Sins (16 page)

It was so hot in the carriage that she ended up having to remove her suit jacket and her hat as she rushed round.

The hats chosen by the fashion editor were impossible
to photograph, Ollie announced disparagingly, having studied them through the lens of his precious Rolleiflex.

He had saved up for nearly six months to buy the camera second-hand from a pawnbroker, desperately hoping that its owner wouldn’t suddenly find the money to reclaim it before he had saved enough to buy it. He had spent many a Saturday afternoon arguing and bargaining with the pawnbroker, trying to wheedle down the price.

‘The hat brims throw too much shadow over the models’ features. They’ll have to wear them back off their faces,’ he told the fashion editor now.

As he went to demonstrate what he meant the fashion editor stepped protectively in front of the model, warning him, ‘Don’t you dare touch those hats. They cost twenty guineas each and are only on loan to us.’

Frustrated in his attempt to demonstrate what he meant, Ollie wheeled round and, catching sight of Ella, marched over to her.

‘Look, this is what I meant,’ he said, taking hold of Ella’s precious best hat, which she’d placed safely on a table, brutally turning back the brim and then ramming the crown down firmly on Ella’s curls. Moving away from her, he saw her lifting her hands to examine the damage, and he ordered sharply, ‘No, don’t touch it!’ then stepped up to her, tilting it to one side.

With him standing so close to her in the confines of the carriage, his arms lifted up whilst he destroyed her hat, Ella could see the ripple of the muscles in his arms and torso beneath the thin T-shirt he was wearing, and smell the fresh male scent of his body.

It was too much for her. She wasn’t used to this kind of proximity to this kind of man. It made her feel hot and angry and somehow dangerously light-headed. She stiffened.

Instantly Ollie’s concentration left the hat, his professionalism giving way to the male instinct of the hunter sensing vulnerable prey. His gaze dropped from the hat to Ella’s trembling mouth. He let his attention drop further to her throat, where a pulse thudded frantically in the pale skin, and then drop lower still to her breasts, disguised as they were by her shapeless clothes. Ollie, an expert in such matters, estimated that they were just the right size to fill his hands. Now that would be a thing, bringing Miss High-and-Mighty down to earth, if he hadn’t got more important things to do. No way did he really want to get entangled with a ruddy stuck-up virgin.

He looked back at the hat, frowning as he adjusted it a second time, before telling the fashion editor, ‘That’s how they should be wearing their titfers, so that I can get the light on their faces.’

‘Celine,’ the fashion editor addressed the most senior of the three models, ‘you put on Ella’s hat and let me have a look. I’m not letting you loose with those model hats, Oliver, until I’m convinced you’re right.’

Celine, the elegant soignée society model, gave Ella a sympathetic look as Oliver removed Ella’s now ruined hat to place it on the model’s carefully coiffured hair.

It was, Ella thought, going to be a long journey to Venice.

*  *  *

She would never ever want to work full time in fashion, Ella decided angrily later in the day as the train approached Paris’s Gare de Lyon. She was exhausted and wrung out, her head ringing with the instructions and counter-instructions the fashion editor and Oliver Charters had both flung at her.

It was a relief to be allowed to return to her own carriage, her head pounding and her heart racing. A kind-hearted cabin attendant brought her a much-needed pot of tea and a croissant. Leaving the croissant, Ella took one of her diet pills, swallowing it down with the tea. She was definitely thinner, although since she was still wearing the same clothes, no one else had noticed–as yet. Ella didn’t particularly want anyone else to notice, especially not anyone like Oliver Charters. She didn’t want him, or indeed anyone, thinking she had lost weight because he had made fun of her. It was enough that she had proved to herself that she could lose weight. But only because of her magic little pills. Ella pushed that knowledge away. She didn’t want to think about the pills. After all, no one else needed to know about them, and as soon as she had lost enough weight she would stop taking them.

Whilst she’d been drinking her tea they’d pulled into the Paris station, and the models had disembarked, ready for Oliver to photograph them.

