Read Online The Perfect Daughter by Gillian Linscott - Free Book Online

trained herself to sleep without turning over. I sat on it and after a moment’s doubt, Bill joined me. I asked if she was at the Slade too.
    â€˜Yes. Was Verona? We don’t tend to socialise much with the first-year people and I’ve been busy. First commission.’
    â€˜You say this was her room?’
    â€˜That’s right. I was sharing with somebody, but when I got this commission I needed somewhere to work on my own. I heard on the grapevine that this was vacant so in I came. Serious mistake. It’s like trying to work in the middle of Trafalgar Square.’
    â€˜On the grapevine? Can you remember how exactly?’
    â€˜Not sure. I think I heard about it from a woman who went to life class with somebody who knew the man they call Rizzo…’
    â€˜The aristocratic Hungarian anarchist?’
    She snorted. ‘Egoist, you mean.’
    Bill said unexpectedly, ‘I thought his painting was good.’
    â€˜Oh he paints well enough. He’d be even better if he stopped posturing and did some work.’
    I asked, ‘And Toby?’
    Another snort. ‘No talent whatsover. He should go home and be a vicar, which is what his father is, wouldn’t you have guessed.’
    â€˜Did you get the impression that Toby was in love with Verona?’
    Janie looked at me as if I’d asked about the habits of warthogs.
    â€˜Not interested. Even if I were, there wouldn’t be any point in this house.’
    Bill asked why.
    â€˜Like trying to draw a map of a desert in a sandstorm. Always people coming and going, shouting at each other, drunk or worse half the time.’
    â€˜Worse?’
    Janie picked up another brush and drew an outline of a leaf.
    â€˜Smoking. Going to China, Rizzo calls it. First time I heard it, I said would he bring me back some calligraphy brushes.’
    I said, ‘Opium, you mean?’
    She nodded.
    Bill said, ‘It seems a funny sort of place for a vicar’s son.’
    Or for a commodore’s daughter, come to that.
    â€˜Oh, I’m sure Toby thinks he’s seeing life. He’ll grow out of it.’
    Grow out of life, did she mean? Which brought us back to Verona. I was going to ask another question, but Bill got in first.
    â€˜The man they call Rizzo had done a drawing of her. Do you think he was attracted to her?’
    â€˜What’s the connection? He spent days at a hospital once painting a gangrenous foot.’
    Bill persisted. He was good at that. ‘Do you think he’s the kind of man women find attractive?’ (Had he picked up that rogue thought in me? I hoped not.)
    â€˜Perhaps, if they’ve got no sense. Rizzo thinks love is a bourgeois affectation. I expect he offered to deflower her.’
    Bill blinked, but rallied. ‘Why do you think so?’
    â€˜He did it to me the first time we met – offered, that is. He says any virgin over fifteen years old is an offence against nature.’
    â€˜What did you do?’
    â€˜Poured a bottle of turps over him. I shouldn’t have reacted like that. Waste of good turps.’
    She went on calmly painting the flower. Bill seemed to have run out of questions, so I came in with mine.
    â€˜You say you moved in here three weeks ago. That would be near the start of May?’
    â€˜Monday May the fourth.’
    Janie was as precise about dates as in her painting. As far as I could remember, Verona had last written to her mother the day before, May the third, saying she was well and working hard. There’d been nothing said about moving.
    â€˜And you got the impression that Verona had moved out for good, not just gone away for a while?’
    â€˜Nobody’s that definite about anything here, but I certainly got the impression it was vacant for the foreseeable future or I shouldn’t have taken it. I must say I was annoyed, though, to find she’d left some of her things here.’ Bill glanced at me. I asked, ‘What sort