Page 49

Chapter Twenty-Six

Back BF (before fame), I thought spending an hour getting ready to go on a night out was excessive.

I’d only ever want to do it if it was spent with my friends, and we pumped the tunes on and pre-drank.

Now, before a big event, it’s days and days’ worth of preparation.

Weeks, in Fliss’ case. She’s been reaching out to loads of flashy designers asking them to send in suggestions for what I should wear to the telly awards, and we made a selection of five that I tried on a week ago.

My chosen dress, a midnight blue mini dress with a longer, sheer over-layer encrusted in diamante, has been measured and altered so it fits me like a glove.

Which has also meant, for the past week, I’ve had to be stricter than ever about what I eat, and when.

I’ve had colonics, wraps, massages, the works.

Then ever since the fitting, I’ve been dashing about going to various beauty appointments, getting facials, tans, pedicures, manicures, waxes.

Every inch of me has to be perfect. I am not ending up in any Ring Of Regrets or on any ‘worst dressed’ lists this year.

Even if I don’t win the award, this has to be my time to shine.

It’s now only a few hours to go and I’ve been booked into a salon near the venue where I’m getting my hair freshly toned, blow-dried and styled, before Verity’s going to finesse my make-up, implementing her magic touch.

Damon is coming to collect me in a limo and we’ll walk the red carpet together.

This isn’t just my moment, it’s going to be our moment!

The salon has been over-run by reality TV stars, there’s Hattie from Born In Buckinghamshire over there, her hair already tightly encased in foils and Kim from CoC is taking a small nap on one of the sofas, her hair wrapped up in an elaborate turban.

The chair next to me is empty and I’m just grateful that Hattie isn’t in it, keeping my fingers crossed for either Layla or Madison to occupy it, or one of the other girls from the set that I get on well with.

“Hiya hun! Fancy seeing you here!” Great.

It’s Samantha. Just my luck. I plaster on a smile, say “hi” back and we marvel over the odds of being sat beside one another in the salon when actually, if you think about it, considering how this is the place for us reality lot to get ready in, it’s not surprising.

I indicate to my phone in my hand, as if to say, ‘would love to chat but have to get on with some very busy and important work’ when really, I just wanted to scroll in peace, maybe have a bit of a gossip with Jared, my hair stylist. But now Samantha is beside us and I can’t trust her not to spread, or over exaggerate, what we say, so we can no longer chat freely.

“Ah right, yeah unfortunate timing for you, isn’t it?” she says and I have no idea what she’s talking about so keep the smile glued to my face and pretend I’m not baffled. Remember, it’s vital: do not show any weakness around Samantha. “It is,” I say. “But we roll. Can’t change the press cycle.”

Fliss and I had hoped the photos of Damon and me at the old person’s home, sorry, retirement village, would drop the day of the awards.

So far, it’s all been going to plan. Damon can’t stop Instagramming and tweeting about his love for me, and while a few #doitforAngelica girls are disappointed I’ve gone back to him, there are others who have been invested in our love story from the beginning that are absolutely delighted.

They see it as a sign that true love sometimes takes its time.

But, when I open up my phone and click onto my fave bookmarked site, the paper that has been so regularly fillings its pages with loved-up me and Damon isn’t leading with our charity work.

Instead the top slot is…a huge picture of my vagina.

It’s pixellated out, of course, and another image has a big banner across my actual lady garden, but it only serves to draw more attention to it somehow.

Plus for all their ‘censored for explicit content’ warnings, the story makes it pretty clear where readers can go if they want to see the full, unblurred version.

Apparently it’s all over Twitter and has even been picked up by some actual porn sites.

I bite down on my own tongue, to stop my face showing any emotion, as Samantha is hovering over me, shaking her head.

“Just awful, isn’t it? I have no idea where they could have got that footage from. ”

But I know where and when it’s from.

“It’s from, it’s from…” I stutter.

I just don’t know who it’s from.

“That day in the house with the power cut – the one when we were told all the systems were down, that no filming could happen.”

It had been a great day. While we didn’t mind the cameras following us wherever we went normally and mostly we didn’t let their presence limit our behaviour much, as that was the premise of the show: we went wild and let the world see it, there were some things that we didn’t do, while aware we were being filmed.

