Читать книгу Where You Belong - Barbara Taylor Bradford - Страница 17

The storm broke as I finished dressing.

Thunder and lightning rampaged across the sky, and I turned on additional lights in my bedroom before going through into the living room.

A master switch controlled all of the lamps in there, and a second after I’d hit it with my finger the room was bathed in a lambent glow. I glanced around, my eyes taking in everything.

Although I knew this room so well, it always gave me pleasure whenever I looked at it. My grandfather had put it together, had created the decorative scheme, and his choices in furniture, all gifts from him to me, had been superb. Even the lamps and paintings had been his selections, and the room had a cohesion and a quiet beauty that was very special.

Janine, the wonderfully efficient and motherly Frenchwoman who looked after the apartment, and me when I was in it, had been very visible all day yesterday. She had cleaned and polished and fussed around in general, and had even arrived bearing a lovely gift…the masses of pink roses which she had arranged in various bowls around the living room.

And tonight the room literally shone from her efforts. The antique wood pieces were warm and mellow in the lamplight, gleamed like dark ripe fruit; how beautifully they stood out against the rose-coloured walls, while the silk-shaded porcelain lamps threw pools of soft light onto their glistening surfaces.

Like the rest of the apartment, the floor in the living room was of a dark, highly polished wood, and left bare as the floors in the other rooms were. The latter were decorated more simply, since I’d done them myself; it was Grandfather’s room, as I called it, which looked the best.

After admiring it from the doorway for a moment longer I then stepped inside, went over and straightened a few cushions on the deep rose linen-covered sofa near the fireplace, before bending over to sniff Janine’s roses. For once they had a perfume, actually smelled of roses, which was unusual these days. Most bought flowers had no scent at all.

I went into the kitchen, checked that there were bottles of white wine in the refrigerator, and returned to my bedroom. For a minute or two I studied myself in the long mirror on a side wall, thinking that I looked much better than I had for days. Healthy, in fact. But that was merely an illusion, one very cleverly created by my artifice with cosmetics; a golden-tinted foundation camouflaged my deathly pallor, hid the dark smudges under my eyes. The latter I’d enhanced with a touch of eye shadow and mascara; while a hint of pink blush and pink lipstick helped to bring a little additional life to my wan face.

The real truth was that I’d looked quite ill for the past week, haggard, white-faced, and red-eyed from crying, and I hadn’t wanted Jake to see me looking that way tonight. He worried enough about me as it was.

I wasn’t sure where we were going to dinner, so I’d chosen one of my basic outfits – black gabardine trousers, a white silk shirt and a black blazer. My blonde-streaked hair was pulled back in a pony tail, and, as I regarded myself objectively, I thought: Plain Jane and then some.

Turning around, I went to the desk, opened the drawer and took out a pair of small pearl earrings. I was putting them on when the doorbell rang.

I hurried through into the hall, anxious to see Jake who had been gone for the past week.

‘Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes,’ he drawled when I flung open the door to let him in.

‘Likewise,’ I answered, and we stood there staring at each other.

Then he reached out eagerly and pulled me into his arms, enveloping me in a tight bear hug. And he held me so close to him I was momentarily startled.