Anyway, we’re behind schedule now. Hugo has decided we better get through a couple of outfits with just Ivory and me and the sand dunes before we run out of light.

“Lift that handbag up, Simone,” Hugo says. “No, not that high—this isn’t The Price is Right. Do it casual. Natural.”

There’s nothing natural about contorting myself into the perfect position to showcase both the jacket and the bag just the way Hugo wants, but I don’t even bother to roll my eyes at him. I’d like to wrap this up as well.

“Alright,” Hugo says, once he’s got a couple hundred images of this set. “Who’s gonna hold my snake?”

“I really hope that’s not a euphemism,” Ivory says, wrinkling her nose.

“Ha ha, very funny.” Hugo sniffs. He’s short and lean, with a salt-and-pepper goatee, a long nose, and a penchant for baseball caps. Ivory says it’s because he’s balding and doesn’t want anyone to know.

He opens up a large chest with suspicious-looking air holes in the side.

“I mean an actual snake. A Burmese python, to be exact. Why don’t you drape him round your neck, Ivory—he’s an albino, too. You two should get along perfectly.”

“Fucking hell no,” Ivory says, taking a step backward. It’s difficult to tell, but I think she went about three shades paler at the sight of Hugo lifting the massive snake out of the crate.

The thing must be twelve feet long. It looks heavy from the way Hugo is struggling to heft it out.

“Let me help,” the handler says, grabbing the lower half of the snake. The handler still looks sweaty and dirty from his romp across the sand to recover the giraffe.

The snake flops around at first, then perks up once it realizes it’s out in the open air.

It’s quite lovely—cream colored with yellow patches. It reminds me a little bit of buttered popcorn. Its skin looks smooth and dry.

“I’ll do it,” I say.

“Alright, switch to the white prairie skirt,” Hugo says. He’s not talking to me—he’s instructing Danielle, the wardrobe specialist. She runs to get the skirt in question, and a different pair of sandals. She helps me strip off my current outfit so I can change. I do it right out in the open, stripping down to a nude-colored thong. Nobody pays any attention to my nakedness. Nudity is as common as vape pens and Instagram posts in the modeling world.

“Which top?” Danielle asks.

“None,” Hugo says. “You don’t care, do you Simone?”

I shake my head. I don’t give a damn about going topless.

Hugo drapes the snake around my shoulders. It really is heavy—over a hundred pounds, I’d guess. The handler helps support the tail while I get into position between two sand dunes.

The snake’s tail hangs down over my bare breast. Its body runs across my shoulders, then down my left arm. He’s wrapped himself around my forearm, his head resting on my open palm. I cover my other breast with my free hand.

“Oh that’s perfect,” Hugo says. “Okay, stand straight on like that . . . alright, now turn a little to your left and look over your shoulder at me. Yeah. Extend that arm and see if the snake will look right at you . . .”

Modeling can be very peaceful. You become almost a human statue, poseable and moveable, but not feeling much. You know you’re making something beautiful. It’s always fun to see the images later, after cropping and editing. You get to see what you were that day—a goddess. An angel. A diva. A party girl. A CEO. An explorer . . .

But the real reason I started modeling was for money. After my blow-up with my parents, I realized how much they owned me. Without money, you have no independence. So I took the first job I could find that would give me that freedom.

I started with runway work in Paris. I was just one of the hundreds of models flown in for Fashion Week. I strutted up and down like a walking coat-hanger for hours at a time, cycling through dozens of outfits. Then I started booking commercial work, too. Just small campaigns for shampoo and nylon brands at first, getting paid a couple hundred dollars a pop.

A year later I got my first big job—the cover of Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit Edition. Technically I wasn’t wearing a swimsuit at all—just a lot of strategically-placed body paint, in the shape of a cheetah-print bikini. After that they started calling me The Body.

I suppose I have Henry to thank for that nickname. My figure never quite went back to the way it was after he was born. I got slim again, but my breasts and hips were fuller than before. And that coincided with the end of an era in modeling. Heroin chic was out, the J.Lo butt came in. Everybody wanted curves, curves, curves. And that was me—I was part of the new wave of sexy supermodels. Kate Upton, Charlotte McKinney, Chrissy Teigan, Emily Ratajkowski, and Simone Solomon . . . plus a Kardashian or two.

Everybody wanted that exotic, ethnically-ambiguous look, and that “real woman” hourglass figure. I don’t know how “real” any of us were, but the money we made was solid enough.

The work flowed in fast. More jobs than I could handle. I flew to every corner of the globe.

It helped keep me busy and keep my mind off how fucking miserable I was.

I tried not to think about Dante—how I’d left, and how I’d lied to him. Lied by omission. The biggest fucking omission there is.

But I didn’t forget about my son.

Between each job, I flew back to London to see him. I let Serwa raise Henry—but he was still mine, in my heart. I held him, I played with him, I fed him. And my heart bled all over again every time I handed him back to my sister.

Serwa loved him, too—I could see that. She centered her world around him. Quit her job at Barclays, spent all day long taking him to the park, the river, the Eye.

My parents were funding it. They were fine paying for her to raise the baby, but not me.

I was bitter. So fucking bitter.

I saved every penny I made from modeling. I planned to take Henry back, when I had enough.

But Serwa was so attached to him, too.

And she was sick. After a year or two of recovery, she started to get weaker again. I thought if I took my son away from her, it would kill her.

So we shared him. She took care of him while I was working, and he was mine when I came home. He called us both Mama when he started to speak.

It wasn’t a terrible system. In fact, it worked surprisingly well. I missed them both so badly when I was gone. But modeling years are short—it’s an industry of youth. I had to work while I could. And I saved, saved, saved the money.

Serwa and I were closer than ever. I didn’t speak to my parents at all. I cut them off when they took my baby away without even asking. I told Serwa to make sure they never visited when I was home. She was careful to keep that promise—to keep them separate from me.

I did let them visit Henry when I wasn’t home. He had so little family, I didn’t want to deny him his grandparents. When I’d come home, he’d tell me all about how Grandma taught him to make crepes, and Grandpa gave him a Rubik’s cube.

My parents tried to make amends many times. I wouldn’t answer their calls or their letters.

Until Serwa died. She passed away three years ago. She was only thirty-four.

We were all there at the hospital together. It was the first time I’d seen my parents in years. My mother looked older. My father looked almost exactly the same—just a few threads of silver in his close-cropped hair.