All of us always had sex under the covers, so when people say they’ve “seen me having sex on telly” what they’ve really seen is some movement under a duvet, on a blurry black-and-white night camera.

I also didn’t mind it if people saw my tits, and sun-bathed topless in the garden once or twice, but I felt uncomfortable doing anything that made me out to be a sex object.

It’s not that I judged anyone who did, I mean look at Madison.

She wasn’t even on camera and she’s made the switch from runner to star and made a fortune too by doing the lads mags since.

It just didn’t suit me. I’ve done one lads mag shoot since leaving the house and I was so awkward and stilted the entire time.

They didn’t invite me back, not that I would have said yes, even if they had.

So, while my reputation is that I am a wild child, the reality is: I tried very hard to not do anything too explicit in the house.

And now, in a series of crystal-clear shots, there’s the full striptease lapdance that I did for Damon that day, trusting the cameramen when they said all the equipment was down.

There I am frame by frame, losing my clothes until that last image of me.

I feel so exposed and betrayed. “Who would do this?” I ask, unable to hide the quiver from my voice.

“Oh hun, you’re shaking,” Samantha grabs my hand and holds it, telling me to take deep breaths.

I’ve let myself down, I just can’t act in front of her anymore.

I feel like someone has stripped my skin off, that everyone in this salon can see the flesh that lies underneath, that they can see even further, my bones, my blood.

Millions and millions of people will have seen this by now, watched me strip in what I thought was a private act, something for the man I was falling in love with.

Actually for his eyes only. That was a crazy day, it was so much fun, and now I feel sick, thinking of what men might be doing to themselves, watching me.

I was already viewed as a disposable girl about town by some media outlets, this false impression that the outside world had of me, that I was ‘anyone’s’ and now, they’re going to think it even more.

I scroll down to the comments and the scathing words swim in front of my eyes .

I look away. Am I going to be sick? I can’t do that, not here, not in front of everyone.

“Has this happened to anyone else? We all went wild that day.”

Samantha shakes her head. “I know. Now we’re all scared shitless, I mean I was off the hook too,” she lowers her voice to a whisper. “Remember. I was properly crazy…There’s so much footage that could be leaked that wasn’t meant to get out.”

“So why am I the first? Or the only?”

Jared comes over before Samantha can answer, talks me through what he has planned for the day. He clearly has no idea what’s in the papers yet and I don’t want to tell him. I just want to get my hair done, as normal, as planned. He goes off to mix the colours and Samantha continues.

“We obviously don’t know anything, but a lot of the gang think it can only be one person: Leo.”

At the mention of his name, my face is drained even more of its colour. I look at myself in the salon mirror, and a ghost stares back.

“Really? Why?” I’d dropped my phone into my bag after reading the comments, to stop myself from looking any further, but I’m conscious I have messages from Damon, Madison, Layla and Leo that remain unread.

“For one, he was one of the cameramen so one of the few who has access to all the footage, all the unedited stuff. If it turns out the cameras had turned back on that day, who else would know? Now you know I don’t want to ever cast judgement on people without knowing the full story but…”

This is one of the irritating things about Samantha, she always has to preface anything bitchy she says with about a million caveats that she absolutely wouldn’t do this but…then proceeds to do the exact thing she claims to be against.

“I heard he’s really struggling financially, some kind of falling out with his family and…”

It tracks with what Leo told me about his parents, but he can’t be broke?

He sorted the money I needed for my parents’ house and stepped in and saved me last minute.

I paid him back as soon as I got the NuYu cash through and it was a hefty amount, can he really be so skint he’d betray me, for a quick pay-out?

“It just doesn’t seem very him,”

Jared’s hurried back over, painting stripes of blonde into my hair. “Who?” he asks, sensing that there’s gossip, the thing he thrives on most.

“Leo,” Samantha says. “One of the cameramen. I have it on good authority that he’s been selling stories on all of us, including a pretty nasty one of Angelica, published just this morning.”

“What? Let me see!”

“Believe me,” I say. “You, of all people, do not want to see my…”