Gold Diggers

by Tasmina Perry

  ‘Dammit, why are all these silly little girls so skinny and pale?’ said Karin impatiently, flipping through the model cards once again. ‘They just look like children.’

  ‘That will be because they are children,’ said Kirsty with a smile. ‘Models start at twelve these days, you know.’

  ‘But we’re not selling clothes to children,’ snapped Karin. ‘Our customers are women, real-life women with hips and tits, not these broom-handle freaks!’

  Karin knew what women wanted. They didn’t want revealing wisps of lycra, they wanted to feel like Ursula Andress emerging out of the sea in Dr No, they wanted to feel like Sophia Loren wearing a turban in Arabesque. Classy, sexy, in control. So she created a collection of classic pieces that made great bodies look even hotter. She then carefully drip-fed them into the market, only allowing Karenza to be stocked in exclusive corners of the market like Harrods and Harvey Nichols. She wooed important fashion editors, sending them top-of-the-range bikinis every season and was rewarded by flattering articles about the hot new jet-set swimwear label that everyone was wearing. But it was Sebastian who had encouraged Karin to open her first shop. She had met him two years after her first collection had debuted, and they were engaged six months later. She didn’t need anyone to help her think big, but Sebastian was supportive – and, more importantly, he was connected. A school friend of Seb’s from Eton had offered her the lease on a small shop on Walton Street and, not being able to afford an expensive interior designer, Karin copied the look of a pal’s Cape Cod beach house, all fabulously pared-down with white floorboards and white walls. It was low-key luxe for people who didn’t want to shout about their wealth. It was perfect. Now she had three shops and a £20-million-pound annual turnover and Karenza was Europe’s fastest-growing swimwear company, but for Karin’s fierce ambitions it was not growing fast enough. It needed more visibility as a major luxury. She needed a print campaign in the major glossy magazines. She smiled a small, sad smile. She knew Sebastian would have approved.

  Kirsty was waving a black-and-white photograph of a skinny brunette with long legs in Karin’s face.

  ‘She’s hot. What about her?’

  ‘Too thin. Looks cocky,’ she said, tossing the photo on the pile dismissively.

  ‘Or her?’ asked Kirsty, pointing at a toothy blonde.

  ‘No way! Check out that mouth. She looks like a rabbit.’

  ‘She did do the Prada show last season,’ offered Kirsty weakly.

  ‘Kirsty! The girl fronting this campaign represents our brand,’ snapped Karin. ‘She is our face and body. I want our potential customers to look at our campaign and think, “I can be that sexy and chic and gorgeous”. Even if she’s fat, I still want her to think that three hundred pounds is money well spent if she can be magically transformed into the gorgeous creature in our campaign.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t want any fat and frumpy housewives wearing Karenza designs,’ said Kirsty sulkily.

  ‘That’s not the point,’ replied Karin briskly. ‘We need someone hot. Someone who can fill a bikini like she’s been poured into it, not some six-foot stringy teenager. We want a woman.’

  She spun round her Eames chair so it faced the window overlooking the street. ‘She’s got to be out there somewhere.’

  Dan Stevens, one of Europe’s hottest fashion designers, was crossing Regent Street when he saw her. He was already late for his next appointment – his last meeting at Vogue House had gone on forever – but something about this girl, standing on the other side of the road, made him stop and look. Even from fifty feet away he could see her right-angle cheekbones, her poker-straight pale blonde hair and her dancer’s posture. Dan frowned; why didn’t he know this girl? He worked with top models and actresses every day; he thought he knew all the beautiful women in London, but he had never seen this one before. Surely she must work in fashion? He thought, she was too stunning, too stylish to be a civilian. He quickened his pace to catch up with her and, drawing level, tapped her on the shoulder. She was dazzling. How many hours had he spent retouching photographs of stars with bad skin, all those smoker’s lines around the mouth, or the eyes deadened from drugs and parties. This girl, though: wow. Those enormous, slightly startled lavender-blue eyes, her incredible bone structure: she was a knockout. Not for the first time in his career, he wished he was single.

  ‘Hi! I, ah, I just wanted to introduce myself. I’m Dan Stevens, I’m a photographer. Are you a model by any chance?’

