Fifty Days of Sin by Serena Dahl Read Free Book Online Page A

paying
attention.”
    “Well, I’m glad you’re better
and we can do this.”
    “Do you think we’d have spoken
to each other if I hadn’t walked into the path of a car?”
    “Oh, yes. Definitely.”
    “Really?” My curiosity is piqued
by his emphatic answer.
    “Of course. I’d have invented
some other reason to strike up a conversation and ask you out to
dinner.”
    “What, just in the middle of the
street?”
    “I don’t see why not. I might
have come over and tripped you up instead, and then told you I felt
so guilty I’d have to take you out for the evening to make up for
it. Or just whacked you over the head with a frying pan and dragged
you back to my place.”
    “Hmm,” I muse with raised
eyebrows and an incredulous smile. “I don’t recall you carrying a
frying pan as you were walking down the road.”
    “You’d be surprised what useful
implements I might be carrying about my person,” he counters.
    “Now you’re just being weird.
And I don’t much like the other alternative, being deliberately
tripped up.”
    “So if I’d done that, you would
have said no, then?” He has a lopsided smile as he asks me.
    I gaze at him through my lashes.
“Of course. I do have some self respect.” But I’m afraid that my
face reveals that I’d accept a date with him on any terms at
all.
    “Well, I’m glad to hear you
prefer being hit by a car and laid up in hospital for ten days
instead of tripped up. Enjoyed the pain, did you?”
    “Oh, it was great,” I tell him
sarcastically. “That’s a bit of a bizarre question, Adam.”
    “Well, you should know that I
have a hidden dark side,” he replies.
    “Like Darth Vader?” I laugh.
    “Yeah – he’s my hero.”
    “Really!”
    “No, not really. I was just
kidding. I don’t really have any heroes.”
    “No-one at all? Not even some
amazing footballer?”
    “Especially not some amazing
footballer. No, I suppose there are people I admire, but I wouldn’t
call anyone a hero.”
    “Okay, so tell me who you
admire.”
    He thinks for a moment. “Duncan
Bannatyne.”
    “Oh, the businessman from the TV
show? Dragon’s Den? Why him?”
    “Well, he’s done incredibly well
for himself, through sheer hard work, which I admire. And he’s
given something back. I read his autobiography recently. I had no
idea about the work he’s done for charity. He’s worked a lot with
UNICEF. The difference he’s been able to make to so many children’s
lives is pretty inspirational. And there’s no way he’d have been
able to do that if he hadn’t worked so hard and built up that kind
of fortune. So, yeah, I admire anyone who’s successful but
philanthropic, I suppose.”
    “That seems fair enough.”
    “How about you?”
    “Oh, other historians whose work
I’m impressed by. They wouldn’t mean anything to you. Unless – I
suppose there’s one you might have seen on TV if you watch history
documentaries. A woman called Helen Castor; she wrote a book about
women who had positions of power in medieval England fairly
recently, and had her own programme. I can remember watching it and
thinking I’d like to be doing that. She came across as very
intelligent and engaging on screen; and very elegant. She’s a bit
older than me but still very attractive.”
    “So while a lot of women dream
of winning the X Factor, the pinnacle of your ambition is to be a
sexy TV historian?” he asks with a smile.
    “I’m not sure that’s exactly
what I said, but yes, I suppose a little bit of celebrity would be
quite fun. Although it’s the writing bit that attracts me most, not
the idea of being on TV.”
    “Surely you could write too if
you really wanted to, when you’re not lecturing or giving
tutorials?”
    “Well, yes, and I have done –
I’ve had four books published. But I suppose my Oxford
contemporaries don’t see the kind of popular history that Helen
Castor has written as sufficiently highbrow. I quite fancy writing
that kind of thing, or even having