Red Joan Read Online Free PDF

through last night. She likes her self-confidence, her ease. Joan catches sight of the invitation propped up on her bookshelf. ‘Are you going to the sherry party this evening?’ she asks.
    â€˜The tutors’ sherry party?’ The girl gives a small burst of laughter, and Joan feels faintly embarrassed for having mentioned it. The girl stubs out her cigarette and then turns to look at Joan. ‘Only if I can wear your fur coat.’
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    Her name is Sonya, an exotic, unusual name, which is fitting for a girl who does not walk through life but sails, who floats in and out of rooms without ever seeming to trip or falter. She makes perfectly ordinary people into an audience, even when they don’t want to be. They think they are taking part but they aren’t. Not really. Not like Sonya. She doesn’t have the humble opinion of her own importance that besieges most girls of her age. She seems to know that she is different and doesn’t mind it. Even her clothes are different, but not in the same way as Joan’s. Joan’s are too new, too homemade to look right. When Joan observes herself in the mirror, she looks as if she is dressed in someone else’s clothes which don’t quite fit. The hemlines are all too long, the waists too slack. It is an uncomfortable thought and she wishes she did not have it, but no matter how much she tells herself that she is grateful for all the effort her mother put into her University Trousseau, the tugging and pinning and late-night stitching, she cannot seem to wriggle out the thought.
    Sonya, in contrast, wears what she likes; black silk dresses in the evenings and, in the daytime, all-in-one trouser suits and odd, mustard-coloured dresses with no shape, no darts or nips or tucks, which on anybody else would look like old sacking tied up with a too-thin belt, but which on Sonya somehow manage to look stylish. Not chic exactly, but deliberate. And then high heels, headscarf, bright red lips. It is almost a statement of anti-fashion, a shrug of contempt towards garters and girdles and primness in the days before dresses were supposed to make statements. Almost anti-fashion, but not quite. Because soon they will all want to look like her.
    Sonya comes back to Joan’s room that evening while Joan is getting ready for the party and proposes a swap: mascara for mink. Joan protests that she does not want anything in return. Sonya can just borrow the coat. There’s no need for bartering. Mascara is unlikely to be the sort of thing she can pull off anyway so she’d rather not wear it.
    Sonya waves her objections aside, wafting her back into the room. ‘It doesn’t need to be pulled off. If you put it on properly, then nobody will know you’re wearing it. They’ll just be dazzled by how big your eyes suddenly appear. Come here and sit down.’ She shows Joan how to apply it, dabbing the cake of black dye with a droplet of water and then brushing the mixture upwards along her eyelashes with a small brush. ‘There! What do you think?’
    Joan looks at herself in the mirror and has to admit that the transformation is quite amazing. She has used Brilliantine on her eyelashes before but it has never had this effect. Now her eyelashes flick upwards and curl, and if she lowers them and looks slightly upwards as Sonya instructs, they give an involuntary flutter. So this is how it’s done, she thinks with delight.
    â€˜What did I tell you? You look like Greta Garbo in
Anna Karenina
.’ Sonya grins at her, and then turns to Joan’s wardrobe to extract the fur coat, her side of the bargain, flinging it dramatically over her shoulders and spinning into the centre of the room.
    â€˜You have to be careful with it,’ Joan says. ‘I’d get into so much trouble if I lost it.’
    Sonya laughs. She extracts a headscarf from her bag—crimson with small white flowers—and ties it around her hair. ‘Of