Jilly Cooper - Octavia

‘You look a bit rough, baby. Been up against it, have you?’

‘I’ve been working hard.’

Andreas laughed.

‘You’re not cut out for a career, I always warned you. And Gareth Llewellyn’s ditched you; I knew he would. You must listen to Uncle Andreas in future.’

He seemed to revel in my utter desperation.

‘Never mind,’ he went on soothingly. ‘I’ll see you right. A few weeks of cushy living and you’ll soon get the ripe peachy look you had at Grayston.’

He ran his hands over me, lingeringly and feelingly, like a child trying to gauge the contents of a wrapped Christmas present. I gritted my teeth, trying to suppress the shudder of revulsion. He let go of me, and started to take the gold paper off the top of the champagne bottle. I watched his soft white hands in horror. God knows what they wouldn’t be doing to me later this evening.

I took a deep breath. ‘Can I have the cash now?’

Andreas shook his head. ‘Uh-uh. You get the cash when you deliver the goods, and they’d better be good.’

The top shot off the bottle into the rafters. Andreas filled a glass and handed it to me.

‘That should relax you,’ he said. ‘Make you feel nice and sexy.’

I took a belt of champagne, wondering if I was going to throw up.

‘Come in boys,’ shouted Andreas over the curtain, and we were joined by a couple of Andreas’ hood friends, flashing jewellery, sweating in waisted suits. They were the sort of guys who’d give even the Mafia nightmares.

‘Meet Mannie and Vic,’ said Andreas.

He must have brought them along to show me off. They were obviously disappointed I wasn’t as fantastic as Andreas had promised but were too wary of him to show it.

‘You wait till she’s been with me for a bit,’ purred Andreas, pinching my cheek. ‘You won’t recognize her.’

‘Fattening her up for Christmas, are you?’ said Mannie, and they all laughed.

Cy Markovitz, having finished with the black girl, wandered over and said he was almost ready. He was a tall, exhausted and melancholy man in his late forties, wearing army trousers, sneakers, and a khaki shirt drenched with sweat.

‘Come and meet Octavia,’ said Andreas, re-filling my glass. ‘She’s a bit nervous, first time she’s done anything like this, so treat her with care. Lovely isn’t she?’ he added, smoothing my hair back from my forehead.

Cy Markovitz nodded — he was, after all, being paid vast sums by Andreas — and said the camera would go up in smoke when it saw me.

‘You needn’t worry about the pix,’ he went on. ‘We’ll shoot through a soft-focus lens with the emphasis on the face and the direct gaze, very subdued and elegant.’

Oh God, what would Gareth say if he ever saw the results. I imagined him suddenly stumbling across them as he flicked through magazines on some foreign news-stand, his face hardening with disapproval, then shrugging his shoulders because he’d always known I was a bad lot. Was it really worth going through with it to help Xander? Was blood really thicker than water?

‘Ready when you are darlings,’ said Gabriel, popping his golden head round the curtain.

Andreas gave me a big smile. ‘Come on baby, you’ll enjoy it once we get started.’

I sat on the silver satin sheets, gazing in misery on the forest of potted plants. The studio seemed to be very full of people, all watching me with bored appraising eyes. I huddled even deeper into my dressing gown.

Cy Markovitz came over to me.

‘You’re not going to need that,’ he said gently.

As I took it off, even Markovitz caught his breath. Andreas’ thug friends were trying to preserve their poker faces, but their eyes were falling out.

‘I told you she was the nearest thing to a Vargas girl you were ever likely to see,’ said Andreas smugly.

Cy was gazing into the viewfinder. His assistant took some Polaroid pictures, peeling them off like a wet bikini. Andreas and Cy pored over them.

‘We’ll need the cold blower to stiffen her nipples,’ said Cy.

Andreas was determined to get his 112 lbs of flesh. Two agonizing hours later, I had been photographed in every conceivable position and garment, including a white fox fur with a string of pearls hanging over one breast, a soaking wet cheesecloth shirt, black stockings and a suspender belt, and nothing but an ostrich feather.

Gabriel, who was fast losing his cool, had been sent out to hire a Persian cat for me to cuddle, but after 30 seconds of popping flash bulbs the poor creature, having lacerated my stomach with its claws, wriggled out of my clutches and took refuge in the rafters.

Now I was stretched out on the satin sheets, wearing a sort of rucked up camisole top. Cy Markovitz clicked away, keeping up a running commentary.

‘Lovely, darling, just pull it down over your right shoulder, look straight into the camera. A bit more wind machine, Gabriel, please. Come on Octavia, baby, relax, and let me have it, shut your eyes, lick your lips and caress yourself.’

‘No,’ I whispered. ‘I won’t do that.’

Markovitz sighed, extracted the roll of film from the camera, licked the flap, sealed it up and, taking another roll from the assistant, replaced it.

‘Turn over,’ he said. ‘Bury your face in the sheets, stick your ass in the air, and freeze in that position.’

‘I can’t freeze when I’m absolutely baking,’ I snapped.

‘Hold it,’ said Markovitz, ‘hold it. That’s fan-bloody-tastic. Come over and have a look, Andreas.’

Andreas joined him. They conferred in low voices, then Andreas came and sat down on the bed beside me, filling up my glass.

‘You’re too uptight baby,’ he said. ‘You’re not coming across.’

‘How can I when you’re all here gawping at me?’

It was like the times when I was a child and my mother insisted on being present when the doctor examined me.

‘You’ll have to try.’ And once again I realized how much he was enjoying my utter humiliation, paying me back for all the times I’d put him down in the past. I lay back on the bed.

‘Open your legs a bit further, open wide, that’s lovely,’ said Cy, clicking away. Any moment he’d ask me to say ‘ah’. After this was all over, I supposed I could go out and throw myself over Westminster Bridge.

Gabriel was still whisking about, adjusting plants, his bronzed, hairless pectorals gleaming in the lights.

‘Why don’t we dress her up as a nun and let Angelica seduce her?’ he said. ‘Then it wouldn’t matter her looking so uptight.’

‘That’s an interesting thought,’ said Andreas.

There was a knock on the door. One of the assistants unlocked it, and let in a girl in a red dress with long black hair, and a pale, witchy, heavily made-up face. She looked furious and vaguely familiar. Perhaps miraculously she was going to take over from me.

‘Hi, Angelica,’ said Markovitz. ‘Go and get your clothes off. We’ll take a break for ten minutes.’

‘She was on the gatefold of Penetration this month,’ said one of Gabriel’s minions. ‘The blurb said Daddy was a regular soldier and that Angelica was reading philosophy at university, and spent the vacation pottering round ruins.’

‘You could hardly call Andreas a ruin,’ said Gabriel.

Andreas opened another bottle of champagne.

‘I’ve booked a table at Skindles’ tonight,’ he said, caressing my shoulder with a moist hand. ‘I thought in this heat it’d be nice to get out of London.’

He took a powder puff from one of Cy’s assistants, and carefully took the shine off my nose. Tears of utter despair stung my eyelids.

‘If you could find a horse,’ said the other of Gabriel’s minions, ‘she’d make a stunning Godiva.’