Escape for the Summer (3 page)

Angel gulped. She’d be feeding the fishes in the Thames by teatime.

And that was if she was
lucky.

Dawn was clearly having very similar thoughts.

“Mrs Yuri, I am so sorry! I can’t apologise enough!”

The furious client spun around. “Your apologies are meaningless! Vat do you sink my Anton will say when he sees how this girl has upset me? Personally insulted me?”

Angel dreaded to think – and so did her boss, judging by Dawn’s white face.

“He will sue you,” continued Mrs Yuri, warming to her theme. “Then he will want to personally speak to the owner of this pitiful excuse for a salon. Unless—” she paused for dramatic emphasis and pointed a gore-red talon in Angel’s direction. “Unless you have rid of this useless imbecile of a girl. At once!”

“I was trying to help!” cried Angel desperately. “The mole looks sore. You really should see a specialist just in case!”

“How dare you!” Mrs Yuri squawked in outrage. “There’s nothing wrong with my mole! How dare you say I need to see doctor?”

Rounding on Dawn she added, “Are you going to let her speak to me like that? I haff never been so insulted! My Anton, he will be furious! Are you going to do nothing to compensate me for being so insulted in
your
salon?”

“Of course not, madam! We’ll do anything to make up for Angel’s appalling lack of manners. Whatever you wish!”

Angel felt faint. This was it. River time.

Mrs Yuri shot Angel a look of triumph.

“Either she goes, or I do! And my friends, of course! We do not come here to be insulted. My Anton vill make sure this salon closes for good.”

Now Dawn had a face that was an exact match for her starched white uniform. Angel’s heart plummeted into her sparkly Skechers. Mrs Yuri was exactly the kind of loaded and bored customer on whom the salon depended. Along with her friends, yet more pampered and glamorous wives of small ugly Russian oligarchs, she probably spent more in one visit to Blush
than Angel earned in an entire year.

P45 here she came.

Maybe I should get a job as a psychic instead of being a beautician
, thought Angel miserably, as less than five minutes later she stood on the pavement with the contents of her locker in a carrier bag. She’d been ejected so fast that her head was reeling. While just about every beautician in the place raced to pamper Mrs Yuri, she’d been frogmarched out of the building and told never to return. Honestly, she’d only been trying to help. That mole had looked very suspicious and Angel was sure that it needed medical attention. There was no need for such a ridiculous overreaction. Some people just loved to make a drama.

Mind you, it would have made a fantastic scene for a dramality show. If only she’d had a film crew in tow...

But unfortunately for Angel she didn’t have a film crew following her every move. Flipping her long blonde hair back from her face and hiking up her skirt an inch or two just in case a millionaire came cruising by and fancied offering her a lift, Angel plucked her iPhone from her bag and set off along the street.

In a moment she’d call her sister, just to make certain that Andi had got that money out for her. Angel was definitely going to buy that bag now.

After the day she’d had, it was the least she deserved.

Chapter 3

“You told me she was a size fourteen! I specifically requested a girl who was a size fourteen for this job! Not one who’s a sixteen on a good day, breathing in and wearing granny pants!”

Gemma Pengelley, she of size-sixteen curves that today were possibly billowing to an eighteen after a weekend spent comfort eating and mainlining vodka, felt her face turn into a giant Edam of humiliation. Standing in a freezing studio and wearing nothing more than a deeply unflattering minimiser bra while two Twiglet-like women poked her fat bits and squabbled over the size of her thighs was not top of her list of favourite things to do. It didn’t even make it to the bottom of that list.

“Does it really matter?” Gemma’s agent, Chloe, was saying hopefully. “She’s modelling control pants anyway. Surely the whole point is that they should hold her in? Won’t it look better to have them modelled by the type of girl who might actually need to wear them?”

“She’s supposed to look slim so the consumer thinks that these briefs really work. They’re meant to hold a tummy in. Not work miracles!” The creative director of the shoot for Trim Tums
looked at Gemma with disgust. “How on earth are we supposed to hide that overhang? Call in Kevin McCloud?”

“What about Photoshop?” Chloe said helpfully.

