Sugar Secrets…& Ambition

by Mel Sparke

  After filling the kettle at a sink in a paint-peeling bathroom, Sonja came back into the studio and was pleased to hear that Tony had put on some music. At least it would create a little atmosphere. Even if Phil Collins wasn’t her choice of easy listening.

  “Like I say, check out some of the work,” he said above the track that was playing. “That’s the kind of top-quality jobs you’ll be doing soon! Big bucks, Sonja, big bucks!”

  Sonja smiled and turned her attention to the walls.

  Rows of attractive men and women with identikit toothy smiles beamed back at her.

  “That’s Erica,” said Tony, appearing suddenly at her side. “Been with us about five years now. Never out of work.”

  Gazing at the young woman - perkily perched on the edge of a settee under the slogan that read Al comfort at Sammy’s Cut-price Sofas! - Sonja wasn’t sure what to say.

  It wasn’t Gap, that was for sure.

  “And this is Sadie,” Tony told her, pointing to a girl perched perkily on the bonnet of a car with a bucket and sponge in her hands. “Bubbles Hand Car Wash - I tell you, their business rocketed when this ad hit the local free paper!”

  Sonja felt a cold shudder down her back. If anyone from college saw her in a corny ad like that, she’d be laughed out of class.

  “And, urn, this one?” asked Sonja, feeling that she had to respond somehow.

  “Ah that, yes,” nodded Tony, looking at the newspaper photo of some girls strolling on a catwalk in what looked suspiciously like nylon pinnies. “Twelve of my models did that show. That was for Worthington’s Workwear - y’know, overalls and the like. Look, there - in the background in the butcher’s apron - that’s Ben. Our top male model.”

  “Tony, I was wondering…” Sonja interrupted.

  “Yes, love?”

  “Do you ever get jobs for things like local clothes designers?”

  “Local designers? Nah, they don’t have the money for it,” he shook his head, in a split second dispelling the image Sonja had in her head of being the face of the next fledgling Vivienne Westwood.

  “Oh…” she muttered non-committally.

  “Y’see, established companies like Worthington’s, and our other regulars, like Bernard’s - y’know, the big plumbing contractors? They’ve got the cash and understand the benefit of getting a pretty face to sell their product. And, of course,” Tony beamed, sweeping his arm over the cuttings on the wall with fatherly pride, “any of these could be your contract next, Sonja! What do you say to that?”

  Sonja knew exactly what to say.

  “No thanks,” she replied coolly, scooping up her coat and sports bag and heading for the door.

  CHAPTER 20

  THE GATECRASHER (PART 2)

  The garden was full of vampires, ghosts and witches - plus a stray Batman or two.

  None of the kids at Lewis’s birthday-cum-Halloween-cum-Guy Fawkes party seemed to mind the biting cold air; they all were too busy bobbing for apples, screaming at the top of their voices and waiting impatiently for their burgers and hot dogs to appear. After that, they were to be taken round to the nearby park to watch the organised fireworks display.

  Kerry, who’d grovelled to Mr Hardy and got a half day off her Saturday job at the chemist’s specially, had her own tasks to perform. Now that it was getting dark, she walked around the garden and lit in turn each of the nightlights that lay inside the carved pumpkin lanterns dotted around the flower borders. They looked fantastic and all the children gasped with delight at the sight of each illuminated head with its spiky-toothed grin.

  Despite being hectically busy in her role as party co-ordinator, Kerry still had time to feel a little disgruntled that none of her friends had come along to join in the silliness and wish Lewis a happy birthday.

  Ollie had good reason - The Loud’s gig was happening later that night and he, Joe and Matt (as general helper-outer) were all at the venue, soundchecking and setting up. Maya, along with Ravi, had been all set to come, until their grandparents had decided to arrive for a weekend visit.

  Apart from that, Anna was working, Cat had bottled out (“Lewis is cute, Kerry, but a whole pack of noisy kids? No thanks!”) and Sonja? Well, Sonja had better things to do. Like travel to the city and pose around a photographer’s studio.

