The Look (7 page)

A
nd so, at eleven o’clock on Saturday, I find myself standing outside Highbury & Islington Underground station, watching Ava study Dad’s
A-Z
map of London and wondering when I will ever learn. Probably never. When we’re in our nineties, I’ll be doing something stupid with my walker because my older sister made me.

And she’ll be around then, obviously. Because what’s happening is just a blip. Ninety percent of people are totally cured. Totally.

I’m still not sure how she talked me into it. I lasted twenty-four hours. Then I crumbled and she really got to work. First, she had to make the call pretending to be Mum, giving me permission to go on the shoot and saying that sadly she couldn’t come along because she had a hospital appointment. (Untrue on all counts. The next appointment is on Monday.) Frankie hemmed and hawed, because apparently I HAVE to have a chaperone if I go to a shoot at my age, but then Ava said — as Mum — that I have an older sister who’d be happy to come along instead, and Frankie agreed. Unfortunately.

Then we had to figure out what “casual, figure-hugging clothes” were, because apparently I’ve got to wear some, and I don’t have any. Well, I have that gray tank top that I wore to Model City’s offices, which seemed to be OK, so my top half is set. But I don’t possess “casual, figure-hugging” pants, and I am NOT wearing my hiking shorts again. I refuse to subject some poor photographer to my legs unless absolutely necessary. I couldn’t wear Ava’s jeans, even if she let me, because they’re too generous around the bum and only come down to my shins. So I’ve borrowed a pair of Mum’s yoga leggings. I couldn’t look more ridiculous, but my sister insists.

Finally, we had to figure out how to get there. The address is an old post office building in North London that’s been converted into studios. Ava’s good at getting to shops and sports venues. I’m good at getting to public galleries, parks, and gardens. But neither of us has tried to get to a post office building in Islington before. I haven’t started modeling yet, and it’s already a lot more difficult than it looks.

“This way,” Ava says, in a semi-confident tone. “What’s the matter, Ted?”

I’m still thinking about the expression on Dad’s face when she told him she felt like seeing a couple of films at the movie theater today, and that I’d agreed to go with her. He gave me an odd look and peered at me for ages before he said good-bye to us. Any minute now he’s going to figure out we’re up to something, and come and stop us. I wish he would. There’s something seriously wrong with my sister, and it’s not just lymphoma.

“Oh, come on! Aren’t you excited?” she goes on. “Modeling
studios! Makeup! You’re going to look gorgeous!” She grabs my arm and hurries me along.

Five minutes later, we’re standing outside the sort of abandoned-looking building where bodies are found in detective series.

“This is it!” she says, checking the map for the last time. “Second floor.”

She bounds ahead and I follow, cautiously. We let ourselves in through a large, unlocked door and head up a flight of concrete steps. If I thought being accosted by Simon on Carnaby Street was weird, this whole situation is positively disturbing. Doing it with a sister high on steroids isn’t helping.

When we reach the second floor, Ava leads me down a long corridor until we hear the sound of voices. We poke our heads through a doorway at the end, and there we are: in a huge, light-filled room with a concrete floor and white-painted brick walls. A guy in a black T-shirt and shorts is sitting at a rickety table, with a shiny laptop in front of him, calling out instructions to someone I can’t see. Ava knocks on the open door and he turns around to look at us. I gasp slightly. He has more facial hair than I would have thought possible. Bushy beard. Massive sideburns. Unusually large eyebrows. Underneath it all, he looks as if he might be quite young, but it’s hard to tell.

“Hello,” he calls across to us. “Are you here for the shoot?”

And the strange thing is that he says it to me, not my sister. Me, the model. The actual model. Bizarre, but wow.

We go over and introduce ourselves.

“I’m Seb,” he says. “I’m the, uh … photographer.”

I’d kind of gathered that from the enormous Nikon camera, with a very large lens, sitting next to his laptop. He looks around, at the lights, the cables, the screens and reflectors, the laptop, me.

