Authors: Aita Ighodaro
That first night at rehab, Tara lay in bed and closed her eyes, but sleep never came. She ached all over and cried softly into her pillow. Every so often an agonizing pain would sear through her
entire body and she would shout for a nurse to come and hold her, but that didn’t help. Eventually she stopped even calling for a nurse. She simply clamped her mouth shut and buried her head
under her duvet.
On the second night Tara placed her pillow over her face and pressed down, hard. She felt like her lungs would burst but each time she gasped for air her hands loosened. Finally she threw the
pillow on the floor and let tears roll down her face. Later she managed to sleep for around two hours. She slept for between one and two hours every night of the first week yet during the daytime
she would sleep for hours at a time and wake up disoriented and severely depressed. She just knew she would be unable to make it.
****
It had been a surreal week for Natalya and her booker Gaby. Once the press release had gone out that the glamorous Latvian with the quirky hairstyle had secured the Mirror
Mirror campaign, Natalya’s profile within and without the fashion industry shot up instantly. Gaby fielded countless calls from fashion houses dying to book the hot new model, the overnight
sensation. She didn’t bother to point out that Natalya had been struggling from go-see to go-see for years and had in fact already been seen and rejected by a number of the people enquiring
about her now. The fashion world was full of sheep. The only problem now was Natalya’s annoying reticence. The imbecile was turning down ridiculous sums of money and had said yes to only one
in ten offers. Gaby felt like shaking her at times.
She needn’t have worried. Playing hard to get never fails. The more offers Natalya turned down, the more in demand she became, and the more she ensured she would not become too quickly
overexposed. Natalya knew how to extend her own shelf-life.
The shoot was to take place in a large, eccentric house beside a sandy beach in Devon. Natalya was amazed to be given her own dressing room and a personal runner who delighted in bringing her
anything she wanted to eat or drink. In the outdoor shots, instead of freezing, scantily clad, in between photographic sessions, she was sent to warm up in her own mobile waiting room kitted out
with nibbles, champagne and cashmere wraps. She recognized the other models, Irma and Anastasia, from the fashion pages, but although they were also well known and therefore well treated, she was
undoubtedly the star. She invited them into her own fancy quarters so that they could while away time chatting about their homeland, Russia, which Natalya had visited a few times and whose language
she had taught herself.
‘Well ladies,
na zdorovie
!’ Natalya poured out three glasses of champagne. She was pleased that it was perfectly chilled.
‘Mmmn … Just what the doctor ordered,’ purred Irma, rolling each syllable in her deep, seductive, Russian-accented voice. She took a long sip and closed her eyes, savouring
the bubbles in her throat before emitting an indulgent moan. Anastasia and Natalya looked at each other and burst into a fit of giggles. Irma was known in the industry for being a notorious
man-eater, rumoured to have broken the hearts of several Hollywood actors and a minor royal.
‘These poor boys have no chance in the face of that!’ drawled Anastasia.
‘Exactly,’ agreed Natalya. ‘No wonder Lord Talveston developed a heart condition after dating you – and the poor guy was only in his thirties. You nearly gave me a
cardiac arrest right there.’
Irma pretended to slap Natalya, then finished the rest of her glass in one long sip.
‘Ah, it’s so good to finally meet you both,’ Natalya said. ‘I’ve heard a lot of great things about you.’ She looked from Irma’s ice-white hair and
translucently pale skin to Anastasia’s olive complexion and short black bob with its heavy asymmetric fringe. Both were even taller and thinner than Natalya, with razor-sharp cheekbones and
narrow, Slavic eyes. She adored the extraordinary, almost alien-like beauty of the other girls and revelled in the picture that the three of them together must create. She found herself thinking
once more, as she’d noticed with Tara, that it was surprisingly good fun to spend time with like-minded girlfriends.
‘Natalya, sweetie, you’re on again. Are you ready or you do you need some more time?’ called Mia, the creative director. Stark-raving mad, and an absolute genius, Mia had
worked in the industry for many years and was renowned for her collection of bizarre belts, which were extraordinary even in the world of high fashion. Today she had her live pet python wrapped
around her waist, pulling in an otherwise billowing silk dress.
