‘I can’t really see it for the lights,’ I replied, blinking. ‘Am I looking at you? Can you see me?’
‘I can see you just fine, Jess,’ he said. ‘Now bend your elbows down a bit and look up. And stick your arse in the air.’
When Agent Veronica told me I was going to have to start at the bottom, I didn’t realize that meant I would have to start with my actual backside. Reluctantly, I did as I was told. Making my arse centre of attention went against everything that I was, I was worried that if I kept it up there any longer, planets would be drawn into its orbit.
‘God, it’s not easy, is it?’ I said. My arms were already shaking with the effort of holding the pose and the air conditioning whipped around the exposed strip of skin between my shirt and my jeans. Hello builder’s bum, farewell dignity.
‘Now open your mouth,’ Ess said, coming ever closer. ‘And stop blinking, look right at the camera like you want to suck it.’
I jolted backwards, backside crashing to the ground. ‘Excuse me?’
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, can’t you be professional for one minute?’ He turned on his heel and threw the camera at a waiting 7. ‘I asked you to hold a pose for one minute and you’re giving me bleeding Naomi Campbell.’
‘No, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ I said, the words tumbling out of my mouth before I could think better of them. ‘I misunderstood. Where do you want me?’
‘On your knees, with your mouth open, waiting for me to come all over your face,’ he replied.
‘OK, yeah, sorry, no.’ I leapt to my feet, standing up and hitching my jeans back up over my backside, my face bright red. ‘That is totally not cool.’
Now I was standing up, and less than three feet away from him, it was clear that I was a good six inches taller than Ess, even in my Nikes. And with the righteous indignation jacking me up another foot, it felt as though I was towering over him.
‘You can’t say things like that to people,’ I said. My face was hot and my mouth was dry. ‘It’s not OK.’
‘It’s art, Jess,’ he said, hammering a fist into his hand as he spoke, his face even redder than mine. ‘It’s editorial. It’s a method. Didn’t you just say you were a real photographer?’
‘I am a real photographer,’ I stated as clear and loud as I could manage, while 7 skittered over to the computer, visibly shaking in his overpriced silver boots. ‘But I’m not going to sit there and let you talk to me like that. It’s horrible.’
‘It’s art,’ Ess repeated, not quite as sure of himself. ‘It’s my style. It’s why the magazine hired me and not you. It’s not like I’m really going to jizz all over your chops, is it? I’m just trying to make you look sexy – although clearly I’m fighting a losing battle on that front.’
‘It doesn’t feel sexy,’ I replied, flushed and upset. ‘It feels horrible. Why can’t 7 stand in for the lights? He’s exactly the same height as me and he’s probably skinnier. He looks more like a model than I do.’
Ess and 7 turned to look at each other and burst out laughing. True, hysterical, body-shaking guffaws.
‘Oh, Jess, he does, you’re right,’ Ess wiped away an actual tear. ‘That is priceless. I didn’t realize you were funny, I just thought you were shit.’
‘Do you think I might be able to set up some of the shots this afternoon?’ I asked. It had to be worth a try. ‘Or shadow you? Rather than, you know, just make the tea?’
The smile on his face evaporated in an instant.
‘Until you’re capable of making a drinkable brew, you’re on tea duty,’ he sniffed. ‘You don’t come within ten feet of my camera until I’ve decided you’re ready. Now go and get the kettle on before the model gets here.’
I wanted to argue. I wanted to tell him he was a complete arsehole who didn’t deserve his job, his assistant or the air that he breathed. But I didn’t. I was broke, I was bunking down with my best mate and I needed the job. So I did what millions of women had done before me: shut my mouth and went to put the kettle on.
Tea soothed all ills. And failing all else, I could always piss in the teapot. That would probably make me feel a bit better.
‘And then he said he was going to jizz …’ I paused for effect while Agent Veronica stared at her laptop. ‘On my face.’
She looked up for a moment, fag hanging out of the corner of her heavily lipsticked mouth, her glasses hiccupping across her nose as she sniffed before turning her attention back to her computer.
‘And?’
‘Well, he can’t say things like that to me!’ I exclaimed before squeezing my eyebrows together with concern. ‘Can he?’
