Free No Escape by Josephine Bell Page B

to be? Not now?”
    â€œYes, now again. Since her—accident.”
    â€œYou’re another model, are you?”
    â€œMe? I’m a radiographer. At the West Kensington.”
    A look of frank horror passed over his face. Jane thought she understood.
    â€œYou said model. Are you an artist? Did Sheila model for painters as well as for her photographer? I know she did that.”
    â€œYou do?” His face went hard now. He said, slowly. “If you’re a genuine friend of hers tell her she’d better look out for herself, will you?”
    â€œWhy? Anyway, she’s going home tomorrow—by train.”
    â€œThen tell her she’d better not travel alone. I mean that. Seriously.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?” Jane thought his dramatic manner rather silly. It matched his long hair and his beard and sloppy, dirty clothes.
    â€œFrankly, I’m not with you,” she said impatiently, turning away her head to look for Gerry.
    But when she turned back again the young man was gone and Gerry appeared the next instant, his own coat and hers over his arm, her handbag in his other hand and profuse apologies on his lips.

Chapter Seven
    Gerry was silent at first on the drive back to Jane’s flat. At last he said, “You didn’t enjoy the party much, did you?”
    His frankness was embarrassing. Jane temporised.
    â€œI never do like big parties, really,” she said. “Even when there are people there I know. Too much noise, so you can’t have any sort of conversation. Too much drink. I like my wine best with a meal. When you don’t know a soul there, like tonight, it seems pretty pointless.”
    â€œIt wasn’t pointless,” he answered, gravely. “Didn’t you realise how upset Sheila’s friends are by this whole painful business?”
    Jane did not know what to say. Her main impression had been that the worry, the anxiety of Sheila’s loving friends, was less for the girl personally than for the effect her actions and their consequences might have on all of them. But she could hardly give these cynical views to Gerry, who seemed to be the only one genuinely concerned with Sheila’s real welfare.
    â€œWas she very important to Ron’s business?” she asked. “I mean, I know she modelled for the art photographs. I saw them in her room, as I told you.”
    â€œDid you really recognise her in them?” Gerry asked. “The lighting is usually arranged to make the face a silhouette or partly in shadow.”
    â€œI know.”
    â€œYou really did recognise them, then? Sheila didn’t tell you?”
    â€œNo. She hasn’t told us anything at all about her work. That’s one of the mysteries or a symptom of her illness. She—she seems to be absolutely scared of the whole set-up.”
    She could have added that though Ron Bream was not particularly formidable, the thin character, Giles, with his cold eyes and long yellow face had certainly sent a few shivers down her spine. But she held her tongue. She was tired now, tired physically, for her working day was spent mostly on her feet and she had been standing again nearly all the evening, and tired mentally, tired of Sheila, her problems, her misfortunes, her refusal to help herself, all the deadly boredom of the un-cooperative patient.
    She said, irritably, “I can’t help feeling Sheila’s making a lot of fuss about very little. If she doesn’t like her job, why can’t she just give notice and leave in the normal way? Why all the melodrama? Whether she fell in the river on purpose or by accident, she was rescued and the best thing she could do would be to get her parents to come and fetch her from the West Kensington. But of course the silly clot won’t hear of it. I’m wondering if she really means to go to Reading or if she‘ll skip off somewhere else.”
    â€œWhy should she?”
    Gerry’s question was