They did look wonderful, Ella acknowledged, watching them through the carriage window. No one would know, looking at them from the front, that one of the suits had been so much too large for the slender model that it was pulled in all down the back with clothes pegs. Ella marvelled
at the patience and good nature of the models. She would hate their job. Not that she exactly loved her own, but it wouldn’t always be like this. One day she would be a proper investigative journalist, and then she wouldn’t have to put up with people like Oliver Charters mocking her and laughing at her.

Ella’s hands were shaking slightly as she poured herself a second cup of tea. How much weight would she have lost by the time they reached Venice, another two days from now? She wasn’t going to stop dieting until she had lost two stone. Then she would weigh exactly eight stone two pounds, and be a size ten. Exactly the same size and weight as the model who had laughed at her and told Oliver Charters that Ella was the size of an elephant. Normally, before the diet pills, just remembering the humiliation of that moment would have had her reaching for her favourite dark chocolate digestive biscuits, but now she didn’t want one at all.

‘So what do you think?’

Standing on the pavement outside the salon, Rose dutifully looked up at the sign that had just been fixed in place and which read ‘Hair by Josh Simons’.

‘I like it,’ she told him truthfully.

The door to the salon was open, as were the windows, the sounds and the smell of painters at work carrying out into the street.

Rose had nipped over to King’s Road during her lunch hour, knowing that the sign was going up.

‘I’d better get back. I’ve got to source some trimming for a storyboard on my way back.’

‘You should be running your own business, with your talent, not working for someone else,’ Josh told her for the umpteenth time.

‘That isn’t what I want and besides, I’m not good enough for that yet. There’s still loads I need to learn. You wouldn’t have left Vidal’s salon before he had said that you were ready to go it alone, would you? Besides, my aunt wants me to work in the London shop eventually.’

‘What about what you want?’

Josh’s question had caught her off guard, and she hesitated before telling him firmly, ‘I want the same as my aunt.’

‘If I’d done what my dad wanted me to do,’ Josh reminded her, ‘I’d be cutting suits somewhere off Savile Row now, and working for someone else.’

‘That’s different,’ Rose responded immediately.

Thinking of her aunt reminded her of the fact that soon it would be Easter and that she would be going home to Denham.

Denham. She had such mixed feelings about her childhood home. She had no memory of her father taking her there, of course–she’d been too young, little more than a baby–but she did have memories of being held in caring arms there and of being loved, of a soft voice urging her to live. Then later, when she’d recovered from the malnutrition and the fever that had nearly killed her, she’d come to recognise her aunt Amber and to love her. That love had been her only safe haven in a world where everyone else was hostile: her great-grandmother, Emerald, her nanny, and most of all her own father. Rose shuddered, remembering her father’s cruelty to her.

‘Hey, where have you gone?’ Josh demanded.

‘Nowhere.’

‘Liar.’

‘All right then, I was thinking about Janey,’ she lied. ‘She keeps begging me to ask you to let her show you her designs for the salon uniforms.’

‘Does she? Well, I suppose I’d better take a butcher’s then,’ Josh grinned. ‘Tell her to bring them over tomorrow evening. Oh, wait a minute, I’d forgotten. It will have to be the night after: I’m taking this girl out tomorrow.’

Josh seemed to date a different girl every week, and was obviously in no hurry to settle down.

Rose was glad that she was in love with John and that she wasn’t one of Josh’s dates. She could just imagine how unhappy and insecure it would make her feel if she was dating him and perhaps falling for him, and she knew that he was seeing other girls. Rose didn’t like taking risks or exposing herself to potential emotional pain. Josh was very good-looking and fun to be with but she was relieved that they were simply friends and that she wasn’t in any danger of falling for him. Thanks to John.

‘I thought it was Manchester where it never stopped raining, not Venice.’

Ella watched as Oliver paced the marble floor of the elegant entrance to the Hotel Danieli, glaring towards the door through which they could see the rain, which had been falling ever since their arrival nearly two days ago, dimpling the waters of the Rio del Vin.

‘It’s no good,’ Oliver told the fashion editor, ‘I’m going
to have to take the models out and get some sample location shots done, rain or no rain.’

