Risky is another species.
‘I guess so,’ I say, and I must look a little disgusted because she somehow feels the need to continue talking about masturbation.
‘Seriously, boss, we’re two women who share an office. If we can’t be open about self-pleasure here, where can we be? We need to abolish the stigma surrounding female masturbation. The silence around it has gone on long enough. I take my vibrator everywhere with me, just in case.’
‘Just in case of what?’
‘Just in case I need it. You know when you become so consumed with the need to come that you have to duck into the nearest room and bring yourself off just to get through the rest of your day?’
I do know that feeling. I feel it almost every day. The difference between me and Risky is that I have attached so much of my sexuality to my husband that I forget I have the power to satisfy myself sometimes. Rather than tell my assistant that, though, I try to bring the focus back to our job.
‘OK, anyway, we should do some work.’
‘Not before we nail this photo. Phone up, channel your inner Princess Diana – is that a better reference for you, she was big in the Eighties, right?’ I nod and do as she says. It might make me feel old, but I know exactly what she means in terms of the bashful but slightly suggestive look Diana would probably have given her phone, should they have existed when she was alive. ‘Now drop your head more to the left. Give a little smile, like you’re thinking naughty thoughts, and take the photo.’
I do it. And have to admit, the photo is really nice.
‘Wow, I look hot,’ I say. Risky rushes over to look. When she sees it she makes all sorts of ‘Look at you, you saucy minx’ type comments, before snatching the phone from me.
‘OK, we need a filter. And a slight tone change. Let me just … and … yup … that’s it … Oh my God, look at it in black and white.’ She hands it back to me. I really do look amazing in black and white.
‘Cor, thanks, Risky. I look so hot even I’d masturbate to that pic.’
‘Yes boss!!!’
I send it immediately to Michael. After a minute or so, a speech bubble pops up and I am excited to read his response.
Nice. Hey, can you grab some milk on the way home? We are out.
Ruby
After the wax disaster, Bonnie and I made an emergency detour to Boots to get some nappies and I sorted her out in a horrible cafe toilet about four streets from the salon. Far enough so that I didn’t have to worry about Maron or the receptionist popping in to get their lunch.
I get Bonnie a slice of chocolate cake the size of her head and tell her to eat it. She doesn’t need much persuading.
‘Mummy needs to work,’ I explain. I search for train times and prices to Birmingham. I’m not ready to give up on seeing Vera again for my treatments. But I’m looking at anything from fifty to a hundred pounds to get there. Plus the cost of the wax, which is generally in the hundreds for what I need. It would be an entire day, with travel and my appointment. This is not a reasonable option. I need to find another salon in London. And I need to find Bonnie another nursery. I’m never going back there either. I take a sip of black coffee and try not to think about the amount of sugar Bonnie has eaten today. More than I have in around four years. But I don’t see what else I could have done.
I see that I have an email from Rebecca Crossly about a job.
Hey Ruby, any chance of those images by end of play today? Editor is onto me about not touching up too much, the mag is under fire again for retouching. But if we don’t I’ll get blacklisted by the PRs. So, basically, rework but keep it natural, let’s try to get away with as much as we can. Just make sure you get rid of that scar. R x
Oh and make her less orange, she looks like an Oompa Loompa.
I tell her yes. Even though it will probably be tomorrow now. I’m the only retoucher Rebecca uses, so she has no choice but to wait. Rebecca is a photographer who is in high demand. I started working for her when she shot brochures for hotels around ten years ago. The level of hotel was very high-end – five-star resorts all across the world. I enjoyed it, making the sky bluer and the grass greener. She started getting work for magazines and kept throwing the work in my direction. A lot of food at first, some landscapes, but the jobs soon turned into people. I was excellent at retouching people because I had years of practice of making photographs of myself look nicer. I have a secret file on my computer – I named it ‘MENSTRUAL DIARY’ in case I die and someone gets into my computer and is tempted to look at them. The file is full of pictures of me that people took before I had the self-assurance to say no. They are hard to come by, but of course they exist. At university people used disposable cameras; I was lucky to be a student before the advent of camera phones and social media. I might not have survived that. I have a little shoe box – something I also hide – full of photographs. I scanned them all into my computer and worked them up into images I wouldn’t mind the world seeing. Of course I’d never show them to anyone, I couldn’t live that lie. Ironically, this doctoring is now exactly what I do for models and celebrities, who don’t have the same issue with dishonesty.
Rebecca now shoots for Vogue, Elle, Cosmo and any other publications that print photos of beautiful women who need to look even more beautiful. It’s a lot of work that’s kept coming my way. It’s hard to turn that down when you’re a single mother and need to pay for your three-bedroom Victorian terrace in Kentish Town, a love of antique furniture and a penchant for expensive handbags.
My job and my moral compass battle with each other every day. I know how much a negative body image can ruin a woman’s life, and here I am perpetuating the problem and giving that complex to millions of other women every single day. I get away with it because my name never appears anywhere. I am the silent partner in crime. The hidden face behind other people’s fake perception of beauty. I am the source of the problem.
As I am replying to Rebecca, Bonnie happily laughing into her wedge of cake, a surge of warm blood fills my knickers. Another devastating side-effect of my condition. Extremely sudden, heavy periods. I’m forty-three years old and I still have absolutely no grip on my menstrual situation. For someone who needs to feel control as much as I do, this is particularly punishing. It’s so hard for me to be positive about anything to do with the female condition.
‘Bonnie, come with me please.’
‘No.’
‘Bonnie, come on, you can finish your cake in a minute. Mummy needs to go to the toilet.’
‘NO,’ she says, not even looking up at me. Why can’t she just do as I ask, just once? Everything is always such a battle.
I pick up her plate, gathering my bags too. She goes to a level eight immediately. I walk backwards with the cake and she follows it like a horse chasing a carrot. Tears spouting from her eyes like a cartoon baby. When I reach the door I grab her by the hand and drag her in. I am past the point of caring what people think of me today.
In the cubicle, our third confined space of the day, I turn her around and give her the plate. She sits on the floor, and tucks back into her cake. It’s disgusting but she has stopped shouting. I can’t win at everything.
This is all so wrong. I hitch up my skirt, blood already escaping from my underwear. It’s always the same. An unpredictable tidal wave of horror.
Rooting around in my bag, I realise I have no sanitary towels with me. I don’t have the kind of flow any amount of scrunched-up toilet paper can deal with. I sit for a moment, thinking the unthinkable.
What choice do