  (“You will make it back for the gig, though, won’t you, Son?” Ollie had asked her. “Well, I’ll just have to see how things go,” she’d shrugged in reply.)

  “KERRYKERRYKERRY!” yelped Lewis, in the shape of a warlock, appearing magically at his sister’s side. “Molly’s crying because Aaron bit her!”

  “I did not bite her! I was only pretending! I’m Count Dracula - see?” shouted a small boy in a black cloak, pulling a set of plastic fangs out of his mouth and presenting them to Kerry as evidence.

  “OK, OK,” nodded Kerry, not wanting to get too close to the drool-dripping fake teeth. She glanced back into the kitchen to where her mum and dad and the couple of sets of parents who’d been brave enough to hang around were now drinking wine and chatting. It would be nice if they came and gave her a hand.

  “Right, where’s Molly? Let’s talk to her and sort this out.”

  Lewis took one hand and Aaron took the other, and together they led Kerry over to a small, wailing girl who had her arms thrown around something dark and furry.

  “Molly?” asked Kerry.

  The girl released her stranglehold on Barney long enough for him wriggle free and bound off towards the sausage rolls on the picnic table. Her howls at his desertion were louder than her sobs at having been ‘got’ by Dracula.

  Between trying to pacify Molly and to calm the indignant Aaron who was still insisting that he’d only pretended to bite Molly, Kerry didn’t hear her mother calling her at first.

  “Kerry! Kerry!” she shouted more insistently from the kitchen doorway at her daughter. “Someone here for you!”

  Extricating herself from the Dracula drama, Kerry walked back into the house, wondering who it could be. At first she wondered if Sonja or Maya had been able to make it after all, but she knew it couldn’t be them - her mother would have just sent them straight through to the garden.

  “Hi,” said the girl standing awkwardly in the kitchen, a gift-wrapped parcel in her hands.

  Kerry had never seen Natasha look awkward and it took her by surprise, apart from the shock of her just turning up at all.

  “Ollie said I should come along - with this…” she held up the parcel “…since he couldn’t make it himself.”

  Well, thought Kerry, I don’t believe it!

  The two girls, along with hundreds of other spectators in Winstead park, craned their necks as they watched the display above them.

  “This reminds me of being a kid!”

  Kerry stole a look at Natasha and marvelled at the natural, happy expression on her face. The spangles of light from the fireworks showered pinks, blues, yellows and greens across her perfect features, which tonight seemed more like that of a child than a model.

  “Mmm, this lot are having fun, that’s for sure,” Kerry agreed, looking at the huddle of giggling, shrieking children in front of them.

  In the middle of the huddle was the birthday boy, waving his greeny-luminous rubber toy skeleton around - Ollie’s gift via Natasha.

  Earlier, Natasha had surprised Kerry (yet again) by joining in the kids’ games with good spirit after she’d arrived, even if she had been a little self-conscious at first. Molly had attached herself to the “pretty lady” like a limpet and had only let go of Natasha when it seemed as if the other kids would beat her in the scramble to get coats on to go to the park.

  “I haven’t had this much fun in ages!” Natasha positively beamed.

  Kerry stared at Ollie’s twin in surprise: since she was sixteen, this girl had lived in a flat in one of London’s trendiest areas, jetting off to countries Kerry had only ever seen in magazines and with access to star-spangled events that only the beautiful and the famous could ever hop
e to attend. How could a kiddy party in a drab little town compare?

  Instead of saying all that, the only thing Kerry came out with was, “How come?”

  Natasha turned to face Kerry with eyes wide and direct.

  “This is all just straightforward, silly, honest fun. It’s real, isn’t it?”

  Kerry wasn’t sure what she meant and even in the dark, her expression must have said as much.

  “Well, London, my job… I thought both of them would be brilliant, y’know? But it’s so fake.”

  Kerry nodded vaguely, still not clear what Tasha was getting at. A brilliant career, success, independence… It sounded pretty amazing compared to being at sixth-form college, living with your parents in sleepy old Winstead.

  “Lately… I’ve just kind of had enough,” said Natasha wistfully.

  “Why’s that?” Kerry gently pushed her.

  “Well, lots of things. You know that last magazine shoot I was in?”

