The Modeliser (23 page)

 
When she finally
fell into bed, her last thought was that Vassily Romanov really was a
class-act, a billionaire breed apart, willing to give a million pound piece of
art, for a woman who was simply just one among many.

The
late showing of the film spilled out into the quiet street. The road was
largely deserted; the shops and bars already past closing time as Talia and
Alex began the walk back to the house.

“I’ll walk you back,” Alex had insisted and so they fell into
step along the High Street.

“What did you think of the film?” Talia finally asked breaking
the silence.

“I liked it,” Alex replied. “Cora is a great director.”

“You know her?” The incredulity in Talia’s voice suddenly
reminded Alex how far he was from LA.

“Sure. I met with her a few times about some projects,”

“And?”

“And nothing. Avi and I decided that she wasn’t yet big name
enough.” Alex watched as Talia’s brow crinkled but she stayed silent.

“Well, tonight was fun,” Talia said as they approached the
top of the street that would take them to his grandfather’s house. Alex was
surprised at the warmth in Talia’s words and he suddenly realised what had
shifted in the weeks that they worked together.

“You know that almost sounded friendly,” he said and watched
the look of embarrassment on Talia's face.
           

“So I guess we’re friends now,” she retorted.

“Friends,” Alex repeated slowly as though the word were alien
to him.

“Friends, you know….” Talia trailed off and she came to a
halt on the pavement turning to Alex who had also come to a standstill next to
her. “Alex, tell me that in the 21
^st
century you do have some female
friends?” Alex felt his cheeks warm in the night air and was grateful for the
dim orange street lamps, which at least meant she probably couldn’t see the
stain of colour rising along his cheekbones.

“Well,” he prevaricated, “there was Dina… Back in primary
school but she used to beat me up… and then Suzy, but Suzy was my imaginary
friend.”

“Your imaginary friend was a girl?” Talia asked. Alex nodded
with a small laugh at the incredulity in Talia’s voice.

“I started early.”

“So no female friends. None at all? All those women you’re
photographed with, surely you haven’t….” Talia trailed off. And as Alex opened
his mouth to answer her unfinished question, she put her hand up. “I don’t want
to know.”

Alex was filled with an unexpected embarrassment that this
short, strident, argumentative thing, his little sister’s best friend no less,
could so comprehensively burrow under his skin. They had reached the front
steps of the house and Talia stopped on the first step. She turned around to
face him.

“Well then Alex Golden, I am your friend, you can finally
look yourself in the mirror and accept that you live in the 21
^st
century and men and women can be friends.”
 

Alex
let out a laugh.

“A female friend. Who’d believe it?” He said dryly. “Don’t
tell Daily World or my reputation will be in tatters.”

They
both laughed quietly, the sound carrying gently on the warm night air. They
were silent for a moment and as she looked up at him, her wide brown eyes
meeting his blue ones, Alex felt a shift between them. Without conscious
thought, his eyes drifted to her lips and then back to her eyes. In the dim
light, he could see her eyes widen a fraction; she too sensed this thing
between them, this unexpected and yet not unwelcome charge of electricity. Alex
raised his hand and rested it on her arm.

“Talia….” he began and knew at once that by speaking he had
broken the spell. He watched Talia’s eyes snap back to focus.

“I should get inside,” she said quickly. “I’ll see you on
Monday.” Alex nodded and watched as she disappeared into the house.

Slowly he began the walk back up the road, hailing a black
cab as one swung into view. As he settled into the back seat, Alex was filled
with a sense of something that he couldn’t quite put his finger on, but a sense
nonetheless that he had just begun something momentous.

Helena
was striding through the Eurostar Terminal at St Pancras train station in
Central London with an expression so glacial that any of the men who were
taking second and even third glances at her, rethought any intention of
approaching her. In leather stiletto Gucci ankle boots, she was close to 6ft
and as she walked purposefully through the terminal she made an arresting
sight, mobile phone in one hand and her Mulberry Piccadilly travel bag hooked
in the crook of her elbow. If she’d been on a catwalk, Tyra Banks herself would
have deemed her walk
fierce
and in her skinny fitted black jeans, a stripy Agnes B
Breton t-shirt and a cropped biker leather jacket, Helena’s edgy look matched
her mood.

After the initial meeting and several heated phone calls with
Tobias, she’d had to concede defeat. Gabe had gone over her head and Tobias
adored the idea of Sula on the cover alongside the magazine’s very own deputy
editor. Sula too had apparently fallen in love with Gabe’s proposal. For Helena
to have continued to argue the point would have been probable career suicide
and so she had agreed to the photo shoot. She gritted her teeth as she swiped
her ticket through the automatic reader and moved towards the Eurostar first
class departure area. The train had already begun boarding and she headed down
the platform to the carriage, spotting Gabe ahead of her wearing a pair of Ray
Bans as he strolled onto the train.

Helena entered the quiet carriage, which thankfully was half
empty with only half a dozen or so suit-wearing executive types. She and Gabe
made eye contact as she entered the carriage and she watched his eyes scan her
appearance but wisely he remained silent. Her temper had been on a knife-edge
all weekend and perhaps Gabe sensed that she needed only the slightest of
provocation to really lose it. Helena reached up to stow her bag in the
overhead luggage racks and then she dropped into a seat opposite Gabe.
Immediately, she pulled out her large leather-bound notebook and began making
notes. On her blackberry she tapped out emails to the team at Époque House who
would be helping co-ordinate the logistics for the French shoot. The train had
slowly begun to pull away from the station, the glass roof of St Pancras
Station giving way to open blue sky, before Gabe finally spoke.

“Are you going ignore me all the way to Paris?”