Ella looked discreetly at her watch. She was on edge, hoping to be able to snatch some time off so that she could visit the Italian silk firm with whom her stepmother did business. Amber had told them that Ella was visiting Venice and they had passed on to her an open invitation to call and see them. It would be rude not to do so, but on the other hand Ella didn’t want to put herself in a position where she was asking for special favours.

‘You can’t possibly take the models out in this weather, Oliver,’ the fashion editor was saying. ‘The last thing I want is one of them catching a cold.’

‘Well, I can’t just go out and photograph a few bridges and canals for possible locations without a model.’ Oliver looked and sounded irritable, pushing his hand through his overlong hair.

The fashion editor tapped one immaculate fingernail on the highly polished surface of an inlaid table and pursed her lips, as she looked round the room as though seeking inspiration, her gaze suddenly focusing on Ella.

‘I’ve got it,’ she announced. ‘You can take Ella with you and she can stand in for the models.’

‘Ella! What the hell…?’

‘Oh, no, please, I couldn’t possibly.’

They were both equally opposed to the fashion editor’s decision, although no doubt for very different reasons, Ella recognised.

‘You can spare Ella, can’t you, Daphne?’ the fashion editor asked Ella’s boss, ignoring the outbursts.

‘Yes, I don’t see why not. And don’t forget, Oliver, I want some photographs for the piece I’m doing on the summer haunts of high society.’

He might be nodding his head in acknowledgement but he was looking at
her
, Ella realised, assessing her, and it was plain that he didn’t much care for what he could see. Well, that was all right because she didn’t care for him either.

‘I hope you’ve got a raincoat,’ he told her sulkily. He pushed back the cuff of the shabby leather jacket he always wore and looked at his watch, adding, ‘We’ve got about three hours of light left, if we’re lucky, so you’d better step on it. You’ve got five minutes to get whatever you need and meet me by the main entrance.’

Ella didn’t have a raincoat; it was the last thing she’d thought she would need in Venice, and she certainly wasn’t going to risk her good coat getting soaked. She’d have to make do with an umbrella borrowed from the hotel, she decided, as she hurried up to her room to get her bag.

There wasn’t time to change out of the knitted white pleated skirt she was wearing, with its navy border just above the hem and its matching knitted cardigan, which she was wearing over a red silk blouse. The outfit wasn’t something she would ever have chosen for herself, and had been a surprise gift from her stepmother, who had presented her with it especially for her trip. Personally Ella felt that the light colour made her look far too conspicuous, but she had still felt obliged to bring it with her, even if it was loose on her because of all the weight she had lost–four more pounds on the journey to Venice, with only another ten pounds to go to reach her goal.

The red beret that went with it might help to keep her hair dry, and she would just have to hope that her navy court shoes wouldn’t suffer too much damage from the rain.

She was out of breath, her heart racing in that disconcerting way it had developed recently, by the time she rejoined Oliver by the main door, grasping the large umbrella she had borrowed from the porter.

‘Come on,’ Oliver demanded, turning up the collar of his jacket as they stepped out into the rain together, and then strode out ahead of her.

‘If we go that way we’ll end up in St Mark’s Square,’ Ella warned him when she caught up with him.

‘So?’ he demanded, peering beneath the umbrella to glare at her.

‘You said you wanted bridge and canal locations,’ Ella pointed out.

He gave a dismissive shrug. ‘So we’ll find some bridges and canals.’

‘It will be quicker if we go this way,’ Ella told him, indicating one of the narrow sidestreets leading off the square.

‘And you’d know, would you? I suppose you’ve had your nose in a guidebook ever since we arrived. Your kind always does.’

His derisory tone stung, but Ella refused to cave in.

‘Actually, I’ve visited Venice before. My stepmother has business connections here.’ She knew she sounded prim and stuffy and, indeed, almost arrogant–she certainly wouldn’t have spoken to anyone else like this–but somehow Oliver Charters brought out the worst in her.

‘And that puts me in my place, does it? Me being from the East End?’

‘I was simply trying to save time,’ Ella told him truthfully,

They were standing in St Mark’s Square now, its wide expanse for once empty not just of visitors but also of the pigeons for which it was so famous. Even the cafés that lined the square had removed their outside tables and chairs, and the whole place looked grey and miserable, not somewhere to shoot high-summer fashion at all.