‘He can say whatever he wants as long as people keep hiring him,’ she replied. ‘Can I ask you a question?’
‘Yes,’ I said, dropping my bag on the floor and my arse into a chair. I’d been too incensed to sit until now but her non-reaction had taken the rage right out of me.
‘What the fucking fuck is wrong with you?’
My arms froze in mid-air as I tightened my ponytail.
‘What’s wrong with me? Seriously?’
‘It’s got to be something,’ Agent Veronica said, stubbing out her cigarette and immediately lighting another. ‘Because I can’t think of a single reason why you’d be in here, complaining to me about working with one of the best fucking photographers in London.’
‘Because he said he wanted me to look at him as though he was going to jizz—’ I started.
‘Yeah, we covered that,’ Agent Veronica cut me off before I could finish. ‘It doesn’t get funnier the more you say it. Actually, it does, but I digress. What are you complaining about?’
I was stunned. In my old job, people were sent to HR for as much as showing an ankle to a chimney sweep and we worked in advertising, an industry that saw itself portrayed as a misogynistic, glass-ceilinged nightmare on Mad Men and thought, nope, that’s not sexist enough.
‘I felt uncomfortable,’ I said, trying not to choke on her cigarette smoke. ‘I didn’t like it.’
‘Oh, I am sorry,’ she replied, pressing her hands to her heart, a look of faux concern on her face. ‘My precious little baby angel! Did that bad man upset you? Did he hurt your feelings?’
I pouted. ‘Yes.’
‘There there.’ She reached across the table and patted me on the head. ‘Now calm down. Did he actually come on your actual face? No, he didn’t.’
‘That doesn’t matter,’ I muttered, beginning to feel stupid. And hungry. Terrible combo. ‘It shouldn’t matter. He shouldn’t be able to say things like that.’
‘No, he shouldn’t but welcome to the world.’ Veronica sat back in her chair, blinking through the fug of smoke around her, and shook her head. ‘Do you want to be a fucking photographer, Tess?’
Six weeks ago, when I left Milan and arrived home, bright and shiny, full of ambition and pasta, I had been fairly certain that I was one. Apparently I had been mistaken.
‘Yes,’ I said hesitantly.
‘Do you want to book actual fucking jobs that pay actual fucking money?’
‘Yes,’ I said quickly. That one I was sure about.
‘Then, I hate to be the one to tell you but there’s worse coming your way than Simon fucking Derrick telling you to get on your knees and make kissy faces at his tiny knob,’ she sighed. ‘You should have told him to whip it out and then pissed yourself laughing.’
‘Simon?’ I asked, the first smile I’d managed all day creeping onto my face. ‘His name is Simon?’
‘What? Did you really fucking well think his Mancunian mother took him down the swimming baths and shouted “What a fucking brilliant backstroke, Ess!”?’ She took a drag and blew it out hard. ‘I’ve had him on the books since he was taking pictures for the Argos catalogue. And they were shite.’
I would have killed to shoot the Argos catalogue.
‘And 7?’ I asked.
‘You mean Colin?’ Agent Veronica grabbed her mouse and began clicking manically. ‘Little shagweed. Went to
Eton, daddy owns half the internet. I hate that child.’
‘It’s harder than I thought it was going to be, that’s all,’ I admitted, scratching at a blob of white paint on the knee of my jeans.
‘There’s nothing easy about breaking through as a photographer, Brookes,’ she replied. ‘It takes some people years. Early starts, late finishes, working weekends, hours spent photoshopping some wanker’s sausage fingers so he doesn’t look like the smackhead that he is on the cover of a magazine. And that’s when you get good enough to pick up that sort of job. Have you considered that maybe it’s not for you?’
I felt my mouth fall open and immediately choked on Agent Veronica’s cigarette smoke.
‘It is for me!’ I said, my eyes stinging from the same smoke. The air in her office was so dense with thick white fug, it could have passed for the set of a Bananarama video. ‘It definitely is. I’ll put in the hours, I don’t care about hard work, I’ll do whatever it takes.’
