‘Kittler, you’ve got exactly ten seconds to say yes or I’m never putting your tiny fucking arse up for a job ever the fuck again. So say yes.’
Ten seconds.
Hawaii.
Piece of piss.
I looked up at the mirror above Vanessa’s bed (no, really) and took a moment. Ratty hair. Sad donkey T-shirt. No job. No boyfriend. No friends. Shit family. Council tax due. Turning opinion round on Tess Brookes was going to be hard bloody work. But what if I just wasn’t Tess Brookes any more? What if I was Vanessa Kittler? Just slightly less slutty and with a faint Yorkshire lilt?
‘Three. Two.’
‘I’ll do it,’ I told my reflection and Veronica in my best Lahndahn drawl. ‘I’ll go.’
‘Too fucking right you will,’ Agent Veronica replied. ‘I need to email you the brief. I know you’re a twat about flights, so book the ticket yourself and claim it back and don’t give me any shit about how expensive it’s going to be. I’m sure there’s room on Daddy’s credit card.’
‘No, that’s fine.’ My pulse was starting to race again. For different reasons this time. ‘Uh, my BlackBerry is, um, fahcked. Can you send it to my flatmate’s address? It’s Tess S Brookes at googlemail. And, uh, I’ll give you another number. Don’t call the BlackBerry.’
Hawaii.
‘Whatever. Just get your shit together, Kittler.’ Agent Veronica sounded very unhappy with Vanessa. Agent Veronica needed to get in line. ‘I won’t have you fucking up on me again. This is it. Your last fucking chance. These photos need to be as good as the photos that got me to sign your pathetic arse in the first place and not as wank as the ones you sent in last month. We did discuss the fact that they were indeed wank, did we not?’
‘Yes?’ I really wished I could see those photos. Presumably she’d been drunk when she took them. Or possibly she’d been too busy shagging Charlie to concentrate. Who knew? There was a world of possibilities.
‘Too fucking right, yes,’ she snapped. ‘This is your last fucking chance. Do not let me down.’
Last chance. Fresh start. It was all the same, really.
It was only when I arrived at Honolulu international airport and saw a driver waiting in arrivals with a big sign saying ‘Vanessa Kittler’ that it occurred to me exactly what I’d done.
I didn’t know why I’d told Agent Veronica that I would go to a place I’d never visited and take pictures of someone I’d never heard of for a magazine I’d never read. I didn’t know why I had picked up my old camera, grabbed Vanessa’s kit bag and started packing. I couldn’t explain why I wrote a note for Amy that just said, ‘Gone to Hawaii. Call you when I get there. So sorry. xxx’ and stuck it on the front door. I had a sneaking suspicion it had something to do with the fact that my life had become an unspeakable disaster and I didn’t really fancy living it any more. And it wasn’t as though the real Vanessa was doing such a spectacular job of her existence, wherever she was. It all seemed to make sense at the time. Same way as two plus two equals three and one. It wasn’t wrong; it just wasn’t quite right.
Clutching the sweaty plastic handle of my badly packed suitcase, I tripped over my own feet on the way over to the driver and nodded with as much authority as I could muster when he waved his sign in my direction. It wasn’t a lot of authority. Nonetheless, he nodded back, opened the back door and took my suitcase. Success. I had officially fooled one person. By not speaking and almost falling over.
Packing for my spur-of-the-moment career change had been trying. What did photographers wear? My wardrobe was mostly made up of relatively sensible office separates. There was a lot of black, a lot of blue, and a lot of Dorothy Perkins. Vanessa swanned around in swanky designer stuff she snagged from her friends and bought with Daddy’s money. Happily, it transpired that the only thing she and I had in common, aside from Charlie Wilder’s penis, was our inside leg measurement. Given that I was already borrowing her job, her name and her camera, I didn’t think she’d mind if I nicked a couple of pairs of skinny jeans, an entire drawerful of T-shirts and the odd frock. And two pairs of very expensive-looking shoes, just in case. And a nice jumper for the plane. Vanessa and I both had curves, the difference being that hers were in all the right places whereas mine were everywhere. Sitting on my arse in an office for the last seven years had done nothing to help me out. Luckily, I discovered that with the help of some very restrictive underwear and a lot of breathing in, I could fit into most of her things. Which made me much happier than it should. I did pack my own pants, flip-flops and bikini. My poor, ancient bikini. I couldn’t exactly remember when I’d bought it, but I was certain it was old enough to be sitting its GCSEs.
It had been a drizzly, grey afternoon in London when I’d boarded my flight at Heathrow, but when the plane touched down at LAX eleven hours later, it was bright and beautiful. And I was tipsy enough to believe this was a sign from the gods that I had made the right choice – I was being rewarded for my bravery with sunshine and teeny tiny bottles of booze. But now it wasn’t a grey Sunday afternoon at Heathrow or a sunny Sunday evening in LA; it was a blazing Monday morning in Hawaii and the reality of what I’d done was starting to sink in. Not that reality was really a concept I was ready to get to grips with just yet. Instead of riding on a bus through the winding streets of London, I was sequestered away in a chauffeur-driven car, rolling along the highway. Instead of staring at bus stops and analysing their ad campaigns, I was blinking vacantly at bright blue skies and palm trees. Without a second thought, I’d traded the Thames for the Pacific Ocean. It was all too much.
Before I could beg the driver to turn round and take me back to the airport, my car pulled up in front of a house that looked exactly like the Blue Peter model of Tracy Island that I had not made as a kid. The three-storey palace was built into the side of a hill, all floor-to-ceiling windows and soft, curving angles crowned by a giant round balcony on the very top. It was very sixties futuristic, but at the same time looked like it had been there for ever, like the house had grown out of the hill. Bertie Bennett had to be richer than Jesus. Or J.K. Rowling. It hadn’t occurred to me how incredibly rich this man would be. He was clearly not a man who usually had his photo taken by a girl whose most recent photography experiment ran to Facebooking her dinner every night for a week and downloading apps that showed you what you’d look like if you were morbidly obese. My eyes stayed fixed on the architectural wonder as the driver waved a key card at an invisible sensor and sailed through a pair of giant iron gates, leaving the mansion behind us as we swept behind the house down a driveway that led through lush green grounds with what looked like a mountain on one side and a completely deserted beach on the other. Before I had a chance to shut my goldfish gape of a mouth, we pulled up and the engine cut out.
‘Miss Kittler? Aloha, e komo mai. Welcome to Oahu.’
The door to the car opened and a short, stocky man in a plain black uniform held out his hand. I sat there staring at him. Didn’t people speak English in Hawaii? Had I overlooked something else epically important? His broad smile slipped into a squint when I didn’t make a move, but all I could do was stare at him. His big brown eyes were far too pretty to belong to a man. He had eyelashes that would make Bambi blush.
‘Miss Kittler?’
‘Hi, yes,’ I croaked, my first words since immigration, and eventually reached out to take his hand.
