The Last Night in London by Karen White (reading list .TXT) 📕

back. “I’d be happy to.” She slid her dressing gown off of her shoulders, glad she’d been too tired to remove her stockings, step-in, and backless brassiere.

Mrs. Ratcliffe tightened her lips as she eyed Eva again. “Very well. You have five minutes. Not a minute more. We are already far behind, and we simply cannot be delayed further.”

“No, Mrs. Ratcliffe,” Eva said, reaching for the gown.

As soon as Mrs. Ratcliffe left, Precious rushed to Eva and took the dress from her. “Freya, Odette—could you please help Eva into the dress? I’ll get her shoes.”

“Close your eyes and raise your arms,” Odette instructed, and Eva did as she was told. The two models slipped the dress over her head, being careful not to scratch her skin with the pins.

Precious placed Eva’s good shoes—the strappy high heels she’d bought with her first paycheck—on the floor in front of her and guided one foot, then the other, into them as Odette and Freya adjusted the dress on Eva’s body.

Quickly, Precious brushed Eva’s hair and pinned it up into a loose chignon. “Pretty as a peach,” she said. “Now, hurry—just don’t trip. I’ll stay and help you change.”

“You don’t have to. Besides, aren’t you supposed to see a film tonight with that young solicitor you met last week?”

“He can wait. I hear Mrs. St. John is a bit of a bear, so you’ll need a friendly face and helping hands each time you return from the showroom.”

Eva smiled, more relieved than she cared to admit. “Thank you. I owe you.”

“I’ll remember that. Now, go. I’ll meet you in the fitting room.”

Eva nodded once, then ran through the door. “Just don’t pull out any of the pins,” Precious called after her, but she didn’t slow down until she reached the fitting room. She was glad to see it was empty except for the makeup man.

“Mr. Danek!” she said eagerly as she approached his cosmetics-strewn table, happy to see her friend.

“Ah, the beautiful Ethel,” he said, returning her smile.

“It’s Eva now, remember? I’m still working on a surname that fits better than Maltby.”

“Of course. I will try harder. I have a few lipsticks for you that I think you will like.”

A small, wiry man of around sixty with a vague European air and salt-and-pepper hair, Mr. Danek was generally assumed to be mute: He never spoke when getting the girls ready for a show. Eva suspected it was because no one ever spoke to him. Her suspicions had been confirmed when she’d spotted Mr. Danek struggling up the back steps of Lushtak’s prior to a rehearsal, overburdened with cases and bags. She’d offered her assistance. He’d gratefully accepted and even smiled, showing surprisingly even white teeth.

A friendship had been formed, then cemented with regular visits to Horvath’s Café near Lushtak’s, run by either friends or family of Mr. Danek. At least Eva assumed this, since they greeted him by name in a foreign language. She wasn’t sure which one, and she hadn’t wanted to appear foolish or uneducated by admitting her ignorance. It had taken a week before she’d found the courage to ask and discovered that Mr. Danek was from Czechoslovakia, a small town called Lidice outside of Prague. It sounded very foreign to Eva, and the names on his tongue made it much more glamorous in her mind than Yorkshire.

In exchange for help with his English, he would give her broken lipsticks and half-used loose face powder tins, as well as crumbling rouges and bent mascara brushes, along with tips on the best ways to use them. Now he held out his palm with two lipstick tubes as she sat down at his table and pulled the chair closer.

“Thank you!” she said. “I don’t even have to look—I know I’ll love them. You always choose just the right shades.”

His dark eyes shone. “It is always a pleasure to work on such a flawless canvas. You and Miss Dubose both. No flaws to cover. It’s a good thing not everyone is like that, or I’d have no work!”

He smiled at his own joke as he rifled through a drawer of rouge pots. “How is your French coming along?”

“Très bien!” Eva said, careful not to move her face too much.

“Maybe one day you will allow me to teach you my language.” He placed a finger on her chin to move her closer, then dipped a mascara brush into a dark pot.

“Maybe,” she said doubtfully. “Although I think French and English should be enough, don’t you?”

His eyes met hers briefly before he leaned in to put mascara on her eyelashes. “The world is a very large place, although some right now in Germany are trying to make it smaller by gobbling up countries like hungry lions.”

He sat back to admire his handiwork, then met her confused expression. “You would do well to read the newspapers, Eva, and keep informed. Most educated women do, although they won’t admit it at the dining table, of course. But I know how much you like to appear educated.”

His words weren’t condemning or reproachful. Simply informative. Eva had told him very little about her background, except that she was from Yorkshire and her mother did laundry and sewing. He had seemed to know without asking that her past was something she was trying to excise, like a cancer.

“All right,” she said, sitting back in her chair. “Then I also need to come up with where I was educated, someplace where a woman named Eva would have lived a sheltered, genteel existence.”

He placed his forearms on the table and said quietly, “If you ever want to rise above your station, you must have a good reason why you model. The circles you wish to move in look down on your profession, you know. Like they do actresses and opera singers. But if you have a respectable background, then moving up is possible, yes?” He turned his head slightly, as if to ensure they were still alone. “You are very good at reinvention, Eva.