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‘Do you want to book actual fucking jobs that pay actual fucking money?’
‘Yes,’ I said quickly. That one I was sure about.
‘Then, I hate to be the one to tell you but there’s worse coming your way than Simon fucking Derrick telling you to get on your knees and make kissy faces at his tiny knob,’ she sighed. ‘You should have told him to whip it out and then pissed yourself laughing.’
‘Simon?’ I asked, the first smile I’d managed all day creeping onto my face. ‘His name is Simon?’
‘What? Did you really fucking well think his Mancunian mother took him down the swimming baths and shouted “What a fucking brilliant backstroke, Ess!”?’ She took a drag and blew it out hard. ‘I’ve had him on the books since he was taking pictures for the Argos catalogue. And they were shite.’
I would have killed to shoot the Argos catalogue.
‘And 7?’ I asked.
‘You mean Colin?’ Agent Veronica grabbed her mouse and began clicking manically. ‘Little shagweed. Went to Eton, daddy owns half the internet. I hate that child.’
‘It’s harder than I thought it was going to be, that’s all,’ I admitted, scratching at a blob of white paint on the knee of my jeans.
‘There’s nothing easy about breaking through as a photographer, Brookes,’ she replied. ‘It takes some people years. Early starts, late finishes, working weekends, hours spent photoshopping some wanker’s sausage fingers so he doesn’t look like the smackhead that he is on the cover of a magazine. And that’s when you get good enough to pick up that sort of job. Have you considered that maybe it’s not for you?’
I felt my mouth fall open and immediately choked on Agent Veronica’s cigarette smoke.
‘It is for me!’ I said, my eyes stinging from the same smoke. The air in her office was so dense with thick white fug, it could have passed for the set of a Bananarama video. ‘It definitely is. I’ll put in the hours, I don’t care about hard work, I’ll do whatever it takes.’
‘And that’s a fandabidozi attitude, Pollyanna, but it doesn’t mean it’s going to happen for you.’ She stubbed out her cigarette and immediately lit another. ‘It might be time to admit that I was a bit bloody ambitious in taking you on. I don’t really work with assistants, Brookes. I’m an agent, not a charity. Do you think I’m at work on a Saturday afternoon for fun?’
‘But I won’t be assisting for long,’ I protested, swiping at my watering eyes, desperate to convince her to let me stay. ‘I’m going to be booking shoots really soon, I promise.’
‘That’s not your decision to make though, is it?’ she grimaced, eyes flickering back and forth over emails I couldn’t see. ‘I’ve had you on the books near enough six months and you’ve booked two jobs for the same person. I can’t babysit you for another six. There are only so many bleeding hours in a bleeding day and, no offence, but I need to concentrate on clients who are bringing in money.’
‘But I will,’ I said again. ‘I just need time.’
‘News-fucking-flash.’ Veronica spoke in between intense inhalations. ‘No one knows who you are, no one’s worked with you, no one gives two shits. I know it’s nearly Christmas but it’d be a bigger miracle than the virgin sodding birth for me to get you another job like the one you blagged at Gloss.’
I opened my mouth to speak but she cut me off with a stab of her cigarette.
‘And you’ve got a dubious reputation at best, depending on who you ask.’
A dubious reputation? I was clean as a whistle. I’d won the attendance prize in school every single year, apart from that one time when Amy made us bunk off to meet Justin Timberlake but that was hardly my fault. If I hadn’t gone, she would have been arrested. Instead of just being cautioned.
‘Word gets around in this industry,’ Agent Veronica said, seeing the confusion on my face. ‘And your cuntychops former flatmate has made it her business to make sure everyone has heard her side of the story.’
Oh, bollocks. Vanessa. Honestly, you steal someone’s job, their identity and let your best friend punch them in the tit once and you never hear the end of it.
‘That said, I like you, Brookes.’
She had a funny way of showing it.
‘I’d hate to see the way you talk to someone you didn’t like,’ I said behind a cough. ‘But thank you.’
‘You’ve got balls and I respect that,’ she went on, ignoring me as usual. Agent Veronica only really listened when you were saying something she wanted to hear. ‘But you’ve got to get used to throwing those fucking balls around a bit. Do you understand me?’
‘You want me to throw my balls around?’
