It Was You All Along

Chapter Fifty-Six

Aurora

I’m on a job in Antigua. I hate the time-difference between everyone I love and me.

I hate the jet lag that always comes for me as I return home, and how achy I get after a long flight.

I’ve taken up Pilates, so I can stretch my muscles, my limbs, my spine.

I’m a pro at finding a tiny corner of a hotel gym, rolling out a mat and easing the tension from my body.

I have one of the world’s best jobs, but I’ve been doing it for a few years now and it’s always the same, every single time.

I’ve been around the world on so many different shoots with so many different people and I make the most of every part of it.

It brings travel that I could never have afforded in a normal job.

And more wealth than I’d ever have thought possible.

But it also brings isolation and loneliness.

As I roll out my mat in the hotel gym I wonder, not for the first time, if Ollie was right all those years ago.

If I should have had a back-up plan up my sleeve.

If I should have had something else to fall back on.

What would I do if I didn’t model? Not acting.

I had a little taster in the casino commercial and it’s not my thing.

I had a tiny taste of fame as Sam Charlton’s sort of girlfriend and I didn’t like it.

At least as a model I’m nameless, mostly.

Just a face to anyone who sees me on a billboard, or on an advertisement on the Underground, or down the sidebar of an online newspaper.

I wonder if everyone feels like this. I wouldn’t say I’m at the top of the modelling game.

I’m hardly Kate Moss or one of the original supers.

I’m not far enough up that I can’t still see the ground.

But the heady heights are within climbing distance.

Only I’m not sure I want to climb any more.

I think I might be over it. Does anyone stay in the same job their entire adult life?

I don’t think I want to. It might be time for something more wholesome.

I tell Toby this over drinks later, as we’ve been reunited for this shoot. Unlike me, he can’t get enough of the travel. We’ve seen each other off and on for dinners here and there, but we haven’t worked together since that time in Scotland.

‘So what will you do? Are your diamond shoes too tight?’ he asks, laughing at his own put-down as we sink our second spicy Margaritas on the beach-front terrace of our hotel.

We were shooting in another hotel on the island, but the one they’ve put us in to sleep is slightly less nice than that – the beach a bit more rocky than the white sand I’ve been draped across all day.

Good drinks, though, and a lovely vibe. Reggae music plays softly and the trade winds blow through the palm trees.

I wish I could say I could get used to this, but I’ve been used to it.

‘I think my diamond shoes might be too tight actually.’

‘Do you know how many women would kill to be in your position?’ Toby asks. ‘Think carefully before throwing it all away.’

‘I won’t throw it all away. I’ve got a huge mortgage to pay now, remember. You’ve seen my flat.’

‘I have. It’s a beauty.’

‘I just need to do something else alongside modelling, I think. Something that excites me, that spurs me on every day.’

‘Such as?’

I shrug and stare out to sea. ‘I’ve signed up for a course to become a Pilates instructor.’

‘You’ve done what?’

‘A while ago Liv predicted that I might fade into obscurity. And before that, Ollie said I needed a Plan B. This is my Plan B.’

‘A Pilates instructor? That’s quite … pedestrian.’

‘No, it’s not!’ I protest.

‘Compared to modelling, it is,’ Toby says.

‘Well, so what? I need pedestrian. I can hardly go and become – I don’t know – an airline pilot.

I’m not qualified to do any kind of job at all, so I may as well start from scratch with something I enjoy.

And I love Pilates. I roll out my mat every day.

I’m not saying I’m going to give up modelling right now.

But I am going to give something else a shot alongside it.

And maybe I’ll make a success of that too. ’

‘Darling, I hate to break it to you, but lightning doesn’t strike twice.’

‘Maybe,’ I reply, although I don’t want to think that, so I jog the conversation along. ‘Tell me what’s been happening with you since we caught up for dinner at Nobu a few weeks ago.’

‘We had dinner at Nobu four months ago, darling. Not a few weeks ago.’

‘This year is whizzing by,’ I moan.

‘I have a new squeeze,’ Toby says. ‘Since I last saw you I have got a boyfriend.’

I draw in a breath. ‘You don’t have boyfriends,’ I tell him. ‘You like to date, but not commit.’

‘This is true, but I might be a changed man.’

‘I’m so pleased for you. Tell me, tell me,’ I encourage.

He pauses, choosing his words thoughtfully. ‘He’s very lovely,’ is all he says.

‘Lovely to you?’ I ask.

‘Lovely to everyone,’ Toby says, smiling.

‘Are you a smitten kitten?’ The wideness of my smile matches his.

‘I am the most smitten of all kittens,’ Toby replies. ‘But we’ve been dating on and off for months. He’s been a bit unsure, I think. So we’ve been going very slowly, and you know what it’s like with all this travel – it forces things to go slow.’

I nod.

‘But … last week we turned a corner and he’s ready to commit, and so am I, so – why not?’

‘Why not indeed,’ I say and my wide smile turns into a wistful one. ‘I’m so happy for you. I have everything crossed for you both.’

‘Me too. Me too.’

‘My mum has a new man too,’ I go on. ‘Everyone’s smug and coupled up.’

‘Who’s her new man?’

‘I don’t know. She says it’s early days, so she’s planning to see how it goes a bit longer before she invites him over for dinner.’

‘Oven-chips,’ Toby points out.

‘Obviously. But he’s very kind, very handsome and works in the City.’

‘So he earns a lot of money. Well done, Sasha,’ Toby says, raising his glass in salute to my mum on the other side of the Atlantic.

‘Well done, both of you,’ I comment.

‘You won’t be single for much longer,’ Toby says. ‘Being single isn’t too bad.’ Even he sounds unconvinced. ‘And I should know. I’ve been single for so long and I’ve enjoyed it, mostly. Playing about. But I don’t want to play any more. I want to settle.’

I don’t want to play about any more, either.

I want to settle too. I think of Ollie. That hug at the premiere where I felt myself relax into him, all my nerves disappearing while he held me in his arms. It felt so intimate and yet it was in front of hundreds of people.

I want to tell Toby about Ollie. How we’ll send Ben off the wagon – how Ben’s forbidden it.

But what’s the point? Toby will tell me to go for it and damn the consequences, but I can’t.

I just can’t. And I know that neither can Ollie.

He’s found someone to be with. I need to do the same.

But I can’t do that, either. I don’t know how to.

So we are where we are and I don’t talk to Toby about it.

Instead I tell him about the late-twenty-somethings I encountered at Liv’s birthday party earlier this year, and how they all had proper jobs with career prospects.

How coupled up they mostly were, how settled and how many of them had children.

How that moment at Liv’s party, as tiny as it was, has made me uneasy, made me reassess where I’m going, although I know Liv is happily uncoupled and happily unencumbered by tiny babies.

But she at least knows what she wants and how to get there.

‘It made me think,’ I confess. ‘It made me wonder if I’m letting real life pass me by – the opportunity to love and be loved – while I travel the world.’

‘And get paid, darling,’ Toby replies with a chastising pout.

‘Yes, all right,’ I say, rolling my eyes.

‘I’m here as the angel on your shoulder reminding you that while you decide your fate, you aren’t exactly living a terrible life.’

‘I know. Everything is pretty good actually. And I shouldn’t moan.’

‘Cheers to that,’ Toby says and we clink our half-drunk Margarita glasses together.