Sins

Still holding on to her arm, he started to guide her towards the door behind them, and it was only Josh’s farewell to Vidal that alerted Rose to the fact that there was now only the two of them. But by then it was too late: Josh was already reaching for the shabby door and opening it for her.

The door opened straight onto a long narrow staircase, its walls painted a sludgy dark brown, the paint chipped in places to show an even more repellent shade of green underneath.

‘You need something light and bright in here,’ Rose announced, immediately inspired, ‘something with a finish that can be wiped clean as people are bound to put their hands on the walls on their way up because the stairs are so narrow.’ She eyed the wall thoughtfully. ‘A sort of off-white shiny paint would be best, and then you could break up the wall with some black-and-white photographs, in plain black frames–head-and-shoulder shots showing off various hairstyles, perhaps.’

Rose was thinking aloud, her imagination taking off and quashing her reluctance to get involved. The shabbiness of her surroundings and the challenge of transforming them was affecting her like an itch she had to scratch.

‘That’s a terrific idea. I’ve got a mate who’s a photographer; always photographing pretty girls, he is. I might be able to do a bit of a deal with him.’

Rose, who was already halfway up the stairs, turned back to look at him. Standing below her brought him to the same eye level. He had extraordinary long eyelashes for a man, and those deep-set dark brown eyes were even more mesmerising close up. He definitely wasn’t her type, though. She liked quiet studious young men, like the young Chinese medical student she had recently got to know whose family owned a Chinese restaurant patronised by Janey’s arty crowd. Lee worked in the restaurant when he wasn’t studying, and one evening, when they had been the last customers to leave, he had sat down with them at Janey’s insistence and told them about his dreams and plans.

Not that Rose had any romantic interest in Lee, or was likely to develop one. Her heart was already given to John, Lord Fitton Legh. John’s stepmother was Ella and Janey’s aunt Cassandra, who his father had married after the death of John’s mother, and the girls had known John all their lives. He was quiet and kind, and Rose loved him for that and for treating her as though she were no different to the others…She had developed a crush on him when she was twelve years old and he had saved her when Emerald had tricked her into getting up on a far too mettlesome horse, knowing that she was a nervous rider. John had come into the yard just as Rose was clinging in terror to the rearing horse’s reins. Within seconds he had calmed it down and had scooped Rose up off its back. In that moment he had become for her the most wonderful person in the whole world. Not that she would ever allow either John himself, or anyone else, to know how she felt. Emerald would have had a field day taunting her if she had guessed, because it was, of course, impossible that John would return her feelings. She had heard her aunt and uncle talking about John’s future, saying that he would probably marry a girl from one of the local aristocratic families, someone who would share his deep commitment to the land and his inheritance, and she had known, young as she had been, that someone in John’s position would never want to marry a girl like her. The Fittons were, after all, a very old and proud Cheshire family.

But that hadn’t prevented her from having her daydreams.

Later on, when she had been at college and she had seen the way that men looked at her, knowing that she loved John had made her feel safe. Because if she loved John then there was no need for her to worry about falling in love with anyone else–with someone who might pretend to love her but who would really only want to treat her as her father had treated her mother.

No other man could hurt her or reject her whilst she loved John. And she always would. Always. Even though she knew that nothing could ever come of it. Instead she hid her private love for him in her heart and concentrated on her work and on making sure that she repaid her aunt Amber’s faith in her.

‘When I said head-and-shoulder portraits of girls, that was exactly what I meant,’ she told Josh severely now, as she focused firmly on the present, ‘not poses more suitable for a certain type of magazine.’

Josh burst out laughing. ‘Ollie would be mortified if he heard you say that. He photographs models for Vogue, not Men Only.’

Rose could feel her face starting to burn. Quickly she turned round and headed to the top of the stairs where the first door in front of her had an unsteady ‘WC’ painted on it.

‘You’ll have to make sure that there are proper cloakroom facilities,’ she announced. ‘At least you will if you want to attract girls.’

She hadn’t realised that there was a double entendre to her words until she heard Josh laugh again.

