An Image Of You. Liz FieldingЧитать онлайн книгу.

      Table of Contents

       Cover

       Excerpt

       Title Page

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

       Chapter Seven

       Chapter Eight

       Chapter Nine

       Chapter Ten

       Copyright

       Chapter One

      ‘Lukas?’ Georgette Bainbridge felt her mouth go dry at her father’s suggestion. ‘You want me to work for Lukas!’ The day which had begun so badly suddenly became a disaster. ‘You can’t mean it!’ But one look at his face confirmed that he did.

      Sir Charles Bainbridge threw the morning paper across the desk at his youngest daughter, who stood facing him with clenched hands and a mutinous expression. ‘I have had enough of this nonsense. It’s time you stopped making a nuisance of yourself and a fool of me.’ George didn’t need to look at the newspaper. She had the most vivid recollection of the incident, and could still almost feel the imprint of the policeman’s hand as he had manhandled her out of the road and into a van. And the reality of bruised ribs from thugs who had caused the near-riot. Angrily her father jabbed at the paper. ‘I’ve come to the end of my patience with you.’

      ‘The end of your patience …’ she spluttered. ‘Have you any idea … any idea … up here in your …’ she glared around at the opulent office ‘… ivory tower …’ she brushed away his exclamation of rage ‘… just what is going on down there?’ She pointed dramatically at the window.

      Her father’s voice was icy. ‘I have a great deal more idea than you do what is going on in this world. Tell me what your demonstrations do!’ he challenged. ‘Have you found one abused child a home? Have you, to your knowledge, saved one single whale?’ he demanded. ‘Have you provided one homeless family with somewhere to live?’

      ‘Yes …’

      ‘I exclude the army of people you seem to have installed in your own house!’ George opened her mouth to protest, then closed it again. A row with her father wouldn’t solve the far more immediate problem: to convince him that she couldn’t possibly go and work for a man like Lukas. But she wasn’t given the opportunity. ‘Well? Have you no answer? It’s unusual to find you lost for words, George.’

      Shaken by his attack and tired from the night spent in a police cell, George subsided into the chair in front of his desk and let her eyes drop to the front-page headline: MILLIONAIRE’S DAUGHTER ARRESTED AT DEMONSTRATION.

      She sighed. It had been a peaceful march until a bunch of louts had started jeering and pushing them about. Her first reaction had been to reach for her camera, but they had seized it and smashed it, and she had struck out in blind fury. It was so unfair.

      ‘They broke my camera,’ she said, with a surge of unaccustomed self-pity.

      ‘I hope it was insured.’ Her father’s wry comment gave her pause. She hadn’t expected him to be pleased with her. But it wasn’t like him to be so angry. He was mostly amused by the scrapes she got into in pursuit of one cause or another.

      She tried to rouse him to her side. ‘That’s not the point, Pa. Those bullies broke up a peaceful demonstration for no better reason than they thought it would be a bit of a lark …’

      ‘Enough!’ Her father was rarely roused to serious anger, but clearly this time he was not to be cajoled. She stopped. ‘Thank you, Georgette.’

      George cringed. If her father had stooped to calling her by that name she was in deep trouble. ‘I’m sorry.’

      Her father’s smile caught her unawares. ‘Of course you are. You are always sorry, George.’ He stood up and walked across his opulent office to the wide windows looking out across the river. He recognised a certain truth in George’s accusation that his office was an ‘ivory tower’, but he wasn’t as cut off as she thought. He steeled himself to an unpleasant task, straightened his shoulders and turned to face her. ‘I’ve lost count of the times you have come to me and said you were “sorry”. You were sorry when you were expelled from boarding-school. Why was that, now?’

      ‘Kittens. The gardener was going to drown the kittens,’ she reminded him.

      ‘Oh, yes, kittens.’ The voice was heavy with irony. ‘However could I have forgotten the kittens? You held a protest. Hung a banner across the school gates, set up a picket-line. Quite remarkable powers of organisation for a girl of thirteen.’ He shook his head. ‘What a waste. You could have been a captain of industry by now.’

      George felt a bubble of indignation rising in her throat. ‘There was no need to drown the poor little things. If they hadn’t wanted her to have kittens she should have been spayed. Anyway, it would all have been a storm in a teacup if Heather James hadn’t telephoned the Sun.’

      ‘Your first headline. Tell me, do you keep a scrapbook?’ George thought she caught a glimpse of a smile.

      ‘No.’ She shook her head.

      ‘A pity. It would doubtless make entertaining reading.’ He paused, frowning. ‘If I were not your father.’ She remained silent, hoping that he had finished. He hadn’t. ‘You were sorry when you were thrown out of art college. I was sorry about that too. They might have let you take your finals.’

      ‘I finished the course,’ she said defensively. ‘Examinations are an archaic form of assessment.’

      ‘Perhaps. You have great talent, George, and if you had had your “archaic” piece of paper you might have developed it instead of spending your time with a bunch of …’

      ‘They are my friends,’ she defended them hotly.

      ‘Hmm. Well, they are not the reason for this chat.’ He paused. ‘Are you aware that the cost of running that little house of yours in Paddington is almost as much as Odney Place?’

      George winced. Her family home had twenty rooms and a staff of five. ‘I feed a lot of people,’ she said,