‘You’re not going to get anywhere mincing around and fucking well sulking in corners.’ She pointed at me with her cigarette, causing a mini flurry of ash to fall into her keyboard. ‘And you’re not going to get anywhere crying to me about some arsehole asking you to polish his knob.’
‘That’s not going to be a regular occurrence, is it?’ I asked, genuinely at a loss. I came from a world where you worked hard and you got ahead. Or at least, I thought I did. It turned out I’d been very naïve. ‘I mean, tell me what to do and I’ll do it.’
‘That’s more like it.’ She sucked her second cigarette into nothing, grinding it out in her ashtray with what I supposed passed for a smile. ‘I want you to go home, put your big boy trousers on and go back on set tomorrow and kick Simon Derrick’s arse. That doesn’t mean you have to take his shit: that means you stand up for yourself and be amazing. Yes?’
‘What else can I do?’ I asked, trying to change the subject before she knocked me out with a single punch. ‘I’ll do anything, really, I’m not afraid of hard work.’
‘How about you take some fucking photos?’ she suggested. ‘Cocking revolutionary idea, I know. I can’t carry you much longer, Brookes, not when you’re not booking jobs. I don’t have the time to spend pulling assisting gigs that pay a pittance out of my wonderful arse.’
‘I’ll give that a try then,’ I said, grabbing my bag from the floor. It didn’t seem like the time to mention that she still took 15 per cent of that pittance. ‘Thanks for the advice, I won’t let you down.’
Before I could open the door, a tennis ball thwacked the wall, right next to my head. Bending down slowly, my heart in my mouth, I turned around to see Agent Veronica staring at me.
‘You dropped this?’ I picked up the ball and held it in the air, heart pounding.
She clapped for me to chuck it back. With a feeble underhand throw, I tossed it across the office, missing Veronica by a good two feet and knocking a massive stack of invoices off the desk.
‘I’m not really a thrower,’ I explained as they fluttered to the floor.
‘Do your research.’ She spoke to me without acknowledging the piles and piles of paper all over her floor. ‘Never have that camera out of your hands, shoot everyone and everything and make the most of every opportunity that comes your way. If you want this, you’re going to have to fight for it. It’s not going to be handed to you on a plate.’
‘I can fight,’ I replied, clenching my hands into fists. ‘I want this. I really want this.’
‘If you don’t book something in the next month, I’m going to have to drop you and then you’ll see how hard this really is. I want to see those balls, Brookes,’ she barked. ‘Show everyone who you are. You’re not Tess the shitty, sad office girl any more, you’re Tess Brookes, photographer, and a photographer should have something to say, should have a message. Show me what that is, who you are. Got it?’
‘Got it,’ I confirmed as I closed the door behind me. ‘Swing my balls around and show everyone who I am.’
It sounded easy. Only … I wasn’t entirely sure who I was any more.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_00d9455b-c54a-58a7-9f06-ba7d1ee4b64d)
‘And then Veronica said she was going to drop me if I didn’t start booking jobs,’ I said, shovelling salt and vinegar Pringles into my mouth by the handful. Damn Tesco and their seasonal three-for-two offers. Damn the woman on the checkout who asked if I was going to a party. There was absolutely nothing wrong with a twenty-seven-year-old woman eating two tubs of Pringles for dinner and saving one for dessert.
‘No way!’ Amy bellowed, the speakers on my laptop crackling with outrage during our daily Skype call. ‘She did not? She can’t do that, can she? She can’t fire you?’
‘She can,’ I replied, exhausted, glancing down at all the pieces of paper and empty Pringle tubs around me. ‘And she might. Looking at it from a business perspective, she probably should. She’s investing a lot of time in me and I’m not bringing much money in. My ROI is terrible and—’
Amy clapped her hands together and I snapped back to the camera.
‘Tess, please tell me you haven’t worked out the return on investment on yourself.’
‘No,’ I replied, slowly pushing my pad and calculator out of view of the webcam. ‘Of course not.’
‘She can’t drop you, you’re just starting out,’ she said, glancing away at her phone for a second. ‘You’re hardly going to be David Bailey overnight, are you? It’s not fair.’
‘It’s not about fair,’ I told her. ‘It’s about what’s best for business. Also, there’s a small chance I did think I would be David Bailey overnight. I suppose things don’t work out like that though, do they? I just don’t want her to give up on me.’
