Ginger held tightly onto her takeaway coffee cup and went for nonchalant. It seemed to be the best attitude to strike as she and most of the paper’s magazine team stood outside the glass conference room in the Sunday News office and watched the features editor, Carla Mattheson, flick back her chestnut hair, lick her already heavily glossed lips and swivel in her chair. She wore a short flirty skirt the wrong side of decent and with every move of those long, bare legs, it was sliding further and further up. This carry-on did not seem to bother either the editor or Zac, who both sat on the couch near Carla and appeared transfixed.
Up until her recent, thrilling and entirely out-of-the-blue appointment to the Sunday News a mere week ago, Ginger had never had much to do with Carla, but she was beginning to see why Paula hated her.
Paula called her a ho, and Ginger loathed name-calling and especially women slut-shaming other women. But after a week in the Sunday News on the magazine team, it was obvious that Carla used her sex appeal as just another bargaining tool in her climb to the top – plus, and this was the worst bit, she appeared to view fellow women reporters as competition to be trampled on.
If the teenage readers of Girlfriend wrote in and said: my boss treats all women like crap and sucks up to the men, Girlfriend would have some sage advice about how sisters needed to help each other, but that message would not cut it in this job.
Ginger now had to work with Carla and Carla had, in one short week, made it plain that nobody on her staff was her friend. They were all her competitors.
She never flirted with the guys on the features team because she didn’t see them as a threat to her plan for world domination.
But for the women reporters, she made life hell. A subtle hell that would be damned difficult to explain out loud, but still hell.
‘I don’t understand her,’ Ginger said to Paula after a couple of days, when they’d both managed to sneak off for a ten-minute sandwich. ‘It’s not as if any of us are any threat to her.’
‘And still here we are, talking about how horrible she is,’ said Paula, who’d been assigned to the paper’s news department in part of Zac Tyson’s reorganisation of the company. ‘It’s simple: you’re women, so you could be. It’s like that old Highlander series – there can be only one. If there’s only one woman at the top in the News, it’s going to be Mattheson, and the rest of you will have spiked heel marks all over your bodies from being trampled on.’
‘What about feminism?’ Ginger demanded.
‘To her, that was a course in women’s studies and politics in college,’ Paula said. ‘This is the real world, Ginger, where women like Carla don’t burn bras but buy really good plunge ones when they want to go in and ask for a raise. This is sexual politics at the very dirty coalface. Instead of changing the game, Carla plays the old game.’
‘Someone should complain,’ Ginger said and earned herself a pitying look from Paula.
‘Are you kidding? You see what happens when women in big London City jobs complain about bullying or sexism? Do they get a medal? No, they might get some payoff money but only after years of hell, two weeks of pain in court where they’re pilloried and they will never work in the industry again. Complain at your peril.’
‘How did I ever think being part of the Sunday News team would be a good career move?’ said Ginger miserably.
‘You’re a dreamer,’ Paula said. ‘I’m a dreamer. I keep giving Mr Zac Hotness the eye but he ignores me. Guess if Carla’s heating his bed, his brain cells are too frazzled to notice anything. She probably uses handcuffs.’
They both laughed.
‘Do you think she’s the type to lock him up, leave him, then head off to the shops for an hour, just to show him who’s boss?’ Ginger asked.
‘Totally.’
The conversation had made Ginger feel even more disillusioned with her own sex.
Between Liza, Charlene and now, Carla Mattheson, it appeared as if sisterhood and feminism were just slogans for T-shirts and not for real life.
Finally, fifteen minutes after she’d summoned the team to the conference room, Carla stopped the flirt show and stood up: tall, sinuous, looking superbly good in her cobalt blue skirt, and a pale blue jersey blouse that had, yup, Paula was right, the definite outline of something that was undoubtedly called ‘Ultra-Plunge – Defibrillator for stunned males costs extra’.
Ginger knew she would never have that aura of potent sexuality around her, but if she did, she hoped she’d use it for good instead of evil.
The editor came past the team and said hello to a few of them. Not to Ginger. She’d met him four times but he probably couldn’t recognise her in a police line-up.
