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when she was growing up. Her brothers said she had total courage and fortitude, and neither of them was prone to pay her compliments needlessly. She had lost her courage for a while, but it had come back in Manhattan. To her surprise she felt extraordinarily safe in this great metropolis, was at ease in this glittering city. Furthermore, it was not very hard to reinvent oneself here.
    No one bothered about where you’d been to school, what your parents did, whether or not you had a pedigree, an aristocratic background, or came from wealth. It was truly a classless society, that’s what she liked about it. In fact, this was a society of achievement. Brains, brilliance, talent and tenacity, drive, ambition and success. Those were the things that made the biggest impression in Manhattan, and made it the place to be, as far as she was concerned. She had been content here.
    As she lay contemplating the future, and what she was goingto do, M suddenly thought of her rules: Be brave, be true to yourself, and realized she had broken one of her most important rules, rule three in her book: KEEP BUSY. Quite unexpectedly, she understood how much time she had wasted with Dax…going to coffee shops, taking in movies, listening to him pontificate about his life, watching TV shows with him, keeping him company. Because he was lonely. And so was she, if she was truthful.
    Being a member of a big family, with a number of siblings, meant she had been brought up in a crowd, always surrounded. And she had been teased, applauded, sometimes taunted and shouted at, but always very much loved…and rarely alone.
    I’m going to go out and get a job, she promised herself now. It would keep her busy, fill up her spare time, and the money would be useful. When she had arrived in New York she had brought enough money to last her for a year, providing she was careful. She had opened a bank account and used the money very sparingly, for rent, food and transportation, although mostly she walked everywhere. Locked up in the suitcase under her bed was an envelope of traveller’s cheques that her sister had forced on her before leaving London. She hadn’t wanted to accept them, but knew only too well not to argue with her darling Birdie, who termed the envelope of cheques ‘your safety net’—and that’s how she thought of them. They were meant to be used only in extreme emergency.
    Starting tomorrow, she would find a job, a part-time job, so she could continue to haunt the modelling agencies, and hopefully Geo would keep her promise and contact the two photographers she said she knew. They were old friends Geo had known through her sister.
    Fingers crossed, M thought, and very shortly she fell asleep. It was an exhausted sleep, and dreamless.

F IVE
    M was filled with excitement and anticipation, and there was a spring in her step as she walked down West Twenty-Second Street. She was on her way to see Frank Farantino, the photographer, who had told Geo to send her along to his studio today.
    In one sense she had lost a friend with the departure of Dax to Los Angeles; on the other hand, she had gained a friend in Georgiana Carlson.
    After that debacle in the middle of the night, a few weeks ago now, Geo had tried her hardest to make amends. Keeping her promise, Geo had spoken to Hank George and Frank Farantino about her, and several days ago both photographers had at last been back in touch with Geo, and appointments had finally been made.
    The first was with Farantino, at his studio in the Meatpacking District, which was an easy walk for M from Geo’s brownstone, and especially on this beautiful September day. The sky was a soft pale blue, puffed up with wispy white clouds, and it was sunny and balmy, but not too hot because of the light breeze blowing off the Hudson River to the west.
    Ever since she had come to live in Manhattan, M had done a lot of walking, wanting to get to know the city, to become well acquainted with some of her favourite