‘You look incredible, Natalya honey!’ appraised Anouska, the shoot’s achingly cool stylist. She shook out her own scruffy black hair and re-pinned it in a towering beehive
while she admired her styling of Natalya.
Natalya stepped out of her trailer and on to the beach in a strapless golden taffeta dress rucked up around her calves to reveal a pair of green Hunter wellies in an intentional clash of styles.
Everybody stared, dumbstruck. She stood on tiptoes and jokingly sashayed down a mock catwalk, nose high in the ear, haughty hand on hip.
The rugged photographer and his young assistant began to sing, deep and slow, ‘Sheeee’s a model and she’s looooking good …’
Natalya collapsed, laughing, and then the photographer pressed PLAY on his retro portable stereo. In their secluded location they didn’t have to worry about the noise.
‘Dance for me, baby!’ he cried.
So Natalya jumped, skipped and leapt around outside, long legs everywhere, arms flailing, unselfconscious and gloriously happy.
The laughter didn’t stop once the cameras started rolling. Respected and admired for the first time within her profession, Natalya relaxed. She had nothing to prove. Instead, she forgot
herself, forgot about Claude, genuinely forgot about her faceless, fearsome father, and she became the mysterious beauty of the campaign. She took on a whole different persona and for a few hours
she was transported to the better world she’d always dreamed of.
‘OK, Natalya,’ directed the photographer, ‘your man is back home after three months away. You’re newlyweds and you’re totally in love. You see him at the other end
of the beach. Show me how much you want him.’ He kept clicking away as Natalya bounded, smiling, across the shore. ‘Oh yeah. Baby, you’re gorgeous!’ he shouted. ‘Oh
you’re beautiful, that’s it, give me another turn.’
Natalya threw herself into character. As she worked her way through the dozens of scenarios the photographer called out, she was struck with little flashes of inspiration. ‘Why don’t
I stand this way,’ she suggested, ‘so that the cut of the dress appears even more asymmetric?’ And then later, ‘If I look down this way then you can catch the shimmer of
gold on my eyelid, which is the exact same gold of the dress.’
As the winter sun faded from the sky, the shoot started to get more intense. ‘Now that it’s getting dark,’ said the photographer, ‘I want to really sum up the essence of
Blue Whisper. Give me your natural, sensual side. Oh yeah. Oh yeah, Natalya, you’re so fine! That’s it, now look at me, keep moving!’
Natalya threw herself on the ground, rolling in the sand as she gazed straight up at the camera, an expression of pure bliss on her face. Nobody spoke.
‘That’s it,’ said the photographer. ‘That’s the money shot. That’s gonna set a million women’s hearts alight.’
They didn’t wrap up until 10 p.m., after which everybody enjoyed a light fresh fish and salad dinner, huddled together at their cosy beach-house hotel.
The next day the gaiety started all over again at 9 a.m. and after two hours of hair and make-up the photographer began, once again, to capture the splendour of the models and their
surroundings. It was a shorter day of mainly group shots this time. The three girls pretended they were old friends – who just happened to be exceptionally good-looking – strolling
along the golden sandy beach. They laughed and gossiped and fooled around, playing tricks on each other, doing cartwheels and giving each other piggybacks. The scenarios were contrived but the
rapport between the girls and the wider team was genuine. As the final stunning shots were achieved, Natalya felt a wave of bittersweet happiness.
At the end of the day, a driver chauffeured the three models back to their respective homes in London. It was with heartache that Natalya parted from Irma and Anastasia. For two days they had
shared in the same fantasy scenarios, and for those two days they’d believed in them. Now she was back in the real world. The girls swapped phone numbers and vowed to meet up for drinks,
although each quietly suspected their drinks date would never materialize. It didn’t matter though. They had shared a wonderful experience, which Natalya could add to her portfolio of
memories. She hoped that one day the joyful memories in her life would outnumber the sad ones.
Bathos. That was the first word Natalya learnt in London just for herself. From the sublime to the ridiculous. The last two days had been sublime, but, as she opened the door to find Claude
already home and fiddling with a new security gizmo in a pair of yellow silk pyjamas, she knew that the euphoria was to be short-lived.