  Dan Stevens. Holy shit! Summer’s mouth dropped open. She’d only come shopping to cheer herself up because she hadn’t had a go-see in a week and here she was being stopped by one of the world’s hottest photographers. You couldn’t open W or US Vogue these days without seeing his name on a cover story. Molly would be really impressed.

  ‘Oh, I know who you are,’ she smiled, butterflies fluttering round her tummy. ‘And yes, I’m a model, although you won’t have heard of me.’

  ‘Good,’ said Dan. ‘Are you busy for the next hour?’

  ‘Just spending money I haven’t got,’ smiled Summer.

  ‘In that case, could you come with me to my next meeting? There’s someone I really think you should meet.’

  Dan Stevens walked through the door grinning from ear to ear. Karin, however, did not think he had much to smile about. He was two hours late for the casting – she couldn’t abide lateness – and she met his grin with a stony face. Dan knew he was getting off lightly: Karin Cavendish in hell-hath-no-fury mode was a fate you wouldn’t wish on an enemy. But she was in no position to make a point; she was very, very lucky to have secured Dan’s services for the campaign. If she hadn’t given Dan his first break, setting him up an appointment to see her fashion editor friend at Elle when he was a struggling nobody, she would never had the kudos to book him. But Karin’s irritation immediately melted away when she spotted the petite blonde girl trailing in nervously behind Dan. The girl was exquisite. Long pale blonde hair hung at either side of a perfectly oval face with a cute upturned nose, full lips and lovely almond-shaped eyes.

  ‘You’re a little late for the casting,’ said Karin, holding out a hand. ‘Can I see your card?’

  Summer stood in the doorway, nervously playing with the strap of her handbag. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t have one with me,’ Summer replied politely, a little intimidated to be face to face with Karin.

  ‘She wasn’t sent for the casting,’ said Dan quickly. ‘I found her shopping on Regent Street. I’ve taken some quick Polaroids and – here – I really think you should take a look.’

  Karin quickly studied the Polaroids, a crucial tool for casting. Pictures in a model’s portfolio were so retouched that it was often impossible to tell whether she photographed well or not. But these Polaroids were amazing. She really was beautiful; in the flesh and on film.

  ‘How tall are you?’ asked Karin, still looking at the photographs.

  ‘Five eight,’ lied Summer.

  ‘Five seven,’ said Karin coolly, scribbling it on the bottom of the Polaroid.

  She looked up at the girl again; she looked familiar but she couldn’t place where she had seen her before.

  ‘Have I met you before?’ she asked.

  Summer felt uncomfortable. She didn’t want to mention her mother. It always sounded as if she was cashing in on Molly’s fame.

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t think so.’

  Suddenly the penny dropped: seeing that long hair swishing about was a dead giveaway. Now Karin saw it – the nose, that wide, luscious mouth, that long curtain of platinum hair. She felt herself stiffen with displeasure. The platinum hair suddenly looked a little too brassy, her generous breasts just a little too large.

  ‘You’re Molly Sinclair’s daughter, aren’t you? You came to my benefit dinner.’

  ‘Really?’ asked Dan, congratulating himself for spotting talent.

  ‘Really,’ smiled Summer, flushing.

  ‘Well, thanks for coming in. Goodbye,’ Karin said quick
ly, gesturing towards the door with her eyes.

  Summer’s heart plummeted and she slowly turned and left. She was gutted: Dan Stevens hadn’t even spoken out for her.

  ‘Are you not even going to get her to try a swimsuit on?’ said Kirsty after Summer had left. ‘She was lovely.’

  ‘A pretty girl, yes,’ offered Karin brusquely. ‘But she’s too small and too curvy.’

  ‘Karin, she’s fantastic!’ laughed Dan incredulously.

  ‘She belongs on a Sports Illustrated cover!’ snapped Karin.

  ‘I thought you wanted the campaign to be sexy?’

  ‘If the girl is too obvious it’ll look tacky.’

  ‘Well I can’t believe she hasn’t fronted a big campaign before. The second I take to her into Vogue, every magazine and fashion company is going to want her. Her day rate will skyrocket.’

  ‘You’re going to take her to Vogue?’ asked Karin, her eyes narrowing.

  ‘US Vogue. I see them on Monday.’

