Read Online The Likeness: A Novel by Tana French - Free Book Online Page A

Frank said, pointing. “Not Dan, not God forbid Danny: Daniel. He’s the one who inherited the house. Only child, orphaned, from an old Anglo-Irish family. Grandfather lost most of their money in dodgy deals in the fifties, but there’s enough left to give Danny Boy a small income. He’s on a scholarship, so he doesn’t have fees to pay. Doing a PhD on, I kid you not, the inanimate object as narrator in early medieval epic poetry.”
“No idiot, then,” I said. Daniel was a big guy, well over six foot and built to match, with glossy dark hair and a square jaw. He was sitting in a wingbacked chair, delicately lifting a glass bauble out of its box and glancing up at the camera. His clothes—white shirt, black trousers, soft gray sweater—looked expensive. In the close-up his eyes, behind steel-rimmed glasses, were gray and cool as stone.
“Definitely no idiot. None of them are, but especially not him. You’ll need to watch your step around that one.”
I ignored that. “Justin Mannering,” Frank said, moving on. Justin had got himself wound up in a snarl of white Christmas lights and was giving them a helpless look. He was tall, too, but in a narrow, prematurely professorial way: short mousy hair already starting to recede, little rimless glasses, long gentle face. “From Belfast. Doing his PhD on sacred and profane love in Renaissance literature, whatever profane love may be; sounds to me like it would cost a couple of quid a minute. Mother died when he was seven, father remarried, two half brothers, Justin doesn’t go home much. But Daddy—Daddy’s a lawyer—still pays his fees and sends money every month. Nice for some, eh?”
“They can’t help it if their parents have money,” I said absently.
“They could get a bloody job, couldn’t they? Lexie gave tutorials, marked papers, invigilated exams—she worked in a café, till they moved out to Glenskehy and the commute got too complicated. Didn’t you work in college?”
“I waited tables in a pub, and it sucked. No way would I have done it if I’d had any choice. Getting your arse pinched by drunk accountants doesn’t necessarily make you a better person.”
Frank shrugged. “I don’t like people who get everything for free. Speaking of whom: Raphael Hyland, goes by Rafe. Sarky little fucker. Daddy’s a merchant banker, originally from Dublin, moved to London in the seventies; Mummy’s a socialite. They divorced when he was six, dumped him straight into boarding school, moved him every couple of years when Daddy got another raise and could afford to trade up. Rafe lives off his trust fund. Doing his PhD on the malcontent in Jacobean drama.”
Rafe was stretched out on a sofa with a glass of wine and a Santa hat, being purely ornamental and doing it well. He was ridiculously beautiful, in that way that makes a lot of guys feel a panicky urge to come out with snide comments in their deepest voices. He was the same general height and build as Justin, but his face was all bones and dangerous curves, and he was gold all over: heavy dark-blond hair, that skin that always looks faintly tanned, long iced-tea eyes hooded like a hawk’s. He was like a mask from some Egyptian prince’s tomb.
“Wow,” I said. “All of a sudden this gig looks more tempting.”
“If you’re good, I won’t tell your fella you said that. The guy’s probably a bender anyway,” Frank said, with crashing predictability. “Last but not least: Abigail Stone. Goes by Abby.”
Abby wasn’t pretty, exactly—small, with shoulder-length brown hair and a snub nose—but there was something about her face: the quirk of her eyebrows and the twist of her mouth gave her a quizzical air that made you want to look twice. She was sitting in front of a turf fire, threading popcorn for garlands, but she was giving the cameraperson—Lexie, presumably—a wry look, and the blur of her free hand made me think she had just whipped a piece of popcorn at the camera.
“She’s a very