Vanity by Lucy Lord Page A

she was doing in a clear-headed, logical manner. If this was what she had to do to get the proper education she craved, it wasn’t such a big deal. It wasn’t as if she cared what any of the people in the glamour-modelling world thought of her, after all.
    But she did care what her fellow students thought of her. Sam had always been very careful to keep her assets under wraps at uni, as she wanted to be admired for her mind (although she’d come to appreciate her body, which she had thought was freakish, now that Marky seemed to love it so much). Sometimes, in seminars, the tutor would actually say, ‘Could somebody other than Sam please answer this question?’, which made her secretly proud. She was only a girl from an Essex comprehensive, after all, and more than half of her peers had been to posh schools.
    But yesterday, horribly, one of the really posh ones, a smug wanker called Josh, had walked into the Union bar brandishing a copy of
Nuts
.
    â€˜Look what we have here,’ he’d said, in his loathsome, drawling voice. ‘I think that somebody in our vicinity takes their clothes off for a living! Sammi-Jo, everyone! What’s the matter, Sam, can’t make it with that enormous brain of yours, after all? You have to rely on your enormous tits instead! Hahahahahaaaa – hardly the next Nietzsche after all, more like a little two-bit whore!’
    Josh was on the same course as Sam and clearly hated the fact that she was a million times cleverer than he was. He had the enormous sense of entitlement of the seriously rich and terminally stupid.
    Everybody in the bar had been jostling to see the pictures, and a couple of pissed third-year students had actually tried to lift up her jumper to ‘see what you’re hiding, Sammi-Jo’. It was just horrific, worse than anything she’d ever imagined happening to her. She’d only ever worked hard and been nice to people. Her parents, while distracted, loved her unconditionally, and her schoolmates had pretty much left her to her own devices as she beavered away at her Maths and Science classes. She was completely unprepared for the humiliation of being jeered at by the community she had so wanted to join.
    But she had to eat, and now she skulked into the canteen, feeling like the lowest bit of dog shit on the earth.
    â€˜Tart,’ giggled a couple of girls who’d been at Heathfield together, as she walked past, head down. Sienna Sax-Hoffmann was sitting next to them. God, she hated Sienna, with her wafty ways and her bloody lace parasol. How fucking affected was that?
    Just as she thought she’d made it unscathed to the food counter, Josh, who she’d fervently hoped wouldn’t be in the canteen today, stood up and shouted,
    â€˜Oh, look! It’s our resident glamour model! Not looking very glam today, is she? She might look better if she got her kit off though! What d’you think, guys? Kit off, kit off, kit off!’
    The entire canteen started chanting, ‘KIT OFF, KIT OFF, KIT OFF!’, and Sam dropped her tray, fleeing the canteen in tears. When she got back to her room she picked up every bit of crockery and started throwing it at the walls, sobbing so hard her heart thought it might burst. She couldn’t understand why people could be so nasty. What had she ever done to them, after all? On balance, she found the glamour-modelling world preferable to the academia that she had so longed for all her short life. Thank God she had Marky.
    She picked up the card her parents had given her and looked inside.
    â€˜Were so proud of you Sam,’ it said. ‘Your going to have the bestest time at Uni.’ She cried a bit more as she read her mother’s sweetly meant and ungrammatical message. ‘Loads of love from Mum and Dad.’ They had each signed it, with flourishes of kisses. Ryan had written on the other side, ‘luv you sam hav fun’ and drawn a surprisingly