Sins

The photographer was protectively nursing a Rolleiflex camera in one large hand, a bag slung over his shoulder, no doubt containing his tripod and other equipment. He was good-looking, if you liked the unkempt bad-boy type, Rose acknowledged as he reached out to shake her hand. He was also oddly familiar.

‘Haven’t we met somewhere before?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ she agreed, ‘but I can’t remember where.’

‘I’ve got it.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘I hitched a ride in your taxi a few weeks back. You were with two other girls.’

‘Oh, yes, of course,’ Rose smiled. ‘Ella and Janey. We were on our way to the party where I met you, Josh.’

‘London’s a small world,’ Josh agreed. ‘Come and have a look at these photographs Ollie’s brought.’

Half an hour later, kneeling back on her heels as she crouched on the floor surrounded by the excellent photographs Oliver had produced for their inspection, Rose watched as Josh threw up his hands in despair.

‘No. They won’t do. No offence, Ollie, the photos are great, but the hair…’

They all looked at the assortment of stiff regulated hairstyles–beehives and backcombed, flicked ends all heavily lacquered.

‘What I want to do here in my salon is to follow Vidal’s example and work with hair in a new way, one that allows the hair to move and breathe and to look natural.’

When they both looked dubiously at him he told them, ‘Look, I’ll show you what I mean.’ He took hold of Rose’s hand, hauling her to her feet. ‘It’s time for me to cut that hair of yours, Rose. It’s been driving me mad with temptation to get to work on it.’

‘No, I don’t want it cut,’ Rose protested, her free hand going protectively to her neat French pleat.

‘Why not? What’s the point in keeping it long when it’s always screwed up in that pleat? I’m going to cut it, and that’s that. Come and sit here.’

He meant it, Rose realised weakly. He had been threatening to cut her hair ever since they’d met.

As Josh sat her down and swiftly removed the pins from her hair, letting it fall in a silky black sheet down her back, Rose was vaguely conscious of Ollie setting up his camera, but she was more concerned about her hair. She had never worn it loose, not since Amber’s great-grandmother had compared it to Emerald’s luxurious head of dark curls and had said how ugly it was, and now automatically she tensed as though half expecting a verbal blow, wanting to cover her hair from sight and yet unable to do so because Josh was brushing it and giving both her and Ollie a running commentary on what he was planning to do.

‘Just look at it, it’s like finding gold,’ he crooned.

‘Then why cut it off?’ Ollie asked as the shutter clicked and he moved round on the periphery of Rose’s vision.

‘Because gold is nothing in its raw state. It needs the eye and the hand of an expert to make it into something of beauty, which is exactly what I intend to do with Rose’s hair. The length of it makes it so heavy that it takes away all its natural movement and rhythm. It’s like trying to play jazz with a traditional orchestra: too much weight and tradition weighing down the magic of the music.’

Rose saw the light from the window flashing on the scissors Josh always carried with him.

‘No,’ she protested, but it was too late. Long black snakes of hair were covering the floor as she sat at Josh’s command with her head bent forward, her panic soothed in some odd way by the almost rhythmic sounds of the scissors and the camera, punctuated by the staccato bursts of questions and explanations exchanged by the two men.

‘Look at this,’ Josh was saying. ‘Look at how I’m freeing up the hair to move and swing. See how it comes to life.’

‘Are you sure you aren’t cutting it too short?’ was Ollie’s response as he moved the tripod round the back of her.

Rose wished she was in a traditional salon with a mirror in front of her so that she could see what was going on, instead of sitting here in this empty room, terrified about the end result of Josh’s endeavours.

‘Vogue are sending my boss to Venice to cover the high-society nightlife there, and she’s told me that she’s taking me with her.’

Ella didn’t try to keep the pride out of her voice as she relayed this information to her stepmother, who had arrived unexpectedly at the Chelsea house. As one of such a large family, Ella rarely got opportunity to have her stepmother to herself, and as the eldest child she always felt it her duty to step back and let the others claim Amber’s attention, especially the younger ones.

Now, though, with both Rose and Janey out, she didn’t attempt to hide her pleasure at having Amber’s undivided attention.

‘So you’re happy, then, at Vogue?’ Amber asked her proudly.

‘Yes, but I do wish now that I’d taken a course in proper journalism. I’d love to progress to writing articles about important things, not just new lipstick colours,’ she told Amber with a rueful look. ‘There’s so much happening now, and things are changing so much. Women aren’t just daughters or wives or mothers any more, they are real people doing real things.’

She looked and sounded so earnest that Amber was determined not to smile. She could imagine, though, what her grandmother, who had single-handedly run her own business and managed her own fortune for years, would have had to say to Ella’s naïve declaration.

What Ella had said was true in one sense, though. Modern young women were certainly taking for themselves far greater personal freedoms than her generation had ever had. Most observers put that down to the war and the fact that during those terrible years women had had to become far more independent, for the sake of the country.

