Free Curtain Call by Anthony Quinn Page A

odd about two girls becoming so close to one another. Madeleine didn’t understand what she was being asked to admit, though she could tell from the pursing of her interrogator’s mouth that she was not quite pleased. Another silence intervened, rather like the one in the confessional when the priest waited for you to list your sins. Eventually Sister Ignatius said, ‘We do not encourage particular friendships among pupils at our school. They give rise to vanity and self-indulgence, and they trespass on the devotion that is more properly owing to Our Lord. Do you understand?’
    She had nodded, not understanding at all. Later, she had asked Veronica about
her
interview, and the halting account she had given of Sister’s counsel was no more enlightening than her own experience of it. They had not been forbidden to associate with each other – that would have been impossible – but it seemed that, once it had been noticed, the light and spontaneity began leaking out of their ‘particular friendship’. Madeleine had sensed she was the keener of them to make things as they once were, hoping Veronica would settle back into being the affectionate and bewitching girl she had first known. And she had continued to hope even as Veronica drifted away, making other friends and apparently forgetting those early avowals of loyalty that remain, in some children’s hearts, stronger than death. A year later she had disappeared, back to live with her family in India, and was never heard from again. It might have surprised her to know how lasting her effect had been on one particular friend from her convent days.
    Madeleine’s life had changed a few months ago, not long after she left Diprose’s. She had been in a Corner House like this one, staring into the middle distance, pondering the very real possibility that she wouldn’t be able to pay that week’s rent, when a man slid softly into the bench opposite.
    â€˜Pardon me, miss, but you’re breaking my heart.’
    â€˜â€“ sorry?’ she enquired, startled by the intrusion. He had taken off his hat and tilted his head in smiling sympathy.
    â€˜It’s hurting me just to look at those big sad eyes of yours. It’s like your sweetheart’s just upped and left. I know, none of my business – you can tell me to buzz off if you like.’
    His air of twinkling suavity suggested that she wouldn’t. Madeleine regarded him hesitantly. He was thirtyish, well groomed, expensively dressed, and his manner, though forward, was not unpleasant. He had produced a silver cigarette case which he now held open across the table. She shook her head: years of inhaling her aunt’s Pall Malls had put her off the habit. He took one himself and lit it, steering a jet of smoke sideways from his mouth. His name was Roderick Astill, and he worked as a booking agent for clubs in the West End, a line of business in which he appeared to be doing rather well.
    â€˜That’s why you caught my eye,’ he drawled. ‘I thought – she must be a dancer.’
    Madeleine frowned and looked away. ‘Nothing like that. The only job I’ve ever done is shop assistant, and I lost that a few weeks ago.’
    â€˜Oh, shame. Left you a bit short for the rent, has it?’ The precision of this shot in the dark unsettled her. She managed a little shrug. ‘Too bad,’ he continued. ‘That’s London – sort of place you could always do with a few bob more.’
    Guarded at first, she gradually opened up to Mr Astill’s keen-eyed charm – he was the sort her aunt used to describe as ‘debonair’. Even the affected way he held a cigarette, between his middle and ring fingers, had a raffish appeal. He talked a great deal, but he listened too, when she was at last persuaded to tell him about her time in London, about Campbell’s vile behaviour and her fruitless search for a job ever since.