Page 12 of We Used To Be Magic

I nod, privately wondering if she’s ever seen our apartment. It’s conveniently located above a laundromat, but that’s about the only thing I can say in its favour. I don’t like to spend anymore time there than I have to due to the weird smell, near-total lack of natural light and potential cockroach infestation.

‘Did no one in your London team cover this with you?’ Imogene continues, tilting her head. ‘Leanne?’

‘She definitely mentioned it.’ I nod. Leanne is my agent back in England, responsible for ‘discovering’ me four months ago. It was a distinctly surreal event. I was eating lunch in a Pret when this tiny, white-haired woman in a bright pink suit popped up beside me and asked me if I’d ever modelled. I just stared at her with a mouth full of falafel wrap until she produced her business card and told me to look her up. Everything seemed to happen very quickly after that.

‘Sure. You guys didn’t have much time together.’ Imogene smiles understandingly. ‘And your walk and your conduct are super polished, which I’m sure was her priority. But followers matter more than they probably should these days.’

‘I’ll sort it.’ I nod. ‘Thank you. Really.’

‘It’s what I’m here for, sweetheart. Do you want a coffee?’

‘I don’t know if I have time,’ I admit. I had to wake up obscenely early to get here before my first show of the day – my hair is still half-damp from the shower, face bare and shiny. But Imogene looks perfectly fluffed and glossy in a tweed co-ord, her winged eyeliner utterly flawless. I have no idea how she does it.

‘You do. I’ll send Kady now,’ she says decisively, reaching for her phone. I glance around as she starts typing, her nails clacking against the screen. Imogene’s office is just as perfect as she is, white-walled, candle-scented and softly lit. There are big shiny plants in every corner and a pink neon sign mounted behind her desk that readsDON’TDREAMIT. I guess the implication is that youBEITinstead, but it always reads as vaguely threatening to me.

‘Have you got any questions?’ Imogene asks then, eyes still glued to her phone.

‘Yeah, um – I was actually wondering what’s going on with London,’ I tell her, straightening in my chair. ‘Just so I know when I need to be packed by.’

‘London,’ Imogene echoes. ‘Yeah. I think we should put a pin in London.’

‘A pin?’

‘You’ve made incredible traction here. My instinct is to capitalise on that.’

‘Oh. Um – wow,’ I say, taken aback. Imogene lowers her phone.

‘I’m going to discuss this with Leanne, of course,’ she says seriously. ‘Right now, this is all hypothetical.’

‘Right. Okay.’

‘Are you happy to stay a little longer?’ Imogene asks, brow crinkling.

‘Oh, yeah!’ I say quickly. ‘Yeah. I just – I thought that London Fashion Week was a big deal, so—’

‘It is.’ She smiles. ‘So we’ll see, okay? Either way, this is a good thing. I promise.’

A good thing. I think about that as I take the subway uptown, plugged into my headphones as the carriage rattles around me. I mean, I trust Imogene, but I don’t know how to feel about staying here any longer than planned. Honestly, I don’t know that I’m physically up to it. Or mentally. By every possible metric, I feel burnt out. It’s like I’ve been running on sheer adrenaline ever since my plane hit the tarmac atJFK, but I figured that I could catch my breath when I was back in London. That things would feel more normal there. But now that London might not be happening …

Everything is so big here. So loud, somuch.I’m chronically sleep-deprived, constantly starving – meals are always snatched, hasty affairs, and my current dependence on instant noodlesmay well be putting me at risk of scurvy. My feet are blistered from heels, my hair fried from heat styling, and don’t even get mestartedabout my skin. But … I’m not unhappy. That’s what’s weird – as hard as it is to get out of bed in the mornings, once I’m upright I’m raring to go. I like that I always have a place to be, and that those places are usually incredible. It makes me feel important. Cool, embarrassingly.

I liked that waiter, too – the one I met the other night. I looked for him once I was back inside the restaurant and thought I caught a glimpse of him heading into the kitchen, but he never re-materialised at our table. If I stay then I might see him again, I realise, my heart lifting at the thought. Imogene might take us back there, and—

God, but what are my parents going to say? They’re in Sussex at the moment, working on a ramshackle little cottage near the beach. It’s all ridiculously scenic, and a small part of me would like to believe that they’ve finally found a forever home. I know better, though. In six months’ time they’ll have fallen in love with some other beautiful ruin, sold up and hit the road with all our meagre possessions in the back of the van. That’s been the drill for the past six years. We move in, we fix up, we move on.

It wasn’t always like this. When I was a kid, Mum and Dad both worked full-time, and I’d spend most afternoons at my grandma’s house. It was small and immaculate, same as her – I never saw her without lipstick and earrings, and she reapplied perfume every time she stepped outside. She used to let me wear it too, and I still remember the feeling of her soft, cool hands cradling mine as she gently dabbed the glass stopper of the bottle against my wrists. A lot of the memories are fuzzy, now, but not that scent. Every so often I catch it out of nowhere and it knocks the wind out of me.

I didn’t know how to make sense of it when she died. I only knew that I missed her a lot, and that Mum must have missedher too because she’d started spending all her time at Grandma’s house instead of going to work. Suddenly I was spending my afternoons watching her and Dad pull up carpets and tear down wallpaper, and it stopped looking and smelling and feeling like Grandma’s house. The loss took shape, settled in my chest.

It seemed to make Mum feel better, though. Once the house was sold, she and Dad sat me down and asked me if I’d like for us all to spend more time together as a family. I said yes, though I didn’t really know what I was saying yes to. I might have answered differently otherwise.

It’s been good in some ways, I suppose. Wedidall get to spend a lot of time together, and helping them out has equipped me with a decent amount ofDIYknow-how – I managed to boost my popularity in the apartment yesterday by fixing a broken showerhead. I’m also great at packing, so it’s prepared me for this lifestyle, weirdly, though I’d be lying if I said I’d never resented them for it. I understand that renovating houses is what they love, but I’m pretty sure that I would have loved being a normal teenager, living in just the one place. To have something other than the two of them to hold on to.

I know a lot of parents treat their kids like extensions of themselves, but not mine. They never bothered me about homework or extracurriculars, about my friends or lack thereof. Never tried to force me to into getting driving lessons or a part-time job – just gave me an allowance for helping with renovations. They were happy enough about my exam results and the universities I got into, sure, but when I first showed them Leanne’s business card, it was like a switch flipped. Suddenly I was facing pursed lips and folded arms, navigating stilted conversations about ‘making good choices’.

This was mostly from Mum, actually. She’s been consistently weird about the whole modelling thing – Dad was sceptical at first, but now he thinks it’s great that I get the chance to seethe world and earn money at the same time. But Mum hasn’t budged from her perch of disapproval – because she thinks it’s frivolous, maybe? She’s always been totally ambivalent towards fashion. She lives in overalls, owns exactly two ‘nice’ dresses and only wears lipstick to funerals. Still, none of that explains why she can’t justpretendto be proud of me.

I shift in my seat, ignoring a twinge of sadness in my chest. If they’re not happy about me staying on in New York, then – then too bad. I get to make my own choices now, and it’s not like there’s anything waiting for me elsewhere. They made sure of that.

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