she left the studio she called Gemma
and filled her in on how the shoot had gone. She
was in a bubble of happiness on the train back to
Brighton; she wanted to smile at everyone.
The bubble burst as soon as she stepped through
her front door. Still fired up by what she'd done,
Angel raced into the kitchen where Frank, Michelle
and Tony were having dinner.
'They liked me! I'm going to be in the paper next
week!' She stood in front of them, grinning
excitedly, and looked at them expectantly.
Frank angrily pushed his plate away. 'You should
have asked us first,' he said loudly. 'Who are these
people, taking advantage of a young girl like that?'
Angel looked at him, feeling her happiness drain
away. Trust him to bring her down. But he wasn't
finished. 'And what kind of photos are they,
anyway?'
'Bikini shots,' she answered defiantly. But she
wasn't able to meet his eye and he stared at her.
'Angie. Tell me the truth. Are you doing topless
modelling?' He moved over to where she was
standing and grabbed her shoulders, forcing her to
look at him. 'Are you?'
'Jesus Christ, Angel, you're not topless, are you?
I don't want every lad at college looking at your
tits,' Tony put in furiously.
Angel stared angrily at her dad and her brother,
then looked at her mother, who was helplessly watching
the scene between her husband and daughter.
Angel shrugged bitterly. What had she expected
their reaction to be? They were only thinking of
themselves. They had never seen her for who she
really was and what she could do. And they couldn't
see what a difference it could make to her life.
She turned on her heel, blinded by her tears. 'You can't stop
me,' she shouted back, catching her mother's stricken expression. 'I'm doing
it and that's it.'
For the next three weeks, Angel stayed at Gemma's
and travelled to London every day for more shoots
with Richard. The paper had loved the first
pictures of Angel and booked her to do a whole
week of Page 3, which was very unusual on the
glamour circuit. A Hollywood film about a stripper
was about to open in London and the paper wanted
their own take on the film, with Angel performing
her own striptease for the readers. She couldn't
believe her luck when Carrie gave her the news.
'This is a massive break, darling,' Carrie had told
her on the phone while Angel was at Richard's. 'I've
a hunch that you'll be going places very soon.'
Angel laughed. 'I'm already going places,
Carrie,' she replied, thinking that she could be
stuck in some boring dead-end job and instead she
was having the most fun ever.
'This is just the beginning, take my word for it,'
Carrie answered. 'Speak to you later, darling, I
have to fly now.'
Angel was still smiling to herself as she slipped
into her first outfit of the shoot – a purple and
black corset, suspender belt, stockings and a black
lace thong – and checked out her appearance in
the dressing-room mirror. Danni had put Angel's
hair up and given her smoky eyes and red vampy
lips.
'Ooh, very Moulin Rouge,' Richard exclaimed as
she walked into the studio. 'I love it, darling!'
'So do I, dahling ,' Angel answered cheekily.
Richard laughed. 'You're learning, now get your
arse over here and we can get going.'
Angel was having a ball. She had such a good
rapport with Richard and he loved the fact that she
had so many ideas of her own about how she should
look. The two of them bantered and joked their
way through the shoot. The paper wanted Angel to
remove an item of underwear each day so that on
the last day she'd be naked. Talk about a steep learning curve , Angel thought; it was less than a
month ago that she had worried about posing
topless and now here she was, about to reveal all, or
nearly all. She was lying on a white fur rug on the
studio floor, stark naked and trying to find the best
position to pose in which wouldn't reveal everything
she had.
'I think it's best if I'm on all fours, sideways to the
camera, with one knee slightly in front of the