Staring At The Light Read Online Free PDF Page A

think. Broad belt:
     her waist is tiny.
    She stood in front of his desk with her hands thrust into the pockets of the unstructured jacket, obliviousof his attempts to record the design. He would see it again, of course: she was artful with clothes (she was artful anyway);
     it would appear in several guises over trousers, over a short, straight skirt with a nice length of leg and, yes, he looked
     forward to that.
    ‘Do sit down,’ he repeated, the sound of his parlour-maid voice making him cringe, but there was nothing he could do about
     it. He loved and missed her in a way that made anything else impossible; but, by God, for all sorts of reasons she would have
     made a terrible daughter-in-law: flouting the rules, both moral and social, was all very well, but not with one of his own.
    She sat. Elegantly, of course, leaning back into the chair with her arm over the back, legs crossed under the fluid skirt,
     at ease, cigarette lit. Useless to remind her about the no-smoking zone. They had been that route before. Oh, Lord, he wished
     he was not fond of her. Sarah, for God’s sake, help me out, was what he wanted to say. I’m a half-way redundant old man in
     a firm that has outgrown me and I need you to act as my protector, the way you do for everyone else.
    ‘How did you get on with Cannon? Our artist?’ he added sarcastically, suddenly remembering that obscure and disastrous client.
     Where
had
she got
him
from? God alone knew.
She
said
he
had seen the name of the firm on headed paper on a relative’s desk and come along by chance because he knew no other lawyers,
     had been sent upstairs because he was scruffy. A feasible but unfortunate explanation. They did not normally deal with criminals,
     unless purely the white-collar kind.
    ‘Oh, fine. Someone blew his house up.’
    ‘Oh.’ Sarah had this tendency to exaggerate; you couldn’t believe a thing she said.
    ‘And the opposition had toothache and the Master got the giggles,’ she added.
    He was lost, so stuck to his own agenda, changing the subject, not daring to say, You know what you should do with Cannon?
Dump him
. Dump him like you dumped my son, only I don’t understand why we all still love you. Instead, ‘Still househunting, are you?’
    ‘Yes, of course.’
    ‘We’ve a new project,’ he announced briskly, after coughing and clearing his throat. ‘Every other leading London legal firm
     is doing it, so we have to do it too. Get an art collection.’
    As a change of topic, this took some beating. She shook her head to clear her face of incredulity. ‘This firm wants to collect
art
? For what?’
    ‘Not wants, Sarah. Needs. Helps raise our profile in places where—’
    ‘Rich corporations go in order to raise theirs,’ she finished for him crisply, rallying faster than a Centre Court tennis
     player.
    He nodded. ‘Part of the image, you see. Doing our bit. We get a few dozen paintings, maybe the odd sculpture or two. Decorate
     the foyer. Place looks like an empty cricket pitch with walls, anyway. Then we put them on show, oh, wherever these things
     go on show. Our logo all over the place, of course. It was these Japanese chaps started, buying
Sunflowers
. Hopefully we make money on our investment at theend of the day. But we can’t have things like that man with his dead sheep in tanks. None of the partners knows the first
     thing – and none of them has got time. So we thought … you.’
    She laughed. Another reason why they could never bring themselves to get rid of her. This easy, non-contemptuous laughter
     that embraced them all, without ever accepting the ethic of any one of them. A potential blackmailer, too, of course.
    ‘Is there a theme to this collection?’ she asked. ‘I am not, emphatically not, going out in search of stags at bay in Scottish
     Highlands. Or dogs on cushions.’
    Personally, Ernest liked the idea of anything featuring food, especially if it was going to include dead game ready for the
     pot, but he