The Sun Sister (The Seven Sisters #6) - Lucinda Riley Page 0,100

I’d been dressed up in basically unwearable (and often hideous) haute couture to create images which the average woman on the street couldn’t even begin to emulate. But, as I heard from endless designers, fashion was a modern art form. Personally, it pissed me off that they claimed this idea as their own when fashion had always been an art form. The Versailles courtiers, for example, or the Ancient Egyptians.

I began to sketch a dress that had a detachable glittery collar and which would fall in soft folds to the ankles. Beautifully simple and very, very wearable. A few minutes later my attention was caught by a new face appearing around the dorm door. The girl wandered over to the empty bed closest to the window. She was – as a lot of the inmates were here – anorexically thin, and little more than five feet high. She had the gorgeous skin tone that, like Maia’s, indicated a mixed-race heritage, and a head of lush, glossy dark curls.

‘Hi,’ I said as I put my pencil down. ‘You new?’

She nodded as she sat on the bed, knees together, hands clasped in a fist on top of them. She didn’t look up at me, and I was glad – normally it only took one glance for a stranger to recognise who I was and to start asking the usual questions.

I watched her release her hands and saw they were shaking as she lifted one to push a lock of hair away from her face.

‘Just out of medical detox?’ I asked.

She nodded.

‘It’s tough, but you’ll get through it,’ I said, feeling like an old pro after my three weeks here.

She shrugged in response.

‘Have they got you on the benzos? That sure helped me,’ I added. This girl looked so frail and now her hair wasn’t covering her eyes, I could see the fear in them. ‘Was it coke?’

‘No, junk.’

As my eyes sought out the telltale track marks on the inside of her thin arms, her hands automatically covered them from view.

‘I’ve heard that’s the toughest,’ I said.

‘Yeah.’

I watched the girl as she put her arms around herself and curled up onto the bed in a foetal position, her back towards me. I could see she was shivering, so I took the blanket from the end of her bed and draped it over her.

‘You can do it,’ I said, patting her on the shoulder. ‘I’m Electra, by the way.’

There was no reaction, which was surprising, because there usually was when I said my name.

‘Okay, I’m going to head to lunch. See you later.’

I left her curled up under the blanket, marvelling at the fact that I’d just found myself caring for her. Seeing her in the same state as I’d been in when they’d taken me out of clinical detox had obviously given me ‘empathy’.

The canteen was busy, with many of the inmates chatting quietly at the circular tables, light pouring in through the tall windows that gave a great view of the Serenity Garden beyond. The buffet spanned the whole length of the canteen, with hatted chefs serving up surprisingly delicious food. I collected my daily intake of carbs – a piping hot beef enchilada with golden cheese melted over it and a side of fries. I reckoned I would have to go on a crash diet when I left, but eating seemed to ease the craving for vodka. As I ate, I thought about the word ‘empathy’. It was one that was used a lot at The Ranch; apparently alcohol and drug abuse made you lose any of it that you had for others, cutting off the good parts of you as well as dulling the bad things you wanted to block out, which was the reason you’d taken the booze and pills in the first place. Tomorrow, I thought, I’d tell Fi that I might just have shown some empathy to the new girl in my dorm. She’d like that.

‘Hi.’

I looked up as Lizzie, my roommate whose bed was next to mine, came and sat down with her soup and plate of green stuff. Her hair was as sleek as always, blonde, perfectly highlighted and styled into a bob. She reminded me of a china doll – except that she’d had so much work done, her face looked like it was made by a psychopathic sculptor who’d studied under Picasso. She was in here for food addiction and I was amazed she came to the canteen at all; for me it