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Anton, he will be furious! Are you going to do nothing to compensate me for being so insulted in your salon?”
    “Of course not, madam! We’ll do anything to make up for Angel’s appalling lack of manners. Whatever you wish!”
    Angel felt faint. This was it. River time.
    Mrs Yuri shot Angel a look of triumph.
    “Either she goes, or I do! And my friends, of course! We do not come here to be insulted. My Anton vill make sure this salon closes for good.”
    Now Dawn had a face that was an exact match for her starched white uniform. Angel’s heart plummeted into her sparkly Skechers. Mrs Yuri was exactly the kind of loaded and bored customer on whom the salon depended. Along with her friends, yet more pampered and glamorous wives of small ugly Russian oligarchs, she probably spent more in one visit to Blushthan Angel earned in an entire year.
    P45 here she came.
    Maybe I should get a job as a psychic instead of being a beautician , thought Angel miserably, as less than five minutes later she stood on the pavement with the contents of her locker in a carrier bag. She’d been ejected so fast that her head was reeling. While just about every beautician in the place raced to pamper Mrs Yuri, she’d been frogmarched out of the building and told never to return. Honestly, she’d only been trying to help. That mole had looked very suspicious and Angel was sure that it needed medical attention. There was no need for such a ridiculous overreaction. Some people just loved to make a drama.
    Mind you, it would have made a fantastic scene for a dramality show. If only she’d had a film crew in tow...
    But unfortunately for Angel she didn’t have a film crew following her every move. Flipping her long blonde hair back from her face and hiking up her skirt an inch or two just in case a millionaire came cruising by and fancied offering her a lift, Angel plucked her iPhone from her bag and set off along the street.
    In a moment she’d call her sister, just to make certain that Andi had got that money out for her. Angel was definitely going to buy that bag now.
    After the day she’d had, it was the least she deserved.
     

Chapter 3
    “You told me she was a size fourteen! I specifically requested a girl who was a size fourteen for this job! Not one who’s a sixteen on a good day, breathing in and wearing granny pants!”
    Gemma Pengelley, she of size-sixteen curves that today were possibly billowing to an eighteen after a weekend spent comfort eating and mainlining vodka, felt her face turn into a giant Edam of humiliation. Standing in a freezing studio and wearing nothing more than a deeply unflattering minimiser bra while two Twiglet-like women poked her fat bits and squabbled over the size of her thighs was not top of her list of favourite things to do. It didn’t even make it to the bottom of that list.
    “Does it really matter?” Gemma’s agent, Chloe, was saying hopefully. “She’s modelling control pants anyway. Surely the whole point is that they should hold her in? Won’t it look better to have them modelled by the type of girl who might actually need to wear them?”
    “She’s supposed to look slim so the consumer thinks that these briefs really work. They’re meant to hold a tummy in. Not work miracles!” The creative director of the shoot for Trim Tumslooked at Gemma with disgust. “How on earth are we supposed to hide that overhang? Call in Kevin McCloud?”
    “What about Photoshop?” Chloe said helpfully.
    The creative director shook her head. “If we wanted to use Photoshop we could have just hired another slim girl and made her look bigger. We wanted somebody slightly on the larger side, not somebody fat! Didn’t you read the job spec we emailed you?”
    Chloe was mortified. “Of course I did. I just haven’t seen Gemma for a few months. Work’s been quiet for her. Let me assure you that the last time I saw my client she really was a size fourteen. Weren’t you, Gemma?”
    Gemma nodded miserably.