  Kerry hadn’t seen the fabled blink-and-you’ll-miss-the-clothes session, but she’d heard enough about it from Ollie, Sonja and the others.

  “Yeah, what about it?” she said, pulling her browny-red curls back from her face and bundling them into the band that she had round her wrist.

  “The photographer who took those pictures - his name’s Jack, he’s twenty-seven and he’s kind of it at the moment on the magazine scene. And, urn, well, we went out for a while.”

  “Oh,” said Kerry, wondering if they’d gone out before the revealing fashion shoot (had he used his influence as her boyfriend to get her to do it?) or after (had he seen so much of her that he wanted to see more?).

  Natasha answered the question without Kerry asking it.

  “He asked me out after the shoot and that was two months ago. Then I found out a couple of weeks ago that he makes a hobby of dating all the youngest, newest models on all the agencies’ books, and that he’d started seeing someone behind my back.”

  That sounded horrible to Kerry - heartless, cold and deeply insensitive. No wonder Natasha had come home to lick her wounds.

  “But one bad guy shouldn’t put you off your job and everything,” she tried to reason.

  “Yes, but you know how I share a flat?”

  Kerry nodded, remembering what Ollie had told her; their parents’ condition for Natasha moving to London so young was that she was supposed to be in a ‘supervised’ flat, looked after by one of the bookers from the agency, along with other young models who’d been signed up.

  “The girl I’ve been sharing a room with - Emily - it turned out she was the one Jack was seeing behind my back. And when I confronted her, she told me he’d promised to get her on the cover of one of the big European glossy mags. And she thought I should understand that!”

  Kerry shuddered; it sounded so horribly seedy.

  “But surely not everyone’s like that?” she asked Natasha.

  “Maybe not,” the other girl shrugged, “but so many people I’ve got to know in this business are ruthlessly ambitious or self-obsessed or bitchy. I don’t know if I can take it any more! Not to mention the whole cattle market of being paraded around different casting directors: having them look you up and down like a piece of meat and then reject you.”

  Kerry was temporarily lost for words. She’d always suspected that modelling wasn’t as glamorous as it sounded, but Natasha was most definitely not painting a very pretty picture.

  “Was that why you weren’t saying much when Sonja was asking you about it?” Kerry pointed out.

  “Yeah, well, I just couldn’t be a hypocrite and tell her it’s fantastic when I don’t feel like that at the moment.”

  “Never mind,” Kerry tried to sound constructive. “At least you’re giving yourself a bit of a breathing space at home.”

  “But that’s the thing, Kerry,” said Natasha earnestly. “Nowhere feels like home now. London isn’t where I feel comfy and settled and then, when I come back here, my old friends treat me like some snob and don’t want to hang about with me any more.”

  Kerry thought of the gang of girls Natasha had gone around with at school - all pretty, all confident, and all bitches obviously, since they’d dumped their mate when she’d had a sniff of success. Kerry had always assumed it was the other way round, but maybe she’d been wrong.

  She was suddenly acutely aware of how lonely Natasha must be, no matter how successful or popular she appeared.

  “Listen, Tasha - will you help me get ready to go out to Ollie’s gig tonight? I haven’t a clue what to wear,” she smiled.

  “Yes! Yes, I’d love to!” Natasha giggled, then gasped as a firework burst into a huge silvery umbrella of light above their heads.

  CHAPTER 21

  COMING BACK DOWN TO EARTH

  Anna stood back from the mirror and turned this way and that.

  She had never managed to get her hair to sit as gorgeously as it had when Cat had given her a make-over, but - parted in the middle and hanging long and shiny and straight - it still looked pretty good.

  Glancing at a clock on her chest of drawers, Anna realised she’d have to get a move on. The Loud were due on stage in forty minutes and she wanted to get down to The Bell and find the others in plenty of time before the gig started.

  A functional grin to the mirror revealed no telltale signs of spinach in her teeth from her hastily heated up and eaten cannelloni.

  “Well, you’ll never be picked to be the next face of Revlon or whatever,” she laughed at her reflection. “But tonight, Anna Michaels, you don’t look too bad at all!”