Good move, Ginger, she told herself sourly. The ‘all-black to hide your extra weight’ look is really working out for you.
Then came Zac, who said hello, by name, to everyone.
‘Ginger, how are you doing?’ he said.
‘Great, Mr Tyson,’ she said, channelling cool professionalism.
‘It’s Zac,’ he said, smiling, and if her heart wasn’t so bruised, it would have skipped a beat. Paula was right: he was sizzling hot.
But this was his patented charm offensive. Ginger had watched him use it on Carla moments before. And now Carla was watching her, with an arched eyebrow.
Ginger gave him a nod and turned to the front of the room as the meeting started.
It quickly turned into a bloodbath.
Nothing anyone had written was any good and all the ideas they’d come up with were hopeless – according to Carla.
A sick four-year-old with a temperature of 100 degrees had stopped one reporter from making a ten-minute interview slot with a singer who was in town promoting a forthcoming gig.
‘Nobody else could go?’ asked Carla in her silky-smooth voice, the voice of the class bully waiting to pounce.
Paula was right: it would be impossible to nail her for any sort of bullying as it was all so subtly done.
‘It happened so quickly . . .’ said the reporter, a harried mother-of-two.
‘Your husband . . .?’
‘Works too.’
‘But he didn’t give up a vital interview to get to the school and get your kid?’
Carla’s tone made it clear that having children was for morons and that women with progeny either needed house husbands or to stay home and not interfere with her work.
Nobody in news had tracked down Callie Reynolds, who was hiding while her husband was on the run from the police for his part in the fraud of the century. Millions were gone, millions.
‘Let’s do a piece on women betrayed by men,’ Carla said, eyes glittering. ‘You.’ She pointed at Fiona, recently transferred over from news, ‘You do it. Do you think she was in on it?’ Carla went on, daring them to answer back. ‘She looked like a rich bitch.’
‘She didn’t when the photographers cornered her outside her friend’s house,’ said Ginger. She’d felt sorry for the woman – she’d looked haunted, betrayed. Ginger knew that look all too well.
Carla’s eyes narrowed. Trouble ahead for me, Ginger thought.
The health and fitness writer was sick for the third week running.
‘So much for the benefits of a vegan diet,’ said Carla bitchily.
Worse, the health and fitness reporter’s job included editing and correcting the many spelling mistakes in the weekly column of a well-known fitness guru.
It had gone into the paper unedited because the subeditors had been rushing and assumed it had been checked. Basic grammar, not to mention correct use of the possessive case, were not among the strong points of the fitness guru and the online teasing for the paper’s errors had been severe.
Everyone looked down at the conference table. Co-ordinating this stuff was Carla’s job or the deputy feature editor’s job, but she didn’t want a deputy features editor, in case anyone pulled an Et tu, Brute on her.
‘You.’ Carla pointed at Ginger. Trouble had arrived. ‘You take over until our dear health and fitness reporter is back with the living. We’ve run out of articles. Cobble together some diet for next week – phone the publishers and find out what diet books they’re trying to flog right now. I’ll need it by tomorrow morning.’
Ginger’s heart soared. An actual, proper feature! Never mind that this was hardly her expert area.
‘And fitness. Get me something new.’ Carla stared at her, beautifully made-up eyes almost evil. ‘A new series, that’s it! You try the regime out. Get photos. How to get fit – my journey, that type of thing. We’re fine for next week, but starting the week after, I’m thinking of a four-week special. Anyone else want to join in? Shots of the entire team in bikinis – the bikini diet and regime: our team try them all out.’
Ginger shook. Getting to write a feature was amazing. A bikini shoot was utterly horrifying.
‘I can’t do that,’ she blurted out.
‘Oh come on,’ said Carla slyly. ‘It’ll be fun. Some sessions with a personal trainer – you’ll get the full treatment for free. Most people would kill for that. I’m thinking CrossFit for you. I know of a nice place – I’d like free membership there. This should nail it. I’ll email you the number. The guy who owns it is very fit, he might train you himself.’
CrossFit! Personal training? Ginger was appalled. And her in a bikini?
