I pouted. ‘Yes.’
‘There there.’ She reached across the table and patted me on the head. ‘Now calm down. Did he actually come on your actual face? No, he didn’t.’
‘That doesn’t matter,’ I muttered, beginning to feel stupid. And hungry. Terrible combo. ‘It shouldn’t matter. He shouldn’t be able to say things like that.’
‘No, he shouldn’t but welcome to the world.’ Veronica sat back in her chair, blinking through the fug of smoke around her, and shook her head. ‘Do you want to be a fucking photographer, Tess?’
Six weeks ago, when I left Milan and arrived home, bright and shiny, full of ambition and pasta, I had been fairly certain that I was one. Apparently I had been mistaken.
‘Yes,’ I said hesitantly.
‘Do you want to book actual fucking jobs that pay actual fucking money?’
‘Yes,’ I said quickly. That one I was sure about.
‘Then, I hate to be the one to tell you but there’s worse coming your way than Simon fucking Derrick telling you to get on your knees and make kissy faces at his tiny knob,’ she sighed. ‘You should have told him to whip it out and then pissed yourself laughing.’
‘Simon?’ I asked, the first smile I’d managed all day creeping onto my face. ‘His name is Simon?’
‘What? Did you really fucking well think his Mancunian mother took him down the swimming baths and shouted “What a fucking brilliant backstroke, Ess!”?’ She took a drag and blew it out hard. ‘I’ve had him on the books since he was taking pictures for the Argos catalogue. And they were shite.’
I would have killed to shoot the Argos catalogue.
‘And 7?’ I asked.
‘You mean Colin?’ Agent Veronica grabbed her mouse and began clicking manically. ‘Little shagweed. Went to Eton, daddy owns half the internet. I hate that child.’
‘It’s harder than I thought it was going to be, that’s all,’ I admitted, scratching at a blob of white paint on the knee of my jeans.
‘There’s nothing easy about breaking through as a photographer, Brookes,’ she replied. ‘It takes some people years. Early starts, late finishes, working weekends, hours spent photoshopping some wanker’s sausage fingers so he doesn’t look like the smackhead that he is on the cover of a magazine. And that’s when you get good enough to pick up that sort of job. Have you considered that maybe it’s not for you?’
I felt my mouth fall open and immediately choked on Agent Veronica’s cigarette smoke.
‘It is for me!’ I said, my eyes stinging from the same smoke. The air in her office was so dense with thick white fug, it could have passed for the set of a Bananarama video. ‘It definitely is. I’ll put in the hours, I don’t care about hard work, I’ll do whatever it takes.’
‘And that’s a fandabidozi attitude, Pollyanna, but it doesn’t mean it’s going to happen for you.’ She stubbed out her cigarette and immediately lit another. ‘It might be time to admit that I was a bit bloody ambitious in taking you on. I don’t really work with assistants, Brookes. I’m an agent, not a charity. Do you think I’m at work on a Saturday afternoon for fun?’
‘But I won’t be assisting for long,’ I protested, swiping at my watering eyes, desperate to convince her to let me stay. ‘I’m going to be booking shoots really soon, I promise.’
‘That’s not your decision to make though, is it?’ she grimaced, eyes flickering back and forth over emails I couldn’t see. ‘I’ve had you on the books near enough six months and you’ve booked two jobs for the same person. I can’t babysit you for another six. There are only so many bleeding hours in a bleeding day and, no offence, but I need to concentrate on clients who are bringing in money.’
‘But I will,’ I said again. ‘I just need time.’
‘News-fucking-flash.’ Veronica spoke in between intense inhalations. ‘No one knows who you are, no one’s worked with you, no one gives two shits. I know it’s nearly Christmas but it’d be a bigger miracle than the virgin sodding birth for me to get you another job like the one you blagged at Gloss.’
I opened my mouth to speak but she cut me off with a stab of her cigarette.
‘And you’ve got a dubious reputation at best, depending on who you ask.’
A dubious reputation? I was clean as a whistle. I’d won the attendance prize in school every single year, apart from that one time when Amy made us bunk off to meet Justin Timberlake but that was hardly my fault. If I hadn’t gone, she would have been arrested. Instead of just being cautioned.
‘Word gets around in this industry,’ Agent Veronica said, seeing the confusion on my face. ‘And your cuntychops former flatmate has made it her business to make sure everyone has heard her side of the story.’
Oh, bollocks. Vanessa. Honestly, you steal someone’s job, their identity and let your best friend punch them in the tit once and you never hear the end of it.
‘That said, I like you, Brookes.’
She had a funny way of showing it.
‘I’d hate to see the way you talk to someone you didn’t like,’ I said behind a cough. ‘But thank you.’
‘You’ve got balls and I respect that,’ she went on, ignoring me as usual. Agent Veronica only really listened when you were saying something she wanted to hear. ‘But you’ve got to get used to throwing those fucking balls around a bit. Do you understand me?’
‘You want me to throw my balls around?’
‘You’re not going to get anywhere mincing around and fucking well sulking in corners.’ She pointed at me with her cigarette, causing a mini flurry of ash to fall into her keyboard. ‘And you’re not going to get anywhere crying to me about some arsehole asking you to polish his knob.’
‘That’s not going to be a regular occurrence, is it?’ I asked, genuinely at a loss. I came from a world where you worked hard and you got ahead. Or at least, I thought I did. It turned out I’d been very naïve. ‘I mean, tell me what to do and I’ll do it.’
‘That’s more like it.’ She sucked her second cigarette into nothing, grinding it out in her ashtray with what I supposed passed for a smile. ‘I want you to go home, put your big boy trousers on and go back on set tomorrow and kick Simon Derrick’s arse. That doesn’t mean you have to take his shit: that means you stand up for yourself and be amazing. Yes?’
‘What else can I do?’ I asked, trying to change the subject before she knocked me out with a single punch. ‘I’ll do anything, really, I’m not afraid of hard work.’
‘How about you take some fucking photos?’ she suggested. ‘Cocking revolutionary idea, I know. I can’t carry you much longer, Brookes, not when you’re not booking jobs. I don’t have the time to spend pulling assisting gigs that pay a pittance out of my wonderful arse.’
‘I’ll give that a try then,’ I said, grabbing my bag from the floor. It didn’t seem like the time to mention that she still took 15 per cent of that pittance. ‘Thanks for the advice, I won’t let you down.’
Before I could open the door, a tennis ball thwacked the wall, right next to my head. Bending down slowly, my heart in my mouth, I turned around to see Agent Veronica staring at me.
‘You dropped this?’ I picked up the ball and held it in the air, heart pounding.
She clapped for me to chuck it back. With a feeble underhand throw, I tossed it across the office, missing Veronica by a good two feet and knocking a massive stack of invoices off the desk.
‘I’m