The Making of Mia (5 page)

‘James – Amelia’s father – believes that some of those big old Victorian mansions may be worth a thing or two in a few years,’
Sarah began, struggling to continue the conversation and grasping at something – anything – that could put her back on track.
‘Of course, the so-called council would have to get rid of those awful hippies using the places as squats. I blame Tony Blair,
personally …’

Jo didn’t say anything and took a gulp of hot tea.

‘I expect your parents are quite savvy about things like that,’ Sarah continued, thinking, suddenly, that it was quite possible
that Jo had rich, bohemian parents who chose to live life in the slums to be subversive. In fact, there had been an
article about that in the paper only recently. Sarah’s mood brightened considerably as she wondered if she had seen anyone
with the surname ‘Hill’ in one of her society magazines. She vaguely remembered reading about someone in Hampstead called
‘Hill-Richards’, and she was just about to ask if Jo was related to her when Jo dealt the fatal blow.

‘I’ve never met my father as he beat my mum up when he found out she was pregnant with me, and we live in a flat on a council
estate.’ Jo’s words landed heavily and Sarah’s mouth dropped open. She suddenly heard Jo’s inner-city accent through the expensive
boarding-school polish and felt annoyed. What was Amelia up to with this obese working-class girl? Rebelling, most probably.
As the thought of Amelia defying her needled, Sarah excused herself to tend to the rose garden. Jo spotted Sarah giving Amelia
a pointed look as she walked out of the kitchen, and Amelia fell about laughing as soon as she left.

‘That was brilliant – I’ve never seen Mummy so put out by anyone before!’

Jo grinned at her friend. ‘Was it too much? Was I rude? Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so blunt with the truth …’

‘Oh, sod it, Jo.’ Amelia stood up and brushed the biscuit crumbs from her flat stomach. ‘She bloody well knew you were at
school on a scholarship and she knew she wouldn’t like the truth but she persisted anyway. Like Daddy says, “Don’t ask questions
that you don’t want to know the answers to.”’ Amelia frowned as she thought of her father away on his countless ‘business
trips’ and felt a pang of sadness for her mother.

‘Anyway, want to see where you’ll be laying your pauper’s head?’

As Amelia showed her around the house, Jo couldn’t believe that people lived like this – Amelia’s house was a stately home,
like something out of a modern-day fairy-tale. From
the sedate hallway they stepped into a luxurious living-room, with deep velvety carpets, heavy swathes of curtains and expensive
antique furniture. The dining-room had mounted stag heads on the faded Colefax and Fowler wallpaper, and the table was set
with antique silver that glowed yellow. Room after room unfolded – such as the ‘Sunday room’, the ‘library’ and the ‘nursery’
– before Jo was shown the master bathroom, complete with marble floor, Jacuzzi bath and the most high-tech shower Jo had ever
seen. She didn’t think showers with so many jets existed.

Feeling exhilarated, and slightly sick at the unsubtle wealth, Jo tried not to let her mouth drop open when they came to the
guest bedroom from the ‘second staircase’.

‘And this will be your room,’ Amelia said, as she pushed the heavy door open. The four-poster bed was placed so Jo had a view
of the vegetable garden and the Hampshire fields beyond, and the en suite – three times the size of Jo’s mother’s bathroom
– came complete with fluffy white towels and Aveda toiletries. Jo didn’t know what to say.

‘Wow, Ames, this is amazing.’

Amelia shrugged and bounced up and down on the bed, messing up the McCaw Allan sheets. ‘It’s nice, isn’t it? Mummy interior-designs
all the rooms in rotation and this was the most recent one. It’s pretty new.’

Jo joined her friend on the bed and grinned. ‘It’s heavenly. I’m so pleased I’ve come. Thanks for inviting me.’

Amelia smirked and hugged her friend. ‘Not a problem. Now, get yourself ready because we’re going shopping for that party
I was telling you about. I managed to get you on the guest-list at the last minute. Although,’ she said with a smug grin,
‘if you’re the girlfriend of the owner it isn’t exactly hard to do.’

Jo felt her smile falter. ‘But …’

‘Now, Jo,’ Amelia said sternly, ‘you have to think
positively. We’re going to find you some gorgeous clothes and then we’re going to spend the rest of the day pampering ourselves.
What do you say?’

Jo wanted to suggest that Amelia was out of her mind, but she didn’t dare.

‘It sounds great!’ she enthused in her perkiest voice, hoping Amelia wouldn’t think she was lying. ‘Can’t wait, super!’

