I wished I had someone to talk to about it. Of course there were my mates but I wanted to talk to a grown-up. Dad wasn’t an option. He’d be worried about Keira dissing me, make a big deal out of it and might do or say something embarrassing if he saw her. And there was Aunt Maddie, but even though I was getting on loads better with her lately, I had a feeling that she’d say back out but for different reasons to mine. She wasn’t into fashion and felt that so much of that whole world was exploitation. Mum had worked in the fashion business and would have understood the pluses and minuses.
When I got back to the house, there was a wonderful aroma of onions and garlic cooking and Gran was busy at the breakfast bar chopping peppers.
‘I’m making supper,’ she said. ‘Chicken casserole. Make sure you’re eating right.’
‘Sheila makes sure we do that,’ I said then I pulled a face. Sheila was the housekeeper who came in a few times a week to make meals for Charlie and me seeing as Dad never had a moment to do anything like cook. Her meals were OK but a bit bland and she only seemed to know how to do pasta, shepherd’s pie and baked potatoes. I sniffed the air. It smelt delicious, Gran was a great cook. ‘But it will be nice to have a change from macaroni cheese.’
‘Now come on, sit down, tell me what’s been going on.’
‘Where are Dad and Charlie?’ I asked.
‘Charlie’s not back yet and your dad’s just popped back to his office. Some minor crisis with a resident’s plumbing.’
‘Great,’ I said. ‘So I’ve got you all to myself.’ Of course, I thought, Gran. She’s the perfect person to talk to. Like Mum used to, she always sees both sides of things. Because she’s a Libran, she says. ‘So do you want to go first or do I?’
‘You,’ she said. ‘You talk, I’ll chop.’
‘OK but I want to know all your news as well,’ I said. Listening as well as talking was another thing that Mum had drummed into Charlie and me. ‘It’s impolite and boring to talk about yourself non-stop like you’re the only person on the planet that anything’s ever happened to,’ she’d tell us. ‘Everyone has their story, their worries and hopes.’ Sometimes when Charlie or I would come home with a major drama, she’d put the timer on and give us five minutes. Then when the ping went that time was up, she’d set it again and she’d talk for five minutes about her day. It used to calm us down. I also knew Mum had learnt to do this from Gran.
Right on cue, Gran put the timer on. We smiled at each other, completely in tune with each other’s thought.
‘Go,’ she said.
I settled myself on a stool at the bar and filled her in on the whole story. Keira. Our past. The competition. My fears. Tanisha.
She listened without interrupting, just nodding here and there until the timer pinged that my time was up.
‘So what do you think?’ I asked.
Gran put down the knife she’d been chopping with, put green leaves into a salad bowl then turned to face me.
‘Go for it, Jess.’ She sounded so like Mum sometimes, her voice had exactly the same tone. It was comforting and distressing at the same time. ‘First of all, I don’t like to think of anyone being mean to you. I know you well and you have a sweet and generous nature. I hate to think that someone’s making you doubt yourself and your motives. I’d like to get a bottle of that precious elderflower and pour it over that silly girl’s head. You mustn’t give up just because you don’t want to run into someone who’s a bully.’
‘I wouldn’t call her a bully, Gran.’
Gran shook her head. ‘There are bullies that use their fists and there are bullies that use their minds. The damage the second kind do isn’t physical but they do damage all the same. They wear away someone’s confidence with jibes and teasing then deny it all and make it sound as if it’s the fault of the person they’re teasing. I’d say, give that girl a run for her money in the competition and DON’T let her intimidate you!’
‘But I hate confrontation, Gran.’
‘What’s your option? You’re going to let her wear you down? No. There’s a time you have to take a stand and make it clear that you’re not a coward nor are you the type of person who gives up when the going gets tough. This is that time. The Jess I know doesn’t run away and whimper. By giving up, you’re letting her win. That’s not the girl I know.’ Gran grinned and pressed the timer. ‘OK, my turn, but just before I take it, what’s your decision?’
I put out my left palm to high-five Gran. ‘I won’t give up.’
