AN EXCERPT ABOUT JACKIE COLLINS IN A NOVEL BY JIM CARTWRIGHT

Those few hours in (Jackie Collins) company gave me a world of wisdom, though there were no lectures or advice or anything like that. I can’t describe it proper. It was just like she was an education in herself. She was all the education a young woman needed just by being alive.

The way she did things, taking a call, picking a flower, pouring a drink, sharing a joke with the maid, laughing, winking, watching the ocean. She was woman in all her fullness, a rose, beautiful, fragrant, feminine, but that didn’t stop her from being powerful and who she wanted to be. It was like I was gathering it from her, getting the fragrance.

It was like the good fairy from the films when I was a kid, don’t remember her giving much advice, it was just her presence made everything better, the touch of her magic got you on the right track and wicked witches and goblins disintegrated at her jewelled feet.

Suze had been a good teacher, she knew lots of things and could teach you stuff and tell you loads, but she wasn’t what she taught, she wasn’t it. Jackie was it. She really was everything Suze worked and strained to be, but Jackie was just it. It didn’t really matter what she said or did but how she was.

We listened to the soul music and now and again she’d say let’s change the track, and it was always right and took us one deeper or one higher or suited the next thing she was going to do. We both did the breath in at one point and smiled.

Too soon it was time to go. She took care of everything, paid for my flight home and got her driver to take me to the airport.

Then I left LA and, resting in Jackie and the soul music, I flew home, flew home on it. I knew what I wanted now, I wanted to be like her. Strong, glamorous, independent, doing what she wanted but still loving and a woman.

Supermarket Supermodel
by Jim Cartwright