Amelia smiled. ‘Then let’s hit the shops.’

The first boutique the girls went in was terrible – full of skinny designer clothes that cost a fortune and would have been
more suited to models than Jo. Amelia bounced around grabbing clothes off the rails while Jo trailed behind her, looking at
the tiny scraps of material and hating herself.

‘Aren’t you going to try anything on?’ Amelia called over to Jo, who was eyeing a black jumper that only went up to a size
sixteen – quite a few sizes too small for Jo.

‘Not in here I don’t think, Ames,’ Jo said diplomatically, not wanting to put a downer on the mood. ‘Nothing in here’s really
to my taste, you know?’ she remarked with a smile, crossing her fingers behind her back and wondering if Amelia was blind
to her weight. ‘But you try things on – let’s find you an outfit to impress Charlie.’

As Amelia literally skipped into a spacious dressing-room, Jo wondered, awkwardly, where she was supposed to wait. A haughty
assistant hovered disapprovingly, and just as Jo decided she’d wait outside the shop, Amelia’s thin brown arm appeared from
the dressing-room curtain and pulled her in. ‘Sit,’ she commanded, and as Jo sat down on the flimsy stool she didn’t know
where to look.

Amelia pulled off her tatty jeans and vest top easily, and Jo tried – but failed – not to drink in Amelia’s pert size-eight
frame as she looked for a part of the cubicle that wasn’t made of mirror. She stared at how the curve of Amelia’s tits and
hips contrasted with the flat of her stomach and flare of her bottom, and realised that despite her fashion magazines she’d
never seen anyone so naked. A tiny ruffled black thong and a flimsy silk bra set off Amelia’s lightly tanned skin and Jo,
who was wearing large off-white knickers and matching bra, felt terrible. She had no idea that girls of her age looked so
sexy and she suddenly felt self-conscious.

‘What do you think of this one?’ Amelia said as she turned around, pulled off her Lejaby bra, and slipped into a green dress
that was slashed down to the stomach – it was identical to the Versace one Jennifer Lopez wore to the Grammys. Jo gulped.

‘It’s very sexy,’ she said, as she noticed the smooth skin of Amelia’s taut midriff, and tried not to stare at her nipples
poking through the sliver of material at the front.

Amelia stared at herself in the mirror and frowned. ‘But is it too obvious?’

‘Obvious?’

‘You know … does it make me look too slutty?’

Jo laughed. ‘You look like a model. Sensational. You could be a brunette Kate Moss.’ If she didn’t like Amelia so much, she’d
have hated her.

Amelia turned round and stuck her hips out at her reflection. ‘I’m too short to be a model,’ she said, staring at herself
distractedly and then wrinkling her nose. ‘Although I suppose I could be a TV presenter, if I wanted to be. They’re all tiny
in real life, apparently. Cordelia met Cat Deeley from
SMTV
in a bar in town a few weeks ago and couldn’t get over how small she was.’ Amelia smoothed the top against her flat stomach
and sighed. ‘Perhaps this dress in hot pink rather than sea green. What do you think?’

As they trailed around the expensive boutiques of Winchester, Jo began to despair. They were never going to find anything
to fit her, let alone make her look even half as
good as Amelia on a bad day. Amelia watched Jo get more and more downcast, and just as Amelia thought Jo looked suicidal she
thought she’d play her trump card.

‘Jo,’ she began nervously, hoping her friend would be pleased – not annoyed – at what she was about to suggest. ‘There’s a
shop just a bit further down here that may have some clothes that … you’d like,’ she said, tentatively. ‘Do you want to try
it?’

Jo nodded glumly. It was clear there were no shops around here that would stock anything that would fit her.

‘The thing is … well. This is the shop. What do you think?’

Jo walked around the shop silently, taking in the oversized yet fashionable clothes in amazement. She didn’t understand.

‘It’s a new maternity shop,’ Amelia whispered to Jo. ‘Don’t be angry with me, it’s just some things in here will fit you better
than others and I thought you might like them.’ Amelia’s whisper trailed off, and Jo didn’t know if she should be pleased
at the fact that there were some decent, near-sexy clothes in her size here or if she should walk out, insulted. Just as she
thought she couldn’t go through with the humiliation of buying clothes for pregnant women, a delicate indigo tunic caught
her eye.

‘If anyone asks, I’m due in four weeks,’ she whispered back to Amelia, and Amelia comically clapped her hands together in
glee as Jo picked up the top and began to browse with a smile on her face.