But Carla outstared Ginger and Ginger, who knew that Carla was too clever to be caught out with any sort of blatant discrimination, felt the flush of embarrassment flood her like fire.
Within minutes, the beauty reporter, a sweet brunette called Jodie Fawcett – who had neck and shoulder problems – was assigned to try a 10K with help from a running club.
Fiona, a reporter who’d done a lot of news work and had recently transferred into features, was sent to try Krav Maga, a form of self-defence used by the Israeli army.
‘I know some already,’ Fiona said flatly, the only person who dared to stand up to Carla. ‘I did a week with the Army on manoeuvres on the Border.’
‘You’ll find it easy, then,’ said Carla, who stared at Ginger speculatively. ‘And don’t forget the photo shoot for all of you – before and after. Punters love that.’
By Wednesday, male reporters and female non-journalistic staff were telling Ginger she was lucky to get such a plum assignment.
‘A month of some guy helping you with CrossFit,’ sighed Sinead, the deputy editor’s assistant, who had a tiny under-desk fridge outside the deputy editor’s office in which she kept cottage cheese, skimmed milk and her emergency dark chocolate rations. ‘I’ll bet you lose inches.’
Ginger, who was finding it very difficult to keep her tough and funny schtick going when she wanted to run home and hide under her bed, laughed.
‘To paraphrase the great Joan Rivers – if God had planned for women to do any jumping jacks or squats with kettlebells, he’d have stuck diamonds on the floor.’
‘Ginger, you are so funny,’ said Sinead. ‘I’ll swap with you!’
‘Oh everyone wants to swap, but hey, anything for a story,’ said Ginger, wondering how she was going to do this.
Carla had picked her most vulnerable spot and stuck a poisoned dart into it. But why? Ginger was no threat to her. Ginger had only just started working for the Sunday News, had transferred from a free-sheet newspaper at that. She would hardly pose a threat to the powerful magazine editor in any way.
The only people not congratulating her were the features team who’d been in the conference room with her.
In the break room, Jodie, the young beauty columnist, who looked wan despite many columns on how to appear dewy and sun-kissed, sidled up to Ginger and muttered: ‘Don’t let Carla get to you. She hates competition. It’s easier to just do what she says and take the heat. Then, she leaves you alone. If you fight her, she’ll get you dumped from her team, and with all the redundancies, you’ll be gone. You’re on contract, right?’
‘Yeah,’ said Ginger, thinking of her mortgage, which had been a nightmare to organise given the fact that she was only on contract.
‘Think of that and the fact that the features editorship won’t hold her for long. Mattheson’s got her heart set on being deputy editor, although the poor sucker currently in the job has no idea he’s in such danger. She’s probably grinding up glass to put in his morning coffee. Nobody would ever know.’
They laughed a little at that, then Jodie grew morose. ‘I have whiplash, I take pain meds yet I have to try running even though my physio says the most I can do for the next while is light exercise. But I have to give it a go or I’m toast.’
Ginger grabbed the younger girl’s arm and squeezed.
‘Talk anytime,’ she said. ‘It’s worse if you keep it all in.’
‘Thanks, friend-slash-therapist!’
Ginger grinned. ‘That’s me.’
She phoned her sister-in-law, Zoe, that evening and blurted out the news.
‘The photo’s the afternoon after next – all of us in bikinis or sports clothes, revealing sports clothes. The before photos.’
Zoe almost growled down the phone. Ginger had explained that the chances of nailing her boss on any sort of harassment/bullying/discrimination charges would be impossible.
‘And don’t tell me to try. I want this job.’
‘There are laws against this sort of thing, Ginger,’ said Zoe, who worked in an ordinary office and couldn’t quite imagine the subtlety of machismo and discrimination in some work arenas.
‘Yes and they don’t really work in my industry.’
‘I don’t believe that, Ginger. You have to stand up for yourself—’ began Zoe.
‘I will,’ said Ginger calmly. Why did nobody think she couldn’t stand up for herself? Probably because Liza had stomped on her for so long, nobody believed she had any backbone left.
