Read Shadow Play for Free Online

before) had gone.
    Â 
    T he clerks’ room was only three enormous doors down from Redwood’s office, but he visited it as rarely as possible. The red light for the ludicrous goods lift winked in the gloomy corridor. Helen passed the room where Dinsdale and John, the one as extrovert and charming as the other was shy, kept one another company. Three of the case clerks, Rose included, gathered by the door, drawn by John, who had carried on singing. Helen paused in passing, drawn as they were drawn, not only by the sound, but by the glamorous Dinsdale who was not like the rest of them at all. There was nothing of the misfit, for a start: he bore all the signs of privilege, private money, charm, humility and a way with words. Everybody loved him. Even Rose, which meant he had passed the acid test. To Helen Dinsdale was a divine problem: the thought of him made her go pink, remember her age (five years older than him), and also remember Redwood’s remark about the joys of monogamy. As Helen watched, prepared to join the fan club, Rose detached herself from the group and sped off, running for the telephone, her spiked hair waving and that plait swinging against her neck. Helen plodded behind with her own prosaic shopping of which she was faintly ashamed. Bags of potatoes and fruit made her feel she had traversed the loop between youth and age: they diminished her into nothing and she quickened her step down this endless corridor in the shadow of the girl. Helen found herself standing outside the door, listening to Rose answering the call, looking for some sort of confirmation of what she had just been told about Rose and the police boys, uncomfortably aware that she had not really questioned anything Redwood had said, not shouted, Where’s your evidence that our most promising non-professional is as promiscuous as a rabbit? Knowing she had not argued because she had not been surprised. Helen often worked late. She knew that Rose never left the office alone.
    Rose’s voice sang with irritation as she held the phone; it was an inflection carried on a draught from another huge window. Helen’s belief in the imperviousness of youth fled. ‘Listen,’ Rose was saying, ‘listen. You either fucking turn up or you don’t. If you don’t, well forget it. Sod you.’ It was clearly milder than it might have been. Rose was speaking through gritted teeth, controlling herself. ‘What do you mean later?’ she was saying. ‘What use is fucking later to me? Oh, I might be in a pub. Oh, Crown and Anchor, somewhere like that. You’ll have to look, won’t you? Bastard,’ was what she hissed, putting the phone down. ‘Bastard, bastard, bastard.’
    It was already dark outside, darker than black velvet, darker than the charcoal with which Helen drew her odd but often accurate depictions of faces, and that was all Helen saw through the window as Rose looked up and spied her own reflection. Rose’s face on the old glass bore wavy lines of a childish and unattractive fury, but the look as she spun round had changed to one of cunning.
    â€˜Oh, it’s you. Well, I don’t mind people hearing me mouthing off.’
    â€˜You’re quite entitled,’ said Helen. ‘As long as you weren’t talking to the Attorney General. Wouldn’t do your career much good.’
    Rose barked with laughter, her sharp little face alight with it and becoming animated into that of a different, more malleable creature until she stopped abruptly and looked at Helen assessingly. Helen could feel the scorn for the depressing bags of fruit and vegetables. Such luggage would never weigh down Rose Darvey or make her consider there was ever a time in Helen’s life when she too might have lived on gin, tonic and crisps, a
modus vivendi
she still often craved.
    â€˜You look tired, Miss West. Why don’t you come out for a drink with us after work?’
    Helen was amazed,