Deep and Silent Waters Read Online Free PDF

their walk for another half-hour before stopping to eat the packed lunch each had brought.
    Breathless and overheated, Laura undid the top buttons on her shirt and tucked the hem into her bra to let the air get to her bare midriff. She was lying back, eating a cheese and tomato sandwich, when her friends nudged her. ‘Hey, look – it’s him again! He followed us. Well, followed you, anyway.’
    Looking up, Laura blinked as Bernie took a rapid succession of pictures of her.
    ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ The gym teacher Mrs Heinz, who was their chaperone that day, marched up to him, bristling. Short and muscled with crew-cut hair and a ginger moustache when she forgot to wax it, she was full of energy and often aggressive and overbearing. ‘Stop that at once and go away, or I’ll call the police!’
    Bernie shrugged and went, but a week later he drove up to Laura’s home with a pile of glossy photos.
    When she saw them she was silent. Was that really her, that beautiful girl with pale breasts partially visible at the open neck of her shirt, lying back against a bed of long grass, her eyes half closed, languid and sultry?
    Her face went bright red. She was so hot she could scarcely breathe, and she felt embarrassed, with her parents staring at the pictures then at her. What were they thinking?
    Then she had wondered how he had made her look like that. And how he had got her name and address. That gave her a sense of Bernie’s ominiscience, which never quite left her even when she knew him well and had discovered that he had asked one of the other girls which school they had come from. When he had processed the pictures he had gone there, had waited until some girls came out, shown then the photos and found out who Laura was that way. Simple when you know how.
    It had taken her parents quite a while to get over their first view of those pictures. When Bernie had talked about a modelling career for Laura, her mother’s reaction had been immediate. ‘She’s far too young. And even if she wasn’t I wouldn’t want her to get involved in that sort of life. She’s going to college.’
    Bernie ignored her and said to Mr Erskine, ‘The camera loves her – I knew it would, the minute I set eyes on her. It’s the bone structure. She could have a brilliant career as a model, earn a fortune.’
    Laura’s father was a shrewd, down-to-earth man who had had to work hard from dawn till dusk to earn his daily bread. ‘What sort of money are we talking about?’ he asked.
    Bernie grinned, knowing that the fish had taken his bait. ‘The sky’s the limit, if she gets taken up by all the magazines and advertisers. She could be making a hundred thousand a year, or it could go up to a million.’
    ‘A million?’ Laura’s father had been impressed, his eyes brightening. Then, catching his wife’s angry, disapproving eye, he added, ‘But she’s still at school, you know, and we couldn’t let her leave until she’s taken her exams.’
    Mrs Erskine interrupted angrily, ‘She isn’t going to be a model, now or later. She should never have posed for those disgusting pictures in the first place!’
    ‘She’s a natural, she didn’t need to pose. I just took pictures of her as she was and look at the result! Stunning, isn’t she? A beautiful girl. She takes after you, I can see that.’
    He had wasted his flattery. ‘She’s too young and I won’t have her going off to London!’ Mrs Erskine snapped.
    Bernie turned back to her husband. ‘If you’re worried I’ll find someone to chaperone her. I’m a happily married man, Mr Erskine. I see beautiful girls all day long. I don’t have to chase after them, they chase after me. I swear to you, your daughter will be as safe with me as if she was my own kid. I think it would be a crying shame if she didn’t get her chance. She has terrific potential – I’m convinced she could get to the top and make a fortune.’
    Laura had never had any self-confidence about her