11
Learning How to Walk
‘OK. Number eleven. Go,’ called Jacob Johnson, the image coach who had been brought in to show the twenty finalists how to walk the catwalk. I was one of them. Keira looked surprised when I came through the doors with Flo in the morning, raised an eyebrow and said something to a blonde girl she seemed to have palled up with. I smiled at her like I was so cool and not fazed by the messages she’d sent. All of us knew who Jacob was, having seen him on various TV makeover shows. He was a small, skinny blond and always dressed in black with heeled boots. I liked him because he treated each one of us like we were his favourite girlfriend. I was number fifteen. Keira was sixteen. Flo had already done her trial walk and she’d sauntered down the catwalk like she was walking through a field of flowers. Jacob had told her to put more attitude into it.
‘No, no, NO,’ called Jacob as number eleven, a tall redhead, walked towards him. I felt sorry for her because she looked so nervous, her face tight with concentration, her body awkward. It didn’t help that we all had to walk in four-inch heels. I was already wobbling in mine. ‘OK, everyone. Listen up. Look and learn. Our girl here is too tight. You need to loosen up, keep your eyes ahead, long steps, no horse-stepping, no short steps. I want you all to relax and enjoy this. It’s your moment. So who’s next? Number twelve. Go girl.’
‘It doesn’t look easy,’ whispered Flo as the next girl went forward to take her turn.
‘No, NO. Stop,’ called Jacob as she sashayed towards him. ‘Too sexy. Tone it down. You’re a goddess, you’re unreachable. The way you’re rolling your hips, you’re telling the world that you’re anybody’s. Oh Lord!’ The girl went over on one ankle and tumbled to the floor and Jacob rushed to help her up. She was already in tears.
I glanced over in Keira’s direction. ‘Eek,’ I mouthed and nodded my head at the fallen girl. She looked the other way.
Girl number twelve was helped to a seat and number thirteen was up ready.
‘Close your mouth, close your mouth,’ called Jacob as she stiffly made her way towards him. ‘You’re not catching flies! Now relax, you’re walking like one of the undead.’
Number fourteen was up next. ‘You’re waddling. I said to loosen up but not that much,’ Jacob commented then demonstrated how we should walk. ‘See, it has to come from the eyes then the body will follow. Eyes ahead.’ The girl tried again. ‘No. No,’ Jacob sighed. ‘Now you’re walking like a monkey.’ The poor girl looked like she didn’t know what to do with her arms or legs and I almost had a fit of the giggles.
‘Number fifteen,’ called Jacob.
‘Here I go,’ I said as Flo helped steady me on the heels. ‘He’ll probably say I walk like a duck.’
‘Quack,’ said Flo.
I went and took my place at the top of the room.
‘OK, go,’ Jacob instructed. ‘Drop your shoulders, that’s it.’
When I was little, Mum and I used to play that we were models. It used to crack us up. Before she got ill, Mum worked as a personal stylist at Selfridges and used to attend all the big fashion shows. I went to a few with her when I was old enough and we often used to pretend we were on the catwalk on the way home. Here I go, Mum, I thought, this time it’s for real. I stood tall, fixed my eyes at the end of the room, took a deep breath and walked.
‘OK, good. Sink into your hips a little,’ called Jacob. ‘That’s it. As you come to the end of the runway, stop with a stomp. Lean on one hip and pow! Not bad, not bad. NEXT.’
<
br /> I’d done it. I glanced over at Flo. She gave me the thumbs up.
The rest of the morning was fun. Racks of clothes had been brought in and we had to practise doing quick changes then out on the catwalk again. Flo and I both found it easy-peasy scrambling into clothes, having got dressed in a hurry a million times when we were late for school. A few girls looked ill at ease getting changed in front of each other but I didn’t mind that either. We did it every week in the cloakroom when getting ready for sports practice.
Towards the end of the morning, it was line-up time again and we all had to go and stand in front of the judges and Tanisha who’d crept in at the back towards the end of the rehearsal. We listened as the judges gave their comments.
‘Wow, this is personal,’ I whispered to Flo as one girl was told that she needed to get her hair straightened. Another was told she had bad skin. Another that her hair was too thin and straggly.
