‘I’m Angie,’ said the woman. And then, ‘Oh my God, you’re so beautiful. I don’t think I’ve ever met such a gorgeous-looking person.’
For once it was Hope who was wrong-footed. Her looks prompted a number of responses but ones quite as direct as this were rare.
She lowered her eyes modestly. ‘Thanks,’ she said.
‘I bet it’s a pain in the arse, being so bloody jaw-dropping,’ Angie said. ‘It must get in the way a lot, like being really rich. I suppose it makes it hard to work out who likes you for you and who just wants to be near you for other reasons.’
Hope just stared at her, open-mouthed. This woman’s perception was startling.
‘Precisely!’ she said. ‘That’s spot on, actually. Do you know, no one has ever articulated it quite like that before?’
‘And you won’t be able to say it because if you did, you’d come across as all “Poor me. No one understands how I suffer for being so stunning.”’ Angie pulled a ‘woe is me’ face that made Hope smile. ‘I have the same problem,’ Angie continued, sucking her cheeks in and pouting so that she looked more like a goldfish than a supermodel.
They both laughed.
‘Do you want to get some coffee from that vending machine he mentioned?’ Hope asked, but Angie shook her head.
‘I don’t do caffeine,’ she said.
‘What? Not at night or not ever?’ Hope asked, aghast.
‘Not ever,’ replied Angie. ‘I aim for as pure a diet as I can get, so no chemicals or stimulants, artificial or otherwise.’
‘Blimey,’ said Hope. ‘That’s impressive. No alcohol either, then?’
Angie shook her head. ‘Nope. I had a baby twelve years ago and I just decided that I needed to make some changes. Nothing like that has passed my lips since.’
‘I won’t tell you about my daily coffee consumption then.’ Hope laughed. ‘It would make your eyes water. So, I assume you’re here because you’re setting up a business?’
Angie pulled at one of the silver hoops in her earlobe and flicked at it with her nail. ‘Actually, I’m expanding the one I already have,’ she said proudly. ‘So, I thought it might be better if I learned a bit of stuff first. It’s a treatment centre for holistic health. It’s been going for years and business is good, so I’m looking at opening at a second site. Trouble is, I’ve been basically making it up as I went along until now. I feel like I need to get a better handle on how things should be done. You know what it’s like when you don’t know what you don’t know?’
Hope nodded. She understood that completely.
‘And so here I am. How about you?’
Hope hadn’t really told anyone about her business idea. She had bounced the concept off her boyfriend, Daniel, but only in a vague way so as not to give him the chance to knock it down before she’d really worked at it. Now she felt suddenly shy at having to say it out loud. But what was the point of being here if she couldn’t even tell anyone what she was planning?
‘I’m going to start a business importing Italian swimwear,’ she said.
Angie nodded. She looked impressed, at least. ‘I don’t really follow fashion, as must be obvious,’ she said, gesturing to her clothing. ‘But from what I can tell, we don’t seem to have that much stylish swimwear here. The last costume I bought came from Marks and Sparks.’
Hope shuddered.
‘Well, that’s what I thought.’ Angie laughed. ‘But I wasn’t sure where else to go. And I’m assuming that you know a fair bit about the market,’ she continued. ‘You’re a model, right?’
Again, Hope was surprised, but this was so refreshing. This woman had just assumed that she was a model and stated it as if it were any other job. Most people got sucked into the glamour of it, asking her endless questions about where she’d worked and who she knew. Angie seemed to see her beauty as a commodity that she would obviously be exploiting – it was as simple as that.
‘Well, I was,’ Hope said. ‘Work started to slow down a bit and I decided I needed to diversify before it dried up completely. Your thirties are a bit of a dead zone for modelling and I’m nearly there. So, I thought about importing. I have the connections and I know what will look good on women and how to show it to its best advantage. And it’s definitely a gap in the market. But I know nothing about business. I don’t even have any GCSEs.’