‘I’m going to do this,’ she added. Despite the sheer fear in her belly. ‘Your sister, Zoe, still works in styling, right? Do you think she could help . . .? Do something to fix me up in nice workout clothes or anything?’
‘Yes!’ shrieked Zoe. ‘Brilliant idea. I’ll phone her and she’ll ring you in fifteen, promise. But why are you doing it, hon?’
Ginger laughed. ‘I thought it was a good idea, time for me to lose a few pounds,’ she said. This, suddenly, was a challenge that would push her to the limit.
Liza had said she whined about not losing weight. What if Liza was right? And what if she was OK really in her own skin but had never been brave enough to step outside in that skin? This was the time to test it all out.
Carla might think she’d handed Ginger a hand grenade but Ginger would lob it right back at her.
Lulu, gorgeous like Zoe but a total fashion-head who made her living styling weird shoots in forests where ethereal girls wore papier mâché antlers on their heads or tame foxes in their arms and drifted around in couture, was on the phone in ten minutes.
‘Sounds like you’ve got a situation, Ginger.’
In those ten minutes, Ginger had completely changed her mind. She’d stared at herself in the mirror and had then misery-downed half a glass of wine and eaten half a packet of chocolate biscuits. She now no longer saw any way out but to give in her notice. She, size eighteen on a good day, eighteen-with-a-safety-pin on a bad one, could not pose in workout gear or swimwear in the magazine and ever hold up her head again. The humiliation would be too great. Who cared about actual working out. The photographs would be agony. The thought of people seeing it in the newspaper . . .
‘Lulu, I’m size eighteen. I have never even owned a bikini. I must have been nuts to think you could help—’
‘Stop right there, honey chile,’ said Lulu, who apparently came over all Louisiana when she was in styling mode. ‘If this was hopeless, we’d get an employment lawyer onto it. I know a really cute one.’ She sighed. ‘Didn’t last. He was very strait-laced.’
She got back on topic. ‘But as it’s not hopeless, we have a canvas, but it needs work. Hair, make-up, a sculpting tan and gym clothes that make you look hot. I really need to see the brief your boss has given you so I know what we’re aiming for.’
‘No brief unless the photographer has it. The aim is ritual humiliation. Plus, I really hoped you’d mention some fat-sucking machine that will make me half the size,’ said Ginger.
‘The only machine we need is the one to suck your body anxiety out of your brain,’ Lulu replied. ‘Plus-sized models are the hottest thing ever now. But even the skinny models get as anxious as you. Womankind has been told that no matter what shape they are, it’s the wrong shape. That’s why beautiful seventeen-year-olds are in anorexia units thinking they’re ugly. Until we take over the world, we have to get clever. Here’s the plan.’
They met at lunchtime the next day. Lulu, whom Ginger had met at Mick and Zoe’s wedding, was as tall as Ginger, raven-haired and dressed in something very cutting edge in shades of grey. She was also greyhound-thin.
Lulu brought Ginger into a small lingerie shop where she greeted the owner with a big hug.
‘Ginger, this is Eugenia, and she can tell you your bra size from fifty paces.’
‘Forty E,’ said Eugenia, raising an eyebrow.
‘Forty-two double E,’ said Ginger, feeling embarrassed.
‘Honey, you’re wearing the wrong size,’ Eugenia said.
‘Did the stuff arrive?’ Lulu asked
‘Two boxes. I called in the best from all over the place.’
Lulu rubbed her hands together. ‘Let’s get you into the cubicle. This is going to be fun.’
The last time Ginger had been in a clothes cubicle, it had been trying on bridesmaids’ dresses like tents with Charlene and Liza giggling outside, admiring Charlene in a dress Ginger’s leg wouldn’t have fitted in. She still hadn’t heard from Liza – not a single call or text. Her plan to do this to show Liza that she didn’t whine felt like a very far-off plan indeed.
She stood inside for a moment, unwilling to strip off. Then she sat down on the small leather-look cream pouffe and started to cry.
In an instant, Lulu was in with her.
‘I can’t do this, Lulu,’ Ginger said. ‘I will feel so exposed. It will be just like the wedding all over again, but this time, in work. In photos. Photos everyone can see. I dress to hide myself, I can’t do this.’
