Free The Affair by Gill Paul

boyish-figured English girls all have great legs. You need to get yourself some knee-length skirts and dresses that fit you on the hips. Pick pastel shades for your skin tone. You’d look great in Capri pants as well. If you don’t mind me being honest, you look a bit gauche in that swing skirt, like some backing singer in a rockabilly band.’ She smiled. ‘No offence.’
    ‘None taken,’ Diana replied, although she was taken aback by the directness.
    As she walked back towards her office, she decided she would take the hint. It came from one of the world’s top costume designers, after all! She realised she had no idea where the women’s clothing shops were in Rome – she hadn’t seen anything but bars and
trattorie
on the drive to and from the studio – but Helen would know.
    She made her way to the sound stages and followed the handwritten sign to the dressing room that was being used for makeup that day. Helen was flicking through a copy of a women’s magazine called
Honey
.
    ‘Thank goodness you came by,’ she exclaimed, throwing down the magazine. ‘I’m bored to tears. There’s nothing to do and it’s not warm enough to sunbathe.’
    ‘No actors to make up?’
    ‘I did a few handmaidens and centurions this morning and now I’m not needed.’
    ‘You are by me,’ Diana told her, before asking if she knew any decent, affordable clothes shops in Rome where she could update her wardrobe.
    Straight away, Helen suggested La Rinascente on Via del Corso. ‘I’ve only been here a few weeks and I’ve bought tons of things there. Why don’t we go this afternoon? We could slip off at five and they stay open till seven-thirty. I’ll give you a second opinion. I love shopping with my girlfriends.’
    Diana readily agreed because she wasn’t a confident shopper, and when they arrived at the store she was glad she had taken Helen along because the choice was overwhelming. Faced with such endless racks of clothes stretching into the distance around the store’s elegant columns and balconies, she would have given up and headed home.
    Helen ferreted out some lovely garments and brought them to the plush changing rooms, where all Diana had to do was slip into them. She knew there was plenty of money in the bank account from a travelling allowance she’d been paid in advance by the film company, so she splashed out on four shift dresses in the style Irene Sharaff had recommended, one lilac evening gown, a pair of white Capri pants, some kaftan tops and a lightweight coat, because she could tell her heavy woollen one wasn’t going to get much use in Rome.
    Helen tried on a pretty black and white sweater with a geometric pattern but put it back on the rack.
    ‘Why don’t you get it?’ Diana asked. ‘It suits you.’
    ‘I’m broke until payday. Going out every night is costing me an arm and a leg.’
    ‘Let me treat you,’ Diana said. ‘I insist. It’s a gift to thank you for being so helpful today. I’d have walked out without finding anything if you hadn’t been here.’
    Helen protested but Diana simply picked up the sweater and added it to her pile on the cashier’s desk. As she wrote a travellers’ cheque to cover the bill, she felt a twinge of guilt about Trevor. Of course, this wasn’t just her money – it was his as well. He was paying all the bills at home. She would write to him that evening, as Hilary suggested.
    Back at the Pensione Splendid, she sat on the bed and poured out her feelings on paper. She told Trevor first and foremost how much she missed talking to him. She hadn’t yet been to see the Forum or the Colosseum because he was the one person she would want to see them with. She told him she knew it was shallow and frivolous to work on a Hollywood movie but that it was an education of a different sort – an education in human nature. She described Joe Mankiewicz and the way he was writing the script for each scene the night before they shot it. She wrote about Irene Sharaff