Читать книгу An Ice Cream For Henry - Emanuele Cerquiglini - Страница 21

B arbara Harrison didn’t try to be beautiful, she just was. When she dressed femininely, she was one of those women who men could fall for in an instant. She was well used to being pursued by the opposite sex. At college, she had eventually got bored with the continual advances from her fellow students, and had been sickened by older men shamelessly trying to pick her up despite her still being a minor. One such man was Donald Coleman, a childhood friend of her father who had thought it was a good idea to sneak into Barbara’s room on vacation in Florida when she was just fourteen. It happened in the middle of the third night of the vacation, when a liquored-up Donald had taken advantage of his wife and Barbara’s parents staying late at a Hawaiian-themed beach party held near the house the two couples had rented together.

Only his longstanding friendship with her father had saved Donald from a charge of attempting to sexually assault a minor, but it had not spared him the wrath of Barbara, who was already something of an expert in taekwondo having practiced it for four years. That was a really bad night for Donald: initially, he had assumed the young girl was up for it when she teased him by getting out of bed in just her underwear after she’d felt his covetous fingers brush against her nostrils, then a few seconds later he found himself flat out on the ground nursing a black eye and a cracked rib. He’d been hoping for a kiss, but instead had been dealt a punch and a kick that he hadn’t even seen coming such was the darkness of the room and the sheer speed of Barbara Harrison’s moves.

Barbara told him she wouldn’t say anything to her parents, but that he’d have to think of an excuse for his injuries and if he ever tried it on again, she’d press charges, but only after killing him first.

Donald told his wife and Barbara’s parents that some strangers had tried to steal his wallet and he’d sustained the injuries trying to defend himself. He and his wife cut short their Florida vacation the next day, setting off just a few hours after he had left hospital. Over the years that followed, the Colemans and the Harrisons saw less and less of each other, and when they did get together, Barbara was never present. Donald was ashamed of what he’d done and he would always come up with different excuses to spurn the invitations of his friend Antony Harrison, until eventually Barbara’s dad gave up and decided he wouldn’t bother calling Donald anymore.

‘ You do right to stop calling him, Dad. I always thought he was a dumb sleaze… And his wife’s sooo jealous of Mom’ s looks,’ Barbara would say whenever the question of ‘whatever happened to the Colemans?’ surfaced. Eventually, the Harrisons forgot all about their former friends.

Upon returning home after her hour-long run through Central Park, Barbara was stopped by the concierge, who handed her a parcel.

“Who’s it from?” asked Barbara curiously.

“It’s from an Italian fashion house, Miss Harrison, that’s all I know,” the concierge replied with a cheery smile.

Barbara went up to the fourth floor of the Upper East Side building, entered her apartment, used one of her feet to close the door behind her, and put the parcel down on the table in the well-lit living room.

She was unsure whether to open it immediately or take a shower first. She had that same sense of excitement and curiosity she had felt as a child, when she would wake before everybody else on Christmas morning, tiptoe downstairs, peer through the frosted-glass sliding doors of the living room to catch a glimpse of the gifts Santa Claus had brought, creep back up to her room, and pretend to sleep before her brother and parents woke. Just like then, Barbara’s patience and strength of character won the day as she rationally decided it wouldn’t be wise to let the sweat cool on her skin.

Stood under the steaming hot shower, she wondered who might have sent her a gift from Italy and decided it had to be Robert. Her mother had promised to get her something special for her birthday in a couple weeks’ time, but her intuition proved correct: the parcel was indeed from Robert.

After putting the last of her things in the case she would later take with her for her weekend in Maine with Robert, Barbara set about opening the parcel.

Having opened the outer packaging, she saw a label bearing the words ‘For you’, signed ‘RB’ for Robert Brown.

Robert wasn’t one for the written word; saying things out loud came more naturally to him.

Barbara untied a pink silk ribbon that was wrapped around an elegant white box bearing the inscription ‘ Atelier Livia Risi’. Inside was a simply stunning dress called ‘Pizzo Jersey BuyBy’, designed and custom-made by Livia Risi herself. It was a bias-cut dress, which made it harder to stitch and required a lot of fabric, but only a bias-cut dress flowed in perfect harmony with a woman as she walked. It was fuchsia with a black v-neck down to the base of the breastbone, and it was possible to wear it without a bra thanks to the embroidered black elastic that followed the shape of the breasts. It was one of the Italian designer’s must-have dresses, a timeless classic that featured (updated, of course) in every spring/summer collection. The dress was embroidered with different layers of lace: double on the front, where a bit more coverage was required, and single in areas where the elegance and sensuality of the female form could more readily be admired. Barbara Harrison was going to look a million dollars in this.

“ Wow!” she exclaimed as she lay the dress out on the bed.

Barbara was a bit of a tomboy at heart, so she tried as much as possible to avoid wearing particularly feminine or revealing outfits. Although it was true that she could make anything look good, she was determined that men and women should recognize her other qualities first, the ones that went beyond appearances. At work, in particular, she had no time for men trying to undress her with their eyes.

‘ If you want to stay on the right side of me, you need to stay focused and quit daydreaming about something that’ s never gonna happen. Do I make myself clear?’ She would say that to anyone who met her for the first time and stared at her too much.

Barbara was forty-two but appeared to have pulled off the trick of stopping nature a decade ago, and even she was taken aback by her refined beauty and innate elegance as she looked at herself in the mirror, wearing her new dress.

Robert accepted that Barbara had this more masculine, and sometimes in private scruffy, side, but he also wanted to see her as beguiling and feminine, an unobtainable goddess whose every slight movement could hypnotize him and make her fall in love with her all over again. He certainly wouldn’t be disappointed today. After applying her cat-eye makeup and finding some sandals to go with the dress, she left the apartment and headed for the restaurant where he would be waiting for her.

Barbara was pleased they had cleared the air on the phone the previous day, and she loved how Robert was always able to surprise her. Spending a few weeks apart from him had served only to deepen the void she had felt ever since she was a child, when her older brother Richard had died suddenly and inexplicably from a heart attack in his sleep. Ever since, that sweet and sensitive little girl had changed and taken on the characteristics she most remembered in her brother: strength and courage. It was her way of trying to ease the unbearable pain her parents had carried around since Richard died and fulfill the expectations they had initially had for both children.

Barbara had been in several relationships over the years, but only Robert had brought that sense of familial warmth and security. It would be a mistake to let a man like him go. He loved her like crazy, she knew that, and beneath her protective shell, she loved him too, in her own way. All he wanted from her was to be there, to live for today, and to accompany him on life’s journey, and all he wanted to do was declare his undying love for her.