‘Hello, my child. Take a seat.’ Claude didn’t crush her against his bulk and smother her with kisses as usual.
‘Hello, bébé, welcome home. I was just going to the bathroom.’
‘No. Sit down first.’
Natalya perched wearily on the edge of a chair.
‘You wait, Natalya,’ Claude ordered, snatching up his ringing phone and speaking, eerily quietly, into it.
‘I own that entire region, and I don’t like selling it now at a third of the price I paid only two years ago. But understand this. I can bring down governments just by uttering a
sentence.’
He snapped the phone shut and turned to Natalya. ‘I see you have been out and about. You have a lot of fun without me, ah?’
He couldn’t still be upset about that night with Tara? She rose from the chair and leaned in to kiss him, if only to shut him up.
‘No, baby. Not now.’ Claude grabbed the hand she had stretched out to embrace him with and held it with such force that she thought he might cut off the blood supply to her
fingers.
‘How do you explain this, baby?’ From his breast pocket he pulled out a magazine cutting. It showed Natalya and Sebastian Spectre deep in conversation at the Tringate Charity
Fundraiser. The picture had been cut out meticulously with a pair of scissors into a perfect rectangle.
‘You … you told me to go as your representative.’ She struggled to get the words out.
‘But I asked you to bring security to watch you. Did you do it? No. And I did not ask you to go half naked.’ He let the picture flutter to the floor.
‘You will stay in this house for a week.’
‘What? I don’t understand.’
‘I said, you are not allowed to leave this place for a week. It is your punishment. Do not disobey me again.’ He roared the last sentence so loudly that a cluster of staff gathered
at the door to see what the commotion was.
‘I’m sorry,’ Natalya breathed.
He turned and left the room without a backward glance.
‘Claude, I’m so sorry,’ Natalya wailed after him.
Natalya waited on the magnificent bed for an hour, but still he did not come. She was wearing the girlie pink panties Claude liked her in. She had to make it up to him. She just had to. How
could she ruin everything at this stage, when she was in the home stretch? If she could make amends then she was still in with a chance of marrying the man. Yes, she was making modelling money now
but that was negligible beside Claude’s mountain-moving fortune.
Finally she heard the beep of the lift, signifying its arrival on the first floor, followed by heavy, lethargic steps coming towards the bedroom. Her throat was dry and her head throbbed with
anxiety. Claude stood for a moment in the arched doorway.
‘I’m so sorry, Claude. I should not hef gone against your wishes. I will never do so again.’
Claude entered the room and sat heavily on the bed. Then he gathered Natalya in his arms and squeezed her body tightly. He closed his eyes and lowered his face to her neck. He inhaled deeply,
breathing in her scent, his nostrils flaring as he did so. Then he kissed her neck and her cheek, her eyes and her nose and her mouth, all the while murmuring ‘My dear, dear Natalya’,
over and over again. ‘You are so dear to me. I am only making you do this so that you will understand what you have done.’
Natalya cried tears of relief. He loved her so. That’s why he was possessive and controlling; because he loved her to the point of barbarity. And his work was so stressful –
particularly now when he had just lost a chunk of money. Wasn’t that what he’d said? But he’d make it all back on the Argentine deal. Claude was a genius and his talent was
finance. All geniuses are crazy – capricious, fanatical – abnormal by their very definition.
‘Promise you will never disobey me again?’
‘I promise.’
And you will give up this … modelling?’
‘I promise. Anything.’
They fell into horizontal positions on the bed, still entwined, and lay like that until Claude dozed off. At which point Natalya opened her eyes, removed his shoes and tucked him into bed before
sliding herself back into his arms and falling into a troubled slumber.
****
Down the road, Reza had just returned from a rare walk around the block. Shunning all of his cars, he had taken advantage of the crisp winter air to get some exercise and clear
his head so that he could rethink some trading strategies. He decided to pick up a copy of the
FT
en route and have a read of his interview. On his way out of the late-night newsagent he
passed a dirty-looking man selling
The Big Issue
and stopped to buy a copy. He tossed the man a £50 note.
‘Keep the change,’ he said.
‘God bless you, sir. You’re a good man.’ The homeless vendor’s mouth hung open as he watched Reza retreat into the distance.