Page 13 of Time of Your Life

Eight

Ysolde

Jilly E. Edwards is indisputably the best agent on the planet.

She found me when I was fifteen outside Selfridges in my school uniform.

I was with my older sister, Evanthe—she never said anything but I think she hated that I was scouted and she wasn’t.

It’s not that she’s not beautiful; she is—but I probably am more so in a conventional way.

Beauty is a funny thing, isn’t it? The only way I’ve ever really been able to approach it is to treat it like it’s the skill set it is.

And sure, it’s not a learnt skill, but people have a natural aptitude towards things like science (Evanthe does, for example).

I have one towards being attractive, I suppose.

She’s always been weird about me being a model, so has our dad.

My little sister’s sweet about my job though.

I think she thinks it’s cool. To an eighteen-year-old, it would be.

I suppose to me, at twenty, it’s still pretty cool.

She wants to be an actress, my little sister.

So she says, anyway. She’s never actually done anything about it, never joined a local theatre or even been in a school play.

Which sort of makes me think that maybe she just wants to be famous.

Which is mad. Only a person who’s never been famous would want to be famous.

I love Rain’s offices. They’re on Welbeck Street, and Jilly’s office is the best one because she’s the best one.

Lala and I in the industry are known as “Jilly’s girls,” not Rain girls, even though we are technically both.

Lala and I, and Chenko from the other night—we’re her primary focus, and don’t tell the others, but I’m definitely her favourite.

I dunno why. Lala has two parents who love her, and I have only one, and he barely likes me, so maybe it’s that she’s sorry for me?

She cares very much about our health and well-being, which is weird for an agent, but nice.

I know some girls in our industry who have agents encouraging them to throw up their dinner and chain smoke.

Jilly would never tell me to throw up my dinner—bad for teeth enamel, for one—and she says all the clothes we wear are too expensive to have them smell like smoke.

I do smell a bit like smoke though—Joah loves a cigarette. I suppose he actually loves most vices…

“Do you have any perfume on you?” I ask Pixie in the lift on the way up to the offices.

She nods and fishes some out of her mini gold Duma backpack from Chanel last year, offering me her CK One. I give myself a couple of spritzes, but Pix gives me a look.

“She’s still going to smell you…”

I grimace as we round the corner into the office.

It’s very white, lots of plants and dramatic rugs—photos of Lala’s and my most famous shoots with a big desk in the centre of it all. I’m not there for any particular reason, sometimes we just come here to come here. My mum’s dead and Lala’s lives in Spain now, so we’re practically orphans.

Jilly springs to her feet as soon as she sees me, arms open.

“Darling heart.” She pulls me into a hug and I give Lala—who’s over on the sofa, magazine in hand—a smile over Jilly’s shoulder.

Jilly kisses my cheek, then scowls. “You smell like smoke.”

“I walked through a terrible puff of it on my way up!” I lie, and she gives me a suspicious mm-hmm , then she moves past me, kissing Pixie’s cheek also before she turns back to me, touching my hair affectionately.

“Look at your hair, all tussled by a rock star.”

“It’s chic,” Lala tells her.

“It’s…not, darling, but okay—” Jilly gives Lala a patient smile before she turns back to me. “I heard the severity of your crush is worse than the Kelly Slater affair.”

“She already said she loves him,” Lala tells Jilly—sort of dobbing on me because she wants to be in Jilly’s good books. Jilly’s like that. Lala is literally the coolest person in every single room, and still even she wants Jilly’s approval.

“To his face,” Lala adds on.

Jilly stares at me, eyes wide and a bit alarmed.

“He said it first?” I offer.

Pixie throws herself down dramatically onto the sofa next to Lalee.

“Joah Harrigan said I love you to you?” She sighs, forlorn.

“He did,” I tell Pix with a smile that gives away all my cool.

“Oh. My. God.” Pix stares at me, jaw practically on the floor. “Oh my god, she’s the luckiest girl in the world—” she tells no one in particular.

“Pixie.” Jilly gives her a my-patience-is-waning smile now. “Do calm down.”

“When did he tell you?” Pixie asks, not remotely responding to Jilly. “And where—? Was it like, after you’d had sex or like when he—”

“After he sang her a song at his show,” Lala tells her.

“HE SANG YOU A SONG AT HIS SHOW?” Pixie literally yells.

Lala silently starts laughing from beside her, and I give her an exasperated look.

Biggest drama queen I’ve ever met, Pix. It’s a crime she never went out for RADA.

“I mean—” Pix gives me a look. “Don’t get me wrong, I am happy for you but I’m sad for me.”

Jilly’s back behind her desk now, chin in hand. “Is he romantic?” she asks, thinking it all through. “Is he very sweet with you, darling?”

I nod. “I think so.”