‘You don’t have to do it,’ Lulu said, hugging her until the sobs subsided. ‘Nobody says you can’t file a discrimination complaint. The entire management can’t think the sun shines out of that woman’s butt.’
‘They do,’ said Ginger. ‘I’m new to her team, still on contract, totally replaceable.’
‘Yet she’s threatened by you,’ said Lulu, ‘or else she wouldn’t be trying to break everyone on her team. Ever wonder about that? You got more power than you think, girl: you need to find it. Honey, we’ve got the tools and under that tent of black, I think you’ve got the materials. Sexy comes in all sizes. I try not to call any fellow woman a bitch, but if the cap fits . . . so let’s show the bitch that you’re coming up fighting.’
‘It’s not easy for me,’ Ginger said tearfully. ‘I’m . . . I’m fat. People aren’t allowed to be fat. I hate it, but other people seem to hate it more.’ The tears poured out of her and she blindly reached for tissues.
Lulu handed her one. ‘Come on, girl. Let’s try this and if you hate it all, then you walk. Deal?’
‘But . . .’ Ginger looked up at all the swimsuits Eugenia was hanging up on the rail. ‘I thought we could try workout gear – like sweatpants with a long T-shirt or something . . .?’
‘I got a brief from your photographic department. It’s a swimsuit shoot. Swimwear only.’ She patted Ginger comfortingly. ‘I won’t let you do it if you don’t look amazing, I promise.’
The photography studio in the Sunday News was an airy, light-filled area with dressing rooms, a shower and proper hair and make-up stations. The photographer was surprised to see a team, led by Lulu, arriving with a hair and make-up person and an abashed Ginger bringing up the rear.
‘Photos are not till half-two,’ he said and looked at his watch. ‘That’s in over three hours.’
‘Sweetie, we need time,’ said Lulu, wearing something even more scarily high fashion today, dark hair dried poker-straight so her fringe sat Cleopatra-style over vivid green eyes outlined with don’t-fuck-with-me eyeliner that matched her metallic charcoal eyeshadow. ‘We’ve got hair, make-up and I’m styling. If a reporter has to be a model, we need the professionals,’ she said, eyeballing him.
‘Me, I love professionals,’ he said, throwing a leather jacket on. ‘Jack Hanratty. See you later. I’m off to lunch.’
Ginger had never had her auburn mane curled with rollers into a sexy tumble of curls. She liked make-up, but the things the make-up artist did with her skin and her eyes made her look exotic: huge eyes outlined into mysterious sexiness, and her face contoured properly so she really didn’t recognise herself. Her lips were so glossed, she was sure they could be seen from space. Best of all was the tan – a rich bronze sprayed on by someone Lulu knew who’d spent forty-five minutes the night before contouring Ginger’s body so that she would not have believed it was her in front of the mirror. It had been worth the forty-five minutes in the tanning booth, holding her boobs up, shivering as the cold spray hit her skin.
‘No bikinis,’ said Lulu and had found a sexy purple swimsuit with plenty of hold that came with a small sarong and, when worn with ludicrously high nude platform sandals, transformed Ginger into a 1950s pin-up with a beautiful waist, and long, long legs.
‘Why are you covering these up?’ said Lulu. ‘You have the most amazing legs and what a waist. Why do you tent yourself?’
‘My waist is only there because this swimsuit has a tourniquet in the middle section made of industrial rubber,’ bleated Ginger, ‘and I’m not usually this colour.’
‘Nobody is this colour,’ Lulu said. ‘Humans do not come in molten bronze with carefully applied highlighter. Well, except for Dwayne Johnson. A little old, obvs, but still, you would, right?
‘Thing is, Ginger, if you can learn to love yourself with tan on, you might learn to love yourself without it.’
They practised posing with Lulu directing her, until Lulu made her face a full-length mirror and go through it all again.
‘I can’t look at me!’ Ginger said in embarrassment.
‘That’s what the models do. Pose and learn. Figure out your angles. You have a great shape. Total hourglass. That’s rare.’
Ginger had spent years avoiding herself in mirrors, but with Lulu barking directions, she had no option but to comply.
