What had I done?
A sudden, horrible realisation crept over me and threatened to devour my every last shred of self-worth as I tried to shake the words ‘What are you coming to Manchester for?’ out of my brain but I couldn’t. They were there now, and they were there to stay.
Whenever I’d think of Gemma from now on, I wouldn’t think of her talking dirty to me or taking it up the arse or eating some other bird out while I looked on, I’d think of her standing in a cold pub car park on a Friday night with her boyfriend at her elbow, asking me why I was coming to Manchester.
Jesus.
What an utter wanker!
6. Zoe Bawl
What a wanker!
What a wanker!
What a wanker!
I spent the best part of the next few days cringing every time I remembered what I’d done and remembering what I’d done about once every five minutes.
What a wanker!
Of course, in the cold light of day it was all very easy to see what had happened and why. Gemma, being an experienced pro, had simply given me what I’d asked for the first time I’d phoned up, whereas me, being a bit of a cock, had taken her at her word. Like the dim readers I liked to mock for sending in sex and marriage I’d bought into what Gemma had said and believed it.
Jesus.
I was very sheepish at work on Monday morning and jumped every time the phone rang, expecting it to be Gemma or Howard phoning up to complain. No one said anything to me, though I walked about on egg shells like everyone knew and wished I could get away for a month or two until it had faded into memory.
Roger wasn’t in, nor was Paddy or Matt, Monty, Fat Paul, anyone from Froth or Stuart, so the office was mercifully quiet. Don came over and we chatted about the various football results over the weekend until Susie phoned him up (even though she was less than 20 feet away) and told him he had a shitload of work to be getting on with. Susie was always doing this to Don. Why? For no other reason than because she could. Don was her worker, ergo her pet. Everyone else might get to talk, joke and laugh with each other but not Don. Don worked under Susie so he had to do what she said while he was at work and that was all there was to it. Why? Because she could and because she was a cunt. Take your pick. It pissed Don off no end but Susie’s other subordinate, Hazel, always got a real kick out of watching her colleague get humiliated and forced to return to his desk like a little kid. Why? Because she was a cunt too. It doesn’t get much simpler that this. Whatever the ins and outs of it all, Don was gone and I was once again left alone with my thoughts.
I wrote a couple of girl blurbs that had been waiting for me to do since Friday but I really wasn’t in the mood for this old nonsense this early on, so I borrowed one of Jackie’s Harry Potter books and started to read.
Just after twelve, Stuart arrived and called me into his office. I was dreading what was coming and wondered how best to bullshit my way out of the shame of it all but Stuart didn’t seem particularly angry or anything. He seemed hungover to fuck, but not angry.
‘Right, sit down. Okay, I need you to do me a favour,’ he started and I was fully-expecting him to follow this up with, ‘I want you to leave off harassing the girls. They’re frightened and upset.’ But he didn’t. Instead, what he proposed really didn’t sound like any sort of favour at all. ‘I need you to go over to the studio and direct a photoshoot for me this afternoon. I’ve got to meet a bloke about... well, that’s not important,’ he said, with a dismissive wave of the hand and I caught a blast of scotch in the face as he talked. ‘It’s over at Howard Parke’s studio in Battersea. You’ll be able to get a cab and claim it back and it’s this girl here,’ he said and handed me a polaroid of an incredibly cute young blonde.
‘Zoe, her name is, though I’m sure it’ll be fucking Bangers & Mash or something after today. She’s a first timer, never done any modelling before, sent her snaps in. I thought it would be a good learning curve for you because you’re going to need to have to do this sort of thing more in the future, so what do you say?’
‘Er… thank you,’ was what I said.
‘Yeah. That’s not really what I meant but, whatever. She’s over there at the moment but she’ll be in make-up for the next hour or so, so go and get your arse down there now and just get Howard to bang out a standard set. He knows what he’s doing anyway but make sure he shoots a few covers too, in case she turns out looking alright.’
Stuart scribbled down Howard’s address on a piece of paper and shooed me off by opening the door next to me.
‘Oh, and most importantly of all, make sure you get I.D. and a model release off her.’
‘A what?’ I asked, my mind already halfway to Battersea.
‘I.D. We can’t publish her pictures unless we’ve got photocopies of two forms of I.D. – drivers’ licence, passport, birth certificate, student card, that sort of thing – proving she’s over eighteen, and a model release giving us permission to publish her pictures which has been signed by her and witnessed by, well in this case it’ll be by you.’
‘Is that right?’ I said.
‘Of course, we can’t just publish any old picture of anyone we like otherwise we’d get taken to the cleaners. That’s why it never works when some bitter divorcee sends in pictures of his ex-wife, claiming he’s her and how she wants to be in the mag and the world to know that she loves it up the arse with a big stick. We can’t publish these pics, no matter how saucy she is, not without I.D. and a written consent,’ he said, then added, ‘Unless the woman’s dead. Then we can stick in whoever we want.’
‘Yeah but that’s a bit sick, isn’t it? I don’t know if I could do it over those sorts of pictures.’
‘Er, no, I mean pictures of her taken before she, erm…’ Stuart trailed off with a look of horror etched across his face. ‘You’d better get a move on, you don’t want to keep them hanging about,’ he told me, urging me away from him.
I grabbed my coat and left the building.
*
Zoe looked just unbelievable in real life. She was good-looking sure, but she wasn’t stunning. So what was it about her that I found so attractive?
Probably the fact that I knew I was going to be seeing her git, real soon.
She was sat in a big flannel dressing-gown in front of the make-up mirror while Howard’s assistant (who herself was no pig) applied the finishing touches to her immaculate lip gloss. She shot a glance in my direction and gave a little nervous smile when I said hello, which was about all she could do while under the brush.
Howard was there too. He shook my hand and greeted me like a long lost brother and led me next door to a mocked-up bedroom studio set where we discussed clothing and possible cover shots.
‘Stockings, suspenders, high heels, little frillies, that sort of thing,’ I told him.
‘And what about her?’ he replied.
We laughed, good-naturedly and he poured us a couple of vodkas, which we both made light work of.
‘Who’s the other geezer in there?’ I asked, as he refilled our glasses.
‘Oh him, the boyfriend, playing chaperone, for fuck’s sake,’ he said, shaking his head and drinking his drink. At that moment Howard’s assistant, Pamela, Zoe and Zoe’s boyfriend, Scott, all emerged from the dressing room and looked to us for approval.
‘Doesn’t she look beautiful?’ Pamela said, and Zoe lit up with pride.
‘Good enough to eat,’ I agreed and noticed Scott’s eyes dart in my direction.
‘I’ll be off then,’ Pamela said and she and Howard swapped kisses.