The Debutante Read Online Free PDF Page A

slim, blonde woman who stared back was almost unrecognisable, even to her. When she’d first gone to New York, she’d been a brunette, hair halfway down her back, hanging like a veil, hiding her face. Her shoulders were hunched forward, rounding protectively over her solar plexus, which felt permanently tender and bruised.
    She wanted to be someone else. Anyone else.
    It was Derek Constantine who suggested she cut and dye her hair. ‘Something timeless, classic.’
    ‘But I can’t afford it.’
    ‘You can’t afford not to be blonde,’ he corrected her. ‘And,’ he sighed, his upper lip curling slightly as he looked down at her ankle-length skirt, ‘we need to do something about all those black clothes. You’re not an Italian widow. This is a city of very fine social distinctions. Everyone nowadays has money, what’s important is pedigree, exclusivity. You’re like a debutante, before the ball. With proper grooming and introductions to the right people, who knows how far you could go?’
    She didn’t understand; it all sounded so conservative and staid. ‘You mean in art?’
    His slate-grey eyes were remote, unreadable. ‘In life,’ he answered, pressing the tips of his long fingers together under his chin.
    In life.
    She blinked back at herself now, two sizes smaller, head to toe in crisp white linen. Clean, controlled, refined. In the hazy afternoon light, she looked golden; angelic.
    If only you could remove the darkness of your character with the ease with which you could change your clothes.
    He’d sounded so sure, taken such an interest in her. The idea of being guided by this successful, sophisticated man was too compelling to resist. So she hadn’t. Instead she’d abdicated, bit by bit, her faltering, embryonic conception of herself, deferring to his clearer vision and experience.
    But the debutante he had in mind wasn’t staid. And the society he introduced her to even less so.
    Digging through her bag, she pulled out a pack of cigarettes, and, lighting one, crossed to the open window. She’d given up. She’d given up a lot of things that hadn’t stuck. And she had the feeling, all too familiar nowadays, of trying to stem the tide with a teacup.
    I just want peace, she prayed silently, taking a deep drag. Here I am, thousands of miles away from New York, with some strange man, doing a job I know nothing about … I’m meant to be getting my head together. I’m meant to be figuring out what I want to do with my life.
    She pushed her hair back from her face. It was so hot. And everything was baffling.
    Suddenly she had an overwhelming desire to get high, to be out of her head, to seduce someone. Pornographic visions filled her brain — a tangle of naked limbs; someone licking her flesh, her mouth travelling across the contours of another body … Her heart seized.
    Was it just a fantasy or a flashback?
    Naked, she was on her knees in front of him. He was holding her head in his hands, pressing his hips forward …
    She bit her lower lip, hard. So hard, it bled. And the desire built, to escape the present moment.
    Stop.
    She couldn’t stop.
    What did Jack look like without his clothes on? They were alone. He was attracted to her, she could feel it. And he was a stranger. Why was it easier to fuck a man you didn’t know?
    She exhaled.
    Don’t go there.
    But a languid sensuality already coursed through her limbs, her imagination spinning like a mirrored top, casting images she couldn’t control. The one thing she shouldn’t think of was the only thing on her mind.
    She turned. The bedclothes were torn away, two naked bodies, strangers, reached for one another … If only she could be obliterated, fucked, destroyed.
    She closed her eyes. The fantasy dissolved. Taking a last drag, she stubbed out the cigarette and threw it away, into the drive below.
    Wandering into the bathroom, she splashed her face with cool water and sat down on the toilet seat. She thought again of the telephone message