By two, the photographer was back, as were Jodie, the beauty editor, who had clearly had her make-up professionally done, and Fiona, the Krav Maga girl, who favoured purple lipstick and hair with blue tips, neither of which looked to have been touched up lately.
‘You decent, Reilly?’ asked Fiona as she barged into the changing room where Ginger’s crew were tidying up.
Ginger herself stood with her back to the mirror, breathing deeply with her eyes closed. She had to practise her stance a few more times, but she was getting so nervous . . .
‘Fuck,’ said Fiona. ‘Ginger, you look freakin’ amazing.’
Jodie, now clad in a bikini that showed off her slender, porcelain skinned-body and long brunette hair, hurried in and stopped dead. Her mouth fell open and she didn’t say anything for a beat. ‘You’re gorgeous, Ginger,’ she said. ‘Your hair, your make-up, your body . . .’
She went over to Ginger and began examining her with delight, testing the auburn curls styled into fat, glossy waves. ‘Your make-up is incredible and this tan – the contouring. And the swimsuit . . . Why do you always wear trousers? Those legs!’
‘Hidden masterpieces,’ said Lulu. ‘I’m Lulu, Ginger’s friend. Swimsuit shots need work for non-professionals.’
‘Screw that,’ said Fiona, gesturing down at her outfit, an old and much-washed jungle camo T-shirt and leggings. ‘This is my look. I’m not wearing a swimsuit for bloody Mattheson. You don’t take down a guy twice your size using an Israeli martial art wearing a bikini and if she doesn’t like it, she can shove it.’
Jodie giggled.
‘You ladies ready for this?’ said a slightly bored voice outside.
Lulu went out and the women heard conversation.
Moments later, Lulu came in, grinning.
‘Jack’s ready to go. I’ve told him this will take time. We want the nice lighting, mood music and another photographic assistant to hold up the gold reflectors.’
Fiona smiled. ‘Nobody tells Jack what to do. He’ll probably put the fish-eye lens on for a laugh.’
Lulu gave her a shimmering, dangerous smile: ‘He’ll do what I’ll tell him and it won’t be using fish-eye lenses.’
The women came out and Jack, clearly either primed or slightly pushed around by the force of Lulu’s personality, was like a different man.
‘OK, instead of doing this as a speedy shot, let’s think Vanity Fair,’ he said, spending more time than was entirely necessary staring at Ginger. ‘Ginger, right? You look – different,’ he said, eyeing her in a way that made Ginger feel weirdly aware of her own body.
‘Yes,’ said Lulu, ‘my fault really. I advised her not to hit the newspaper staff with the full blast of her amazing sexuality when she started working there.’
Jack’s mouth fell open as he considered this.
In the background, Fiona broke out laughing.
‘I hear you,’ said Fiona, recovering. ‘I mean, that’s why I wear this sort of stuff. I don’t want to let the full blast – were they the words you used, Lulu? – the full blast of my sexuality out in case anyone in the office couldn’t cope with it. Us lesbians have to be careful with the full blast stuff.’
‘Exactly,’ agreed Lulu. ‘I’d probably be too attracted to you if you wore a bikini.’
‘Yeah,’ nodded Fiona. ‘Us girls, all we think about is sex, right?’
‘Right,’ Lulu agreed.
Jodie and Ginger bit their lips as they all watched Jack try to compute this.
‘We ought to stop tormenting him,’ Lulu whispered.
‘Nah,’ said Fiona. ‘It’s fun.’
‘Let’s get started,’ said Jack, definitely confused. This was not the way he had figured that this photo shoot would go. Carla Mattheson had told him it was a quick shot for the magazine of three female staff members who were going to do various things for the bikini diet. He had not expected one of them to turn up in combat clothes.
Nor had he expected another one of them, the big red-headed one he thought it was going to be hardest to get a good picture of, to turn up looking like something out of a 1940s movie. She looked incredible, like some pin-up, but a modern pin-up, with those amazing long legs.
He had always known Ginger was tall but she just seemed sort of big because of all those big dark long jackets she wore. He’d got the impression she was a large girl underneath it all, but hey, there was a lot of action under all those clothes.
