Toby's Room Read Online Free PDF Page A

hadn’t heard him approach. He bent forward, his sleeve a black wing brushing her face, and picked up the drawing. But in so doing he revealed the portrait of himself underneath.
    She waited for the explosion of anger, one of his rare, white-lipped rages that she’d heard about but never witnessed.
    Instead, he burst out laughing. ‘Really, Miss Brooke, you flatter me.’
    Without further comment, he took her drawing of the model and began making quick, anatomical sketches in the margin, each of them better than anything she’d managed to achieve. Tonks’s skeletons had more life than her nudes. She tried to concentrate on what he was saying, but it was hopeless: she was too aware ofwhispers spreading round the room. By the end of the session, everybody knew what she’d done.
    No sooner had Tonks left the room than her friends clustered round her. ‘Oh, Elinor, you
didn’t
.’ ‘What did he
say
?’ ‘Come on, let’s see it.’ ‘Don’t be such a spoilsport.’ Finally, a gasp of sheer horror: ‘It wasn’t
nude
, was it?’
    She escaped as soon as she could. Outside the quad gates, she hesitated. If she went back to her lodgings now, she might well spend the rest of the day in bed with the covers pulled over her head. No, somehow or other, she had to keep going, and she had to get away from the Slade.
    Russell Square was the nearest green space. She often came here, though not usually at lunchtime. The benches were crowded with people eating soggy sandwiches from greaseproof-paper bags. She found herself a place on the grass and lay down, lifting her face to the sun. Somewhere near by a fountain played, though the sound of trickling water brought no relief. God, it was hot. She could barely swallow, her throat was so dry. At the far end of the square was a hut with a few tables outside, where you could buy lemonade, but there was a long queue. Not worth it, she decided. Not in this heat.
    Thoughts floated to the surface of her mind and burst like bubbles. I should have brought a drawing pad. You never really felt alone if you were drawing; it formed a sort of cocoon around you. And why didn’t I wear a thinner dress? That queue’s quite a bit shorter now. And why,
why
, wasn’t she wearing a straw hat? She had one – well, it was there somewhere – only that morning she’d been in such a state she’d grabbed the first thing she could lay her hands on. Black felt, oh God, far too hot in this weather, although at least she could pull it down and hide her cropped hair. But now her scalp itched. A bead of sweat ran down into her eye, burning like acid, and suddenly it was all too much. She tore the hat off, leaned forward and shook her fingers through her hair.
    At the same moment, a shadow fell across her. Peering up through the mess of jagged ends, she saw Kit Neville, in a baggy, creased suit, looking down at her.
    ‘Miss Brooke, you look rather hot, I wonder if you’d like some lemonade?’
    ‘There’s a queue.’
    ‘It’s not so bad now. Shall I get us some?’
    She nodded, trying to think of something slightly more gracious to say, but he’d already turned away. He’d startled her, appearing in front of her so suddenly. When he vanished behind a clump of bushes, she was half inclined to think he’d been a mirage, but no, minutes later, there he was again, his burly figure making great strides across the grass, a ragged shadow snatching at his heels.
    He handed her a glass. ‘Don’t know how cool it is, mind.’
    Cautiously, with an audible clicking of the knees, he lowered himself to sit beside her, risking grass stains on his obviously expensive suit. That was one of the things you noticed about Kit Neville. He wore extremely well-tailored suits, and he looked a mess. She didn’t particularly like the man – or, rather, she didn’t like what she’d heard about him. He was a bully, people said. But now, looking at him, she saw none of the swaggering self-confidence he projected so