I clock Lala, make sure she thinks that too.

“Yeah, I think so too,” she tells Jilly with a smile.

Jilly thinks to herself for a moment. “He’s rather crass, is he not?”

“He does say the F-word a lot ,” I concede.

“And the C-word…” Pixie tattles on him.

“No—” I shake my head at Jilly. “He’s promised to stop that.”

“Well, that’s something,” Jilly says with what’s supposed to be an encouraging smile, but it’s a bit half-baked.

“It is,” Lala says, trying to counteract the energy in the room. “Sol hates that word.”

“It’s so lowbrow. I immediately feel poorer whenever someone says it near me…”

“Did you tell your boyfriend that?” Lala asks, eyebrows up.

I umm and ahh. “Not so colourfully, but yes, I believe my stance was made apparent.”

Pixie perches on Jilly’s desk, thinking to herself before she says aloud: “He is poor though, isn’t he?”

I scrunch my nose up at her. “No.”

“But he was ,” Pixie tells me.

I look between them all. News to me. “Was he?”

“You didn’t know?” Pixie says. “He grew up on a council estate…”

I cross my arms. “How do you know that?”

She shrugs. “I read about it in The Daily Sun —”

I roll my eyes at her, but Lala gives me an earnest look as I sit down next to her on the sofa.

“Can you not hear his accent?”

“There are rich people in Manchester!” I pout.

“Oh, yeah?” Lala scoffs. “Who?”

“Freddie.” I tell her, defiant.

She rolls her eyes. “Manchester United players don’t count.”

I give her an exasperated look. “Well, cut my legs from under me then, why don’t you?”

“What’s it matter—? You love a bit of rough,” Lala reminds me with a look.

And she’s definitely talking about Freddie. He’s my—never mind. I haven’t worked out how to tell Joah about him yet, so let’s not worry about him right now.

“Is he rough in the fun way?” Pixie asks and as she does, Jilly sighs forlornly.

“I don’t know why I invited you all here—I forget that I get a horrible headache…”

“Yes,” I say, ignoring Jilly but only because I know she loves me so it’s okay to do that. “But the perfect amount. We’re just…very in-tune, like, we’re oddly in sync—but he’s very commanding—? Very good at the tossing about…”

“Weakest of knees for being tossed.” Lala nods her head my way. “He’s also very sexually thoughtful, which is nice, I think—”

Pixie opens her mouth to speak—eyes about to fall out of her head as she’s poised to presumably ask how Lala even knows, when Lala preempts the question.

She gestures towards me again. “I get a play-by-play of her day whether I like it or not.”

Jilly clears her throat and gives me a careful look. “I did get a call from his manager…”

“What?” I blink. “Why?”

My agent takes a measured breath. “He’s… concerned …” She gives me an apologetic smile that I do not meet. She keeps going. “…that you’re not the best thing for Joah’s image?”

“Right—” Lala jumps to her feet, pushing her sleeves up. “What’s this man’s name?” she asks Jilly. When Jilly doesn’t answer her, Lala turns back to me, eyebrow up, waiting.

“Mick,” I tell her, because maybe Mick could use a visit from Lalee…

“Mick Who?”

And I’m about to say his surname when Jilly points her finger from across the room at me.

“Don’t.”

Lalee falls back down onto the sofa, pouting, arms crossed. “Cock.”

“Angel—” Jilly gives me a patient, maternal smile.

“You are the fashion world’s darling. And yes, there’s often some lighthearted gossip about you most days in most papers in the country—what’s she wearing; what’s she eating; she looks hungry —child’s play.

And society in general has a fairly balanced view on you—despite the fact that you’ve dated several high-profile men, and even though you once dropped a tiny baggy of MDMA on the pavement out front of Holy Brompton Trinity on Christmas morning—”

Lala grimaces on my behalf, before saying in my defence, “But how else was she supposed to sit through church?”

“Ys, the general public’s perception of you…you’re the modelling world’s good girl…”

I roll my eyes at my agent now. She’s being ridiculous. “Christy is the good girl.”

Every man and his dog knows that.

“Yes.” Jilly nods emphatically. “And you are right behind her, darling.”

“You know what—” Lala says, glancing between us all. “She’s not, actually—that’s what’s impressive about her. She’s a fucking hot mess—”

I frown. “Hey.”

“Love you, Sol—you are, though. Exclusively when it comes to men. Not your fault. You were raised by a nihilistic, emotional miscreant—”

“Well—” I start but my best friend interrupts me with a head shake.

“Wasn’t a question.”

I give her a look. “Nor was it a point—”

“The point is”—she turns to Jilly specifically—“she’s not such a good girl. She has a flaming pile of men in her rearview mirror. She’s just Ysolde Featherstonhaugh, and she has that smile and those eyes, and something about that combination—”