“I’m going to be, uh … shooting you today.”

“Great!” I say brightly. I’m thinking that if everything goes at this speed, this shoot is going to take a
looong
time.

“We’re going to do it … uh … here,” he adds, wandering over toward the white brick wall.

Does he mean this studio? Where else would we be doing it?

He can see my confusion. “I mean, like, uh …
here
.” He indicates a particular spot on the wall, where the paint is slightly peeling. “Or, uh … here.” He points at another peeling place, farther down. “The light’s good. Atmospheric shadows. I might try a bit in natural daylight. See how we go. Interesting texture …”

He was almost going at normal speed there for a minute, when he talked about the light. Now he’s come to a halt.

I look at the wall. It’s true; the paint is more interesting where it’s patchy and flaky. And the shadows thrown by the bars in the high windows are moody, almost spooky. My art teacher, Miss Jenkins, would agree it was very atmospheric.

“See what I mean?” he says.

I nod, because I do, and he smiles. His teeth look weird poking through all that beard, but it’s a friendly smile. He seems pleased to have found a fellow wall-appreciator.

“Actually,” Ava says, looking pale and woozy suddenly, “I think I might sit down. That journey was longer than I thought. Is there a chair?”

Seb shows her into a little room carved out of one corner with a couple of sofas in it, and a kitchenette at one end. She curls up on one of the sofas.

“Are you sure you’re OK?” I ask, going over and stroking her hair. “I mean …”

Duh. “OK” is a relative term in my family now. I bite my lip.

“I’m fine,” she says sleepily. “I mean it. Call me when you need me. But don’t fuss, OK?”

With Seb hovering at the doorway, checking his watch, I don’t have much choice.

“Is that your … uh … sister?” he asks.

I nod.

“Mine’s upstairs,” he says. “Doing hair and makeup. She … uh … helps me out.”

Leaving Ava where she is, I follow Seb up a set of rickety stairs to a small changing area, built on top of the kitchenette. His sister is putting makeup on a girl with blonde, curly hair. They both turn around to say hi to me. The sister looks like Seb, but less hairy. The other girl looks like a fairytale princess. She has a perfect oval face and gray-green eyes. Her hair, wrapped around curlers, shines like coils of spun gold. Even with only foundation and eye makeup on she has, without a doubt, the most stunning face I’ve ever seen outside the pages of
Marie Claire
. Honestly! I have never been this close to anyone so mesmerizing. She even makes Ava look only mildly attractive by comparison. And I’m being photographed after her.
What
are they thinking?

“Hello,” she says, smiling at me. “I’m Mireille. How’re you doing?”

“Fine,” I lie. Mireille. Mum let slip once that she thought about naming me Mireille, but she thought Edwina sounded more romantic. Not sure what planet she was on at the time. “I’m Ted.”

Seb leaves us to it. His sister, who’s named Julia, explains that she usually does freelance makeup work for theater companies.

“Normally, I like to do something a bit creative, but today Seb wants you natural. We’re just highlighting the eyes and cheeks. I’m nearly finished with Mireille. Won’t be a mo’.”

I sit on a spare chair and watch as she carefully applies layer after layer of lipstick to Mireille’s perfect mouth, blotting and adjusting as she goes. I remember what Ava said about work experience and try to understand what effect Julia’s going for. According to what she just said, the lips are going to be the least important bit, but this is taking ages, and Mireille’s lips are very … pink. Then Julia gets to work on the cheeks.

“Is that, er, natural?” I ask. I mean, I’m sure Julia knows what she’s doing, but … well, actually, I’m
not
so sure. To me, Mireille looks as if she’s about to go on stage at a nightclub.

“It will be different in front of the camera,” Julia laughs. “It’s shocking how the lights bleach you. Although Seb said he might work with natural light today, so I’m really underplaying it.”

If this is underplaying it — goodness.

