The Making of Mia

by Ilana Fox

  ‘Look, nobody’s given me a chance here in seven years, and if I’m brutally honest I’m counting the days until the exams are over and we leave. If I was meant to be friends with everyone it would have happened, and let’s face it, Ames, you’re the only one who even bothers to speak to me.’

  For once Jo let a wave of self-pity wash over her, and she fought not to cry, knowing if she did, like last time, she wouldn’t be able to stop. She was stronger than that. She was determined to be.

  Amelia could see Jo’s eyes shining with tears and she played her trump card. ‘Here, this will cheer you up – the new Cosmopolitan, just out today. It’s got a great piece where they give a girl a make-over … You should email them and see if they’d do a make-over for you – could be a great chance to make some contacts for when you start your career.’

  Jo shook her head, but Amelia dragged her over to the mirror and forced her to look at herself properly. Jo cringed.

  Her mousy-brown hair lat flat against her head and limp on her shoulders, and her eyes, set against the frown of her face, were dull. Apart from her wide nostrils, her nose wasn’t too bad, as noses went, but her lips were too thin, her eyebrows too thick, and Jo knew that even if she lost some weight she’d be one of those girls who are lost in the crowd. She was average – not ugly, not pretty, just nondescript. Jo wished with all her heart that she was stunningly beautiful like Amelia.

  ‘I bet the beauty department could made you look great in just a couple of hours,’ Amelia said, lifting Jo’s hair from her shoulders to see what it would look like if it was up. ‘And you could pitch them that idea you were telling me about the other night – about how girls should be made-over and PhotoShopped so they look like celebrities, so they don’t feel so bad about themselves.’

  Jo shook her head, and her hair fell from Amelia’s hands. She’d be too terrified to have a magazine make-over – because no matter what they did to her, she’d still be overweight and she’d still be plain old Jo Hill who didn’t have class and never would. She refused to look at her reflection any longer – it hurt too much. Jo eyed Cosmopolitan longingly, and Amelia got the hint.

  ‘Shall I leave you to fawn all over your magazine, then,’ she joked, and after she’d gathered her bags and had gone Jo breathed a sigh of relief – not because she didn’t like Amelia’s company, but because by picking up the magazine she could finally escape real life and disappear into the glamorous world of models, make-up and fantasising about what it would be like when she was finally an editor of a glossy magazine. She would wear Manolo Blahnik heels, Versace suits and, as well as being thin and beautiful, she would be powerful.

  As Jo settled down with the magazine she instinctively analysed it – memorising how to write pithy features and learning what worked on fashion shoots. She opened her bedside drawer and found some Jaffa Cakes, and as she ate her way through the packet she read the top make-up tips from her favourite beauty editors, and worked out what colours she’d use on her eyelids if she were going to a celebrity-packed party. In reality she would never dare use make-up – she believed she was so ugly that a touch of shimmering colour wouldn’t make any difference, or worse, would make it look like she actually cared – but when Jo retreated into the glamorous world of fashion magazines she could pretend she was just like any other girl: carefree, young, pretty and slender.

  Because the truth was that Jo was more than just overweight. She was sixteen stone and she was finding that even her extra-large school uniform was straining at the seams.

  Jo knew she had to go on a diet – she wasn’t stupid – but she couldn’t seem to stop herself eating, and even though she hated the rolls of fat that collected sweat under her uniform, she was always hungry. The kind dinner ladies didn’t help matters either. Every day they piled more and more food on her plate in the hope of getting her to smile, and even though Amelia frowned at the heaped plates of food, she never said anything about Jo cutting back, not even when the bitchier girls laughed as Jo went up for seconds. She was the one person at school who didn’t seem to mind too much that Jo was more than chubby, the one person who could see Jo for who she was: a sweet, fun, bright girl who was driven by ambition and the desire to succeed. But even Amelia couldn’t protect her from being the odd one out in a school where everyone had to be perfect.

  ‘Oh, look, there’s Jo Hill skipping her homework again so she can be in bed with a magazine, what a surprise!’ A nasal voice interrupted her thoughts, and Jo turned to see Dominique and her group of blonde, identikit friends. Dominique had the bed closest to Jo’s, and since the first year she’d picked on Jo to make herself feel better about her slightly rounded stomach and large bottom.

