Secret Nanny Club (27 page)

CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN

Luckily
Creea had loved my Christmas-party fashion shoot idea. Even though it was still September she told me to get cracking on it immediately. I decided on a big old-world country-house hotel in Kildare, about an hour’s drive from Dublin. It was a former private house belonging to an earl, with magnificent high ceilings and beautifully sculpted mantelpieces. I organised with the hotel’s PR and marketing team to have a roaring log fire

in
the drawing room which we intended on using, and they had given me permission to decorate it with festive candles and Christmas decorations. I even hired an enormous Christmas trees complete with fake ribbon wrapped presents to put underneath.

The magazine works two months’ ahead so time was
not on my side. The shoot had to be in the November issue of the magazine and the pressure was on. The hotel had promised us the rooms to use free of charge in exchange for a credit mentioning their website and details of their Christmas Party nights and New Year’s Eve ball.

My mother had kindly given me the use of her car to
drive to Kildare, and the hotel had offered to put up myself, the photographer, the model, the hairdresser and the make-up artist free of charge. This was fantastic as it would save us getting up at five both mornings to get to the hotel on time. The hotel PR had told me there was no problem using the rooms for our shoots as long as the guests weren’t disturbed too much. This meant that we needed to start work very early in the morning. I had been so busy all week prepping for the Christmas shoot that I barely had time in the evenings to even cuddle little John. But I was glad to be busy because first of all it took me out of the office and, second of all, I didn’t have time to think about Clive’s nasty solicitor’s letter. I tried to banish it to the back of my mind until I had decided what I was going to do about it. The day after Creea gave me the go-ahead to put the Christmas-party fashion shoot together I held a casting in a city-centre hotel room. I had been going to do it with just the photographer, a lovely guy called Dave with whom I had worked in the past, but Creea had said it would be nice to take Louise along to the casting so she could have an idea how it worked. Reluctantly I agreed.

Well, I could hardly say no to the boss, could I?
I had a clear image of the type of model I wanted to cast for this job. Usually when I dream up a shoot in the early stages I have a vague idea of the type of look I’m going for. By the time I see the girls and can envisage the end product laid out between the covers of the magazine, I am sure. I wanted somebody classy for my shoot. Tall, elegant, with high cheekbones. I wanted somebody with healthy-looking long dark hair and big, dark soulful eyes. I didn’t want somebody cheesy covered in fake tan. In fact, I preferred the model to look pale rather than heavily-tanned. After all, it was supposed to be winter. After looking through several model websites, I made requests to see ten models. It was great to see Dave again. I hadn’t seen him since before I gave birth and he enveloped me in a great big bear-hug before planting a smacker on my cheek. “You look stunning,” he grinned. “Motherhood obviously sits well with you.”

“Thanks,” I said. “It does. It’s a tough but very
rewarding job!’

Even as I uttered the words I was struck by a pang of
guilt again. Here I was at work while a stranger soothed my child when he cried, fed him when he was hungry, watered him when thirsty and amused him with his toys. Stop it, I berated myself. This is just ridiculous! Millions of mothers go back to work. Millions! Stop beating yourself up for it.

“Coffee?”

“Oh yes, please, I’d love some. Actually, there’s a great little deli on the corner of this street that does great takeaway coffees.”

“Grand, so.
Do you want something to eat too?”

I shook my head. I really had to cut back on my endless
munching at every opportunity. I yearned to get my figure back. “No thanks, Dave. I’m fine with black coffee.”

I had been about to ask him to get a third cup for
Louise, but then decided not to as she hadn’t even turned up yet.

The casting was about to start in ten minutes. Dave
and I sat behind a large desk near the door. The models were going to wait outside and then come in one by one and show us their portfolios. Models’ portfolios were like CVs to them. Ideally they would contain totally different head and body shots showing the client what they would be capable of in front of the camera. Sometimes the prettiest of girls just couldn’t take a good strong photo, while plainer girls were more versatile and almost came to life in front of the camera lens.

“Right, Dave, it looks like Louise isn’t going to show
so let’s crack on with the casting. You sit there and I’ll go out and get the first girl.”

I popped outside and the girls were all standing in a
queue chatting among themselves. I asked them if they could come in one by one, starting with the first girl Helen. Helen was a willowy, sweet-looking brunette, a girl I’d worked with in the past. She was an absolute pro, always enthusiastic and professional and never late for a job. She had a reputation in the fashion world of being great to work with. Today she arrived in, bright and breezy, with her recently updated portfolio. She looked Dave straight in the eye, extended her hand and smiled. “Nice to see you again, Dave.” Then she greeted me in the same friendly, polite manner. We flicked through her portfolio, praising some of her recent shots, and then asked her to tell the next girl in the line to come in.

She thanked us and left. Dave and I looked at each other
and immediately recognised each other’s disappointment. “Her skin,” I said, feeling my face crumple.

He too looked disappointed. “I know. It’s unfortunate.”

“Her skin is usually flawless. I don’t understand it.”

Dave shrugged. “That’s why it’s important to hold
castings. It saves time in the long run.”

“You could always airbrush her face, I suppose . . .”

“I could. But it would be easier if I didn’t have to.”

Michelle was next through the door. I hardly
recognised her as she had put on at least a stone since I had worked with her last. Her lovely cheekbones had all but disappeared. She was still slim. In fact she was a lot slimmer than myself and slimmer than most women you would see walking up and down the street, but the horrible thing about doing fashion shoots was that the samples that you were sent from the designers were almost always a size eight, making it very difficult to work with models who were of a bigger size. I wish it wasn’t like that but there was nothing I could do about it. Michelle would not be booked for this casting.