‘And that’s a fandabidozi attitude, Pollyanna, but it doesn’t mean it’s going to happen for you.’ She stubbed out her cigarette and immediately lit another. ‘It might be time to admit that I was a bit bloody ambitious in taking you on. I don’t really work with assistants, Brookes. I’m an agent, not a charity. Do you think I’m at work on a Saturday afternoon for fun?’
‘But I won’t be assisting for long,’ I protested, swiping at my watering eyes, desperate to convince her to let me stay. ‘I’m going to be booking shoots really soon, I promise.’
‘That’s not your decision to make though, is it?’ she grimaced, eyes flickering back and forth over emails I couldn’t see. ‘I’ve had you on the books near enough six months and you’ve booked two jobs for the same person. I can’t babysit you for another six. There are only so many bleeding hours in a bleeding day and, no offence, but I need to concentrate on clients who are bringing in money.’
‘But I will,’ I said again. ‘I just need time.’
‘News-fucking-flash.’ Veronica spoke in between intense inhalations. ‘No one knows who you are, no one’s worked with you, no one gives two shits. I know it’s nearly Christmas but it’d be a bigger miracle than the virgin sodding birth for me to get you another job like the one you blagged at Gloss.’
I opened my mouth to speak but she cut me off with a stab of her cigarette.
‘And you’ve got a dubious reputation at best, depending on who you ask.’
A dubious reputation? I was clean as a whistle. I’d won the attendance prize in school every single year, apart from that one time when Amy made us bunk off to meet Justin Timberlake but that was hardly my fault. If I hadn’t gone, she would have been arrested. Instead of just being cautioned.
‘Word gets around in this industry,’ Agent Veronica said, seeing the confusion on my face. ‘And your cuntychops former flatmate has made it her business to make sure everyone has heard her side of the story.’
Oh, bollocks. Vanessa. Honestly, you steal someone’s job, their identity and let your best friend punch them in the tit once and you never hear the end of it.
‘That said, I like you, Brookes.’
She had a funny way of showing it.
‘I’d hate to see the way you talk to someone you didn’t like,’ I said behind a cough. ‘But thank you.’
‘You’ve got balls and I respect that,’ she went on, ignoring me as usual. Agent Veronica only really listened when you were saying something she wanted to hear. ‘But you’ve got to get used to throwing those fucking balls around a bit. Do you understand me?’
‘You want me to throw my balls around?’
‘You’re not going to get anywhere mincing around and fucking well sulking in corners.’ She pointed at me with her cigarette, causing a mini flurry of ash to fall into her keyboard. ‘And you’re not going to get anywhere crying to me about some arsehole asking you to polish his knob.’
‘That’s not going to be a regular occurrence, is it?’ I asked, genuinely at a loss. I came from a world where you worked hard and you got ahead. Or at least, I thought I did. It turned out I’d been very naïve. ‘I mean, tell me what to do and I’ll do it.’
‘That’s more like it.’ She sucked her second cigarette into nothing, grinding it out in her ashtray with what I supposed passed for a smile. ‘I want you to go home, put your big boy trousers on and go back on set tomorrow and kick Simon Derrick’s arse. That doesn’t mean you have to take his shit: that means you stand up for yourself and be amazing. Yes?’
‘What else can I do?’ I asked, trying to change the subject before she knocked me out with a single punch. ‘I’ll do anything, really, I’m not afraid of hard work.’
‘How about you take some fucking photos?’ she suggested. ‘Cocking revolutionary idea, I know. I can’t carry you much longer, Brookes, not when you’re not booking jobs. I don’t have the time to spend pulling assisting gigs that pay a pittance out of my wonderful arse.’
‘I’ll give that a try then,’ I said, grabbing my bag from the floor. It didn’t seem like the time to mention that she still took 15 per cent of that pittance. ‘Thanks for the advice, I won’t let you down.’
Before I could open the door, a tennis ball thwacked the wall, right next to my head. Bending down slowly, my heart in my mouth, I turned around to see Agent Veronica staring at me.
‘You dropped this?’ I picked up the ball and held it in the air, heart pounding.
She clapped for me to chuck it back. With a feeble underhand throw, I tossed it across the office, missing Veronica by a good two feet and knocking a massive stack of invoices off the desk.