  ‘You’re never going to lose your virginity if going to bed with a magazine is all you’re interested in,’ she said cattily, as her friends giggled and nudged each other. ‘Men don’t like girls who just lie on their backs – they like a bit of movement.’

  Jo stared at the girls coolly. ‘Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m hoping that when I do get a boyfriend he’s going to be impressed by the fact that I have ambition and am not an airhead like you.’

  Dominique doubled up with fake laughter. ‘If you call lying on your back while reading trashy magazines “ambition”, then I’m sure you’ll find someone to sleep with you. Especially if he can put the magazine over your head before he climbs on top.’

  Jo felt her good mood vanish, and she turned towards the wall, desperately trying to ignore the giggles and the slumber-party atmosphere of bedtime that never included her. The magazine fell out of her hands and opened on the editor’s letter page, and Jo stared at it, imagining her slimmed-down and made-up face looking back at her in place of the current Cosmo editor. One day Dominique – and Jemima and Susie and all the other bitchy girls at school – would be fat from having babies with philandering City bankers, and they would all turn to her magazine for love-life advice. Jo would be thin, stylish and the most revered magazine editor in the UK, and when the girls opened the magazine and saw Jo’s beautiful face in prime position on the editor’s letter page they’d wish they’d never bullied her at school. She’d show them.

  Chapter Two

  August 2000

  Jo woke with a jolt. The sun was streaming through her thin My Little Pony curtains, and for a minute she didn’t know where she was until she realised she could smell burnt toast rather than Dominique’s overbearing perfume. She glanced around the bedroom and breathed a sigh of relief: she was at home, and she was never going to have to go back to St Christopher’s School for Snobs again. Old posters of Kurt Cobain hung limply from the pale pink walls, and her curtains blocked out the view of the rest of the Peckham council estate. Jo never opened them – they acted as a barrier to the gangs of teenagers outside who taunted her for being ‘posh’ and fat. Jo often wondered if she was the loneliest person in the world. She didn’t feel like she fitted in anywhere.

  Today, however, was the start of her brand-new life: A-level results day. Jo couldn’t face going back to the school ever again, so Amelia had promised to phone with her results. She couldn’t wait – in a few hours she could properly start thinking about how her life was going to be at university, and Jo resolved that today she would start her diet. By the time term started she would not only have lost some of her extra weight, but would be ready to meet new people – the people she would be friends with for the rest of her life. She grinned to herself. The next few years were going to be fantastic.

  The phone in the hall began to ring, and Jo was about to jump out of bed when she heard her mother answer it. As the voice of her hard, brittle mother relaxed into conversation Jo tensed up – why didn’t her mother understand how important it was to keep the line free? Jo tried not to panic and hurled herself into the hallway to give Elaine Hill a dirty look. Jo’s mum – who was dressed in velour jogging bottoms and a faded Joe Bloggs T-shirt – turned away from her daughter and laughed into the phone, murmuring something dis
tinctly sexual. Jo grimaced. She was on the phone to one of her men-friends then, most probably the one who sometimes gave her money for the final demands piling up by the front door.

  Jo stepped into the bathroom, where she pulled off the long shirt that doubled as a pyjama top, and heaved herself into the bath. Suddenly missing the school’s top-of-the-range power-showers, Jo made sure the plastic shower attachment was tightly gripped to the bath taps with rubber bands and let the sorry trickle of water wash over her body. As Jo soaped herself she kept her eyes on the flaking enamel of the bath that seemed to get worse every time she washed, and when that became too depressing she squeezed them tight, desperate to think about anything but her looming grades and how she should have forgotten about Saint for a month or two while she revised.

  In her fantasy Jo became a model in a shower-gel commercial – all leggy with cascading dark hair that shone like glass as the water glossed over it. Jo shook her head, and as her hair touched her back she felt like the girl she knew she was, inside her extra padding. She could be sexy, she could be flirtatious, and she imagined the make-believe cameraman finding her irresistible. As he began to wink at her, Jo turned the other way, flashing her bottom at him while imagining him telling her she was beautiful. Jo began to smile despite her shower starting to run cold, and just as she was working out if the cameraman looked like George Clooney or Russell Crowe in Gladiator, her mum’s pissed-off voice broke through the daydream.