  Karin’s mind went into business mode, thinking three moves ahead.

  ‘What agency did she say she was with?’

  ‘La Mode agency,’ said Dan.

  ‘Never heard of them,’ sniffed Karin, but she was secretly pleased. A small, unknown agency would give her Summer for peanuts, just to ingratiate themselves with a fashion house. It could save Karin thousands and, if Dan was going to champion her as he was suggesting, this girl could be the next big face – and Karenza would have her first.

  ‘I wonder what she’d be like brunette?’

  Karin snatched up her phone. ‘Jane? Can you send the model back up?’ she asked the receptionist. As they waited for Summer to come back up, Karin opened her desk drawer, removing a pair of scissors which she gave to Kirsty.

  ‘Can you just cut me some of your hair?’

  ‘What?’ replied Kirsty, startled.

  ‘Your hair. I need it,’ said Karin tartly, her eyes locking with Kirsty’s. ‘Come on, it’s important. Just two or three inches will be fine. It will grow back, for goodness’ sake.’

  Kirsty gingerly snipped at the bottom of her brown bob and handed the segment of hair to Karin.

  As Summer came back into the room, Karin walked purposefully towards her. ‘I want you to go to Joel at Real Hairdressing,’ said Karin, handing Summer the brunette locks. ‘Tell him I sent you and tell him to make your hair that colour. When he’s done it – and not before – come back here and maybe we can start trying on some swimsuits.’

  Kirsty and Dan looked at each other and smiled.

  14

  Jilly was worried. After that snake Richard had gone off with the office floozie and Erin had moved out of his apartment, Jilly had fully expected her granddaughter to return to Cornwall immediately. After all, she had no home, no boyfriend, some job answering telephones twelve hours a day; what on earth could be keeping her in London?

  ‘I just don’t understand it, lovey,’ she said down the phone line. ‘London’s expensive, it’s lonely. Why don’t you come home?’

  Erin had to admit Jilly had a point. She’d been in London six weeks and here she was, living in a single room in a Bayswater hotel costing her a hundred pounds a night. She hadn’t any friends to stay with after she’d left Richard’s – she could hardly have asked Adam to put her up for a few days while she found somewhere new to live – and working so hard at the Midas Corporation, there seemed neither the time nor the opportunity to make any new friends. It wasn’t quite the glamorous life either of them had imagined for her; then again, there was something about Midas that made her fizz with excitement, and it wasn’t just her £70,000 pay-packet. She wasn’t quite ready to leave just yet.

  ‘When you spent four years at university getting a Russian degree, it wasn’t to spend your life making somebody else’s travel arrangements, was it?’ said Jilly. ‘Come home. Finish your novel. That’s you’ve always wanted, isn’t it?’

  Erin felt an enormous rush of guilt at the mention of her novel. Jilly could almost read her mind; Erin hadn’t written a word since she had been in London. But she’d started another career now and she couldn’t very well admit defeat so soon and go running home just because Richard was such a rat.

  ‘Let me give it a week,’ said Erin. ‘This hotel arrangement is purely temporary. If I haven’t got settled in a week, we can talk again.’ She put down the receiver and resolved that she had to find somewhere immediately, if not sooner.

  ‘Now the next property I’m going to show you is really special,’ said the estate agent with an encouraging smile. Erin groaned inwardly. It was the fourth flat in as many days that this estate agent had shown her. He had kept phoning her up at work, promising her he could find her something amazing, but everything he had shown her so far seemed decidedly overpriced or poky.

  Perhaps this flat would be the one, Erin thought hopefully, as they pulled up outside a huge Victorian building in a shady street in Canonbury, the prettiest part of Islington. It certainly looked good from the outside, with rich, honey-coloured brickwork and large well-tended flowerpots sitting on the wide windowsills.

  ‘Incredible isn’t it?’ smiled Ryan Hall, the agent. It’s her who’s incredible, he thought. I’ve got to close the deal on this one. Ryan had been desperately seeking out impressive properties all week, just so he could see Erin again.

  ‘It used to be an old cotton factory,’ he said, striding up the path. ‘Lay derelict for years until it was redeveloped a few years ago.’ He jangled the key in the lock and gently touched Erin’s shoulder to guide her in.