‘Well, you certainly seem happy,’ Amber told Ella. ‘I’ve never known you be such a chatterbox. Working at Vogue suits you, Ella. It’s bringing you out of yourself.’

Ella smiled, but the real truth was that it was her diet pills that were making her more vivacious, as well as curbing her appetite. She had noticed how, within a short time of taking one, she was more inclined to start chattering. When she’d said as much to Libby, the other girl had told her that it was yet another benefit of Dr Williamson’s marvellous little pills that they gave a person so much extra energy. No one had noticed her weight loss yet, but then Ella didn’t particularly want them to. She was losing weight to prove that she could to herself. The last thing she wanted was Oliver Charters noticing and thinking totally the wrong thing, like she was doing it because she wanted to impress him. Because she wasn’t.

Amber’s real purpose in coming to London had been to discuss the final arrangements for Emerald’s ball with Beth, and to meet with Mr Melrose on Monday. The lawyer had telephoned her in an excited and agitated state late on Friday evening to tell her that he had had a telephone call from a young man who claimed to be the lost heir to the dukedom. This young man was meeting with Mr Melrose on Monday and he had asked Amber if she would be kind enough to be there.

‘But I know nothing of Robert’s Australian family,’ she had protested.

However, the lawyer had begged her to attend, saying that he would appreciate her views on the young man and adding that he felt that if he was the duke then it would ease his passage in society if he could have some support from her as Robert’s widow.

Since Jay wasn’t going to be at home, having agreed to go and look at a combine harvester the estate manager wanted him to buy, Amber had decided that she might as well spend the weekend in London catching up with her family, and checking that Emerald was not abusing her friend Beth’s somewhat indolent chaperonage. Beth was a wonderfully kind godmother to Emerald but Amber was sure she let her get away with murder.

Her first port of call on her arrival in London had been Eaton Square, where she had left her case and learned from the housekeeper that Beth and the girls were out, so she had then taken a cab to Chelsea, to find that only her eldest stepdaughter was at home.

‘And Janey and Rose are well and happy?’ Amber asked with concern.

‘Yes, I think so,’ Ella answered her truthfully. ‘Janey is still convinced that Mary Quant is going to beg her to design for her, the minute she leaves St Martins, and Rose already has her own personal interior design commission.’

She explained to Amber what Rose was doing, and Amber was relieved that her niece was settling down so well. She always worried more about Rose than the others. All she wanted for the children was that they should be loved and love in return, and know the happiness that she knew with Jay. Young people, though, needed to spread their wings; to learn about life and to follow their dreams. Amber knew that too.

‘So when do you leave for Venice?’ she asked Ella.

‘Early next week. We’ll be travelling with the fashion editor and some models, as she’ll be doing a feature on travel and fashion, and fashion and Venice, so we’ll be going on the Orient-Express. I’m so excited about that.’

Amber laughed. ‘But you’ve travelled on it before, when Daddy and I took you all to Venice several years ago.’

‘Yes, I know but that was different. I didn’t realise then how lucky I was. Venice was just a place with lots of canals and a funny smell, where you and Daddy were going to talk to people about silk.’

She was excited about the coming trip, Ella acknowledged later after her stepmother had left to do some shopping. Although officially she was travelling to Venice in her capacity as the features editor’s assistant, she had managed to persuade the travel editor to let her do a ‘trial’ piece on the city from a potential visitor’s point of view. Determined to do a good job and prove that she could write a stimulating article, Ella had been reading up on the history of the city. She knew that the travel editor would expect her to write a piece that focused on the glamorous society side of Venice life, mentioning its elegant hotels and the private palazzos, where smart exclusive parties were held, including the kind of detail that would appeal to Vogue readers. However, privately Ella would have liked to write something more challenging than a tame piece about rich people and expensive clothes. The city had a fascinating history, and she was hoping that whilst she was there she would come across something that would enable her to give her article a true depth. Ella’s favourite newspaper was the Manchester Guardian, and secretly she longed to write the kind of gritty no-holds-barred articles she read in its pages, articles that spoke about hardship and oppression, and not expensive frocks and the right shade of lipstick. Ella imagined that the female reporters who worked on the paper would look and speak rather like the actress Katharine Hepburn, and in her daydreams she imagined herself working in a busy newsroom, filing copy of stories of immense social importance.

She knew that everyone at Vogue would laugh at her if they realised what she really longed for, but she wasn’t going to give up her dreams. One day she would write deep meaningful articles that would uncover social injustice and change people’s lives. One day.

Chapter Ten (#ulink_5312d62b-7da6-5ae6-b332-98a29e2c4de0)

The back of Rose’s neck was cold and bare and she felt oddly light-headed, as well as unable not to give in to the temptation to turn her head to sneak a look at her reflection in the shop windows she was walking past. The wind caught her hair, ruffling it in much the same way that Josh had done after he had cut it.

He had told her that on Monday he intended to shampoo it and go over it again.

‘I’d like to put a colour rinse on it as well, something to bring out the shine. A dark plum would look fantastic.’