  ‘Joanne, your posh friend’s on the phone for ya.’

  For a second Jo was disappointed that she’d turned back into a sad, overweight teenager holding a grubby white shower attachment over her head, but she chose not to let it bother her. It was results time.

  ‘Amelia? Hello, is that you?’ The moment she said the words Jo felt stupid, as nobody apart from Amelia ever phoned her. She squirmed under the small threadbare towel that didn’t hide her body properly.

  ‘Yah, Jo, hi,’ Amelia said perkily down the phone, and in the background Jo could hear squeals of delight coming from her former classmates. Obviously everyone had done well.

  ‘So …?’ Jo was frantic, and couldn’t be bothered with small talk. There would be time for that later.

  ‘Three As and a B,’ Amelia said proudly, and Jo welled up with pleasure – she was going to Edinburgh! Except … she had only taken three A-levels. Jo’s brow furrowed slightly, and she realised there was silence at the other end of the phone. Suddenly she understood.

  ‘Ames, that’s brilliant, well done,’ Jo gushed, hoping her disappointment wasn’t showing. Amelia deserved good grades. She’d worked hard.

  ‘I know!’ Amelia squealed. ‘Would have been top of the year but Susie got four As.’ Jo’s grin faded and anger threatened to spill out. How had Susie – the girl who spent every evening organising her clothes – passed? Had she plagiarised her essays? Jo didn’t think Susie was that smart. It was a backhander from her father, most probably. Jo sniffed. Who said money couldn’t buy happiness?

  ‘So what about me?’ Jo held her breath – she could barely stand it.

  Amelia cleared her throat and Jo instantly knew it was bad news.

  ‘Just tell me. It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘You got a D in English Lit,’ Amelia began, and Jo made a small choking noise. Amelia hurried on, anxious to make Jo feel better.

  ‘But you got a C in General Studies, and a C in History of Art, too.’

  Jo was stunned, and she could feel the blood draining from her face.

  Amelia rushed on. ‘I spoke to Mrs Wickham and she says you can appeal if you want to, but there’s not much chance of your grades changing. I think she’s a bit annoyed that Bedales beat us in the league table, to be honest. We beat Scabby Abbey again, though …’

  Jo stared blankly at the grubby wood-chip wallpaper. She’d got all Bs in her essays … and all her teachers – even Miss Montgomery – had predicted top marks for her. Something had gone wrong … badly wrong. Jo couldn’t bear to be on the phone any longer.

  ‘Thanks for letting me know, Ames, I appreciate it,’ Jo said as politely as she could, but before she could get off the phone Amelia interrupted her.

  ‘Oh, hang on, Dominique wants a word,’ she said, before lowering her voice. ‘Maybe she wants to make amends for always being such a cow.’

  Jo’s heart dropped even further. The last thing she wanted now was to speak to one of her former dorm buddies. Jo forced a bright smile and hoped she’d sound as breezy as possible.

  ‘Domi, hi, how are you?’

  There was the slightest pause at the end of the phone before Dominique spoke, and Jo could hear her walking away from the others, her stiletto heels making a hollow clicking noise on the waxed wooden hall floor.

  ‘Very well, thanks, Jo … and it’s good to talk to you – I wanted to say goodbye, as we’re probably not going to ever see each other again. After all, it’s not like we run in the same social circles, is it?’

  Jo stopped smiling as soon as she heard the cold tone of Dominique’s voice.

  ‘Fine,’ Jo said bluntly, all pretence at social niceties gone. ‘Goodbye, then.’

  Jo was ready to hang up the phone, but Dominique’s voice came through the receiver loudly. ‘But before we do say goodbye, I was wondering what marks you got,’ she said in a nasty tone that implied she knew just how badly Jo had done.

  Jo’s hand gripped the telephone so hard that her knuckles turned white. She didn’t speak.

