Penny Jordan - Sins

Upstairs, Lew’s mood changed swiftly from amusement to angry irritation.

‘Either I photograph you as I wish or not at all.’

Emerald glared at him. She was used to people giving in to her, not giving her ultimatums. She had desperately wanted him to take her photograph but not in a pose that would make it obvious that she had been half nude when he had done so.

Without bothering to answer him Emerald went back behind the screen and started to dress, only realising once she had her bra on that her twinset had fallen down the other side of the screen.

Dougie knocked loudly on the door and then pushed it open, without waiting for a response. They wouldn’t be in bed yet. Lew always worked up to bed via a photographic session.

Just as Dougie walked in Emerald emerged from behind the screen in the diaphanous wrap to retrieve her clothes, and almost bumped into him. They each came to an abrupt halt and stared at one another.

Lew scowled when he saw Dougie. ‘What do you want?’

‘You said you wanted me to remind you that you’re having dinner with Lady Pamela later to discuss the arrangements for the photographs for the christening.’

‘You came up here to tell me that? It’s only three o’clock in the afternoon.’

Quickly grabbing her clothes, Emerald retreated back behind the screen and hurriedly got dressed. Damn, damn, damn. Why had that wretched Australian had to come in and see her like that?

‘Well, since you are here you can show Lady Emerald out, since she’s had second thoughts and is leaving. So silly of you to panic like that, darling,’ Lew told Emerald with spiky malice. ‘You were quite safe. I never shag girls who wear pink twinsets, and even if I did, shagging virginal débutantes simply isn’t my style, far too unrewarding. Oh, and a bit of advice for you: don’t wear pink, it doesn’t suit you. Makes you look sallow.’ The acid tone in which the comments were delivered left Emerald in no doubt as to what Lew thought of her. And of course the Australian had overheard it all and would be enjoying her humiliation. Emerald’s scalded pride burned her cheeks bright pink.

So Lady Emerald was leaving of her own accord and he needn’t have come up here risking his employer’s displeasure after all? Dougie cursed under his breath.

‘It seems Lady Emerald got the wrong photographer,’ Lew was telling him disdainfully.

‘Next time try Cecil Beaton, sweetheart. He does a lovely soft focus pearls-and-twinset look that’s just right for prudish little virgins,’ he added unkindly to Emerald.

Glaring at Dougie, Emerald shot past him. She knew she had made a fool of herself and she could imagine how they would laugh about her once she’d left.

‘I’ll see you out,’ Dougie told her, catching up with her outside the door.

‘Don’t bother,’ Emerald snapped.

The dreadful Australian might be keeping a straight face but she just knew that inside he was laughing at her. She hated them both, but she hated the horrid Australian the most.

As for her photograph…She’d just have to make do with Cecil Beaton’s original photograph of her now, and that had already appeared in Tatler . Well, she’d think of some other way of publicly linking her name with the duke’s. Perhaps she could manipulate things so that they were photographed together at one of the deb balls? If only her father had still been alive she could have persuaded him to invite the duke to stay at Osterby. There was no point in even thinking about inviting him to Denham. He was a royal duke, after all, and hardly likely to accept an invitation to a millowner’s house.

Rose hoped that she wasn’t going to be late as she hurried through the Saturday crowd thronging the King’s Road, on her way to the salon. She felt guilty about putting Janey off instead of having coffee with her as they’d originally planned, but thankfully Janey had understood when she’d explained that she’d had a last-minute telephone call from Josh, wanting her to meet up with him at the salon because he’d arranged a meeting with his photographer friend who was going to bring some shots he had done for Vogue so that Rose could look through them and pick some out for the stair wall.

Time seemed to be rushing by so fast; the days longer and the air warmer with spring flowers in bloom. Even her job wasn’t making her as miserable as it had done, although she knew she would never be totally happy at Ivor Hammond’s, not with the way she was treated.

At least she’d soon be getting a break from work with the Easter holiday coming up.

Easter. Easter meant going home to Denham and, if she was very lucky and fortune smiled on her, seeing John.

She was still smiling, lost in her own private daydreams, as she opened the door to the salon using the key that Josh had insisted on giving her, and ran quickly up the stairs.

The friend Josh had found was typical of the kind of working-class young men with East End accents and wicked teasing smiles that Josh seemed to know. Despite their bold manners, they treated Rose with deference, instantly ceasing to pepper their conversation with swear words when she was in earshot. A couple of them had plastered the stair wall after Rose’s attempts to remove the old paint had resulted in half the rotten plaster coming away too, and had done an excellent job. So too had the painter whom Josh had insisted on hiring, looking horrified when Rose had told him that she planned to paint the high wall herself.

‘Over my dead body you are,’ Josh had told her. ‘I’m not having my designer breaking her neck falling off a pair of ladders, not when she hasn’t come up with a design for my salon yet.’

‘I’ve told you, I think we should stick to the black and white theme but spice it up with touches of shocking pink.’

‘Shocking pink…’ Josh had groaned. ‘Take a look at me, will you, and then tell me, do I look like a bloke who does poncy shocking pink?’

Rose had giggled, despite her attempt to remain professional.

‘There’s nothing poncy about shocking pink,’ she’d told him firmly. ‘And besides, girls like it. Your stylists could wear black and shocking-pink turbans and headbands, and uniforms in black with shocking-pink scissors and hairdryers appliquéd onto them. What are you going to call the salon?’

‘I haven’t decided yet, why?’

‘Well, we could appliqué the name onto the uniforms as well.’

‘Fine, but what if these juniors and stylists you seem to think I’m going to be taking on aren’t all girls? What if some of them are male?’

‘Then they can wear black trousers and a black shirt with the appliqués on it, and perhaps a shocking-pink tie.’

She had seen that Josh was impressed but that he didn’t want to say so, so she went on lightly, ‘You’re going to have to come up with a name soon. I really like the way Vidal has called his salon simply Vidal Sassoon.’

‘Well, I suppose I could call mine Josh Simons,’ Josh had suggested.

From the sound of male voices now coming from the upstairs salon, it appeared that Josh and his photographer friend had already arrived. The salon, its walls also newly plastered, was still a bare empty space, apart from a folding card table and a pair of bentwood chairs so battered that Rose was inclined to believe Josh when he’d claimed to have rescued them from a skip.

She was so much happier working here than she was in the expensive Bond Street premises of her employer, Rose acknowledged. She loved the challenges that working within such a tight budget, and more importantly, creating something useful rather than merely decorative, were giving her. The contrast between working here and in the Bond Street showroom was making her increasingly aware of where her real ambitions lay and how unhappy she was. Given free choice, Rose suspected that she would have willingly switched now from studying interior design for the home to studying interior design for commercial premises, but there were at least two good reasons why she could not do that. The first and most important was that she knew that her aunt was looking to her to take over her business, and the second was that as far as Rose knew, there was no recognised ‘apprenticeship’ for someone wanting to specialise in commercial premises. It was true that some interior designers took on such projects–Oliver Messel, for instance–but they did not work exclusively in that area.