‘So that’s where I’ve been going wrong when I’ve taken girls back to my place,’ he joked. ‘And there I’ve been, changing my toothpaste, thinking I might have bad breath. You reckon I’d be better getting one of those fancy crocheted covers for the toilet roll, do you?’

Rose laughed in spite of herself. She wasn’t fooled for a minute; she doubted that any girl who agreed to go home with this man cared two hoots about his bathroom. She wasn’t going to boost his ego by telling him so, though, not when she was pretty sure that he already knew it hi

mself.

Instead she said loftily, ‘Of course I don’t know what kind of clientele you want to attract.’

‘But posh girls like you wouldn’t come and get their hair done in a salon run by a working-class Jewish hairdresser whose salon that hasn’t got the right kind of “cloakroom,” is that it?’

He sounded more curt than amused now. His obvious contempt made Rose flinch, but she stood her ground.

‘That wasn’t what I meant at all. It isn’t a matter of being “posh”. In fact, some of the grandest houses in the country have the most antiquated bathrooms you can imagine. It’s just a matter of making your clientele feel that you appreciate and value them, especially when that clientele is going to be female. Making them feel comfortable, but at the same time making them feel that they deserve something that’s special, and…and the best. That is after all why you want them to come to you, isn’t it?’ she challenged him. ‘Not just so that you can do their hair but because you think you can do their hair better than anyone else?’

Josh was taken aback and impressed by her astuteness. He looked at her as though he hadn’t really seen her before and in one sense he realised he hadn’t. Previously he’d seen her as a stunning-looking girl whose Eurasian beauty would make her an excellent model for the avant-garde hairstyles he and Vidal talked about so passionately into the early hours. They were both in their different ways determined to do away with the old-established hairdressing model of rigidly arranged and lacquered ‘set’ styles, and to replace them with precision cutting that focused on the natural movement of a woman’s hair.

Whilst he and Vidal understood one another’s drive, Rose had astonished Josh with the speed at which she had tapped into his ambitions. She was, he decided ruefully, bang on the money, though, and that was exactly what he wanted.

In that moment Josh made up his mind that Rose and no one else was going to be responsible for the décor of his salon, no matter how much cajoling he had to do to get her to do it–and somehow he knew he would have to cajole her. He was no fool, though. There was no point in scaring her off by telling her what he had decided. Instead he stepped past her and pushed open the door into the long dilapidated room that he planned to turn into his salon.

‘Come and have a look at this…’

Chapter Eight

The sound of someone knocking on the door, when Lew was out at lunch with his latest girl, distracted Dougie’s attention from the small portable typewriter on which he was typing up a list of potential clients Lew had left him. There were no sittings booked for the afternoon and, knowing Lew as he now did, Dougie suspected that when he returned it would be with the young woman he had been pursuing and that he himself would be told to shoot off for the day. Cursing under his breath as the knocking continued and he hit two wrong keys in succession, Dougie pushed back his chair and stood up.

Emerald waited impatiently at the door. She hadn’t been put off when the new top society photographer, lauded in Tatler and the Queen, hadn’t replied to her letter to him from Paris insisting that she wanted him to take her new official débutante photograph, and nor had she changed her mind about the importance of having him do just that.

She had quickly discovered on her return to London that she was far from the only contender for the position of HRH The Duchess of Kent, and that invitations offering an opportunity for débutantes to meet the duke were very carefully monitored by those who managed to secure his presence at any event. Naturally, she was not going to be readily invited to parties the duke was attending by the mothers of other débutantes, for instance. Emerald quite understood that, and she understood too that she was going to have to use subtle, even underhand, means to ensure that she brought herself to the duke’s attention. Getting herself photographed by Lewis Coulter, and then being described as the season’s prettiest débutante would do her campaign no harm. His mother was bound to have copies of all the top magazines, and Emerald could easily imagine her pointing her photograph out to her son and saying what an impeccable lineage. At least on her father’s side. It was a pity that her mother wasn’t better born. Emerald’s mouth thinned. Had she been, then Emerald wouldn’t have to think about strategies for bringing herself to the duke’s attention because her mother would naturally have numbered Princess Marina amongst her social circle.