‘Your eyes are dead,’ said Derek to a stunning blonde girl who looked taken aback by his comment.
‘Your worry comes through in your eyes,’ said Jackie to a black girl with short hair.
‘You’re too heavy on the bottom,’ said Karie to a blonde girl with a beautiful heart-shaped face. ‘If you’re going to stay in, you have to lose some padding.’
The girl looked perfect to me.
‘Too heavy on the top,’ Derek told a curvy black girl.
‘You walk like a horse,’ Jackie told a waif-like girl with huge eyes and wispy white hair.
I felt my jaw dropping. Here were the most beautiful girls being told that they weren’t good enough. Part of me wanted to say, oi, if you haven’t got something nice to say, don’t say it, but another part felt they were just doing their job. I thought about the girls I’d been looking at in school assembly earlier in the week. The judges would have had a field day with them – too fat, too thin, too small, too . . . just not right. It sucked that anyone should be made to feel that way. I’d read somewhere that sixty-five per cent of the population were size sixteen plus. There should be a modelling contest for them, I thought. And not just them. For all sorts. All shapes and sizes, big and small.
The judges turned to Flo. ‘Ah Florence,’ said Karie. ‘Slightly nervous? Don’t be. You’re a very pretty girl but we feel that your look is bland. You need an edge. An attitude. Think you can work on that?’
Flo nodded and then they turned to me.
‘Jessica. You need to be more confident. We feel that you don’t really think that you deserve to be here,’ said Jackie. ‘Own your place here. A lack of confidence doesn’t wash in the modelling world. You have to act and sell the product no matter how you’re feeling inside. OK?’
I nodded. Own my place? How the heck am I supposed to do that? I wondered.
The waif-like girl was in floods of tears after the judges and Tanisha left to confer and we waited to hear who’d been eliminated. ‘It’s my whole life, my dream, my everything,’ she told us.
‘Someone’s throwing up in the loo,’ said the redhead when she came back from the cloakroom. ‘Eating disorder or nerves, do you think?’
‘Probably both,’ said her friend. ‘That’s so last decade. I think the trend is to look healthier these days and anyway, throwing up messes up your teeth.’
‘How come?’ asked the redhead.
‘The acid from vomit erodes your teeth over time and throwing up can make the glands in your neck swell and give you ulcers. I should know. I tried it until I realised it was actually making me look and feel crap.’
Ew, I thought. I felt more and more like a fraud as I overheard how important it was to the other contestants. I couldn’t say it had ever been my dream to be a model. In fact, I still had no idea what I wanted to do when I left school.
Finally we were called into a back room and told to line up in front of the judges. They stared at us. We stared at them.
Tanisha stood up. ‘Well done, everyone. You’ve all worked very hard today but this is a competition and I’m afraid five of you won’t be coming back.’ She stayed silent for a while as we waited to hear which of us hadn’t got through. It was just like being on The X Factor or Strictly Come Dancing when the contestants were kept in agony as they prolonged the results. I felt like I was going to get the giggles again. I always did in tense situations. Don’t laugh, don’t laugh, I told myself.
‘I’m going to put you in groups of five,’ Tanisha said then read out four groups of names. I was in the third group.
More silence. More trying to suppress the need to laugh. I daren’t look at Flo who was in group two along with Keira. I knew if I caught Flo’s eye, I’d burst out laughing. Not that I thought the situation was funny at all. It wasn’t. It was excruciating.
Once we were in our four groups, Tanisha surveyed us all with no expression on her face. ‘Group two, you’re through,’ she said finally.
The girls exploded with relief. More silence as Tanisha looked at the remaining groups. ‘Group four, you’re through.’
There were more sighs of relief and hugging. ‘Group one . . .’ More silence. The atmosphere was so tense, it was as if time had stood still and all you could hear was people’s breathing. ‘Group one . . . you’ll be going home today.’
‘Oh!’ they chorused with disappointment while girls in my group realised that they’d made it and were through.
Flo came over and hugged me. ‘I can’t believe it,’ she said.
