Green Grass by Raffaella Barker Read Free Book Online Page B

in fact serves only to enhance the fine length and proportion of the nose.
    It is a boxer’s nose, and it made Laura weak and breathless with longing when she first saw Inigo seventeen years ago, having bolted into his exhibition in Mercer Street in New York to escape a sudden summer downpour. Laura had been in New York for a year, studying film at NYU. She had another yearto go, and she was missing home like crazy. She even missed her brother. Laura was on her way home from a class on creating the defining moment in a plot. She felt low and despondent; New York was breathless and humid, her apartment had no air conditioning, and her workload was greater than she could bear. She had no one to talk to about it, her fellow students were all so determined, so untrammelled by crises of confidence. Laura had a sneaking feeling this course was not for her. But what was? The humidity today was extreme; she held her hair up as she walked to let any small movement in the air play on her neck. She had a headache and was halfway home before she realised she’d left her coat in the seminar room. A clap of thunder and the hiss of summer rain invaded her thoughts, and she ran for shelter.
    Inigo Miller was twenty-one that summer, and still wondering what on earth he was meant to say to justify his being here. He felt a fraud, but was in fact a success. His degree show had been lifted straight from art school and transported here, and it had opened with a queue around the block. Jack Smack, a creepy British agent, had offered to represent him, and since selling his soul to this whip-thin smooth talker, Inigo had hardly slept or stopped to draw breath, so constant was the round of interviews, meetings and exhibitions. Inigo made the most ofevery minute, convinced that he would be exposed as no big deal and shipped home at any moment.
    Now he was talking to a smiling brace of Japanese art agents who smoothed their hair and nodded fervently when Inigo said he was thinking of taking his show to Tokyo.
    â€˜I want to have everything turned upside down. To re-examine it all from the perspective of another culture will be fascinating. I like to challenge my own perceptions,’ he was saying, his tongue in his cheek. He didn’t take it all so seriously then. Planning an escape as soon as possible, he glanced longingly at the door and saw Laura. In fact, he saw the back of Laura standing in the open doorway, smoothing the rain from her hair.
    â€˜Excuse me,’ Inigo said to the Japanese. ‘There’s someone I—’ He didn’t finish his sentence because he had already gone. It was late June, and the hot streets streamed and steamed from this torrent of rain, and the smell of wet leaves hung in the air at the door of the gallery, making Laura shiver with nostalgia for her parents’ garden and her childhood.
    Inigo stood behind Laura, admiring her shoulders, her hair – everything about the back of her suggested the front would be wonderful. He couldn’t think of anything to say to her, and he was afraid she might suddenly dart out into the rain again, and be gonewithout him seeing her face. The only thing to do was to go out and then come back towards the door and hope that if he smiled and said, ‘Hello,’ a conversation might develop.
    Laura, glooming in the rain and relishing feeling sorry for herself, paid little attention when someone brushed past her to leave the gallery. But then he came back, presumably because he had forgotten something, and Laura looked up from her contemplation of the torrent swirling by the kerb to see Inigo, wet but smiling and suggesting hopefully: ‘Hello, would you like to come and have tea with my Japanese agent?’
    â€˜What sort of Japanese agent?’ Laura asked, smiling now, unconsciously reaching up to unknot her hair, shaking it onto her shoulders, unable to stop herself gazing at him.
    â€˜Successful, I hope,’ said Inigo, grinning