‘I don’t want you to give up on you,’ Amy corrected. ‘It’s a minor setback, that’s all. You’re killing it. You’re better than David Bailey. Fitter than him anyway … although I don’t think I’ve actually ever seen one of his photos. Or a photo of him. Is he fit?’
‘I appreciate that but it would be a massive setback,’ I said. ‘I haven’t got a clue what I’m doing, I wouldn’t even know where to start.’
But I was trying. The bed was covered in magazines and newspapers, every publication I could get my hands on lay open on top of the duvet, the name of every art director, picture desk and photo editor in London highlighted with neon-yellow marker pen. I was down but I was not out. Not yet.
‘You’ll work it out,’ Amy replied, her attention drifting. ‘You always do.’
‘Is everything all right? Do you need to go?’ I asked as she frowned at her phone again. ‘It’s OK if you do.’
‘Sorry.’ She threw her phone backwards onto the bed behind her and I winced as it bounced twice and then hit the floor. ‘I am listening, I’ve just got loads of emails coming in. This presentation is going to kill me.’
Amy was in New York to launch Al’s brand-new fashion line, AJB, and, from what I could gather, it was going to be quite the event.
‘If Kekipi doesn’t first,’ I replied. ‘How are you going to grow your hair to waterfall-plait length in the next three weeks?’
Amy, Paige and I had received emails in the middle of the night, detailing our mandatory bridesmaid prep regime. I loved that man like a brother, but there was no way on God’s green earth that I was booking myself in for a full body wax prior to my dress fitting. Yes, my legs needed shaving, but it wasn’t like I was rocking a full tache, I thought, absently stroking my face.
‘He’s taking me to get fitted for extensions tomorrow,’ she said, fingering her messy black pixie cut. ‘Or at least he thinks he is. Anyway, less about Kekipi Kardashian and more about this job you’re on. You didn’t get a facial and the photographer is a sexist wankpaddle who isn’t fit to wipe his arse with your negatives. What happened then?’
‘Oh, don’t worry about it, it doesn’t matter, I should let you go.’
As much as I missed Amy, I was keen to get back to my project. I wouldn’t be able to sleep until I’d found the contact details of every possible person who could hire me and worked out how to bribe them into hiring me. I had to show Agent Veronica I was a good bet. ‘I haven’t had dinner or anything yet, I’m starving to death.’
‘There should be some spaghetti hoops in the kitchen cupboard,’ she said with a nostalgic smile. ‘God, I’d take your arm off for some hoops on toast right now. Bread here is shit. What’s that all about?’
‘Where are you going for dinner tonight?’ I asked, hoping to distract her. I’d been living in her house for six weeks. The hoops were long gone. ‘Somewhere amazing?’
‘Everywhere here is amazing.’ She puffed out her cheeks and slapped her belly. ‘I’ve put on about a stone. Honestly, Tess, the food in New York – I want to eat everything. I am eating everything. You might as well burn all my clothes because they’re going to have to roll me home when I’m done.’
‘Sounds awful,’ I said, forcing a smile. ‘Speaking of home, any idea when you’ll be back? Still looking at flying on Christmas Eve?’
Amy scrunched up her face and shook her head.
‘Not sure,’ she said. ‘We’re here until the presentation on the twenty-third obvs and then Al said something about going to Hawaii to work on some new concepts before we go to Milan. He wants to go through some of Jane’s notebooks he’s got back at the house. I’d probably have to go with him – the time difference between London and Hawaii is mental and we’d never get anything approved in time.’
Al, AKA Bertie Bennett, AKA fashion industry legend, Amy’s new boss and one of my favourite people in the world, lived in Hawaii, which was where he and I had met. It was also where I had met another person who, for the time being, would remain nameless, lest I felt the urge to carve out my heart with a rusty spoon.
‘Hawaii is amazing,’ I mooned, eyes full of pineapples and palm trees. ‘You’ll love it, Aims.’
‘I know, I really want to go,’ Amy said, gurning like a mad woman. ‘And imagine Hawaii at Christmas. Wouldn’t that be amazing? I wonder if they still have Christmas trees. Shit, what if they don’t have Brussels sprouts? I hate them, obviously, but you’ve got to have them.’
Wuh?
‘You’re going for Christmas?’ I squeaked far too quickly, finally understanding what she was saying. ‘You’re not coming home?’