‘Right,’ he said, realising he had been staring at her a bit too long. ‘Let’s set this up.’
Lulu wasn’t a stylist for nothing and before Jack knew it, she and his assistant were dragging out props from the cupboards, putting out a couple of cardboard palm trees, a few sun loungers, a little table and corny-looking plastic Martini glasses that might make it look as though the girls were on holiday somewhere.
‘You could always put in a cool background,’ she said, looking at him.
‘No budget,’ he said. ‘They won’t do it. This is what we are stuck with.’
‘OK then,’ she said, ‘you have to gold-light it up, it’s the only way we’re going to get that summer look for it.’
‘Perhaps when we are doing the individual shots,’ he said thoughtfully.
Lulu caught Ginger’s eye, saw the anguish in them. It was one thing to pose with the other girls but quite another to pose on her own.
‘No,’ she said, ‘group shots: that’s it. We are not doing this again, we are going to do some amazing group shots and we are going to look at them here and we are going to pick out a variety of ones which work.’
‘Hey,’ said Jack, ‘that’s not how I work. You can look at them on the computer but you don’t get to pick them.’
‘Sorry,’ said Lulu, ‘but I’m the stylist and I’m in charge of Ginger here. She no likee the picture, the picture no appearee in the paper.’
‘Yeah and that goes for me too,’ said Fiona. ‘No picture that I don’t like is going in, because I’m not letting Mattheson – or whatever sub she currently has under her thumb – decide what shot of me to put in.’
‘I agree completely,’ said Jodie nervously.
‘You can bully me all you want,’ said Jack, ‘but I just take the shots and I send up the ones that I think work.’
‘Yes,’ said Lulu, smiling, sort of an evil smile. ‘We all like that idea – but they’ll be the most amazing shots as chosen by us or no shoot.’
‘I’m not someone you can boss around, ‘said Jack. ‘I’m a journalist, honey, I’m in a union.’
‘Good for you, big boy,’ smiled Lulu. ‘We ready to rock and roll, or what?’
Ginger had never worked so hard in her life. It was exhausting: wearing the killer heels was exhausting, holding the poses that Lulu told her to hold was exhausting. She was in the middle for some reason. And beside her, Fiona couldn’t help bitching about how boring it all was and how much work she had to do.
‘But I guess I am getting to learn Krav Maga properly,’ she added. ‘I always wanted to do that. It’s worth looking like a moron in this shoot. What’s your thing, I forgot?’ she asked Ginger.
‘Personal trainer in CrossFit,’ said Ginger, sucking her waist in and giving a sultry look straight down the lens at Jack as directed by Lulu. ‘Haven’t met him yet. Monday.’ Ginger didn’t add that she was mildly sick at the thought. What if he wanted to weigh her? He would want to. She knew it.
‘Handy to get a few free personal workouts,’ shrugged Fiona. ‘That’s the problem of working in an office – it’s so sedentary. It’s good to kick-start yourself with some exercise.’
Ginger waited for the moment when she’d feel humiliated by this remark, but it didn’t come. Fiona didn’t mean it in any rude way, not the way Liza had meant it that horrible night at the wedding. Liza had implied that Ginger was just too lazy to do any exercise. Fiona was saying, ‘Yes, fitting in working out is hard but it’s possible.’
‘Do you work out much?’ she asked.
‘I used to do more,’ said Fiona, ‘but I moved in with my girlfriend and she’s got a little boy. We spend all our time with him, it’s fun.’
‘Wonderful,’ said Ginger. ‘How old is he?’
‘Three,’ Fiona’s eyes lit up. ‘He’s a beautiful little boy. I want to adopt him. That’s why I don’t let Carla Mattheson get to me,’ she said, ‘because I’ve got something else going on, another life. That’s the trick,’ she said, ignoring Jack yelling at them all to stop talking because he was going to start shooting again. ‘Work is just work. My dad always said that when you die you’ll never wish you had spent more time at the office.’
‘Will you stop talking,’ yelled Jack impatiently, ‘I want to get some pictures here before the entire day is over. At least models don’t talk.’
