Read (1990) Sweet Heart for Free Online

well.’ Charley shook the silk square out to show its full design, then draped it around the woman’s shoulders. The woman held it by the corners as if it were a grubby sack and stared at herself in the mirror. Her face was taut, like her hair. Charley winked at Laura. Laura gave her a cautionary frown.
    ‘Cornelia James?’ The woman looked down at the corner for the signature.
    ‘Of course, madam,’ Charley said.
    ‘Does rather suit me, wouldn’t you think?’
    ‘Absolutely. And it gives you two outfits.’ Charley removed the scarf with a conjuror’s flourish. ‘Without it, a simple day dress.’ She draped the scarf back around, arranging it more strikingly. ‘With it, you dress up. Perfect for a cocktail party or the theatre. You’ll find it wonderfully cool to wear when it’s hot.’
    ‘And you think this blue really is my colour?’
    Charley performed a ritual walk of approval, like a Red Indian round a totem pole. ‘It definitely suits you. Your husband’ll love it.’
    ‘Boyfriend,’ the woman said.
    ‘He’ll love it too.’
    She paid with a platinum card that matched her hair and swept out into the Walton Street drizzle, the rope-handled carrier bearing the emblem of Laura’s boutique rubbing against the crocodile scales of her Chanel handbag.
    Laura closed the door behind her and tossed her imaginary hair back from her face, still not used to the fact that she’d had it cut short. She was attractive, with rather boyish features, and her cropped brown hair made her look even more masculine. A rack of linen jackets swayed in the draught behind her. The summer displays looked bright but uninviting against the June rain.
    Charley clipped the American Express slip into the till. ‘Lady Antonia Hever-Walsh, my dear, no less,’ she said. ‘What a cow.’
    ‘She’s a good customer,’ Laura said tartly.
    Charley wondered what had happened to Laura’s sense of humour recently. She was normally far ruder than Charley about customers she did not like, which was understandable, since she had to put up with them for six days a week while for Charley, helping out in the boutique was a hobby.
    A horn blared from the stationary traffic in the street. Someone under a red umbrella peered in through the window, then hurried on. Ella Fitzgerald’s voice drifted from the speakers; Charley did not think it suited the gloomy afternoon.
    ‘It wasn’t a dream, Charley, your regression. No way. It would definitely have been a past life.’
    ‘It was bloody embarrassing, I tell you. Having the only erotic whatever-it-was of my life in front of this woman.’ Charley entered the sale in the ledger and flicked back a couple of pages. ‘You haven’t had a bad couple of weeks. Perhaps you’ve turned a corner.’
    ‘Flavia Montessore’s famous. She’s rumoured to have regressed Nancy Reagan. She practices all over the United States. She’s one of the top regressive hypnotists in the world.’
    ‘How can you tell something’s a past life and not a dream?’ The traffic crawled forward. A warden walkedpast with her satchel. ‘Didn’t you say you were a Crusader in one life? How do you know it’s not some story you read when you were a child and have forgotten about?’
    ‘Because it was too vivid. There was detail I couldn’t possibly have got from reading a school book.’ Laura began to straighten out the pile of clothes Lady Antonia Hever-Walsh had tried on and discarded. ‘I know people who’ve spoken languages they’ve never learned under regression.’
    ‘And screwed people they’ve never met?’
    Laura hooked the straps of a skirt onto a pine hanger. ‘I’ve never got laid in regression.’ She slipped the size cube over the hook.
    ‘I wasn’t in the past at all,’ Charley said.
    ‘You said you were in an old car.’
    ‘Not that old. I’d say it was post-war.’
    Laura was silent for a moment. ‘The window’s wrong. I think we should change it.’ She hung the skirt on the rack.