Airhead

supposed to sprinkle into my hair every morning, and comb through, so it wouldn’t ever look greasy.

And Doreen the nail lady applied a paste to each one of my nails that quickly hardened to a fake nail that she filed short, then painted black.

Then she went, ‘Bite them. Go on. Try.’

And when I stuck my nail into my mouth, I nearly broke a tooth on it.

‘You’ll never bite them again,’ she said, ‘so long as you wear these.

You’ll come see me twice a month so I can fill the gaps as they grow.’

And then drops were being put into my eyes to get the red out (and I was being gently chastised for crying) while the whole team tried to think of things to tell me that I might have forgotten, like that my skin is too sensitive to wax (like this was actually something that was going to happen), so I have to shave unwanted body hair (including my bikini line, about which Norman said to me, ‘You have to use a BRAND-NEW RAZOR every time,’ which, hello, was totally embarrassing. But also incredibly useful, considering what Kelly had told me in the car about the swimsuit-issue thing), and that processed foods aggravate acid reflux (like I hadn’t noticed), and that (more interestingly) Brandon and I were fully breaking up before my accident because I was sick of him catting around with Mischa behind my back (fortunately they told me this while Brandon wasn’t in the room). None of them seemed to know that Nikki had been catting around behind Brandon’s back with her room-mate’s boyfriend (thank God).

All this made the time pass very quickly, so I barely noticed my eyelashes were being curled, and my hair straightened, and my toenails painted black to match my new fingernails, and that they were even bleaching my arm hairs (yes).

Then they went, ‘OK, off to wardrobe,’ and I was sent to a (barely) curtained-off area of the room where three tiny girls, each about a foot shorter than me, started taking off my clothes (without even asking!) and making me put on new things… things I couldn’t even figure out HOW to put on, so it was a good thing they were there actually, to help.

Then they would look at what I was in and one of them would take a Polaroid and run out of the curtained area and then come back with a yes or no. Finally they settled on this diaphanous white dress that was so low cut it would barely stay on, and these silver stilettos, and no earrings, and finally I was let out of the curtained area and led down a long, plush carpeted hallway, past a lot of stylishly dressed people who stared at me — up at me, mostly, since I was so tall in my stilettos — and a few of whom said, ‘Hi, Nikki.’ I tried to say hi back, but whenever I did, I’d get a shocked look. I guess Nikki wasn’t known for being particularly friendly while on a shoot.

Which I could sort of see why, considering how people poked and pulled her.

Then finally I was led up to a door that had the words ROBERT STARK, CEO written on them in silver letters. And the door was thrown open and I was in Mr Stark’s office at last.

Except that Mr Stark’s office was in total chaos because of the photo shoot. There were power cords running criss-crossed all along the carpet, and giant klieg lights set up all over the place, shining down hotly on everyone, and skinny guys in black shirts and jeans everywhere, and girls in ponytails with fancy glasses holding cups of latte, and big blackout cloths draped over the floor-to-ceiling windows that must have offered a panoramic view of all of Manhattan.

And in the centre of it all was a huge mahogany desk, at which sat Robert Stark in a white shirt unbuttoned about six inches to reveal a lot of grey chest hair. And behind him stood his son, also wearing a white shirt open to reveal his completely hairless chest. Both men looked tanned (thanks, I knew from Denise, to bronzer, which she’d also smeared all over me — and I mean, all over… there is apparently no room for modesty in modelling) and handsome in the lights. Robert Stark, though, looked impatient, while his son just looked bored.

I was getting ready to go up and introduce myself and ask if we could have a word together in private — because maybe if Mr Stark met me and saw what I was like, he might reconsider the whole making my parents pay back the two million dollars if I didn’t honour Nikki’s contract with Stark… and also might tell me why he’d given Nikki a computer that was loaded with keystroke-monitoring software.

But just as I was about to take a step in Mr Stark’s direction, someone grabbed me and wrapped me in a fierce hug.

‘There you are!’ cried a woman’s voice — gravelly, and big, to match the hug. ‘Oh, my God, I can’t believe how long it’s been! I wanted to come see you in the hospital, but they had those damned family visitation-only restrictions! But I’m her agent! I’m family, I told them. No deal. Well, let me look at you.’

