Read The Troika Dolls for Free Online Page B

me?’
    Stevie nodded, flattered to have been asked, flattered to have been found luminous and fascinating by someone so gorgeous.
    The very next week, autumn became winter. Joss arrived at Stevie’s hotel with a huge smile and a primrose cradled in his palm like a tiny bird.
    ‘It’s wonderful, Joss,’ Stevie said, utterly enchanted by the delicate offering lying in the rough painter’s palm, returning the smile.
    Joss put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her in tight, kissing the top of her head as if he had known her forever. ‘Ah, you see, Stevie? I was right about you. You have all the answers already. The true secret of happiness lies in being able to find joy in the details of life. If you can do that, nirvana is yours.’
    They walked out of the hotel and into Hyde Park, strolling arm in arm around the circular duck pond, then northwards towards Notting Hill.
    Joss lived in a large airy studio, with big windows filled with bare treetops. The walls were covered in colours and postcards and feathers and shards of mirror and graffiti—the whole room was a giant collage. It was like nothing Stevie had ever seen before.
    ‘I’m a hoarder,’ he laughed. ‘Can’t you tell? Awful vice but I can never let anything beautiful pass me by without grabbing it.’ He turned to Stevie, his brown eyes warm and full of light. ‘Like you, Stevie Duveen.’ He kissed her ever so gently on the lips then laughed again.
    ‘Why do you really want to paint me?’ Stevie asked.
    ‘Painting is my way of seeing things,’ Joss smiled. ‘It’s the way I understand the world.’
    Joss sat her on his old velvet sofa and set a new canvas on the easel. Stevie sat, her shoulders still, her fingers turning the primrose that had by now become so much more than a primrose, and Joss began to paint her.
    There was soft music in the air, the music of gypsies, and Stevie felt full of magic. Joss’ world was so different to hers, so unplanned, so romantic, so free. Suddenly she wanted a piece of it; she couldn’t remember what it felt like not to always be responsible and organised and utterly dependable, forever locked in a tight cage of control. She couldn’t remember what it felt like to be young . . .
    She looked at Joss, a paintbrush behind his perfect, paint-flecked ear. He glanced at her, then back at the canvas, then up to her face again.
    The way he stared at her, his intensity, made her feel like she was being seen for the first time in her life.
    Could Joss set her free?
    Her heart gave an almighty thump and she knew she had no choice but to try to find out.
    ‘I should have known, David,’ she said, shelving the postcards from the past. ‘For all my training in risk assessments, I didn’t see it coming. There were no signs. No indicators. It was . . .’ she swallowed hard, ‘completely unforseen.’
    Stevie had arrived unexpectedly from Zurich one weekend. It was three weeks since she’d last seen Joss—too long—but her work had taken her to Jakarta and it had been impossible to come home sooner. She had walked into Joss’ studio and smiled to herself as she took in the familiar disarray, the sofa, the rumpled sheets of the bed in the corner.
    There was a new canvas on the easel, the beginnings of a bare breast that was not hers. She didn’t think anything of it, until she noticed a primrose amongst the bed sheets.
    Stevie’s legs began to shake. She sat on the velvet sofa that had seen so much happiness and wept.
    Joss returned right then, his arm around a stunning, laughing girl.
    It was Norah Wolfe, the super-cool supermodel with the shaggy blonde hair and the rock star father.
    Stevie remembered being with Joss at Annabel’s when he had first spotted Norah across the room, him sneering, ‘Famous for nothing.’ Stevie had heard the contempt in his voice, but she also remembered that the contempt had been mixed with fascination.
    Stevie turned back to Rice and gave a little laugh. ‘He actually smiled