Cathy Kelly - Lessons in Heartbreak

‘More like seventy-five.’

‘Oh, that’s a much more reassuring statistic.’

‘Well, might as well be real,’ Carla said.

‘At least we’d be doing something we really believed in,’ Izzie added.

For the first month after the conversation, they’d done nothing but talk about the idea. Then they’d begun to lay the groundwork: talking to banks, talking to a small-business consultancy, and drawing up a business plan. So far, nobody was prepared to loan them the money, but as Carla said, all it took was one person to believe in them.

Then, two months ago, Izzie Silver had found love.

Love in the form of Joe Hansen. Love had obliterated everything else from her mind. And while Carla still talked about their own agency, Izzie’s heart was no longer in it, purely because there was no room in her heart for anything but Joe.

Love had grabbed her unexpectedly and nobody had been more shocked than Izzie.

‘If it all works out, we won’t be the backbone of Perfect-NY any more,’ Carla had said happily just before Izzie had set off for New Mexico. ‘Imagine, we’ll be the bosses…and the bookers, assistants, accountants and probably the women who’ll be mopping out the women’s room at night too, but, hey, we won’t care.’

‘No,’ agreed Izzie, thinking that she didn’t give a damn about anything because she was so miserable at having to fly to New Mexico and be away from Joe. Once, she’d have loved this chance to leave the office for a shoot in a far-flung location. Now, thanks to Joe, she hated the very idea.

‘Catalogue shoots are tough,’ Carla added. ‘Pity you weren’t sent to babysit an editorial shoot instead. ‘Cos it’s going to be hard work, honey.’

She was right, Izzie thought, standing in the New Mexico heat, watching the Perfect-NY model work.

Catalogue shoots were hard work. Hours of shooting clothes with no time to labour over things the way they could on magazine shoots. On magazine shoots, Izzie knew it could easily take a day to shoot six outfits – here, they might manage that in one morning. The models had to be ultra professional. The girl with the cheekbones, still-eyed and silent, was just that.

During the morning, Izzie had watched Tonya in an astonishing seven different outfits, transforming her silent watchful face into an all-American-girl-next-door smile each time. It was only when the cameras were finished, and Tonya’s face lapsed back into adolescent normality, that Izzie thought again and again how incredibly young she was.

Now it was lunchtime. The photographer and his two senior assistants were drinking coffee and gulping down the food brought in from outside; the other two assistants were hauling light reflectors and shifting huge lights.

No lunch for them.

The make-up and hair people were sitting outside, letting the sun dust their pedicured toes and gossiping happily about people they knew.

‘She insists she hasn’t had any cosmetic procedures done. Like, hello!! That’s so a lie. If the skin round her eyes get pulled up any further at the corners, she’ll be able to see sideways. And talk about botox schmotox. She never smiled much before, but now she’s like a wax dummy.’

‘Dummy? She wishes. Dummies were warm once – isn’t that how they melt the wax?’

‘You’re a scream!’

The woman from Zest’s enormous marketing department was loudly phoning her office.

‘It’s fabulous: we’re on target. We’ve the rest of the day here because the light’s so good that Ivan says we can shoot until at least six. Then tomorrow we’re going up to the pueblo…’

Izzie’s cell phone buzzed discreetly and she fumbled in her giant tote until she found it. She loved big bags that could hold her organiser, make-up, spare flat shoes, gum, emergency Hershey bars, water bottle, and flacon of her favourite perfume, Acqua di Parma. The minus was triumphantly holding up a panty liner by mistake when you were actually looking for a bit of note paper. How did they always manage to escape their packaging and stick themselves to inappropriate things? They never stuck to knickers as comprehensively as they did to things in her handbag.

‘How’s it goin’?’ asked Carla on a line so clear that she might be in the next room instead of thousands of miles away in their Manhattan office.

‘It’s all going fine,’ Izzie reassured her. ‘Nobody’s screamed at anybody yet, nobody’s threatened to walk off in a temper, and the shots are good.’

‘You practising magic to keep it all running smooth, girl?’ asked Carla.

‘Got my cauldron in my bag,’ replied Izzie, ‘and I’m ready with the eye of newt and the blood of a virgin.’

Carla laughed at the other end of the phone. ‘Not much virgin blood around if Ivan Meisner is the photographer.’

Ivan’s reputation preceded him. As a photographer he might be a genius who had W and Vogue squabbling over him, but the genius fairy hadn’t extended her wand as far as his personality.

Nobody watching him idly caressing his extra-long lens as he watched young models could be in any doubt that he considered himself a bit of a maestro in the sack as well as behind the Hasselblad.

‘He’s definitely got his eye on Tonya,’ Izzie said, ‘but don’t worry. I’m going to put a stop to his gallop.’

‘Can somebody tape that?’ Carla asked. ‘I’d like to see him when you’ve finished with him. Hard Copy would love film of Ivan having his lights punched out.’

Izzie laughed. Carla was one of the few people who knew that, at fourteen, Izzie Silver had had a reputation for being a tomboy with a punishing right hook. It wasn’t the sort of thing she’d want widely known – violence was only in fashion when it came to faking hard-edged shoots in graffiti-painted alleyways – but it still gave her an edge.

‘Don’t mess with the big Irish chick,’ was how some people put it. Izzie was more than able to stand up to anyone. Ruefully, she could see how that might put some men off. Before Joe, it had been six months since her last date. Not that she cared any more: you had to move on, right?

‘Carla, you’re just dying to see me hit someone, aren’t you?’ laughed Izzie now.

‘I know you can because of all those kickboxing classes,’ Carla retorted. ‘Sure, you’re the queen of glaring people into silence with the evil eye and telling them you don’t take any crap, but I’d still prefer to see you flatten someone one day. For fun. Pleeese…? I hate the way Ivan hits on young models.’

‘He won’t this time,’ Izzie said firmly. ‘He might try, but he won’t get anywhere. Since the company have actually spent hard cash to fly me here to make sure it all runs smoothly, I’m going to do my best. Any news at your end?’

‘No, it’s pretty quiet. Rosanna’s off sick so we’re a woman down. Lola spotted a gorgeous Mexican girl on the subway last night. She got a photo of her and gave the girl her card, but she thinks the kid’s scared she’s from immigration or something, so she may not call. Stunning, Lola says. Tall, with the most incredible skin and fabulous legs.’

‘Oh, I hope she phones,’ Izzie said. As bookers, they were always on the lookout for the next big thing in modelling. Despite the proliferation of television shows where gorgeous girls turned up hoping to be models, there were still scores of undiscovered beauties, and there was nothing worse than finding one and having her not believe the ‘I work for a model agency’ schtick.

‘Me too. Lola keeps glaring at her phone. It’s going to catch fire soon.’

‘No more news?’

‘Nah. Quiet. What’s the Zest marketing guy like? I heard he’s a looker.’