The creative director shook her head. “If we wanted to use Photoshop we could have just hired another slim girl and made her look bigger. We wanted somebody slightly on the larger side, not somebody fat! Didn’t you read the job spec we emailed you?”

Chloe was mortified. “Of course I did. I just haven’t seen Gemma for a few months. Work’s been quiet for her. Let me assure you that the last time I saw my client she really was a size fourteen. Weren’t you, Gemma?”

Gemma nodded miserably. As if it wasn’t humiliating enough to be stripped down to her knickers in a room so cold that her goosebumps had goosebumps, now she had to have all her squishy bits poked and prodded in full view of all the other stick-insect models. Even though she’d fixed her gaze firmly on the studio floor, Gemma could tell that the other, slimmer girls were sniggering and enjoying every minute of her humiliation. Oh God, she
knew
she should have turned this job down but her agent had insisted that it would be, in her words, “a nice little earner
”.
So, being perpetually broke, usually because her flatmate Angel had failed to make the rent, Gemma had taken the job, albeit against her better judgement. Acting work had been thin on the ground lately and so she’d taken her eye off the ball a bit with her weight, choosing to treat herself to a Snickers
when she didn’t get a call back or grabbing a quick Maccy D’s on the way home from yet another fruitless casting. Somewhere in her wardrobe, stuffed full of clothes that ranged from twelves up to voluminous size eighteens, there were garments she could squeeze into which bore the legend
14
,
s
o technically when Chloe had asked her what she size she was she hadn’t really been lying.

I’m an actress anyway, not a bloody model, thought Gemma resentfully while her agent and the creative director continued to bicker and prod her flabby bits. In the cold studio lighting her cellulitey legs were the same colour and texture as the porridge she’d shovelled down before she’d left the house that morning. Well, porridge was good for you, wasn’t it? Everybody knew that.
But maybe without the huge dollop of condensed milk and the three big spoonfuls of sugar?
whispered the Diet Angel, who often liked to perch on Gemma’s shoulder. Fat lot of use she was; Gemma hadn’t heard from the Diet Angel for weeks. She thought it must have been squashed flat by the Diet Devil, who seemed to be in permanent residence, urging her that one more slice of pizza wouldn’t hurt and murmuring
Go on, you’ve eaten one biscuit; you might as well just finish the packet
. However, the Diet Devil didn’t have to parade around in her knickers in front of a group of girls who made Bambi look chunky.

Gemma sighed. Maybe on the way home she’d pop into her local Greggs? They always saved her a cheese swirl or two. That would cheer her up.

“I don’t know why you’re sighing,” hissed Chloe as, with her bony fingers biting into Gemma’s fleshy shoulder, she propelled her client across the studio. “You’re not the one who’s just been made to look like a total and utter dick. In fact, worse than that! An
unprofessional total and utter dick!
You told me that you were a size fourteen!”

“I am a size fourteen. I think these pants are probably cut on a bit on the small side,” protested Gemma, trying to conceal her billowing body with a wrap.

Chloe, in her early forties and funky and slim, shot Gemma a withering look. Dragging her client to a full-length mirror and whipping away the wrap, she said sharply, “Look in that mirror and tell me what you see! Is that a size fourteen? Seriously?”

Gemma gulped. There was a lump in her throat the size and consistency of one of the rock cakes she’d baked the day before. They’d been lovely too, just the right mixture of crusty on the outside but soft and fluffy and curranty on the inside. Gemma loved to bake, especially when she was feeling low – which seemed to be most of the time just lately. The problem was that she also liked to eat what she’d baked. She was already looking forward to going home and polishing off the rest of the batch. Preferably all alone in her bedroom, where nobody could have a go at her.

“Don’t, Chloe!” she begged, when her nose was practically rammed into the glass. God, but Gemma hated mirrors. Really hated them. In fact Dracula was probably happier to tuck into a clove of garlic than Gemma was to look at her reflection. She managed to avoid mirrors most of the time, or full-length ones in any case, which was some feat for somebody who shared a house with Angel, the girl who’d have trampled Narcissus on her way to a spot of pool-gazing.

“Don’t you dare look away!” warned Chloe when Gemma tried to avert her eyes. “This is called tough love, Gemma! No matter what Christina Hendricks might say, nobody wants to hire a fat actress. Now look in the mirror!”

