Faith - Lesley Pearse [38]
Laura chuckled to herself when she recalled how she’d changed into her dress at the end of the day in the toilets at Pawson and Leaf. Even now, when over the years she’d had many gorgeous dresses, that one was still in her top five. The diaphanous lace sheath dress had a deep scooped neck and three-quarter sleeves, but for decency’s sake it had a built-in skimpy petticoat beneath it. With a mahogany rinse on her hair, which she’d put up in a beehive, sheer black stockings and four-inch stilettos, Laura could have passed for twenty-one, when in fact she was only a couple of weeks short of seventeen.
It wasn’t far to go down Cheapside to Moorgate to meet Jackie but her excitement grew even stronger because several men whistled at her, even though she was clutching her coat round her tightly because it was so cold. Jackie was waiting for her at the tube station, and she got two little crowns of tinsel out of her pocket for them to wear.
Once in the pub they went straight to the toilets to take off their coats, put on more lipstick and check each other’s appearance.
Jackie was wearing an emerald-green satin dress with a boat neck, her auburn hair in loose waves on her shoulders, and she looked like a film star, but when she saw what Laura was wearing she looked stunned.
‘You’re not just pretty, you’re beautiful,’ she gasped. ‘That dress, your hair! I can’t believe it!’
Jackie had often told her she was pretty, but Laura had never really believed it. This was partly because of being insulted at school, but also, next to her friend with her vivid colouring, poise and bounce, she had always felt drab. But she could see in the mirror that the colour of the dress seemed to make her skin glow, and the rinse made her hair shine with coppery lights. Maybe ‘beautiful’ was an exaggeration, but she had certainly never seen herself looking so good before.
As Jackie had predicted, The Plume of Feathers was full of businessmen, and from the moment the girls walked out of the toilets, they got attention. They were not the only girls in the bar, there were perhaps ten or so others, but they were certainly the two most attractive ones. They didn’t even have to buy a drink; the barman just waved their money away when they asked for two Babychams and gestured vaguely to one end of the bar to say it had already been taken care of.
Three drinks later they were already feeling tipsy for neither of them was used to drinking, so after a brief confab in the toilets they decided they’d better not have any more, and that Roger and Steven, the two youngest men in the bar, were the ones they should encourage.
They were both undeniably good-looking, tall and smart in their pinstriped suits, and amusing too. Steven worked on the Stock Exchange, Roger for an insurance company, and though Laura privately thought that they were out of their league with a couple of twenty-four-year-olds, she didn’t dare say so because Jackie was really smitten by blond, blue-eyed Roger.
But being left with Steven was hardly like drawing the short straw. He was rather like Dirk Bogarde, with his dark hair and crinkly, smiley eyes, and the way he looked at Laura made her feel really desirable.
Later, the men took them by taxi to an Italian restaurant in Villiers Street, just off The Strand. Jackie kept pinching Laura’s knee under the table, her secret signal that she was prepared to go anywhere, do anything with Roger. Perhaps it was fortunate that both men were going home to their families for Christmas the following day, and didn’t appear