  ‘I’d live here if I could afford it,’ said Ryan, hoping she’d get the hint and invite him around. ‘A girl like you deserves a place like this.’

  As they walked inside, Erin nodded in agreement. There was a large lobby with a marble floor and an old-fashioned grille-front lift – a relic from the building’s industrial days. She had always dreamed of living in a place like this. Erin crossed her fingers as they rode up to the second floor. Please be nice, she whispered, please be nice. She desperately needed to find somewhere to call her own or she’d be back on that Port Merryn clifftop before the end of the month.

  ‘Our agency looks after the entire building,’ continued Ryan as he opened the door to apartment eleven. ‘I’ve only been with Thomson Bailey three months but my boss tells me that apartments in this building hardly ever become available. Once you’re here, you don’t want to leave.’

  For once, Erin thought Ryan Hall might be telling the truth. It wasn’t a huge space, a corridor painted soft sage green with high ceilings and curly cornices led into a big living space already kitted out with squashy cream sofas and billowing velvet drapes. There was a small open-plan kitchen, a bathroom with just enough space for a shower, and a large bedroom with a sleigh bed and – she gasped – French doors which led out to a tiny balcony.

  ‘It’s fantastic,’ smiled Erin, unable to hide her glee. ‘You should have shown me this place first.’

  ‘Then I wouldn’t have had the pleasure of your company all week,’ smiled Ryan Hall honestly.

  ‘How much did you say this one was?’ she asked.

  ‘Five hundred a week,’ said Ryan, flicking a piece of fluff from his shoulder.

  Erin felt her heart clank to the ground. It was almost twice what she had been planning on playing; over half of her salary after tax.

  Just then, Ryan’s mobile began to ring furiously. ‘Make yourself comfortable and think about it,’ he whispered.

  ‘Yes, er, hello darling. Just got caught up. I won’t be long,’ Ryan hissed into the phone, quickly moving down the corridor and out of the front door.

  Erin smiled to herself: the girlfriend. Clearly Ryan’s sledgehammer seduction techniques worked on someone. She wandered back into the hallway, trying to add up her outgoings in her head, when suddenly there was the clatter of the lift door opening followed by raucous laughter. Seconds later, a head appeared round the door.

  ‘Oh hello. You must be
looking round,’ said an Irish accent.

  ‘Yes, I am,’ said Erin, a little surprised. She took a moment to look at him. He was late twenty-something with a crop of dirty blonde hair, a mischievous smile and lively eyes that looked a little glassy and drunk.

  ‘Sorry. Just being a good neighbour and all that,’ he said, slightly slurring his words. ‘I saw the door open, so I was just checking it hadn’t been burgled or anything.’ He vaguely extended a hand but then thought better of it and used it to prop himself up in the frame of the door. ‘Anyway. I’m Chris Scanlan.’

  ‘No, not a burglar, just looking round,’ smiled Erin. Chris Scanlan was dressed in a suit, she noted, but not one that suggested he worked in the City, more like a student dressing up for a wedding. He was standing next to a petite pretty girl with long dark hair who wrapped her arm proprietorially around his waist. She looked a little drunk too.

  Chris Scanlan pointed to the door of number twelve. ‘I live there, by the way. Are you going to take it? I’m not drunk and noisy very often, honestly,’ he added.

  ‘I like it, but it’s a little pricy for me,’ she whispered, hoping Ryan Hall couldn’t hear her. ‘And,’ Erin smiled, ‘I think the all-night parties might be a bit much.’

  ‘Talking of all-night …’ smiled the little brunette, tugging Chris Scanlan’s hand towards his flat.

  ‘Well, it’s definitely a great place to live,’ said Chris over his shoulder, before he was yanked inside and the door was slammed.

  What a prat, thought Erin. Do I want to pay all that money to live opposite some womanizer with balls bigger than his brains? She’d had enough of that with Richard.

  ‘So. Do you want overnight to think about it?’ asked Ryan Hall, appearing in the hallway slightly flustered. ‘Although I have to warn you, I’m showing three people round tomorrow morning.’

  Erin turned around to look at the flat lying invitingly behind her. All cosy colours and soft lighting. And she thought of the Bayswater hotel costing her a hundred pounds a night.