Cathy Kelly 3-Book Collection 1: Lessons in Heartbreak, Once in a Lifetime, Homecoming

‘Better get some for everyone.’

Izzie and Carla grinned. At normal castings, diet soda, black coffee and cigarettes were the only staples. Here, muffins, non-skinny lattes and candy might work better.

Seven hours later, they had signed up eight models and the last one was a triumph. Six foot, statuesque and blonde, Steffi had been a school gymnast and cheer-leader, but she’d always been too big for ‘normal’ modelling.

She moved with the grace of a lioness and her face was poetry with a sexy smile that lit up the room. When they’d finished, Steffi had said she wanted to treat everyone to a drink to celebrate. Her boyfriend wanted to come over and celebrate too.

‘Sounds good to me,’ said Lola, rubbing a stiff neck.

‘Sure,’ said Izzie, who had nowhere else to be. It had been a very successful day and they had another casting tomorrow: SilverWebb was due a little downtime.

‘There’s a nice bar around the block,’ Carla said.

Steffi, Lola, Izzie and Carla piled in the door of the bar.

‘Hey, I like this place,’ said Steffi delightedly. She really was gorgeous, Izzie thought, and everyone in the bar clearly agreed with her, because they all stopped what they were doing to look at the tall blonde with the long legs and wide, all-encompassing smile.

‘Now where will we sit? Over here by the window and we can see what’s going on?’ She walked over to a banquette by the window and sat down, beaming out at everyone, happy with the world. Her happiness was infectious. Grinning, Izzie went and sat down beside her.

‘You do realise that every man in the bar is staring at you?’ she asked.

Steffi laughed, a rich, sexy, throaty laugh.

‘I know,’ she said mischievously. ‘And I like it! Hey, girls, let’s celebrate my new career, I can’t believe I’m going to be a model!’

‘You should believe it,’ said Lola, sitting down beside her. ‘You’ve got a great look.’

‘You say the nicest things.’ Steffi squeezed Lola’s arm happily. ‘It’s gonna be such fun working together, and I can’t wait for you all to meet Jerry. You’re going to love him!’

Carla came back from the bar carrying a tray with four glasses and a bottle of white wine.

‘This moment deserves champagne but this was all they had,’ she said. ‘I got peanuts too. Wine and peanuts are major food groups, right?’

‘Right.’ Izzie nodded.

‘Fantastic,’ said Steffi, grabbing a pack of peanuts. ‘I’m starved.’

The three SilverWebb women looked at each other and laughed.

‘You are so different from most models we know,’ Lola remarked.

‘You mean that I eat?’ said Steffi, between mouthfuls. She even ate sexily, Izzie thought with admiration. ‘I hate girls who don’t eat. Like, why?’

By the time Steffi’s boyfriend, Jerry, arrived with a couple of his friends to celebrate, the girls had finished their bottle of wine and were dickering over the idea of ordering a second.

‘Jerry!’ squealed Steffi when she saw him.

He was tall, good looking, maybe six or seven years older than Steffi and clearly besotted with her. With a brief hello to everyone else, he caught her and grabbed her in a bear hug, whirling her around the bar floor, not caring who saw him.

‘I’m so proud of you,’ he said.

‘Baby, right back at you,’ Steffi beamed and they kissed, slowly, with the burn of real passion.

‘Way to go, man,’ said one of his friends, clapping.

‘Isn’t she something?’ Jerry said, still holding on to Steffi.

That was when the emotion of the day finally got to Izzie. Gorgeous Steffi seemed to symbolise everything the Silver-Webb Agency stood for: beautiful real women who were at peace with who they were.

And yet finding Steffi for their agency highlighted just how much of an outsider Izzie felt and how badly she’d got it wrong. Steffi was hugging the man in her life on this special day and Izzie was sitting there, smiling, drinking celebratory wine – knowing that when her glass was empty she’d be going home to an empty apartment.

Izzie guessed there was probably the same age difference between Steffi and Jerry as there was between herself and Joe Hansen, but Joe had never whirled her around in pride at her achievements or showed her off to his friends saying, ‘Isn’t she something?’

Instead, he took her to quiet, out-of-the way restaurants lest they met anyone. She’d been essentially hidden, whereas Steffi was fêted and adored in public.

How ironic that, as one of the bosses of the new SilverWebb Agency, she was supposed to be the wise, clever one, running models’ careers and yet, right now, she felt like the novice who knew nothing. Pre-Joe, she’d been so shrewd and sensible, but not any more. It had taken Joe, and Gran’s stroke, to show her that she didn’t know diddly squat.

‘I have to go,’ she said, reaching around for her handbag.

‘No,’ shrieked Carla, Lola and Steffi in unison.

‘You can’t,’ said Lola. ‘We haven’t celebrated enough.’

Then she corrected herself: ‘But if you have somewhere to go…’

Izzie thought of where she had to go: home, then maybe to the launderette. She needed to buy a few groceries. She was out of coffee filters and granola.

‘You don’t need to rush off, do you?’ asked Carla gently, gazing at her friend with worry on her face.

Carla knew that Izzie had no vital appointments except with her television remote control.

‘OK,’ Izzie said. ‘I’ll stay for one more.’

An hour later, Carla was getting on like a house on fire with one of Jerry’s pals and even Lola, who had never quite decided whether she preferred men or women, was talking animatedly to his other friend.

Somehow Izzie had got stuck in the corner seat and she felt like a spiky, uninhabitable island in a sea of loved-up couples. She couldn’t do small talk any more: she’d lost the knack, along with her sense of humour and her sense of knowing what life was about.

Two glasses of wine had given her a headache and she thought maybe some orange juice would help. She wriggled out of the corner, hauling her handbag after her, and went up to the bar, where the bartender proceeded to ignore her.

‘Hey,’ she said loudly, ‘seeing as how I’m invisible, should I use my superpowers for good or for world domination? What do you think?’

The bartender turned around and she noticed, in a dispassionate, model-agency-scout kind of way, that he was pretty good looking. Younger than her, of course: everyone was younger than her now. He was mid-thirties and athletic. Once upon a time, she might have expected him to flirt mildly with her but not any more. Nobody was ever going to flirt with her again because she couldn’t bear it and they seemed to sense that.