Julia takes Mireille’s hair out of the curlers and brushes it. The beautiful girl checks out her gorgeous face in the mirror, gives a nod of satisfaction, and thanks Julia, before heading downstairs to be photographed. Meanwhile, I take her place. Julia herself, I notice, isn’t wearing a scrap of makeup, apart
from the backs of her hands, which are covered in test swipes of foundation, blusher, and blue eye shadow, and remind me a bit of Ava’s hands at the moment, color-wise. They’re still bruised from all the needles she’s had poked into them to take endless blood samples. She doesn’t talk much about what happens at the hospital, but I know it’s tough, and I can understand that she’d rather be here, asleep, than at home, thinking about it. Frankly, right now, I’m glad she made me come, even if Julia can never make me look like Mireille.

For what seems like several hours, but must be about thirty minutes, Julia applies various creams and powders to my face from among a vast array she’s laid out on the shelf beside us. Once I get used to a stranger touching my face, it’s actually very relaxing. I can’t see what she’s doing, because I’m facing her, not the mirror. I just have to trust that it’s OK. She also fiddles about with my hair, doing the best she can and only sighing occasionally. Her one comment is that my caterpillar unibrow is going to have to go sometime soon, but coming from the sister of a modern-day Yeti, I’m surprised she even noticed.

“There!” she says when she’s finished. “Better.”

I check the mirror at last. Please God, let me have turned into Linda Evangelista, whoever she is.

Hard to tell. Does Linda Evangelista look like a moonfaced geisha? That’s my first thought, when I see my BIG eyes, pale skin, and bright lips. But as I get used to it, I realize that I’m still underneath there somewhere. I’m about one percent as pretty as Mireille, but a hundred percent more model-like than I was before Julia started. Even my hair looks like a nest made by a tidy bird who was quite proud of it. I feel like an actress, dressed
up for a part, or like I did when I put on my
gi
in judo, ready for a grading. The makeup makes it easier, somehow — like a barrier between me and that enormous Nikon camera downstairs. I think I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.

Julia follows me down to watch Mireille pose for Seb. I was worried they might have finished by now, and I wouldn’t get a chance to see how to do it, but it seems they’ve hardly started. Taking a few photos is a lot more time-consuming than I gave it credit for.

I quickly check on Ava, who’s still fast asleep on her sofa in the kitchen area and doesn’t stir when I call. She is technically in charge of me and I’m sure she’d love to see what’s going on, but she looks so peaceful where she is that I decide not to disturb her. I’ll tell her all about it later. Then I go back to stand near Julia and see what I can learn from Miss Perfect.

Meanwhile, Seb has placed an old, battered wooden chair in front of the peeling paintwork and Mireille’s sitting on it backward, with her chest leaning against the back of the chair and her legs either side of it. She constantly moves her head so he can capture her face from various angles. The air is full of pumping drum ’n’ bass, coming from a speaker attached to Seb’s laptop. I’d be dancing along to it, but Mireille is ignoring it entirely, focusing very much on giving Seb her smile and making sure her coils of hair are hanging perfectly around her face. Every now and again, Seb says, “Uh, can you … uh …?” and wiggles his hand until Mireille shifts position and gives him the smile from a different direction.

Oh, no. She has a smile.

I don’t have a smile. I mean, I
smile
, obviously. I do it a lot. But I don’t have
a
smile, which you obviously need. Nor, needless to say, do I have coils of golden hair to arrange around my shoulders. My spaghetti legs will look daft on either side of that chair in Mum’s yoga leggings. And I’ll find it very hard to stop jiggling to the drum ’n’ bass. Other than that, I’m good.

HELP.

I still can’t quite believe that Ava talked me into this, but I’m here now, and I’ve got to go through with it. At least Seb will be taking pictures of Geisha Ted, not the real me. And they’ll have the pictures of Mireille, so the morning won’t be entirely wasted.