I was held at arm’s length while a dark-haired middle-aged woman, whippet-thin, in a cream-coloured skirt suit examined me from head to foot.

‘Gorgeous, as always,’ she concluded when she was done checking me out. ‘Couldn’t be more gorgeous. Oh, but you don’t have the foggiest idea who I am, do you? You really did get a bump on the head!’

‘Um,’ I said, glancing past the woman at Robert Stark, who was complaining to someone about the cufflinks on his tuxedo shirt, which appeared to keep coming undone. ‘You’re Rebecca, my agent?’

‘That’s right, that’s right!’ She flung her arms around me again.

‘Rebecca Lowell! Thank God you’re all right. If anything had happened to you… well, I don’t know what I’d have done!’

‘Run straight back to that trailer park in the Ozarks to see if she could find someone else to pluck from obscurity,’ said a man in leather trousers with a pencil moustache drily.

‘Oh, hush,’ Rebecca said to the leather trousers man. To me, she said, ‘I know this is probably all very overwhelming. But you’ve always been a natural and I know you’ll snap back in no time. And speaking of being a natural… how excited are you about SI? Oh, Nikki, when I heard, my heart… well, I just thought I’d cry!’

‘Step away from the talent, Rebecca,’ Pencil Moustache said. ‘Now that she’s here we can finally get to work.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry, Raoul,’ Rebecca said, still hanging on to me. ‘It’s just that when I think how close she came to death—’

I wondered how she’d react if I told her her client Nikki really had died. Just not legally in the state of New York.

‘Yes, well, I’ll take good care of her for now, Bec.’ The man she’d called Raoul took me by the arm and said, ‘We’ve met before, Nikki, but you don’t remember, I see. Which is a crushing blow from which I doubt I’ll soon recover. Never mind. Hop up on to this desk here so Pete can check the lighting —’

Obediently, I hopped up on to the enormous mahogany desk — after first checking to make sure my diaphanous dress was covering everything it was supposed to be covering. Which it wasn’t doing the world’s best job of. My nipples were kind of showing…

‘Yes, yes,’ Raoul said, totally noticing what I thought I was doing so subtly. ‘Never mind that now, we’ve all seen it before. Now roll over and stick your heels in the air — elbows up, chin in your hands — Norman, hair.’ Norman darted forward to arrange my hair as I let Raoul twist me into a completely uncomfortable — even painful — position on the desk. ‘Yes, that’s better. All right, gentlemen, places.’

I couldn’t see what was going on behind me, because I was trying to hold my painful pose. But I suppose Mr Stark and his son went back to their places, since Raoul said, ‘Good, good. Let’s take some Polaroids.’

Well, I thought to myself as the photographer, Gwen, started snapping away. This isn’t so bad. Why had Lulu laughed so much when I asked how hard modelling can be? It’s not exactly difficult… although my neck kind of hurts. And I think there’s some mascara in my eye. And –

‘Nikki, Nikki,’ Raoul said. ‘Can you try not to look like you’re in pain? I know you are, darling, but don’t think about it. Think about lovely things, will you? Lovely thoughts, lovely face —’

I realized with horror that I’d been grimacing. I immediately plastered a huge smile on to my face.

‘Not quite that lovely, Nikki,’ Raoul intoned. ‘This isn’t a Sears portrait studio. Relax your mouth. Think dewy… Denise, can you make her lips more dewy? There. There. Now, a few more —’

And then Raoul and everyone gathered around to look at the Polaroids as they developed. So I started to sit up. Now, I thought, would be the perfect time to speak to Mr Stark –

‘Nikki, darling,’ Rebecca called sweetly from somewhere beyond the circle of white light thrown by the kliegs, so I couldn’t see her, ‘where do you think you’re going?’

‘Um,’ I said. ‘To change back into my real clothes?’

‘The shoot’s not over,’ I heard Brandon say with a smirk. ‘It hasn’t even begun.’

‘But —’ I looked at the dozens of Polaroids now being dropped indifferently to the floor.