21
Of course she checks it out. She’s not stupid. As soon as she gets her phone back, she does a mad Google and up the agency pops, totally legit. Not just its own website, but, if you hit the images tab, there are thousands and thousands of shots of catwalks and cover pages, of fashion spreads in everything from tabloids to glossies, with agency credits for the models. And when you search Julia Beech, almost as many turn up. Smiling with models and actresses (no ‘I’m an actor’ types in these pictures) whom even Gemma has heard of, smiling with CEOs and directors and magazine editors and jewel-encrusted women. Smiling in front of white backdrops covered in names and logos of luxury brands. Smiling on sun-filled terraces overlooking the sea, in banqueting halls where the chandeliers are the size of spaceships.
That’s a lot of trouble to go to, to pull off a scam, she thinks. That Julia has a proper glamorous life. And she dials the number on the business card and calls her. The old-fashioned way, like it’s still the twentieth century.
*
It’s in a mews house in South Kensington. Old stable doors filled in with plate glass, the interior screened off from the outside world by vertical blinds. She walks past a couple of times, uncertain, because she’d never have imagined that a business dedicated to showing people off would itself be so discreet. But, as she comes back up the mews for the third time, the door opens and the longest, thinnest girl she’s ever seen comes out. More tribal carving than human being. She carries a gigantic portfolio under a broomstick arm.
Yes, this must be it, thinks Gemma, and feels short and dumpy as she watches the girl walk towards the tube. There must be a mistake, she thinks. Naz is right. I’m not tall enough. Not nearly. And I’m a size ten, for God’s sake; I’m huge. But she presses the buzzer beneath the discreet chrome plate that reads, in small letters, ‘JB Ltd’ anyway, because hope outweighs reality, always.
A bored voice answers. ‘Julia Beech,’ it says.
‘I’m Gemma Hanson,’ she says. ‘I, um, have an appointment?’
A pause. ‘Who with?’
‘With Julia,’ she says proudly. ‘Julia Beech.’
Another pause, then something heavy clunks inside the blond wood door. It glides open beneath her touch.
Be cool, Gems. Be cool.
A woman with a black bob and scarlet lipstick looks her up and down from behind a desk. ‘What time were you meant to be here?’
‘Three. I’m a bit early.’
‘Yes, you are.’
She could swear she sees an eye-roll as the woman turns away to look at a printed list on the desk. Isn’t that right? Isn’t that what you’re meant to do? It’s pretty much the only advice she’s ever had from her school careers counsellor. That, and clean fingernails. And how polished shoes never go unnoticed.
‘Never mind,’ says the woman, ‘you can wait over there,’ and she points to a small square of modular sofas gathered around a coffee table. Two girls already sit there, leafing through copies of Vogue and Marie Claire. The French one. Which she’s heard is better than the English.
The office is weirdly quiet, though she can see that all of the half-dozen people manning the desks are on their phones. Clever acoustics. She smiles shyly at the receptionist and receives a blank stare in response.
She feels like a fairground exhibit in her stolen Zara dress. The other girls are studiedly casual. Jeans, trainers, vest tops, little cardigans in jewel hues to warm their fleshless bodies. No make-up, skin smooth as alabaster, glossy hair tied back at their napes. I must look a twat, she thinks. Everything about me screams first visit.
She picks up a copy of Vogue and, using it for cover, surreptitiously wipes off her lipstick. Not much she can do about the hours of contouring she put in this morning. But at least she can get rid of that gauche little Cupid’s bow.
Someone stands up. A man, thirties, wispy chin beard and round hipster glasses. He picks up a folder, stretches and approaches. Gemma tenses. He comes and stands behind her as she feverishly scans a double-page fashion spread, trying to look blasé.
‘Naomi?’ says the man, and one of the girls composes her mouth into a little round O as though she too has only just noticed him. She gets up and there’s some stuff with air kisses, and then he leads her away to a panel door hidden behind a potted plant.
Gemma smiles timidly at her remaining companion, who glances at her for one moment, tucks her chin in and returns to her magazine.
Well, fuck you too.
A glass staircase leads to the first floor. People go up and down, up and down. And still no Julia. Her snotty companion is led away, and a black girl so shiny she looks as if she’s been dipped in quicksilver takes her place, and her magazine.
This is hopeless, Gemma thinks. I’m too ordinary. I’m Clapham-pretty, not International-Goddess-pretty like those girls. I’m average height. I’m thin-for-Clapham, not South Ken thin. That girl’s ankles wouldn’t support anything heavier than a pussycat. I bet her knees are thicker than her thighs.
‘Gemma?’
She jumps. Julia Beech must have come in through the front door. The day is hot, but she looks cool and composed in a mint-green shift dress, bronzed legs finished off with a pair of matching stiletto mules. Diamonds on her earlobes, on her knuckles.
Gemma drops her Vogue onto the table and scrambles to her feet. There’s a woman with her, an identically cut dress in cowboy gingham and a witty little hoedown handkerchief knotted at the side of her neck. A real tan, bright blue eyes, a little chin so neat it has to have been sculpted that way, a pixie haircut. The first short hair Gemma has seen since she came through this door.
‘Oh, yes,’ the woman says, appreciatively, ‘I see what you mean.’