a day’s work, wouldn’t you say? Hello? HELLO?”

Frankie hadn’t mentioned the money. Not exactly. She’d said it would be “very good,” and I thought after the TV thing that meant maybe three hundred pounds. Possibly four hundred. Ten THOUSAND pounds is Linda Evangelista money. I still can’t talk. I’m gasping.

“If you think THAT’S good, just wait till you hear what they’ll pay for this campaign.” Tina cackles down the line. “You haven’t even STARTED yet, sweetie. They suggested triple the Miss Teen figure, but Cassandra will get you more. I make my girls RICH.”

“
How
much?” Ava asks.

We’re on our way home from another visit to the pediatric oncology unit.

“‘Thirty thousand pounds. Maybe forty. On top of what I’ll get from Miss Teen.”

“Forty. Thousand. Pounds,” she repeats. “It’s enough to pay for your whole university tuition.”

“I know,” I say in a very small voice.

“So
that’s
why you were so distracted just now.”

Ava’s been asked to help organize a head-shaving ceremony for some new patients in our group at the beginning of
December. The Director of Patient Services spent the past half hour going through various ideas with us and I was hoping she hadn’t spotted that I wasn’t completely concentrating, but Tina had just called.

“Did it really show?”

“You didn’t answer about three questions. Don’t worry, though. I answered for you. But hey — forty grand. What are you going to spend it on?”

“
If
I get the job,” I remind her. “I don’t know.”

“You must have some ideas.”

She’s right. I have a few. For a start, there’s a new phone. My old one is cracked and scuffed and doesn’t always work. Then, of course, there’s makeup, shoes, and handbags. Lots of them, to make up for all the years when I didn’t take them seriously enough. And I wouldn’t mind getting myself a decent camera and sponsoring a patch of woodland in the Cotswolds. Still, I think that would leave a lot left over.

“What do you think?” I ask her.

She pauses for a while and looks out of the bus window.

“A car. For Dad. It would be nice to travel by car sometimes.”

That’s true. How she drags her aching body on and off public transport on the bad days is a mystery to me. When she gets home, she’s so exhausted she has to sleep immediately. Money doesn’t make you happy, necessarily, but I bet it makes you a lot less tired.

“OK, a car,” I agree. “What else?
I
know. Rose Cottage: We could move back to Richmond and get our old bedrooms back. And a vacation somewhere glamorous. Lots of vacations. What about Barbados?”

But Ava’s still staring out the bus window. I can’t see her face properly. It’s not smiling, though — I can see that much.

“I miss the beach,” she says eventually. Her voice sounds far away and sad.

Oh.
That
beach. With
that
surfer boy on it. The one she should have been on all summer. Jesse’s back on it now, home from his Mediterranean yacht tour, but she won’t let him see her. He’s banished to Cornwall. It’s still a stupid idea. We still don’t talk about it.

“You can go there next year,” I point out. “It’ll still be there.”

For the first and only time, she turns to me and gives me the look I’ve been dreading. The look that says “the beach will, but will I?”

So she does think about the other ten percent after all.

Of course she does.

Then she turns away again and all at once I realize how totally brave she is for dealing with this on her own and just focusing on the fun stuff with me. That’s my job, I think: Fun-Stuff Girl. So I spend the rest of the journey picturing all the other things we could do with forty thousand pounds — or fifty, if you include my Miss Teen money, and once you get going, there are a lot of them. I’m still in the middle of completely reimagining Mum’s thrift shop wardrobe, as designed by Frida at Gucci, when we get home.

If
I get the job.

The thing is, with Tina on the case, things are different now. I’m in makeup for the Miss Teen shoot when she phones me again from LA. In fact, it’s my sixteenth birthday today, but that’s not why she’s calling.

“I shouldn’t be telling you this, princess. Frankie’ll call you later. But I just wanted you to know, I’m a GENIUS. You’ve got the fragrance campaign. It’s yours.”

I leap so far out of my seat that Gemma, my makeup artist, sighs with frustration. She’s going to have to completely redo my right eye. She gets on with it while Tina fills in the details. Then, as soon as the call’s over, Gemma wants to know them all.

“They want me!” I explain. “Rudolf Reissen wants me! For this ad in New York.”

“Oh my God. Really? The guy who just did that spread for Emmanuelle Alt?”

She high-fives me and we have a celebratory pastry. One of the good things about professional shoots is the amount of food everywhere. I have no idea how models stay so thin in the long run.

“So, when are you going?”

“Soon.”

“And who’s the campaign for?”

“Can’t say.”

I’ve been sworn to secrecy, but Tina told me it’s Constantine & Reed — the first fashion store I ever paid any real attention to, and whose stuff I now want nearly as badly as I want to move back to Richmond Park again. This job is just too perfect. Tina says they’re launching a new perfume called Viper, with a seriously impressive advertising budget. Massive. And some of that budget is going to be spent on me.

“My God, though,” Gemma squeals, “if it’s Reissen, that means it will be everywhere. Buses, billboards, magazines … you’ve made it, Ted! Go you!”

We both look at my reflection in the mirror. Today I’m a Mongolian huntress, with white hair and lips, and crystal-tipped eyelashes. I can’t believe it. First the cover of
i-D
, now this. I’ve made it. I’m actually quivering with shock.

After that, the Miss Teen shoot goes really well. For the next six hours, I’m poured in and out of gorgeous clothes. They all fit perfectly and I feel I was made to jump and dance around in them, looking brave and heroic and being Xena for all I’m worth. Amanda Elat, the head of the brand, looks delighted.

“You captured the spirit of the collection perfectly. You just glowed.”

I know. I could feel it.

Today, Dad was my chaperone again. On the way home, we talk about the money.

“We’ll have to start a trust,” he whispers wonderingly. “Make sure you’re earning interest. Oh, and the taxes. We’ll need someone to help with that.” He trails off. I bet he never thought one day he’d be helping his teenage daughter manage her thousands. Then he shakes himself out of it. “Now listen, love. Are you sure you want to do this? Because you don’t have to.”

I put on my serious face and assure Dad that yes, I am perfectly comfortable about, oh, going to New York to model for a top photographer and earning enough money to last me till I’m thirty.

Seriously, I can handle it.