Follies. Rosie Thomas

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СКАЧАТЬ the frown disappeared from between his eyes.

      ‘I didn’t see you there,’ he said. ‘Sorry for the language. Good job I didn’t break my leg on your impedimenta, that’s all. It’s the first Meet tomorrow.’

      Helen nodded politely, evidently not understanding, and Oliver grinned at her as he scrambled up. She saw that there was a long scrape in the high polish of his boots, and had to resist the impulse to kneel down and rub the blemish off such a vision of perfection. At close quarters Oliver Mortimore was not only the most beautiful but also the most physical man she had ever encountered. He radiated such confidence, such highly-charged animal pleasure in his own existence, that set her skin tingling in response. He made Helen feel hot, and shapeless inside her clothes. Oliver held out his hand. He was six inches taller than Helen, but it felt like twice that.

      ‘I’m Oliver Mortimore,’ he said lightly. ‘Who are you, and why don’t I know you?’

      ‘I know who you are,’ Helen countered. ‘You don’t know me because there’s no particular reason why you should. My name’s Helen Brown.’

      ‘And what are you doing at Follies, Miss Brown?’

      Helen moved forward under his gaze to pick up one of the scattered boxes.

      ‘What I’m doing is moving in. I’m going to live here for a year.’

      Oliver was staring at her now with undisguised interest.

      ‘Oh really? You’re not in the usual run of socialites and harpies that Rose collects around her, are you?’

      He was so clearly stating no more than the obvious that Helen found herself laughing with him.

      ‘I imagine not. Frances Page let me inherit her room. We’re friends,’ Helen told him crisply, ‘in a way.’

      Oliver raised his eyebrows, but politely made no other comment on such an unlikely sounding friendship. ‘Ah, unlucky Fran,’ he said. ‘Perfectly okay for one’s own use, of course; but not very clever to start dealing in the stuff. Still, if you’re a girl with expensive tastes and no cash, like Fran, the books do have to be balanced somehow.’

      Helen looked away. She didn’t care to hear muddled, aristocratic, silly Frances spoken of so lightly. For the time that they had lived in adjacent College rooms, she had been a good friend to Helen. She hadn’t been sent to prison for what Helen thought of as her witless dabbling on the fringe of the cocaine-peddlers’ world, though she could have been. But she had been sent down from Oxford, and Helen missed her.

      Oliver was counting up the remaining items of Helen’s luggage.

      ‘Cases, three; cardboard boxes, miscellaneous, secured with string, four. You can’t possibly manage all this yourself. Where’s bloody Gerry?’

      He picked up the nearest box. ‘Oof, what’s in here? Rocks or something?’

      Helen put out her hand. The material of his sleeve felt very soft. ‘Books, mostly. Don’t bother, really. Rose told me I’d have to cope myself, and I’m quite ready to.’

      ‘Lazy old trout.’ Oliver had already started for the stairs. ‘Where’s your room?’

      ‘Top floor.’ Helen had no alternative but to pick up the remaining case and follow him.

      Oliver chuckled. ‘Good old Rose. Trust her to have stuck you right up there. Who’re the lucky occupiers of the smarter quarters this year?’

      ‘No idea. Isn’t this Gerry one of them?’

      ‘God, no. Gerry is Rose’s half-brother. He calls himself a writer, but he’s actually a drunk and a lecher. He also claims to be a distant relative of mine, because Rose is, but I find that hard to swallow. You’ll be seeing lots of him, which is hard luck.’

      They reached the door of Helen’s room and Oliver shouldered it open. He dropped his armload and strolled over to the window. ‘Nice view, anyway. Hey, you can almost see my windows over at the House.’ Oliver flexed his shoulders inside their second skin of tweed, easing them after the long pull up the stairs, then turned back to Helen.

      ‘Come and have tea with me, won’t you? Tomorrow. No – wait – Friday. Yes?’

      Helen looked straight back into his tanned, smiling face for a long moment before she answered. But there was no possibility that she could refuse.

      ‘Yes. On Friday, then.’

      To her amazement, Oliver leaned forward and kissed her, quite casually, on the corner of her mouth. ‘Cheer up,’ he said softly. ‘You should smile a bit oftener. You’ve no idea how much it suits you.’

      From the doorway he waved, without looking at her again, and Helen heard him clatter away down the stairs.

      For a moment she stood stock-still in the middle of the room, absently touching the corner of her mouth with her fingertips. Then she sank down at one end of the narrow bed. Follies had cachet, Helen knew that. The idea of Helen Brown, who had none at all, living there had given her some rare moments of private amusement over the summer. And now here she was, in the house for barely an hour and already she had been invited to tea and kissed by Oliver, practically a being from another planet. Helen rocked back on the bed and laughed out loud, a transforming giggle that Oliver would have approved of. It was absurd to think anything of their encounter, let alone to take it as an augury for the new year, but she would do it anyway. It was a good one, Helen was sure of that.

      Chloe Campbell registered the road sign as it flicked past her on the motorway. Oxford 15 miles. Shit, almost there. A little shiver of nervousness snaked along her spine before she realised it. Well, there was nothing to be apprehensive about. Nothing at all. Chloe jammed her foot down on the accelerator and swung her slick, little black Renault Gordini out into the overtaking lane. A glance in the mirror showed the family saloons dropping satisfactorily away behind her, and she relaxed her too-tight grip on the wheel. Nice little car, she thought. Thank you, Colin. Thank you, but goodbye in the end, just the same. Goodbye to a lot of things, come to think of it.

       Chloe, darling, are you serious about all this?

      The question was addressed to her own reflection briefly glimpsed in the mirror. The huge green eyes with their sooty black lashes were perfectly made up as usual. The dark coppery-red hair gleamed over the diamond ear-studs, just as always. But where were all the other things she used to identify herself by?

      Chloe began her reckoning once more, already repeated once too often since she had left London.

      No job, to start with. She had resigned from that, her ridiculously well-paid job as a top copywriter in a smart little ad agency. Well, except for the money, that was no great loss. Trying to create the perfect lines for the perfect housewife in her dream kitchen with the superlative packet soup bored Chloe nowadays, like so many other things.

      No lover, either. All the available ones bored her too, and it irked her to think of the unavailable one. Leo Dawnay, damn him. All of this was really because of him. Leo was in the business, the perfect Englishman who had made it his particular business to trade on that on Madison Avenue. A big joint campaign had brought him briefly back to London, and into Chloe’s bed. It was Leo who had said it as they lay wound together after one of their long evenings of love-making.

      ‘You СКАЧАТЬ