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TWO WEEKS BEFORE THAT THURSDAY

Opal

“It’s no good, my fucking face is melting off again.”

Opal dropped her arms, mid pigeon-pose, and glared. Faiza peeped over the tripod at her.

“It’s fine,” Faiza said. “You look great.”

“It is not fine. My eyebrows feel like they’re on my cheeks.” Opal stormed off the yoga mat and across the studio to the illuminated mirror. She examined her face. “They are on my cheeks. Which is almost unbelievable because my lipstick is also on my nose. How the everloving fuck does makeup melt in two directions at once?”

“You were upside down for quite a long time,” Faiza volunteered. “Which looked great, by the way.”

Opal turned to the young girl cringing beside the mirror. She looked like all the other young girls who had crossed Opal’s path in an endless stream since she had started this business. Every single person involved in social media marketing was about fifteen years old with tits that defied gravity and they spent all of their time wearing crop tops, pouting into phone cameras, and speaking every sentence with a questioning lilt at the end like they’d never been certain of anything in their lives. Even Faiza, her social media manager/photographer/producer/video editor/PA, who was more resilient than most—well, at least she’d stuck around for more than five minutes and seemed to know what she was doing—was barely out of college.

“What is your name?” Opal demanded of the young girl.

“Taylor?”

“Are you sure? You don’t sound it.”

The girl nodded, biting her lip.

“Taylor, I wonder if you can tell me something.”

“...Okay?”

“Are you a professional makeup artist or are you some brainless cow whose entire resume consists of makeup tutorials that you do from your bedroom on TikTok?”

“She’s a professional,” said Faiza in a carefully controlled voice. “She’s done London Fashion Week.”

“Then why do I look like a badger who has been put into a microwave?”

“I’m sorry,” said Taylor. “I can try a bit of powder?”

“A bit of powder? What a great idea! A bit of powder can solve anything. Global warming, arms proliferation, cancer. Just slap a bit of powder on there! Problem gone!”

“It’s...the makeup melts a little when you sweat?”

“No shit, Sherlock. GlowUpp makeup melts when you sweat. GlowUpp makeup melts when the sun comes out. GlowUpp makeup melts when you look at it funny. The stuff is utterly useless, especially for a fitness expert who is trying to wear GlowUpp makeup while recording a fitness video.”

“Maybe if we—”

“The thing is, Taylor,” Opal interrupted, “and I will say this slowly: even though GlowUpp makeup is terrible, even though it is awful slop that’s fit only to be tossed straight into the bin as soon as you buy it, I have signed a binding contract to be an exclusive brand ambassador for GlowUpp. Faiza, you’re the one with the alleged marketing degree. What does that mean, exclusive brand ambassador ?”

“It means that you are legally obligated to use GlowUpp products in all of your public-facing appearances as a fitness influencer and talk about how GlowUpp products are your beauty product of choice when you’re following a healthy lifestyle.”

“Did you hear that, Taylor?”

“...Yes?”

“And what that means for you , Taylor, is that it is your job to make GlowUpp’s terrible makeup look good on me. This is why we hire a so-called makeup artist, instead of me slapping the stuff on by myself with a trowel and hoping for the best. Do you understand?”

“...Yes?”

“Good. So tell me, Taylor, why, after a little light yoga, do I currently look like a dog’s breakfast?”

Taylor was tearing up now. “Maybe...maybe powder?”

Faiza stepped in between them before Opal could get properly angry. “Taylor, why don’t you take a little break? And we can get back to work in a little bit, with a fresh approach?”

Taylor fled.

Opal swore.

Faiza sighed. “This is the fifth makeup artist you’ve made cry. Can we maybe rethink our philosophy for dealing with freelancers?”

Opal grabbed a wipe and started trying to rub off her makeup. It was incredible how something that slid off her face so easily when she was exercising was so resistant to actual makeup remover.

“My philosophy isn’t the problem. It’s this sponsorship that’s the problem. And the main problem is that it’s the only one I’ve got and it is currently funding both my mortgage and your salary.”

“My meager salary,” added Faiza.

“My massive mortgage, because I am the talent, and your meager salary, because you are straight out of college, and I am giving you a chance.”

Faiza shook her head and looked down at her phone.

“Feel free to look for a job elsewhere,” said Opal.

“There are no jobs. It’s all unpaid internships.”

“In that case, hustle your ass and help find us another sponsorship or brand ambassadordom or whatever it is, and then we can consider a raise.” Opal gave it up as doomed and chucked the wipe into a trash.

“What did Sweaty Betty tell you?” Faiza asked.

“Recession.”

“I was talking with Si and they said they’d pulled out because you were too difficult to work with.”

“They can’t handle strong women,” said Opal.

“That might be true, but also, you are a bitch.”

“What is it with your generation? Has feminism entirely bypassed you? Have you given it up in exchange for collagen and avocado toast?”

“I think the point of feminism is to support your fellow women.”

Opal snorted.

“The thing is,” continued Faiza, “you can yell at me all you want, and you probably will, but if this carries on, GlowUpp is going to drop you as well. And then what happens?”

“I’ll fire my staff, meaning you, and go it alone. I don’t need anybody.”

“I’ll go try to persuade Taylor to come back.”

Faiza went off, leaving Opal by herself. She grabbed another wipe and scrubbed some more.

She did indeed have a massive mortgage on her flat in Canary Wharf. And quite aside from the crapness of their product, her contact at GlowUpp had been making noises that smacked loudly of dissatisfaction. The fact was, she’d scraped this sponsorship by the skin of her teeth. She was strong, she was ambitious, she was knowledgeable, she could be extremely charming when she wanted to, and she was in the best shape of her life, but she was past the age of fifty and that meant, as far as social media influencing went, that she was the bottom of the heap. Invisible. Washed up.

And once this source of income was gone, she was all out of options. She only had herself to rely on, and bankruptcy loomed.

Again.

You’re worthless and you’ll always be a failure without me .

There it was. His voice again in her head, on top of her mother’s voice and her father’s voice and her teachers’ voices. These days, his was the loudest.

And at night, in her dreams, she saw Cora. As she’d been before she died.

Opal began running in place. There was a reason they called it outrunning your demons. Except every time she thought she’d outrun hers, they came back and told her she was a pile of crap, that all of the trolls on her Instagram account telling her she was unfuckable were right, that it didn’t matter that she had perfect triceps and triglyceride levels, she was washed up, and worse than that, she was a terrible excuse for a human being and she had blood on her hands.

“Argh,” she said, and collapsed into the makeup chair, and reached for her phone. Faiza wasn’t going to be back for a while—if at all—and so she might as well follow up some leads.

But first...she’d do the reverse image search. She hadn’t done it yet today.

It was second nature by now; what had started out of desperation one sleepless evening had become a habit, like doing her morning workout. Select, copy, drag, drop, search. Nothing.

That is: usually it was nothing.

Today...it was something.

Opal leaned forward in her chair, eyes wide, hardly able to believe what she was seeing. This...was really something.

If she played her cards right, this was something that could change everything.