“We’ll let you know,” I told her.

But I knew that she knew we wouldn’t be contacting her. It was tough. Modelling was a tough game. Rejection was the norm, but still I hated to be the one rejecting. It was awful. Next in was Lorraine Dyer. Lorraine is a very popular model. She isn’t the prettiest model ever, but she has striking bone structure, and being closely linked to one of Ireland’s top rugby stars has kept her firmly in the gossip columns for the past two years. She is probably in the papers at least twice a week, and will pretty much do anything from standing in a bikini on Grafton Street with a handful of lottery cards in her hand to sitting on a bike with an inflatable banana on her head. I don’t think Lorraine has ever actually turned down a job, and although she will probably never end up on the cover of
Imag
e
magazine, she sure is laughing all the way to the bank.

“Hey, you guys!” She beamed, flashing her pearly
whites. She was wearing a tight vest that showed off her recent boob job, and dark skinny jeans. She gave us both a kiss like we were her very best friends. Lorraine is very full-on bosom-buddies with anyone that might help her on the way to the top. You’d have to give her full marks for her networking skills, no doubt about that. She showed us her portfolio. It was mostly press calls, launching everything from fake tan to washing powder. Her book lacked classy editorials but you couldn’t help being impressed by the sheer volume of work that she had done over the last couple of years. There were no flies on Lorraine.

We had to see seven more girls. As expected, some o
f them looked so completely different from their online photos that they might as well have been different people altogether. It was quite amazing. And then, just as I was about to give up hope that we were going to find the right girl, Adrienne walked in. She was at least six foot, feminine and willowy with long, shiny, dark hair and legs that seemed to go on forever. She had nice straight white teeth, a clear complexion and a lovely natural smile. She was obviously very young. She wasn’t wearing a shred of make-up and it was easy to see how versatile she could look. When she left, myself and Dave turned to look at each other, and smiled in unison. We both knew we had found our woman.

Immediately I phoned Adrienne’s agency and booked
her for the shoot. Her agent boss told me that she was new to the agency and hadn’t actually done a shoot with any Irish magazine before. This made me doubly excited. It was every stylist’s dream to discover somebody brand new, an up-and-coming star. Adrienne was from Latvia and her English wasn’t perfect, but that was okay, I wasn’t hiring her for her conversational skills. Then Dave and I went down to the lobby to have another coffee and discuss the concept of the shoot.

I’d forgotten what nice and charming company Dave
was. He was very easy to be around. He filled me in on all the gossip around town. As a society photographer he could tell me who was dating whom, who had split up with whom and which models had recently invested in Botox and boob jobs. He even told me that a particular model hounded him day and night to make sure he airbrushed out any of her wrinkles in photos and demanded that she got a look of all photos before they were emailed in to the picture desks.

We both agreed that Adrienne was a rare find.
“Can you believe she’s only seventeen though?” I said. “That makes me feel very old.”

“Don’t be daft, you’re still hot,
Kaylah. You’d be hot at any age.”

To my absolute mortification, I found myself blushing.
I looked away quickly to hide my face. It was the first time in ages a man had actually paid me a compliment. I was so grateful I was almost overwhelmed. Dave’s job was to photograph stunning women on a daily basis, and he told me that he considered me hot? I could have cried with appreciation.

“Thanks,” I gulped because I genuinely couldn’t
think of anything else to say. And then, and I’m not sure if it was just because I knew he fancied me, I actually began thinking that Dave was very attractive. He had lovely eyes and dark wavy hair that was greying slightly at the temples. He had a really cute boyish smile too. Oh God, maybe I was falling for him.

CHAPTER
NINETEEN

The lovely country-house hotel in Kildare where we had
arranged to do the fashion shoot was set in extensive grounds, with pretty manicured lawns and an abundance of exotic-looking flowers. It was stunning and I had such a good feeling about the shoot. But when I walked into the foyer I was amazed to see Louise of all people already sitting there. Why the hell was she here? Was I dreaming? She was sitting cross-legged by a table with a cappuccino in front of her.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, genuinely stunned.

She looked up at me with a mock smile. “What am I
doing
here? Oh, didn’t anyone tell you? Creea sent me. She thought it would be good for me to help on the photo shoot. Is that not okay with you?”

“But . . . but you don’t know anything about setting
up fashion shoots,” I felt myself spluttering with annoyance. “You didn’t even show up to the casting.”

Louise looked suitably taken aback. “Yes, that was
unfortunate,” she said. “But I genuinely couldn’t find the hotel. Listen, if there’s a problem I’ll just go back to Dublin and tell Creea that there was a problem with me being here.” She went to pick up the Louis Vuitton suitcase by her feet.

“It’s okay, you can stay,” I answered, probably a bit
too gruffly. I needed to calm down and not lose my cool so easily with her. If she had been trying to get a rise out of me it had worked. “But listen, we’re not here on a holiday, so I am warning you that organising a fashion shoot is not child’s play. I expect you to be more of a help than a hindrance. Understood?”

“Yes, of course,” she said, her voice almost a whisper.
“So what can I do?”

“I’ll let you know in a minute,” I said, and then took
a deep breath. Jesus, I wished she would just go away! Talk about stressing me out!