The Dress Thief by Natalie Meg Evans Read Free Book Online

out how to do it without actually breaking into Maison Javier in the night and carrying away the clothes. She watched Paul trying to spear a radish only for it to bounce off his plate and on to the cobbles. ‘If it’s bad news, give it.’
    Paul grimaced. ‘I’m planning my words so you don’t bite my head off.’
    ‘I always bite your head off.’ A closer look revealed the blur of sleeplessnessin his eyes too. ‘Midnight oil?’
    ‘Nightmares. Every time I close my eyes, I see my mother’s corpse.’
    ‘Oh, don’t, Paul.’
    ‘And the police came to my boat.’
    ‘Police?’
    ‘Wanting to see my mooring permit.’
    ‘You
do
have a permit?’
    He gave her a look that said,
What d’you think?
‘Alix, you always say you want to be a couturier and open your own fashion house? Well, my contact has arranged a jobinterview for you.’
    Her heart scudded to a halt. ‘What?’
    ‘At Maison Javier. Then you wouldn’t have to sneak into his shows; you’d be at the heart of his organisation.’
    ‘Oh.’ That was it then. The chance she’d dreamed of. Only …
    ‘Did I say something wrong?’
    ‘No. Well, a bit.’ Paul was enticing her to break her promiseto Mémé, but offering her the chance to betray herself too. It was so hardto explain. She stared across the square, then waved her fork at an artist erecting his easel. ‘See him, with the little fat legs? Bonnet – my artist friend who lives here on the square? –’ she indicated a row of old houses behind her. ‘He says that man has spent twenty years sketching tourists, smoothing out their chins and the bumps on their noses. When he goes home, there’s a lake of charcoaldust on the cobbles with his footprints in it, a memento of where he’s stood all day. For him, making a pretty picture and getting paid is what it’s about.’
    Paul grunted. ‘From what you’ve told me about Bonnet’s empty food cupboards, he could do with selling a picture now and again, rather than criticising those who do.’
    She leaped to Bonnet’s defence. ‘He’d rather starve than paint to order!My grandfather felt the same. He believed that a finished picture had lost its soul.’
    Paul tried to spear another radish. ‘How d’you know?’
    ‘Mémé says so. Grandpapa would paint the same scene over and over, trying for the perfect cast of light.’ Paul’s snort ignited her anger. ‘If you’d ever read Zola’s
l’
Œ
uvre
you’d understand. In the book, Claude Lantier struggles against an establishmentthat only wants safe, traditional art. His whole life is dedicated to producing one great painting that fuses nature with authentic passion.’
    ‘Only he runs out of paint and dies?’
    ‘No, he hangs himself.’
    ‘Oh.’ Paul sent another radish careering into Alix’s lap. ‘Always a way out, isn’t there?’
    Alix was bitterly sorry for her tactlessness, but she wanted Paul to understand why she was so torn.She needed money, but the means being offered was dangerous and, more important, immoral. To her, couture was art. Copying a dress was like taking an apple from an orchard. Stealing a collection was like burning the orchard down. It was taking a man’s genius, his soul.
    Paul said, ‘Do you want this interview or not? It seems a heaven-sent chance.’
    It was an impossible choice. She’d have to givein her notice at the telephone exchange and withstand Mémé’s distress. And what if she got taken on at Maison Javier only to discover she’d been mistaken about her talent? You could carry dreams around with you for years, like a cluster of balloons, only to discover they were all empty air. Gesturing towards the radishes, she told Paul, ‘Use your fingers. Who’s watching? I think, after all, I won’tbecome a couturier. Bonnet asked me to pose for a painting. I’m off for a sitting after lunch.’ She’d run into the artist at a second-hand clothes stall in Rue des Rosiers. She’d been selling a tweed skirt she no longer