The Making of Mia (24 page)

‘I know!’ she said, and she grabbed a copy of
US Weekly
from her dining-table. ‘Check you out!’ Jo giggled, throwing the magazine to him.

Gable stared at his image in the pulpy magazine and laughed quietly to himself. ‘It’s a dream come true, you know,’ he said.
‘All that pain, hard work and cost is starting to pay off. I’m a Hollywood actor,’ he said, looking at Jo intently. ‘And I’m
going to Leonardo di Caprio’s wrap party next week. Because he asked me to.’

Gable shook his head in disbelief and Jo gave him a massive hug. Tears began to fill his eyes and Jo couldn’t remember ever
having felt so proud of anyone else before.

‘You’ve made it,’ she said, and she tried not to think about her own career. True, she had enough freelance work to keep her
in expensive clothes and a luxury condo, but it still wasn’t enough for her. Jo wanted to be at the top of her game, and although
she’d been in discussions with the
Guardian
about having her own column in one of their supplements, she didn’t want to do it as Olivia Windsor, but as Jo Hill. Unfortunately
she had backed herself into a corner, and she knew that the
Guardian
would never believe her if she suddenly said she was Olivia Windsor, and that it was she and not her
nom de plume
that owned Platinum Consulting. Jo knew she had to find a way to break into the magazine world as herself, but she couldn’t
think of how to do it. Jo knew it was hopeless while Joshua Garnet would still remember who she was.

As Jo went into the kitchenette to fix them more drinks her email bleeped, and after she had poured them both healthy measures
of vodka she walked over to her laptop, trying to ignore Gable’s eyes boring a hole in her back. She secretly hoped he was
admiring her new black Chloé top, too.

‘Well?’ Gable yelped, both excitedly and nervously all at once. ‘Is it that Lucy girl? Does she want my interview?’

Jo sat down and read Lucy’s email.

‘She says they’d love an interview with you,’ Jo read out happily, and she looked at her friend who had turned white under
his tan.

‘But it will be anonymous, right? It’s gotta be anonymous or the deal is off.’

Jo laughed. ‘Of course it will be,’ she said. ‘I’ll make you ten years younger, as straight as an arrow, a womaniser, a former
soap star and a model all in one. Nobody will ever
guess that Gable Blackwood, star of
Fire Crossing
and boyfriend of Violet Compton, is the king of cosmetic surgery.’ Jo grinned and turned back to her laptop, and Gable grunted.

‘I trust you with my life,’ he said, and Jo nodded distractedly. ‘What’s up?’ he said to her, walking over to the table and
picking up his fresh drink. ‘Is there a problem?’

Jo shook her head and turned to Gable, biting her lip. As much as she loved Gable she wished Amelia was here.

‘I suggested in my pitch that
Gloss
gets a real-life account of someone who has had a breast enlargement to show just how painful it is …’ Jo began, and when
she saw Gable looking serious she averted her eyes and continued. ‘You know – to balance out all the “surgery is good” stuff.
The thing is, though … Lucy has asked me if I want to do it. She says she doesn’t expect me to want to, but if I do then
Gloss
will pick up the tab. Joshua and Madeline have approved the budget already.’

Jo’s eyes shone and for a moment Gable felt nervous at what he saw. The living-room was filled with a tense silence, and Jo
took the opportunity to look down at her chest. Were her breasts really that bad? Did she really want to change them? For
months Jo had been unhappy with how low her breasts hung. She wore Wonderbras pretty much every day to keep them high, but
they seemed almost too soft, too deflated, to be what the media portrayed as ‘sexy’. Jo had recently taken to checking out
other girls’ cleavages in bars, and without fail she always felt a cold chill rush down her spine when she realised that almost
every other girl had a pert, full chest, and in comparison she was flat, invisible. Jo was used to being the ugliest girl
in a crowd, but the little voice in her head was getting louder. Why shouldn’t she have natural-looking breasts rather than
the ones she had ruined through her overeating and dramatic weight loss? Just because she wanted to improve an aspect of her
physical
appearance, she decided, it didn’t make her a superficial person. After all, she wasn’t thinking about doing it to make her
name in the glamour industry or to look like a footballer’s wife. She was considering having it done to make her look like
she was a normal twenty-two-year-old. And where was the harm in that?

