Two-Faced (35 page)

‘You’re joking!’ Kim gasped.

‘Afraid not.’ Sammy shook his head. ‘It would have been amazing for her, because they’re planning a nationwide saturation campaign. But there’s no use harping on about it, because I’m definitely going to have to cancel it.’

‘Please don’t,’ Kim begged, terrified that Mia was about to lose out on her biggest chance yet. ‘I know I’ve been moaning about her, but I’m just pissed off with her for staying out so long. She’ll be back soon, I know she will. Let’s just give her a bit more time.’

‘Kim, this is too important to play around with,’ Sammy told her wearily. ‘If she comes back tonight, or even tomorrow morning, and she can prove she hasn’t been doing drugs – fine, I won’t cancel. But if she
has
done something, we both know she’ll be a mess again in no time. And I couldn’t let her to go ahead with the audition, because these Americans don’t mess around. If she won the contract and screwed it up they wouldn’t just terminate it, they’d sue the backsides off us.’

Chewing on her nails now, Kim peered at him thoughtfully for several long moments before saying, ‘I still don’t think you should cancel it.’ She held up her hand when he opened his mouth to argue and said, ‘Hear me out before you say anything . . . Right, let’s say we’re wrong, and she’s just met up with a mate and lost track of time. Then tomorrow she comes back all bright and breezy, only to hear that we’ve cancelled the audition because we don’t trust her. How’s she going to react to that, do you think?’

‘But what if we’re right, and she
has
gone back on the drugs?’ Sammy countered. ‘I don’t cancel, and she doesn’t turn up because, like you said, she’s chosen her boyfriend over us, and we can’t get hold of her to tell her about it. Or, worse, she
does
turn up and
gets
the job, then goes rapidly downhill and they can’t use any of the pictures. Both of our reputations go down the pan, and we get sued to boot.’

‘Maybe not,’ Kim said quietly. ‘I’m sure she’d quit the drugs if she had something important like this to look forward to.’

Giving her a doubtful look, Sammy said, ‘Come on, Kim, you don’t really believe that. How long has she been away from drugs while you were at my house? And how long did it take when I brought you back before she took off? I think we both know what that signifies.’

‘I know,’ Kim admitted gloomily. ‘But if this Blaze thing is as big as you say, we can’t just give up on her without a fight.’

‘You can’t fight for somebody who isn’t here to be saved,’ Sammy reminded her simply.

Sitting in silence for several minutes, Kim lit a cigarette and quietly thought things over.

‘There’s always our Michelle,’ she said after a while.

‘Oh no, I don’t think so.’ Sammy shook his head. ‘We both know she’s not cut out for the modelling life.’

‘But this would be different from the last time,’ Kim persisted. ‘I mean, she had to try and
act
then, but she wouldn’t really have to do anything this time, apart from smile and let them put make-up on her.’

‘You know there’s much more to it than that.’

‘Maybe so,’ Kim conceded. ‘But we’re only talking ifs here, don’t forget.
If
Mia doesn’t turn up, Shell can stand in for her. And if she gets the job, Mia would be so made up that she’d be bound to pull her socks up and get on with it. If she didn’t get it, we wouldn’t really have lost anything. And at least they couldn’t say that Mia just hadn’t bothered turning up.’

‘I don’t know,’ Sammy murmured doubtfully, still thinking it would be best to just cancel.

‘Well, I think it’s worth considering,’ Kim said firmly. ‘
You
didn’t know the difference last time Shell stood in for her. And you know how good she looks since she got her hair done like Mia’s. And how amazing was it when Mia did her make-up for her that time? Even
I
would have had a job telling them apart if I hadn’t been there to see it all.
And
,’ she added, hitting him with her biggest gun, ‘it was
her
that the scout noticed in the first place, so she obviously takes a good picture.’

Sammy couldn’t deny the truth of this, but he still thought it would be a huge mistake to put a complete novice forward for such a high-profile campaign.

‘I’ll think about it,’ he said. ‘But we’ll need to speak to Michelle about it before we make any decisions, because we’ve asked a lot of her already and I don’t want her to feel as if she’s being coerced into it.’