Helena
glanced up from her blackberry only momentarily.

“That is the intention – yes,” she replied sharply and
bent her head back to the notes in front of her.

Talia
was still gasping from her run on the heath as she let herself into the
Hampstead house. Kicking off her running shoes, she moved into the kitchen,
gulping down a glass of water as her breath slowly returned to normal. As she
caught sight of her sweat soaked face in the hallway mirror, she grimaced.
Once, she may have been a schoolgirl cross-country champion but those days were
now long gone. The hectic schedule when she’d been working on Encounters, the
long days, early mornings, story conference away days - had given her little
time to get to a gym and the fatty canteen food and the carb heavy bagels and
muffins that were always laid on for story meetings hadn’t helped either. Her
body which had always been athletic with curves in all the right place had
started to inch slowly towards the dumpy side of the fence and being only 5ft
4, didn’t help matters either.
 
But
since she’d been out of a job, Talia had tried to begin a new routine of
exercise and her body was slowly starting to adjust. In her fitted training top
and running leggings, Talia sucked in her stomach, her shape was once again
returning to the right side of hourglass but she would always have to work to
stay in shape, she wasn’t one of those women who easily kept the weight off.
She started to head up the stairs when she heard the insistent ring of her
phone. Talia ducked back down the stairs and immediately accepted the call not
pausing to check the caller ID.

“You’ve made it girl.” The words were followed by a squeal of
laughter and Talia recognised the voice of her friend Simone.

“What are you talking about?” She asked.

“You haven’t seen it?” Simone demanded. “Go to the shops and
buy a copy of Buzz. Actually open your laptop and get on to their website.”

Talia
groaned. Much as she loved her peripheral involvement in the entertainment
industry, she had little interest in the weekly gossip magazines. Simone by
contrast lapped it all up with relish.

“You know I don’t read that shit,” Talia replied.

“You’ll want to read this one, trust me.”

“Fine, fine,” Talia answered already opening her laptop and
waking it from sleep mode. She tapped some keys and navigated to the Buzz home
page waiting as the page loaded. “What am I looking for?” she asked.

“You’ll know when you see it,” was Simone’s cryptic response
and Talia sighed, feeling sweat running down her neck. All she wanted was a
shower and then to get on with the pile of scripts she had to read.

“Oh my god.”

Talia gasped the words out as the Buzz page finally loaded
and she was confronted with a photograph of herself alongside Alex, a
photograph that must have been snapped the night before.

“Told you,” Simone responded with a laugh.

“I’ve been papped.”

“You’ve really made it now,” Simone agreed.

“I look like a bag lady,” Talia moaned as she scanned the
photograph. Her shirt-dress over leggings combination now seemed even more of a
fashion faux pas. Her legs looked dumpy in those flats and her hair was an
unsightly disastrous frizz ball.

“Well, I wouldn’t read the comments,” Simone replied
diplomatically. But already Talia’s eyes were scanning down to the 59 readers
comments.

“ ‘
That dress is Fugly’
,” Talia read.

“Stop reading,” Simone instructed. But Talia was skimming
down as the words jumped out at her.

“ ‘
Hot mess
,
Dumpy, minger…. Old
…’ Oh my god. These people are so harsh.”
She wailed.

“The people who read this rubbish are arseholes with no
lives,” Simone said firmly.

“You read these mags and you’re not an arsehole with no
life,” Talia pointed out.

“That’s true.” Simone agreed.

“They’re right,” Talia finally said, “that dress is Fugly.”
She rose from the kitchen table, already a plan was formulating in her head.

“You’ll be yesterday’s news by this afternoon,” Simone assured
her but Talia’s mind was already made up.

“What are you doing today? She asked her friend.

“Supposed to be doing a shot list for this shoot… Why?”

“We’re going shopping.”

After
she’d showered, picking her nicest pair of rather too snug skinny jeans and a
v-necked vest that flattered her breasts giving her an attractive cleavage,
Talia assessed her wardrobe. Most of it she’d put in storage after moving out
of Nina’s but a lot of those clothes, Talia knew could be thrown away. The
things she’d moved into the Hampstead house with were similarly unimpressive.
Baggy jeans, oversized tops and apart from the DVF dress and Charlotte Olympia
shoes that Helena had given her, little that could be called feminine or sexy.
She’d been saving most of her pay from Alex towards her flat deposit but today,
Talia decided she would
carpe diem
– she was on a new path now and
that demanded a whole new image.

Some
women ate when they were depressed, others turned to alcohol when the blues hit
but for Tamara shopping was her drug of choice. Not that she would ever admit
to being depressed. In the days after she had spotted Vassily and his young
lover, she had readied herself for his call. Rich men all had multiple
mistresses and for a billionaire she was ready to adapt, she would simply have
to suck it up. But once again Vassily had failed to call. Again he had left her
high and dry. Acid rage boiled in Tamara and she lashed out at anyone stupid
enough to cross her. On set she had been shorter than ever and poor Casey had
gone home crying more times in the last week, than in the preceding two years
of working for Tamara.

Tamara had stalked down Sloane Street almost without seeing,
even as she’d purchased a pair of two-tone Chanel ballet pumps, three pairs of
Jimmy Choo heels, a bracelet at Cartier and a scarf at Hermes. Never mind that
just the week before she’d received a panicked call from her accountant warning
her that her finances were at buckling point, that she could not keep spending
so much more than she earned. Her agent too had called with an offer of a TV
commercial for probiotic yoghurt and Tamara had scoffed. She’d left modelling
behind and she would not, could not face the ignominy of doing a yoghurt
advert. Maybe fragrance or a cosmetic ad but yoghurt… Never.