‘I’m going to do it,’ she said decisively. ‘I’m going to get some brand-new breasts and they’re going to be my twenty-third
birthday present from Joshua Garnet.’ She looked out at the moonlit ocean and raised her glass in the direction of England.
The idea of changing her body felt powerful, dramatic, and even though she knew it would hurt, and that she was giving in
to the idea of ‘perfection’ promoted by the very magazines that she wrote for, Jo wanted her slender body to be even better.
A hint of an idea started to formulate in her brain, and she downed her drink in one, realising what she needed to do to have
revenge on her former boss.

‘Joshua Garnet is going to rue the day he ever offered Olivia Windsor a breast job,’ she murmured, in a voice so filled with
venom that Gable looked surprised.

‘Gable Blackwood, how would you feel about having a little sister who shares your amazing good looks?’

Gable buried his head in his hands.

April 2005

Jo stared at a photograph of Kate Moss in a copy of English
Vogue
. She was in a Dior advert and was naked on a chair with her legs pulled up to her chest. On her bare legs were chocolate-brown
leather boots that laced up, Victorian style, from the bottom to the top, with sheepskin buckles that gave the boots an aggressive
edge. They looked warm, comfortable and were undeniably sexy. Jo looked at them for a moment and wondered how much they cost
before returning her gaze to Kate’s face. She was stunning. But as well as being the most beautiful woman in the UK, there
was something else to her. Yes, she looked like she was in the middle of having an orgasm even when she was doing something
as innocuous as pushing her hair back from her face, you could see her hip personality through her doll-like 1960s-style features.
Anyone could tell that Kate was edgy, cool and rock and roll – and you knew that from how she looked, how she presented herself.
Because Jo had been reading magazines and looking at images of Kate Moss for years she felt like she knew her. The truth was
Jo couldn’t remember ever reading an interview with her or even hearing her speak. Kate Moss was silent, but through her face
you knew exactly who she was. Jo looked in the mirror and wondered what her own face told people.

Even though her hair was no longer mousy-brown, and
was cut into a sleek, bouncy style, Jo wondered what she would look like if she was blonde. Thanks to Bobby at the salon her
hair was still impeccable, and she loved her subtle streaks of gold, caramel, butter and mahogany. Her hair looked classy,
and her eyebrows – a nondescript shade of light brown – were arched perfectly. Jo remembered how they had been before she
had learnt to pluck them and she shuddered with embarrassment. She wondered if the girls at school had ever called her Liam
Gallagher behind her back, and she realised they probably had. She raised her eyebrows and looked at her reflection in the
mirror. When they were half a centimetre higher on her face she looked prettier, she thought.

Jo turned her attention to her lips, which were pale, thin and cracked from drinking the night before with a group of girls
in the Ammo Rooms. She quickly glanced at Kate Moss’s pouting lips – which were soft, plump and juicy – and looked at hers
again, feeling miserable. Kate’s lips weren’t blow-job lips – Kate wasn’t so obvious to have lips like that, and besides,
they would have distracted people from her amazing, sex-glazed eyes – but they were lickable. Chewable. Jo pushed her lips
out as far as she could without looking like she was pulling a face and marvelled at what a difference slightly bigger lips
made to her expression. If she had cheekbones, slightly plumper lips and maybe her eyebrows positioned higher up so she didn’t
look like she was frowning all the time, she could be pretty, she thought. And if her nose was slightly more button-shaped,
like Kate’s, then she could even be beautiful. At the moment her nose looked like it belonged to Paris Hilton. Which was fine
for Paris – who was all long lines and haughty angles – but not for Jo Hill.

Jo stared at herself in the mirror and felt depressed. Her insecurities were rearing their ugly head again, and this time
all the make-up in the world could do nothing to change how
Jo felt about her face. It was only the thought of Gable, and how he had transformed himself from being boring and dull Simon
into the stunningly attractive man he was today, that gave her some hope. She phoned him.

‘You know when you decided to get your face done so you looked less like Simon Lynott and more like Freddie Ljungberg?’ she
began nervously. ‘Well, in percentages, how sure were you that you wanted to get it done?’

‘One hundred per cent,’ he said firmly, before pausing for a second. He was on set in the Grand Canyon, and although he’d
been shooting for a couple of days and was dressed as a cowboy, Gable couldn’t get Jo – and her plans – out of his mind. He
was worried sick, and felt responsible for telling her about his own surgery and possibly encouraging her into doing the same
thing.

