I have enough pictures of Lloyd to fill a gallery, but the only extant photographs of myself in the last two years are a head shot on the hotel website and a picture of my arse taken on his mobile phone.
He has set me up to fail.
‘Damn you, Ellison,’ I murmur, picking up the business card.
She is called Sasha Margetts. She has all the right letters after her name, but underneath it I read ‘Boudoir and Erotic’. Is this where wannabe porn starlets go for their portfolio shots? I wonder. Will she have me licking suggestively on a lollipop while I shake my airbrushed booty? Or will it all be dead tasteful with soft lighting and feathers covering the rude bits? Only one way to find out …
I reach for the phone at least a dozen times before finally going through with the call. I contemplate ringing Lloyd first and haranguing him for picking such an odious task, but that would only give him some kind of perverse satisfaction, so I don’t. I’m not going to fail this on the nursery slopes.
‘Hello, Sasha Margetts.’
‘Hi, my name’s Sophie Martin.’
‘Oh, yes, my afternoon booking! Is it still OK? Can you make it?’
‘I think so. Not sure of the exact time though – I didn’t make the booking myself.’
‘Oh no, that’s right. It was your agent, wasn’t it? Lloyd?’
I have to take a very deep breath. My agent? ‘S’right,’ I manage.
‘Well, I’ll be ready for you at two. Do you know where we are?’
‘Your card says Carrington Mews – I think that’s quite near here. Sloane Square tube station?’
‘Yes, that’s the closest. We’ll do the solo shots first.’
‘We’ll … solo shots?’ I struggle to make sense of this. Does she mean that there will be another model in some of the photographs?
‘Yes. You don’t need to bring anything, by the way. I’ve a full wardrobe of costumes and props and I’ll do make-up here. So, two o’clock then?’
‘Yeah. Great.’ I put the phone down, and then I can’t prevent myself calling Lloyd. ‘Lloyd!’
He chuckles down the phone at me. ‘You got it then?’
‘What the fuck does she mean? “We’ll do the solo shots first”? What does that mean? What else did you tell her to do?’
‘Wait and see.’
‘I think, as my agent, you should keep me in the loop.’
‘I think, as the orchestrator of the challenge, I should make this as hard for you as I can. Ah, why did I say that? “Hard for you.” I think I am. Thinking about what’s going to happen –’
‘Which is?’
‘As I said before –’
‘Oh, don’t bother.’ I hang up.
I look at the clock. Eleven fifteen. Am I going to do this?
Yes, I am. Failure is not an option.
I think about changing for the appointment, but in the end I turn up in the chichi Chelsea courtyard in the same charcoal-grey skirt suit I wore to work. At least Sasha Margetts will see that I am not some Botoxed bimbo but a bona fide businesswoman who doesn’t get messed around.
Though I suspect I might get messed up.
The door is answered by a smiling woman in her forties, casually but expensively dressed, giving every impression of a model-turned-photographer. In fact, I think I vaguely recognise her.
‘Yes, yes,’ she laughs, responding to my quizzical frown. ‘Sash Derby as was. That’s me.’
‘Oh God. It is you, isn’t it? I remember those perfume adverts you did.’
We climb a staircase, quoting in unison the corny line she had had to speak.
‘I know, dreadful, weren’t they?’ she says, ushering me into a vast white studio space, lined and surrounded with clothes racks and storage units. ‘I much prefer what I do now. No more pouting and trying to look mysterious. Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean …’
‘It’s fine. I’m not really a model. I’m a hotelier.’
‘Oh? But you want to break into the scene, your agent said.’ She stands over by a small sink unit and waves a kettle at me. ‘Tea? Coffee? Or sometimes my models need a tot of something stronger, just to dispel the nerves.’
‘He said that, did he? Oh, tea’s fine. White, no sugar.’
‘Isn’t it true?’
‘Oh, if he says it is, I’m sure it is.’ I’m skirting close to a fail, I think. I have to go with the flow. She has been given a story, and it’s my job to stick to it. ‘The hotel’s great, but I’m looking for something on the side. Where I can express myself.’
‘That’s terrific. That’s what we need to discuss. How do we best express you, your personality and your individuality, through the medium of my camera?’
Stumped, I look for inspiration amongst the portraits on the wall. Most are innocuous enough – beautiful girls in cashmere wraps or naked but for jewellery. Until you look at their faces. Rapt, caught in another world, another state of being. Their vulnerability is shocking and arousing.
‘Seems to me,’ I say, trying not to let my voice tremble, ‘that I won’t get much choice in that. One’s face does what it does at that crucial moment.’
‘Yes, you can’t fake it.’ Sash appears at my shoulder, inspecting her work along with me. ‘It’s a moment when you are nothing but yourself. The masks peeled off, the face metaphorically bare.’
‘That’s a strangely frightening thought.’
She puts her hand on my shoulder. I’m not tactile, outside the bedroom, and I flinch a little.
‘You’re not the first person to think so. Come on. Sit down and we’ll talk about your needs.’
I take my tea and perch on her white leather sofa. ‘Didn’t Lloyd give you any idea of what was wanted?’
She laughs. ‘Oh yes, he did. But I’m starting with you. You’re the girl in the picture. What are you getting out of this?’
A win. I’m getting to win.
‘I’m getting to represent myself as what I am.’
‘Which is?’
‘An insatiable whore.’
She is taken aback. For a moment, all she can do is stare at me.
‘Sorry not to put it more delicately,’ I say. ‘I suppose people generally say that they want to express their flowering sexuality or their empowering femininity or whatever. But I don’t dress it up. I’m not a flowery feminine sexually empowered blah-de-blah. I’m an insatiable whore. That’s what you’ll see. That’s what you’ll get.’
Sash sips at her tea.
‘Oh,’ she says. ‘You sound a little bit angry. Are you sure you want to do this?’
‘I’m only angry because people don’t like insatiable whores. Well, they do really, but they won’t admit it, so we get bad press. It’s not fair, is it?’
‘I suppose not. So, when we pick props you want something fairly full-on? Aggressively