‘I’m sure she’ll do it when she realises what a massive opportunity it is for Mia,’ Kim said – sure that she could persuade her into it. ‘Anyway, we’re still only talking ifs here. For all we know, Mia could be on her way home as we speak.’

‘I sincerely hope so,’ Sammy said. ‘I really do.’

Mia didn’t come home that night, or the next morning. And when she still hadn’t shown up the day after that, Kim resigned herself to the fact that she’d definitely done a runner.

Less well-versed in the selfishness of teenage girls, Sammy was convinced that something must have happened to her, because
surely
she wouldn’t just stay away without at least letting them know that she was all right. Humouring him, even though she knew that it was pointless, Kim rang around the local hospitals to see if Mia had had an accident and been rushed in – which, of course, she hadn’t. And she’d even agreed to call the police, telling them that she was concerned because Mia had been under a lot of pressure lately. But, as she’d told Sammy from the start, they said that, as an adult, Mia was perfectly entitled to leave home without telling anybody. And, yes, they would keep a general eye out for her, and they would certainly inform Kim if any bodies matching her description turned up. But that was as far as they were willing to go. There would be no search, because, frankly, there was no reason to suspect that Mia was in any kind of danger.

Michelle agreed with her mum. Mia was fine; she’d just done her usual trick of making a mess and walking away from it, leaving them to pick up the pieces. She was furious with Mia for that, because she’d already sacrificed so much to help her. Michelle’s reputation was in tatters, and she’d had the humiliation of having to try and convince her tutors that the coke incident was a one-off which would never be repeated, only for them to inform her that she couldn’t come straight back to college without first undergoing a course of counselling to ensure that she was mentally fit enough to continue.

Yet, despite knowing that it was Mia who had put her in that position, Michelle still couldn’t completely condemn her sister. Mia was an addict, and addiction was no laughing matter. Nor was it something that could be as easily fixed as her mum and Sammy had seemed to think. She had fooled them all into thinking that she was ‘cured’ after that extended stay at Sammy’s, but, in hindsight, Michelle knew that she should have known better. She’d covered addiction at college, and the general consensus seemed to be that you couldn’t help an addict until the addict was ready to accept help. Until then, they would do whatever it took, and tell you whatever they thought you wanted to hear, in order to get you off their backs so they could get out and score their next hit.

Feeling guilty for not saying any of this to her mum and Sammy, which might have put them on their guard and prevented this latest disaster, Michelle agreed to stand in for Mia at the Blaze audition. She was truly dreading it, but she figured that she had to do
some
thing to bring Mia to her senses and get her firmly back on track. And if something as big as this potentially was didn’t do it, nothing would.

22

The audition was being held in London, in a private function room at the Hilton where the New York-based Blaze executives were staying.

They already had a specific idea in mind of the kind of girl who would ultimately front their campaign, so they had sent their scout out a few weeks ahead of time to find as many likely candidates as possible who fitted their criteria. Then, after poring over each of the proposed girls’ portfolios, they had cherry-picked the best ten and invited them along to the audition.

To the untrained eye, the waiting area seemed to be filled with the same girl in different clothes. But to Sammy’s finely honed eye, there was only one who posed any real threat to Mia – or, rather, to
Michelle
. And he’d have liked to have been able to reassure Michelle of this but the poor girl was too tense for conversation.

Sitting beside him now, she was struggling just to stay seated. As far as she was concerned, every one of the other girls was gorgeous and deserved to be here, but she, Michelle, was an impostor. And it didn’t matter how many times her mum tried to remind her that it had been
her
picture that the scout had originally spotted, as far as she was concerned that wasn’t her, that was her imitating Mia – the girl they really wanted; the one who had earned the right to be here after working her socks off for two long years. And now Michelle was walking in and stealing her thunder.

Or
not
, because there was no way she was going to get this job. Not with all these gorgeous
proper
models to compete against.