‘Well, maybe not one hundred per cent, but I couldn’t see any other way of being the man I wanted to be … Look, do you really
believe that you’ll never be happy looking the way you do?’ he asked her, and Jo didn’t know what to say. She’d always thought
that when she had reached the elusive size ten she’d wake up one morning and be happy, but it hadn’t happened. Every day she
felt as though she was still the frumpy Joanne Hill who nobody liked or took seriously. She wanted to wipe her childhood away
from her memory so she could start her life again, but she couldn’t.

‘Listen to me,’ Gable said. ‘You’re a cute girl, and when you go back to England you’ll look amazing compared to all those
dowdy girls in London, just like everyone else who’s groomed and looks after themself.’

Jo shut her eyes. Gable hadn’t a clue that most of the girls who worked in the media in London looked like models.

‘You know,’ she said, ‘maybe it’s looking like everyone else that is part of the problem. For years I was either ignored or
mocked because of my weight – my blubber made me stand
out, and even though I hated it, it was all I knew. But now I blend in, I feel it’s for all the wrong reasons. I don’t want
to be just an average-looking girl who happens to be a great writer and has a famous actor for a friend. I want to be a hot-looking
girl who happens to run the best magazine in the country.’

As she began pacing around her condo Jo realised she didn’t need to talk about it any more – she was just going to do it.

‘Forget about percentages and me not knowing if I should get more surgery,’ Jo said, her voice sounding stronger than Gable
had ever heard before. ‘I’m going to use all my pay cheques from
Gloss
to get surgery, and I’m going to get it done. I’m one hundred per cent.’

‘But are you sure about this? It all seems so rash, so sudden …’ The sun pounded down on him and he could feel sweat prickling
at his thick foundation.

Jo spoke into her mobile. ‘Yes, I wasn’t absolutely convinced it was a good idea, but now I’ve spoken to you I think it is.
OK, so I admit I’d had too much to drink when Lucy’s email came in the other week, but I really don’t see anything wrong in
doing this – hundreds of girls get plastic surgery every day. Why shouldn’t I?’

Gable was silent for a moment. ‘But you’re not just talking about breast implants, are you? You’ve been saying you want the
works – chin, nose, cheeks …’ He lowered his voice. ‘You said you were going to have more surgery than I did, and you were
going to come out looking just like me! A girl-me! So you can be my “little sister”!’

Jo bit her lip. ‘Look, I know you hate the idea of me getting surgery, but I see this as a chance to improve myself, to finally
be the woman I always wanted to become. What harm can this do?’

‘Lots, if you’ve not thought about it properly,’ Gable
muttered almost inaudibly. ‘I just don’t see why you need to do this. I changed the way I look because I’m an actor – because
nobody would give me the time of day unless I looked like a Hollywood star. The last time I checked, magazine editors didn’t
need to look like models.’

Jo laughed. ‘They don’t need to, no, but they tend to – especially at Garnet, and that’s where I want to work as a “talented
but also stunning editor”. What’s so wrong with that?’

Gable knew it would be hypocritical to try to talk Jo out of it, and chose not to answer her. ‘Have you spoken to my surgeon
about your rash plans to become my “little sister”?’

‘Yes,’ Jo said patiently. ‘And he’s happy for me to go ahead with this. He could hardly say no when I said you recommended
him, could he?’

Gable tried not to sigh. ‘I just want to make sure you really have thought this through. Once you’re in the operating theatre
there’s no going back, you know.’

Jo knew – it was all she could think about ever since she’d received Lucy’s email. A small voice in her head asked if she
needed to take such severe measures, but Jo knew she’d never be beautiful without a helping hand, and that if changing her
appearance meant she could become a magazine editor – a player – then she had no choice.

Jo opened her eyes and wondered if she was dying. She was in a small, clean, private room in the hospital where Gable’s surgeon
worked, and even though she could make out the bandages around her chest she had a sudden fear that the surgery had gone wrong,
that she was having a heart attack. Jo had never experienced such a tight feeling in her chest before and she felt like she
was about to explode from within her skin. She hurt so much, and despite the fear running through
her veins she couldn’t shake off her drowsiness. It scared the shit out of her.