Jessie Keane - Ruthless

‘OK. Let’s see what we have here.’ Precious had scrubbed Layla’s face clean, slicked it over with moisturizer, then placed her in front of the brightly lit dressing-table mirror. Layla sat there like a prize dog at Crufts while Precious tipped her head this way and that. ‘Right. What we have is good skin. Flawless, actually. Well done for that.’

Layla said nothing. If she had clear skin then it was down to genes: her mother’s skin was good, too.

‘Also we have a good face shape, very defined cheek bones. Those eyebrows are a bloody disaster though. Hold still.’

Precious got busy with the tweezers.

‘Jesus!’

‘Shut up and hold still.’

Layla yelped a lot, but by the time Precious had finished, she looked in the mirror and saw that she had nicely shaped, finely arched black brows.

‘Good lips,’ Precious went on. ‘Got a proper little cupid’s-bow mouth there, and very nice oval-shaped eyes. What’s that colour? Brown?’

‘Sort of a dark green. Like my mother’s.’

‘Actually, with the big hair you look a lot like her.’

‘Oh, come on.’

‘You do.’

‘No way. She’s…’ Layla paused.

‘She’s what?’ Precious leaned over the dressing table, started pulling tubes of flesh-coloured gunk out of her make-up bag.

‘She’s beautiful,’ said Layla on a sigh. ‘Absolutely bloody stunning.’

Actually Layla thought that Annie was more than that. In addition to her amazing looks, she had balls, real authority. Layla had seen the way grown men jumped when her mother snapped out an order.

‘And you’re not?’

‘Of course I’m not.’

‘This is what in psychological circles we call a breakthrough,’ said Precious.

‘A what?’

Precious squirted foundation on to the back of her hand, then began dabbing it on to Layla’s face. ‘A breakthrough,’ she said, squinting as she worked. ‘ Don’t frown – those lines’ll get stuck in there. A breakthrough is when you get to the nub of the problem. And that’s what we’ve just done.’

‘So what is the nub of the problem?’ Layla was curious.

‘Your mother.’

‘My mother’s the problem?’ Layla tried to think without frowning. ‘Well, we don’t get along that well, but she’s my mother, for God’s sake and she’s-’

‘Stunningly beautiful,’ finished Precious. ‘Shut your eyes, that’s right. And because she is so beautiful, you’ve never felt able to compete. So you haven’t. Instead you’ve retired from the contest. Refused to participate. Hence the no make-up, the pulled-back hair, the sexless clothes.’

Was Precious on to something here? Was it because of her mother’s looks that she’d hidden herself away? Layla was so preoccupied by the thought she abandoned all resistance and allowed Precious to proceed with the transformation unhindered.

Aside from her mother, Layla had never come across anyone so confident in her femininity as Precious. She was intrigued, fascinated by this woman who could dance naked in front of strangers and think nothing of it. Layla couldn’t imagine what that was like. She longed to know how it felt.

By popping in and out of her room of an evening on the pretext of using the kitchen, Layla had discovered that the security guy on duty in the monitor room always took a fifteen-minute break at eleven. During that time one of the barmen was supposed to cover the monitors, to ensure the girls’ safety while they were alone in one of the private dancing rooms with a punter. This week it was Junior who was providing the cover while the security guy took his break, and she’d noticed that he wasn’t too diligent about it. Usually he’d leave the monitor room unattended while he loitered in the kitchen, making tea, or he’d be hanging around the dressing room, chatting up the girls. Tonight, she was planning to take advantage of his absence.

‘Open your eyes.’ Precious was screwing the cap back on the tube of foundation. Now she picked up a tub of translucent powder, opened it, and swirled a big brush around in there. ‘Close your eyes again…’

The brush was applied to Layla’s face. Layla sneezed.

‘I’m making this nice and easy so you can do it yourself next time,’ explained Precious, picking up a smaller brush and loading it with pink powder. ‘Blusher,’ she said, sweeping it along Layla’s cheeks. Next she took out a black pencil, outlined Layla’s newly defined brows. Then, using a fine brush, she applied eyeliner, sticking close to the lashes, flicking out and up at the end. When that was done she clamped Layla’s lashes into a little silver instrument of torture, held them there for thirty seconds on each eye. Then applied mascara. Dusted powder over that. Then another coat of mascara.

‘How much longer?’ asked Layla, restless.

‘Hush.’ Now Precious was holding various lipsticks against Layla’s skin. She settled on a wine-red one. ‘That’s just about the other side of the colour spectrum to your eyes, which makes it perfect.’

She painted the lipstick on with another brush, made Layla bite down on a tissue, reapplied it. Then she fluffed up Layla’s hair all around her face. Finally she stood behind her, grasped her shoulders, and studied her in the mirror.

‘OK. All done. What do you think?’

Layla looked in the mirror. Her mother was staring back at her.

‘ Holy shit ! ’ she said, spooked.

Precious was grinning. ‘Layla Carter,’ she said in measured tones, ‘you’re beautiful.’

‘Jesus H. Christ in a sidecar.’

‘Stunning, yes? But we’ve still got work to do.’

‘Like what?’

‘I’m going to teach you how to achieve the same effect. What did it take, five minutes? That’s all. Then we’ll go and get you some make-up of your own, and some brushes – you need good brushes, rollers for your hair, all that stuff.’

Layla was still staring at her reflection, amazed.

‘Oh, and we’ll sort your hands out. Get them neatened up.’

‘OK,’ said Layla, dazed.

‘And then of course, we sort out your clothes.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with my clothes.’

‘You must be bloody well joking!’

That night Layla was hovering by her bedroom door when Kyle left his post in the monitor room. Junior wouldn’t be up here for a good five minutes, and even then he’d make a detour to the kitchen first: she’d timed his comings and goings. She hurried along the hall, stepped into the monitor room, and sat down in Kyle’s vacated – still warm – chair. There was an emergency buzzer on the desk, so that whoever was manning the monitors could summon assistance from the bouncers at the front of the club. It was a neat arrangement.

Layla scanned the black-and-white monitors. One of them showed an empty room with a small dark silk banquette and an area big enough for a private dance. The second showed an embarrassed young man with a happy grin on his face watching Destiny dance in a pale-coloured thong and nothing else. The third monitor showed Precious and another middle-aged man, his arms folded, watching her gyrate in front of him. He had a look about him as if he’d been hypnotized.

Layla could see why he was so enthralled. Precious, devoid of clothing, was performing a sinuous dance, hips moving hypnotically, her breasts swaying.

‘Oh my God,’ murmured Layla, fascinated.

Precious was so comfortable in her skin that for a moment Layla didn’t realize that she was absolutely stark-bollock nude. But she was. Her bush was shaved, revealing everything. Her hair kept playing peek-a-boo with her breasts. Layla could only stare, transfixed. She had never seen anything so completely seductive in her entire life.