So Gemma looked, and a plump blonde, all natural honey curls and eyes the same bright blue as hyacinths, peered back at her. Those were the good bits, but the face, blurred by weight and with the suggestion of a double chin, wasn’t quite so great. The pink control underwear sliced into her flesh like cheese wire, sucking lumps and bumps in for sure but not quite able to contain them when they made a break for freedom. Completing the picture were dimpled arms bristling with goosebumps, a tummy like a Michelin tyre and patchy fake-tanned legs that chaffed at the top.

Oh God. She looked like one of those “before
”
shots that they took of fat celebrities to sell their fitness DVDs! If only she could now magic herself an “after” shot. How on earth had this happened? Tears blurred the hideous image.

“Gemma,” said Chloe, meeting her eyes in the glass, “I’ve been your agent for six years and I have to be honest. Unless you make some pretty major changes you won’t be getting any work at all. Don’t you want to act?”

Gemma nodded. Her throat was too tight with tears to speak. Of course she wanted to act! It was the only thing she’d ever wanted to do – apart from to be with Nick, of course. Six weeks ago he’d dumped her again; the last time she’d seen him had been at their local, where he was wearing some skinny brunette like a chest bandage and giving a good impression that they were Siamese twins joined at the tongue. Gemma had turned around and gone home via Waitrose. That night she’d enjoyed a threesome with Ben and Jerry, the only men she’d rely on in the future.

Chloe sighed. Gemma was a lovely girl and, when she had been successful in auditions, she’d always managed to impress the people she worked with. With her curves and blonde curls and mouth like an unpopped fuchsia bud, she was a dead ringer for a Botticelli angel who’d gobbled just a little too much ambrosia. It was pure bad luck she’d been born a few centuries too late. Even icons like Marilyn Monroe would struggle to find work in the body-obsessed twenty-teens. There was only one way Gemma could possibly pick up roles now, and that was to lose some weight – and pronto. Chloe, who existed on a diet of Marlboros and fresh air, found it hard to be sympathetic, especially now that today’s commission was in serious danger of going down the drain. You had to suffer to be beautiful, right? And Gemma clearly hadn’t been suffering. At all.

“I have had work,” Gemma protested, through the rock-cake lump. Her voice sounded odd, glass fragile and as though it might shatter at any moment. A bit like her self-confidence, in fact. “I was in
EastEnders
and I—”

“And you asked Phil Mitchell if he had a light,” interrupted Chloe, rolling her eyes so much that Gemma almost expected them to roll right out of her head, across the studio and down the street. “That was
two years
ago! It’s been
two years
since you had a proper television role. Since then you’ve only had a couple of voice-overs, that Shakespeare play for schools – where you were fantastic as Ophelia, I know – and a few adverts. Unless you up your game you’ll be left behind. Babe, I can’t afford to carry any dead wood!”

Gemma stared at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Her agent exhaled slowly. “That I’m going to have to let you go unless you sort yourself out, lose the weight and find a way to get yourself out there. Flick through
Closer
or
Heat –
they’re full of
TOWIE
people and soap stars; you should be right up there with them.
Y
ou
can
act, Gemma, but unless you start marketing yourself slightly more seriously I’m going to have to remove you from my books.”

“You’ll drop me?” Gemma couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “After all these years? Because some stupid lingerie people thought I was fat?”

Chloe shrugged. “Let’s face it: you’re not exactly earning me any money. I do have kids to feed, you know.”

She shouldered her Mulberry bag and considered Gemma thoughtfully. The girl had potential, she really did. She’d graduated from the BRIT School as one of the most promising students in her year, but somehow she’d just never managed to fulfil that promise. Maybe she was just too kind? Too easy-going? Too undisciplined? All qualities that the world of the media hardly valued, preferring to grind people like this into the dirt. Maybe Gemma Pengelley would have been better off staying in the West Country, filling her face with pasties and scones? Either way, a kick up the ample backside was most definitely what she needed.

“Please don’t take me off your books,” Gemma whispered. “I’ll lose weight. I’ll get myself in the papers. I’ll do whatever it takes, but please, please, don’t stop representing me.”