The make-up artists began to call the girls through to a side room to get them ready. The products that they would be using would all be Blaze ones, to make sure that the girls’ skin-types suited the new range – because the last thing they needed was to choose a girl who immediately broke out in an unsightly rash. Once ready, each girl would then go through to face the panel, where they would be viewed in person for the first time and photographed before a final decision was made.

Leaving Michelle, because this was the part of the torturous journey that she really would have to face alone, Sammy went out to collect Kim from the hotel foyer. He took her for a coffee and a bite to eat, holding a confident smile in place as he told her what had been happening so far, and what was probably happening now.

Beneath the jovial words, Sammy was actually a nervous wreck. Michelle was just about holding it together, and if she performed anything like the last time she could well be coming out on a stretcher in a very short space of time. But still, he had to give her credit for putting herself through this. She owed Mia nothing, and yet, once again, she’d stepped in to try and salvage something from the mess that Mia seemed to be determined to make of her life.

He couldn’t deny that he was fond of Mia, having spent so much of the last two years championing her with a dedication that she probably didn’t deserve. But he’d always thought that she had something about her that was worth the effort. She was a beautiful girl and he’d excused her often bad attitude as high spirits, telling himself that when she matured she would have the potential to really make something of herself. But since this latest episode the scales had begun to fall from his eyes and he’d realised that she was never going to change. If anything, her attitude would get worse – and he’d already had a taste of that when she’d threatened to sack him at the first taste of success.

If only Mia were more like her sister, he believed that she could truly have the world at her feet. Michelle was every bit as beautiful – even if neither of the girls could see it. But she was also polite, reasonable, and intelligent – qualities that were sadly lacking in Mia. The only problem being that Michelle just didn’t have the same vain urge to be famous; and she was so insecure about herself that she was unlikely to do well at this audition – if she got through it at all.

Back in the waiting area, Michelle had been made up and was waiting her turn to face the panel. Three girls had been in already, and had all come out within minutes with tears streaking their cheeks – which didn’t help Michelle’s nerves, because if
they
had been rejected she stood even less chance of getting through than she’d thought.

Taking a deep breath when the girl sitting next to her was called in, Michelle stared at the floor and gave herself a talking-to. All right, she already knew that she wasn’t going to win, so there was no point letting it tie her up in knots. Sammy had told her just to do her best – and not to worry if she failed because at least she’d turned up, so nobody could say that Mia was unreliable. She looked the part, thanks to the make-up artist’s wizardry, so now she had to stop thinking of herself as shy, plain Michelle and make-believe that she was Mia. It would be a struggle, but she could do it – she
had
to do it.

‘Mia Delaney, please . . . Mia Delaney?’

Snapping her head up at the sound of the voice, Michelle swallowed nervously. She’d been in a world of her own and hadn’t realised that the last girl had already come back out. It was her turn.

There were two men and a woman sitting on a long leather couch in the audition room. A photographer and his assistant were standing in the corner, the camera facing a stool which was standing in front of a plain backdrop.

The woman told Michelle to come and stand in front of them. She stared at her long and hard before having a hushed discussion with her colleagues. Then she wrote something down on the notepad she was holding and gestured with her pen towards the stool, saying, ‘Go sit in the light so we can get a better look at you.’

Feeling a little like a horse gone to market, Michelle sat down elegantly. The woman had sounded so dismissive that they must surely be wondering what she was doing here. But she
was
here, so she had to see it through to the end.

Michelle raised her face towards the light when instructed to do so by the photographer, and relaxed exactly as Sammy had told her to. She gazed into the camera lens, silently telling herself that she was Mia Delaney . . . the beautiful, already successful model who had been doing this for years.

Back on the couch, the Blaze people whispered among themselves as the photographer snapped numerous shots of Michelle. Then, getting up when he’d finished at last, they came over to view the results on his laptop.

Glad that the torture was almost over, and sure that they were about to send her out with a flea in her ear, Michelle was already half off the stool in preparation for a quick exit. So when the woman smiled at her after several minutes and asked her to wait outside, she was confused. None of the other girls had waited; they’d rushed straight out and hadn’t come back. So why were they asking
her
to wait?