‘Me neither,’ said a voice behind us.
I turned to see Keira standing there.
‘Oh hi, Keira.’
‘I suppose it helps living in the same place as the main sponsor,’ she said.
‘I . . .’
‘Hey, that’s not fair,’ said Flo. ‘I’m sure Tanisha had nothing to do with Jess getting through. There are three other judges and they don’t live at Porchester Park.’
‘Yeah sure,’ said Keira with a sneer. ‘Anyway, I thought you were dropping out.’
‘I was going to,’ I replied. I was about to tell her about my conversation with Tanisha then realised then it really would look like I had friends in high places.
‘So what made you change your mind?’ asked Keira.
‘I’m not someone who gives up easily—’ I started.
Keira snorted. ‘Hah! Why should you when you live in a place with A-listers on your door and running into Tanisha every day.’
‘It’s not like that, Keira,’ I said. ‘Actually it hasn’t always been easy living there but . . .’ I didn’t want to open up to her and tell her about how it had been when I’d first moved there. She’d only find some way to misinterpret what I was saying.
‘Poor little rich girl, that’s you,’ said Kiera.
‘Why are you being so horrible?’ asked Flo. ‘What did Jess ever do to you? I think you’re just jealous.’
Keira looked down her nose at me. ‘Me? As if. What’s there to be jealous of? I was only there five minutes and clearly JJ liked me and your other—’
‘Says who?’ interrupted Flo.
‘Says me,’ said Keira. ‘And don’t think that JJ is yours just because you live in the same place, Jess. You don’t own him or any part of him.’
I was about to say that I had a date with JJ when he came back from LA but bit my tongue. I didn’t want to tell her anything. ‘Come on, Flo, let’s go,’ I said and pulled her away. I felt confused. No-one had ever talked to me the way that Keira had, like she really hated me. I didn’t understand why.
I turned back to her. ‘Listen, we’re both in this competition. Why can’t we at least try to get along? We’re all in it together.’
‘Not me,’ said Keira. ‘I’m in this to win and I’m not in it together with anyone.’
She turned and walked off. Flo stuck her tongue out after her.
‘Take no notice, Jess,’ she said. ‘She’s just mean.’
I nodded but it was too late. She got under my skin. The way she treated me hurt. I also got the feeling she�
�d been about to say something else before Flo had interrupted but I told myself not to dwell on it and to try and get her and her behaviour out of my mind.
12
Finding a Look
‘I have to own my place,’ I told the gathered family at lunch at Gran’s on Sunday. ‘And Flo was told she’s too bland and has to find her look. I’ll probably have to do that too so that I stand out from the rest of the competitors.’
‘Shave your eyebrows off,’ said Charlie. ‘That’ll make you look different.’
‘I can always rely on you for style advice. Not.’
‘So what happens next?’ asked Aunt Maddie who was looking most unimpressed by everything I’d said about the competition. ‘And what about your swimming? I thought that was your thing. Don’t you have to practise for upcoming events?’
I shook my head. ‘There’s nothing now until the end of the year. The team just has to stay fit and practise regularly, that’s all.’
‘So what’s next with the modelling?’ asked Gran.
‘There are fifteen of us who’ve got through so far. In the next round, we have our photos taken and then five more go out, then the finalists will have their shots go onto the competition website and the public can vote. On the last week, we get to do a catwalk show and all the audience there can add their vote too. Whoever has the most votes gets a spread in Teen in the City magazine and five thousand pounds.’
‘Yay,’ said Charlie. ‘Hope you win. What would you do with the dosh?’
‘I haven’t thought about it because I’m not going to win. No way. There are some seriously gorgeous girls in the running.’
‘Cool. Ask them all over for supper,’ said Charlie. ‘But don’t diss yourself. I reckon you’re in with a chance.’
I shook my head. ‘Some of the girls already have personal trainers and go for regular beauty treatments and their make-up is the best you can buy.’
‘Yeah but we’ll get everyone at school to vote,’ said Charlie.
‘Maybe, but don’t forget there’s Flo too. Some people at school will vote for her.’
Catwalk Queen Page 8