  ‘Cat got your tongue, Jo? Never mind – the list is up on the wall anyway, and I can see for myself …’ Jo imagined Dominique trailing a manicured finger down the list of names, as she let out a tinkling laugh.

  ‘Oh, dear, Joanne,’ she said patronisingly. ‘Maybe you should have taken my advice after all and actually done a bit of revision! I did tell you that reading all those magazines wasn’t going to help your career, and I was right, wasn’t I?’

  Jo slammed the phone down as hard as she could, but before she could take a few deep breaths and calm down, she spotted her mother staring at her with thinly veiled disgust.

  ‘Well?’ she asked impatiently as she started rinsing some dishes in the sink.

  Jo shook her head, and refused to meet her mother’s eyes.

  Elaine Hill snorted and kept on washing up. ‘About time you realised you ain’t posh like your little friend,’ she muttered, and she plunged her hands deeper into the oily suds. ‘You can go on the dole and start paying me rent,’ she directed at her daughter with a sharp glance and Jo felt sick. She looked at the small kitchen with the peeling 1970s wallpaper and grease-stained oven, and she felt despair quickly consume her. University had been her one chance to escape, but without the grades – or the money – the reality of getting there was impossible. It was a dream, just like everything else good that happened to her.

  Jo sat down in the corner of one of her favourite places in Peckham – Frank’s Café – and her nose twitched appreciatively as she sniffed the air. Frank’s had not changed in years, and its all-day breakfasts were the stuff of local legend. Jo loved it in here; despite St Christopher’s trying to rub off her rough edges, she always gravitated back to the café on school holidays. Jo was just sitting down at a small table near the back when Rose – Frank’s wife – spotted Jo while serving fried breakfasts to some burly builders reading the Sun. Rose’s tired face lit up, and she gave Jo a wide grin.

  ‘Frank, Frank!’ she called out to her husband, and Frank, the Italian owner, came out of the kitchen wiping his hands on his apron. Frank and Rose were in their late fifties but they loved working in their café, an institution on the high street to those in the know and invisible to those who rushed past on their way to the centre of London in their cheap suits.

  ‘Joanna!’ Frank said, grabbing Jo by her shoulders and kissing her on the cheeks. ‘How is our little bright spark, eh? Packing her bags for university where she will find another café, no?’ Jo grinned at Frank and his wife. They never failed to ch
eer her up.

  ‘Oh, Frank, I messed up,’ Jo began and she played with the salt and pepper mills on the plastic red and white checked tablecloth. ‘I didn’t get the grades and no university that does my course will take me.’

  Frank turned to his wife in mock horror, as Rose, unburdening herself from the plates she was serving, came over.

  ‘Joanna, you are a smart girl, how could this happen?’

  Jo shook her head. No words could explain it. She wasn’t really sure herself.

  ‘What we will do is this – we give you a good breakfast to fill you up and then you tell us everything, OK?’

  Jo looked up at Frank and Rose and felt a wave of appreciation. It felt like it had been a long time since anyone apart from Amelia had been kind to her.

  ‘Thanks, I’d like that, but I’m on a diet. I’ll just have a coffee. I don’t want to get any fatter, right?’ Jo joked sadly.

  Rose looked at her husband, who took Jo in hand. ‘Today you’ve had some bad news, so you eat, and then you think. Tomorrow, tomorrow is the day you diet, although I think you are beautiful as you are.’

  Jo grinned and nodded, and the couple rushed back into the kitchen while Jo stared despondently at a ring of sticky coffee on the tablecloth and tried to ignore the sounds of Radio coming from behind the counter. She had fucked up, she knew that, but it had never crossed her mind that she might need a back-up plan. Jo had planned to lose weight, go to university, get a brilliant degree, and when she was twenty-one she planned to go to journalism college. A couple of years on she’d be writing for the glossies, and from there it was only a matter of time before she was in charge. Jo planned it so that by the time she was thirty she’d be running a magazine. The only problem was that she wasn’t going to get that degree after all. And she had gone from knowing what she was going to do in years to come, to not knowing what she was going to do tomorrow.