Read Online Jasmine Nights by Julia Gregson - Free Book Online Page B

mention hammer toes either, unless it came up naturally, which it almost never did in conversation. Ha ha ha. Arleta, digging into her custard slice, was in high spirits. She told Saba she’d been very, very low indeed before the audition, but this was just what she needed. ‘It’s the greatest fun on earth, ENSA,’ she said. ‘A real challenge.’
    ‘Are you nervous?’ Saba said.
    ‘Not really.’ Arleta winked. She took out her handkerchief and wiped the lipstick from her cup. ‘I more or less know I’m in,’ she said cockily.
    ‘How?’
    Arleta stuck her tongue into her cheek, closed her eyes and squinted at Saba.
    ‘Let’s just say I have friends in high places,’ was all she would say.

Chapter 5
    After all the auditions had ended, Dom hung around outside the stage door for nearly two hours, waiting for her. The doorman, sitting in a glass box, read his Sporting Life from cover to cover. Dom watched prop baskets and racks of clothes come and go, listening with a certain exasperation to snatches of conversation: ‘I worked with Mabel years ago. She’s a marvel, but puffed sleeves, imagine!’ from a loud middle-aged woman with dyed hair, and ‘I’d try the wig department, if I were you’ from a mincing little type in a checked overcoat.
    And then, she emerged from behind him, so buoyantly that she could have been walking on air. There were bright spots of red on her cheeks; she was smiling to herself. It was starting to rain, and the street was full of dun- or dark-coated people putting up umbrellas.
    She looked straight at him as she stepped on to the pavement.
    ‘It’s Dominic,’ he said. ‘I’ve been waiting for you.’
    ‘Waiting for me?’ She looked confused and embarrassed, and then the penny dropped.
    ‘Heavens,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure I would have recognised you out of your pyjamas. You’re as good as new.’
    The same thing his mother had said, and so untrue.
    ‘Look, I’m sorry about today,’ she added, colouring. ‘It was all too much. It’s my first time in London.’
    ‘And my first time for being jilted.’ He made it sound like a joke, but it was true. Almost.
    ‘Well get you!’ She was mocking him and smiling too, reminding him again of their hospital kiss.
    ‘Must you dash? Can’t I buy you a drink? A nice cup of cocoa maybe?’ Oh, the habits of facetiousness did die hard, even when your heart was going like a bloody tom-tom. It’s only a dare, he told himself. Calm down.
    While she considered this, he noticed the feverish look in her eyes, as though she was floating above the earth and not aware of her surroundings.
    ‘Well, all right then,’ she said after a pause. ‘I’m absolutely starving. I was so nervous before.’ He touched her arm to warn her of a passing car that could have knocked her over, and she continued in the same dream-like voice, ‘I can’t believe it. Any of it. I honestly don’t know what to do with myself.’
    They had to walk. It was rush hour now, the buses were crammed. He said he would take her to Cavour’s in the Strand. When it started to rain harder, he took off his greatcoat and draped it around her shoulders.
    Halfway up Regent Street she sat down on a bench like a vagabond and took her right shoe off. Her new shoes had given her a blister. Her hair was wet and plastered around her face, which was triangle-shaped and high-cheekboned, and she suddenly looked so vulnerable, cocooned in his greatcoat and with London rushing around her, and her little foot now curved for his inspection, that he wanted to take it in his hand and kiss it better. He touched her instep lightly; she did not move away.
    ‘Nasty,’ he said. ‘Amputation? Ambulance? What do you think?’
    She swung her handbag at his head.
    ‘Idiot! Twit!’ A tomboy moment which delighted him. He’d never liked ladylike girls with their pearls, and handbags on their laps, and talk of horses and Mummy and parties, but where did her high spirits come from? She