In the changing-room Jo lost the smile.

‘I look like an idiot,’ she said to Amelia, hating herself for believing, just for a second, that she could look beautiful.
‘I should stick to black. I’m safe in black.’

Amelia shook her head. ‘You look great, look at yourself.’

Jo stood self-consciously in front of the full-length mirror
and tried to hide her bulging stomach behind her hands. The tunic was cleverly cut to show some of her cleavage and then dropped
down in subtle pleats over her stomach. A black crocheted shawl covered her bare arms, and the stretchy dark denim jeans (albeit
with a maternity pouch that nobody could see) made her legs look slightly longer. If Jo squinted, they could have passed for
Diesel.

‘I’m not sure …’

Amelia sighed and sat down on the floor.

‘Look, since we’ve left school you’ve lost a couple of pounds from your face and it really shows.’ Jo looked at her friend
in disbelief. ‘And as for your clothes, well, those shapeless sacks you wear don’t do you justice.’ Amelia looked pointedly
at Jo’s ankle-length faded black skirt and dark grey T-shirt that was bunched up on the floor.

Jo started to open her mouth to protest but Amelia wouldn’t let her. Jo could very easily see how Amelia was Sarah Gladstone-Denham’s
daughter.

‘Wear these clothes tonight, let me put some make-up on you, and try looking like a different person just for a few hours.
If it all goes wrong – which it won’t – nobody will ever see you again anyway, but if it all goes right you can buy me a drink.
What do you say?’

Jo stared at her reflection for a long time and then let the faintest smile show on her face. ‘Go on, then,’ she said with
a grin. ‘Although if I get mistaken for a drag queen later, you’ll be in trouble.’

Jo and Amelia were sitting in the Beetle outside Gigolo – Charlie’s recently opened bar in the heart of Winchester – and Jo
was on the verge of a panic attack.

‘I’m not sure I can do this,’ she whispered, as Amelia applied a final stroke of blusher to Jo’s cheeks. Jo moved her face
away from Amelia’s hands and stared at the impossibly glamorous people queuing outside the bar. She felt irrational fear running
through her veins. ‘Ames, do I really have to wear all this make-up?’ she asked her friend. ‘I feel a bit odd with all this
stuff on my face … A bit … obvious.’

Jo pulled a mirror from her bag and gazed at herself with slight horror. Amelia had spent what seemed like hours on her, blow-drying
her hair until it shone, shading blue Dior cream eyeshadow over her lids, and accenting the curve of her eyes with heavy black
liner. Maybelline Great Lash mascara provided a
femme fatale
look, and a final sweep of Pout Flush Blush gave the impression of cheekbones. Jo wasn’t sure if she looked sensational or
if she resembled a clown, but she was sure she wasn’t fashionable – last month’s issue of
Cosmo
said the natural look was in.

Amelia smiled kindly, but before she said anything Jo buried her head in her hands.

‘It’s going to be like school all over again, isn’t it?
Everyone is going to take the piss out of me and my make-up and you’re going to end up babysitting me.’

Amelia rolled her eyes. ‘Don’t be stupid,’ she said gently. ‘You look amazing – like a completely different person … Now,
let’s go.’ Amelia jumped out of the car, hoping that as soon as they were in the bar Jo would stop worrying, but Jo followed
her slowly, wobbling on the kitten heels Amelia had made her buy and feeling overdressed and foolish.

The new jeans she’d been so proud of earlier that day suddenly felt too tight, and Jo was sure that her love handles could
be seen through her top. She watched the gorgeous girls in the queue pout and stick out their hipbones as they waited to get
in, and then felt her heart drop as she realised just how enormous she was in comparison to them. The only way to get through
the evening, Jo decided, was to pretend to be an undercover reporter doing a piece on body fascism in England. She wasn’t
really fat, she told herself, just wearing padding for a magazine assignment.

Amelia confidently led Jo past the staring girls in the queue and, after shooting the burly bouncers a flirtatious grin, led
Jo into the dark bar. A barman spotted Amelia and wolf-whistled, but his expression froze slightly when he spotted Jo lumbering
behind her. Suddenly everyone stopped talking, and Jo felt herself tense up – she knew they were staring at her, and not in
a good way. Amelia took control of the situation and steered Jo to a free table in a roped-off VIP section.

‘I’ll be back in a sec,’ she said, spotting a space at the bar. ‘I’m just going to get us some drinks.’