‘I’m not really a thrower,’ I explained as they fluttered to the floor.
‘Do your research.’ She spoke to me without acknowledging the piles and piles of paper all over her floor. ‘Never have that camera out of your hands, shoot everyone and everything and make the most of every opportunity that comes your way. If you want this, you’re going to have to fight for it. It’s not going to be handed to you on a plate.’
‘I can fight,’ I replied, clenching my hands into fists. ‘I want this. I really want this.’
‘If you don’t book something in the next month, I’m going to have to drop you and then you’ll see how hard this really is. I want to see those balls, Brookes,’ she barked. ‘Show everyone who you are. You’re not Tess the shitty, sad office girl any more, you’re Tess Brookes, photographer, and a photographer should have something to say, should have a message. Show me what that is, who you are. Got it?’
‘Got it,’ I confirmed as I closed the door behind me. ‘Swing my balls around and show everyone who I am.’
It sounded easy. Only … I wasn’t entirely sure who I was any more.
CHAPTER THREE
‘And then Veronica said she was going to drop me if I didn’t start booking jobs,’ I said, shovelling salt and vinegar Pringles into my mouth by the handful. Damn Tesco and their seasonal three-for-two offers. Damn the woman on the checkout who asked if I was going to a party. There was absolutely nothing wrong with a twenty-seven-year-old woman eating two tubs of Pringles for dinner and saving one for dessert.
‘No way!’ Amy bellowed, the speakers on my laptop crackling with outrage during our daily Skype call. ‘She did not? She can’t do that, can she? She can’t fire you?’
‘She can,’ I replied, exhausted, glancing down at all the pieces of paper and empty Pringle tubs around me. ‘And she might. Looking at it from a business perspective, she probably should. She’s investing a lot of time in me and I’m not bringing much money in. My ROI is terrible and—’
Amy clapped her hands together and I snapped back to the camera.
‘Tess, please tell me you haven’t worked out the return on investment on yourself.’
‘No,’ I replied, slowly pushing my pad and calculator out of view of the webcam. ‘Of course not.’
‘She can’t drop you, you’re just starting out,’ she said, glancing away at her phone for a second. ‘Yo
u’re hardly going to be David Bailey overnight, are you? It’s not fair.’
‘It’s not about fair,’ I told her. ‘It’s about what’s best for business. Also, there’s a small chance I did think I would be David Bailey overnight. I suppose things don’t work out like that though, do they? I just don’t want her to give up on me.’
‘I don’t want you to give up on you,’ Amy corrected. ‘It’s a minor setback, that’s all. You’re killing it. You’re better than David Bailey. Fitter than him anyway … although I don’t think I’ve actually ever seen one of his photos. Or a photo of him. Is he fit?’
‘I appreciate that but it would be a massive setback,’ I said. ‘I haven’t got a clue what I’m doing, I wouldn’t even know where to start.’
But I was trying. The bed was covered in magazines and newspapers, every publication I could get my hands on lay open on top of the duvet, the name of every art director, picture desk and photo editor in London highlighted with neon-yellow marker pen. I was down but I was not out. Not yet.
‘You’ll work it out,’ Amy replied, her attention drifting. ‘You always do.’
‘Is everything all right? Do you need to go?’ I asked as she frowned at her phone again. ‘It’s OK if you do.’
‘Sorry.’ She threw her phone backwards onto the bed behind her and I winced as it bounced twice and then hit the floor. ‘I am listening, I’ve just got loads of emails coming in. This presentation is going to kill me.’
Amy was in New York to launch Al’s brand-new fashion line, AJB, and, from what I could gather, it was going to be quite the event.
‘If Kekipi doesn’t first,’ I replied. ‘How are you going to grow your hair to waterfall-plait length in the next three weeks?’
Amy, Paige and I had received emails in the middle of the night, detailing our mandatory bridesmaid prep regime. I loved that man like a brother, but there was no way on God’s green earth that I was booking myself in for a full body wax prior to my dress fitting. Yes, my legs needed shaving, but it wasn’t like I was rocking a full tache, I thought, absently stroking my face.