When the shoot was over, they all stood clustered around Jack’s computer looking at the digital images. There were hundreds, literally hundreds. But even Ginger – who simply couldn’t bear to look at herself at first – found that she looked great in the pictures. She wasn’t thin, but she was curvy and . . . sexy? Yes, she definitely looked sexy and she’d never looked sexy in her life. Not once, not ever.
‘You like?’ said Jack, looking up at her, a little glint in his eye.
‘Yes,’ she said, utterly straightforward.
‘You’re a strange one,’ he said. ‘It’s like you’re surprised or something.’
‘Just happy,’ said Lulu, intervening. ‘Ladies, why don’t you all get changed and I will go through the photos with Jack here,’ she put a firm hand on his shoulders. ‘We’ll nail it down to the ten that we like best.’
‘Ten?’ said Jack.
‘Ten,’ said Lulu,
‘I’ve got your number, babe, just wish you’d give me yours,’ muttered Jack.
‘You old smooth-talker,’ Lulu said, without an ounce of softness, ‘but when we have a deal on the pictures, we’ll discuss numbers. Until then, no dice.’
Between them, Lulu and Jack picked out ten pictures in which all three of the girls looked amazing.
‘Carla won’t like this – she was hoping for not-so-good shots to sell the “before” piece,’ Jack said.
‘But these look amazing and professional, which is what selling papers is all about,’ Lulu countered. ‘If she wants individual shots, you could crop them.’
‘Wish I could hire you here,’ said Jack, ‘you’re good at this.’
‘Did it for a living for a long time with a lot of famous photographers,’ said Lulu, ‘but I don’t have the time now.’
‘What do you do?’
‘Are we on a date?’ said Lulu.
‘Sorry, hands off, I know,’ said Jack, putting up his hands in mock surrender.
Jodie, Fiona and Ginger laughed. Even the studio assistant, who had been laboriously putting away all the equipment and whose arms were worn out by holding up giant circular metallic gold highlighters, managed a laugh.
‘I think our work here is done,’ said Lulu. ‘Get your stuff, ladies, we’re out of here.’
Ginger watched Jack hand Lulu a bit of paper which had to be his phone number, which Lulu smoothly took up, folded and slipped into her jeans pocket.
‘I’ll call you after I see the magazine,’ said Lulu. ‘We might like a couple of those shots,’ she added idly. ‘Ginger would like a few nice ones of her.’
‘No problem.’
Ginger managed to hold it together until they were out on the street and were separate from the other girls. Then she grabbed Lulu’s arm and squealed.
‘I never ever thought that could work! Lulu, you’re a magician! What you did was incredible. I have never liked a picture of me in my life.’
‘You just never had anyone to tell you how to do this sort of stuff,’ said Lulu simply. ‘You didn’t have a mum and mums help with this sort of stuff. Or else friends do, and you had a crappy friend. I helped Zoe and she helped me, and our mum – who is fabulous and bonkers and loves fashion – helped both of us, but you didn’t have that. Instead, by all accounts, you had a bitchy friend who made you feel like crap forever. You should be proud of how you look, Ginger. We’re all shaped differently and the world makes it hard for anyone who isn’t built for high fashion. For example, I have absolutely no tits whatsoever. I’m as flat as a pancake.’
‘You don’t look it,’ said Ginger, surprised.
‘Without the aid of major padding when required, I would be like a boy, but you’ve got to work with that. I wear things that show off the bone structure in my chest, and if I really want to make an impact in the boob way, I go for fakery. I’ve seen models who are so slim you can’t see them when they turn sideways and they have bodies issues, so Ginger, you have got to learn to be comfortable with your body and look after it. It’s the only one you’ve got.’
Ginger nodded fervently. Lulu was right.
They passed a shop with a plate-glass window and she caught sight of herself back in her street clothes. With the beautiful hair and make-up still on, she even felt as if she was walking differently, walking as if she finally believed she was a sexy woman.
She drew herself up and walked taller, not hunching, not trying to hide.
‘Yes,’ she said, more to herself than to Lulu. ‘It’s the only one I’ve got.’