The last few months had been hard work but every time I’d walked past a shop window full of brightly wrapped presents I couldn’t afford or attempted to ignore drunk people wearing reindeer antlers on the Tube, I remembered that soon Amy would be home for Christmas and everything would be OK.
‘I want to come home,’ she replied, not quite quickly enough. ‘I probably will. But I may not be able to, Tess, and I know you of all people understand how sometimes work has to come first, even if I can’t quite believe I’m saying that.’
I hated it when my dedication to a cause came back to bite me in the arse.
‘Of course I do,’ I said, trying not to pout. Amy hadn’t held down a job for more than weeks at a time in years and working for Al was an incredible opportunity. I was so happy for her. And only the tiniest possible bit envious. ‘I miss you, that’s all. I can’t believe you’re in New York and I’m stuck here. I’m so jealous. But don’t worry about it, it’s fine.’
I couldn’t imagine getting through Christmas Day without my best friend. We’d spent it together every year for as long as I could remember, from being tiny tots skipping down to church with our families, right through to sneaking out while everyone was in a post-turkey coma and necking Baileys out of the bottle by the village pond. That tradition had lasted much longer than going to church ever did.
‘Christmas is still ages away,’ Amy added when I didn’t paste on my fake smile fast enough. ‘We’ll work something out.’
There wasn’t a woman alive who didn’t know that ‘fine’ never really meant ‘fine’. A man, maybe, but a woman? No way.
‘It’s only nine days away,’ I said, checking my half-eaten chocolate advent calendar as the terrifying prospect of having to spend the day alone with my family reared its ugly head. Nope, not worth thinking about.
‘Loads can happen in nine days, Tess,’ she replied, messing with her hair again. It had got so much longer since I’d left Milan that her shaggy fringe hung low over her big blue eyes. She looked gorgeous. ‘Don’t stress about it.’
‘I won’t stress about it,’ I echoed, stressing. ‘So, you’re busy even today then?’
‘I am. I’m busy every day. It’s mental,’ she said, eyes flicking up towards the top of my screen. ‘Cockmonkeys, is that really the time? Tess, I’ve got to go, I’m late.’
‘You’re always late,’ I reminded her. ‘It’s one of those wonderful annoying things I’ve come to love about you.’
‘I’m only late, like, half the time now,’ she said proudly. ‘I am the all-new and improved Amy Smith. Well, 50 per cent improved. Call you tomorrow?’
‘Of course,’ I said, giving her a swift salute. ‘Now, go on, before you’re any later.’
‘Yeah, yeah.’ Amy brushed at her hair one last time and blew a kiss into the camera. ‘Love you, skankface.’
‘Love you too,’ I said, waving before my best friend disappeared and the screen went blue.
My cheery smile faded. The suggestion that Amy wouldn’t be home for Christmas was worse news than the prospect of getting dropped by Agent Veronica. It was worse than my black-and-blue backside and Paige not telling me what was going on with her love life and never talking to Charlie any more, and it was almost worse than the fact I hadn’t heard from Nick Miller in nearly five months.
‘I’m pleased for her, I am,’ I said, stepping into the not-really-hot-enough bathwater fifteen minutes later. ‘It’s amazing, she deserves it.’
The rubber duck sat on the edge of the bath and eyed me with suspicion.
‘Don’t look at me like that.’ I shuffled around until I was somewhere near comfortable and tried not to knock a crusty looking bottle of Head & Shoulders off the side of the bath with my massive copper-coloured topknot. ‘She does deserve it.’
He still didn’t say anything.
‘I mean, yeah, I suppose if I really tried, I could be a bit annoyed that she’s never kept a job for more than three months and now she’s running all over the world with Al.’ I shrugged. ‘And she’s having this amazing adventure while I’m making tea and holding lights and letting a man pretend to ejaculate on my face but, you know, whatever.’
The duck wrinkled his rubber bill and I knocked him into the bath.
‘I hate you,’ I said, holding my breath and sinking underneath the bubbles, but there he was, all judgemental painted-on eyes, when I re-emerged.
‘I’m not jealous,’ I told him/myself. ‘She’s had so many shit jobs, this is amazing for her.’
‘Remember that time she got fired from the dog walking service for bringing the wrong dog back from the park?’ he asked.
