The Schoolgirl Model

`I'm afraid Kira will be a little late,' the receptionist at the agency told me. 'Oh, fine,' I said, `no problem.' I had been trying to convince myself that all the bad things I had read about models were rubbish, but the words difficult, vain and unintelligent kept coming into my head. And now she was going to be late. How late? An hour? Three hours? Maybe she wouldn't come at all. What if she had decided a visit to the hairdresser's would be more fun than talking to me? If she was late, she would be rushing. She could be in an awful mood and refuse to answer my questions.

But when the winner of the Looks magazine supermodel competition walked in, she was smiling, relaxed and apologetic - and with her mother. Kira was not dressed in expensive-looking designer clothes but in a simple black dress and trainers. There was no sign of a selfish attitude, she was just a very friendly, very tall, very pretty girl. All models under the age of 16 must take an adult with them whenever they work, she explained, and apart from looking incredibly young, her mother was a normal mum - visibly proud of her successful daughter.

Kira gives the impression of being slightly puzzled by her new-found fame, which is understandable since it was completely unplanned. It was her older sister who decided that she should take part in the model competition. 'She saw the competition and said I should go in for it,' Kira remembers. 'I said no, but she sent some photos in anyway.' When the call came to tell her that she was a finalist, she was at school. The achievement of being selected for the final gave Kira the confidence to go through with it and she performed perfectly. She won easily and the Select model agency in London immediately offered her work.

Kira now finds that one of the hardest things she has to do is to manage her two separate lives. But her friends and teachers have become accustomed to having a star among them. `They're really proud of me,' she says. However, a few unkind people at her school are rude about her success. 'They say I have too high an opinion of myself.' This kind of remark must be hard for Kira to deal with, since there can't be many people as successful as her who are less self-important. But she says, 'They assume that because I've suddenly become a model, I can't stay the same. But the only thing that's changed is I've become more confident - not in a horrible way, but I'm able to stand up for myself more.'

As a busy model though, her social life is obviously affected. The Select agency can ring at any time and tell her that she is wanted for a job the next day. 'If my friends are going out together, I can't say I'll come, because I don't know what I'm doing the next day. I can't really make plans, and if I do they sometimes get broken, but my friends are good about it. They don't say, "Oh, you're always going off modelling now, you never have time for us".'

Kira has the looks, ability and support to have a fabulous career ahead of her. And not many people can say that before they even sit their school-leaving exams. I am about to finish the interview with the girl who has it all, and I ask what she would like to do as a career if she didn't have the outstanding beauty that seems certain to take her to the top of the profession. She pauses and replies: 'I'd like to do what you're doing.'