  Grabbing a tiny tub from the bathroom shelf, Anna was just about to apply some glossy lip balm when the doorbell made her jump.

  “Boo!”

  Matt, who’d been standing alone at the bar, turned to see Cat grinning by his side, her hair bundled up into messy bunches, her ample chest vying for prominence with the giant sequinned star sewn to the front of her bright orange T-shirt.

  “Hi, Cat,” he nodded at her, glad of the company. He’d left the boys back stage getting vibed up for their performance, and had been scanning the crowd for the last ten minutes for any sightings of his friends.

  “No Siamese twin tonight then?” Cat asked with a wicked smile.

  “What?”

  “No Gabrielle? You two are normally joined at the hip, aren’t you?”

  “Oh, right,” said Matt, just getting her dig. “No, well, yes. I mean, she should be here soon. She’s bringing her mates along.”

  “Mmm. Any of the rest of our lot here?”

  “Nah, not much of a turnout so far. Anna’s definitely coming. Maya can’t make it - she phoned Ollie to say her grandparents are here for a visit.”

  Cat made a yawning action.

  “OK, that’s Maya’s excuse,” she drawled. “But where’s Kerry? I thought she’d be right down at the front of the stage being Ollie’s one-woman fan club.”

  “She should be here, but she had her little brother’s party on, remember?”

  “God, yes!” Cat pulled a face in horror. “It’ll take ages to wash all that ice cream and cake and kiddy sick off her!”

  “It’s seven-year-olds we’re talking about, Cat, not babies!”

  “Same difference,” shrugged Cat. “And what about Sonja, or should I say Mighty Miss Blabbermouth?”

  “She’s got that photo shoot on. But why do you call her that?”

  “Oh, only that she totally spilled the beans to Gabrielle the other night at Anna’s. About you and me, I mean. And you and Natasha,” Cat smirked, enjoying the double-whammy of getting her cousin into trouble and relishing the sight of Matt’s pained expression.

  “What?” he winced.

  “Don’t worry - Maya managed to cover it up, so Gabrielle didn’t suss,” she said casually. “Well, at least, I don’t think she did…”

  Matt hid his face in his hands and let out a long, low groan.

  “Stop it with the cow impersonations,” Cat chided him, before adding bri
ghtly, “Here’s comes your girlfriend!”

  For a split second when she pulled open the door, Anna couldn’t make out who was standing in front of her: the girl’s head was bowed and the yellowy glare of the bulb that illuminated the top of the metal stairwell cast a bleached-out cloak of light over the figure clutching a sports bag.

  “Can I come in?” said the girl, raising her head at last.

  ‘“Course you can,” Anna replied, her intuition telling her that Sonja had something on her mind.

  Ollie and the boys were waiting impatiently for the next fifteen minutes to pass so they could get it over with and step out on stage. Their tension was all the worse because Nick - who’d promised faithfully to tell them who the important person would be in their audience before they took to the stage - was nowhere to be seen.

  “Maybe it’s better if we don’t know,” said Andy, busy tuning his guitar.

  “Yeah, Andy’s right. Maybe if we did know it was definitely some record company guy to see us, we’d get too nervous and go to pieces.”

  Joe, who was struck dumb with nerves, looked across silently at Ollie and waited to see what he thought.

  “But not knowing who’s out there is going to make us just as nervous!” said Ollie, kicking the leg of his chair irritably. He pulled up the bottom of his baggy khaki T-shirt and wiped the beads of sweat off his forehead with it.

  “Hey, guys!” said a voice as a jokey punch landed on Ollie’s exposed belly. “Miss me?”

  “Oufff!” gasped Ollie, though the ‘blow’ had hardly touched him.

  He yanked his T-shirt away from his face and found himself staring at his grinning uncle and another bloke, dressed as a Nick-a-like in jeans, rock T-shirt and leather jacket. He looked slightly familiar, but Ollie couldn’t think why.

  “Where’ve you been, Nick? We’re on soon and we thought our manager would’ve been here to wish us well!”

  “And here I am!” he beamed, holding his arms out wide.