Sheila’s comb was stilled in her hair. Her heart, unaccountably, ached. If only her hands understood the tools of beauty magic. If only her hair hung lush and dark and foaming around straight shoulders. Such eyebrows - a statement of command and control. No fear. None. This woman was not plagued by shadows, for her life was full and absorbing. She was more than whole, at home in her skin, pausing here to preen, before whirling back into adventure and experience. Her movements were concise yet graceful. She was not pretty, but had strong, striking features and the proud stance of a woman who was comfortable with her body.
Sheila was not disposed to envying other women. She liked to look neat, but otherwise never fussed over her appearance. There seemed no point. Where nature had given some women poise and arresting faces and bodies, it had spent little time crafting Sheila’s mortal form. Plain but homely: her mother’s description; meant to be a palliative, she supposed. She was not fat, but not shapely either. Straight up. Straight down. A sort of solid chunk.
The woman caught Sheila’s eye in the mirror. Her hand froze half-way to her face, her fingers curled around the bullet of brilliant red lip-stick. Tightly, she smiled. Pity. A moment of it. Sheila withered in its beam. Then, the woman focused in upon herself and pressed the waxy colour against her mouth. The movement was sensual, almost choreographed. Sheila’s lips were thin, but this woman’s were autumn ripe, the lower lip fuller than the upper. Their cushiony flesh sank beneath the invading stick of pigment. Round and round. Twice. Colour so thick it must surely dry to a hard, gloss finish.
Sheila became aware of staring, and coloured up. She stuffed her comb back into her own small purse and leaned forward to rub at her nose. It was shiny.
Beside her, the woman took a tissue from her bag and pressed it to her mouth. She dropped the kissed paper onto the floor, didn’t even look at it. For a moment, she pouted at herself, then frowned and applied another layer of colour.
It seemed purposeful.
The woman gazed haughtily at her reflection, smiled to herself, and leaned forward to press her mouth against the mirror. A guileless act of self-love. It seemed as if another woman behind the glass leaned forward to accept the kiss. Then, she dropped her lipstick carelessly back into her bag, slung it over her shoulder, patted her luxuriant hair and walked regally out.
Sheila stared at the ghost of the lips on the mirror. Shockingly red. The woman was still here. She had left a part of herself behind.
Outside, the tannoy announced the imminent departure of a train, Sheila’s train. Hurriedly, she zipped up her purse and scraped her hair behind her ears. But she could not walk past the lips on the mirror. They glared out at her, summoning.
Almost without thinking, Sheila found herself standing on tip-toe to place her own mouth against the print. The glass was cold and unyielding. She could not feel the thick colour.
Suddenly self-conscious, she jumped backwards. Her reflection showed a startled pale face, its mouth daubed with a gash of raw red that engulfed her own narrow lips. She rubbed anxiously at this invasion and bent down to pick up the tissue the woman had discarded. This, she shoved into her rain-coat pocket, then scurried out to the concourse. Her face was flaming, she could feel the heat. Platform 15. Hurry. Hurry.
Defences down, shadows assailed her from all sides. She felt as if she was pressing through a throng, although the station was unusually empty, just a few clots of people staring up at the board announcing arrivals and departures. All the shops were shut, fenced off by metal grilles. Sheila ran down the ramp to the platform, where the train panted softly. There was hardly anyone on it. She leapt awkwardly through the nearest door and found a seat quickly. Her face was still burning. She could see herself reflected in the window. A wounded mouth. Remembering, and wanting to scrub her lips, she took the tissue from her pocket. It was white as a towel, the blot like a flower of blood upon it. Sheila stared at it in her hand. The ghost mouth was an oracle, it might speak. She laid the tissue out on the table in front of her, smoothing carefully around the print. Someone sat down opposite her, but they were not really there, so she ignored them. The lipstick had sunk into the fibres of the tissue, revealing every line of the lips they had touched. It was perfect, like a painting. Red on white. The lines, Sheila thought, are so personal, like those on a palm. A woman’s life might be encrypted in the print of her lips, or her future.
The train shuddered, creaked. A guard stamped past the window, blowing a whistle. Doors slammed. And they were moving, away from London, out into the darkness of the sleeping land.
Sheila could not sleep. She stared at the red lips on the table, and when she closed her eyes, the pouting shape burned behind her lids, neon green. She wanted to know the woman who belonged to their shape.
Sheila’s mother let her sleep without interruption until one o’clock the following afternoon. Sheila had arrived home at four thirty in the morning, creeping into the house as quietly as possible, although her mother, whose hearing seemed as acute as a bat’s, called her name as she tip-toed up the creaking stairs.
‘Sheila!’
‘Yes, Mum.’
Silence.
In her bedroom, Sheila had laid out the tissue carefully on the dressing table where her tortoiseshell brush and comb set lay on a lace mat. The lines in the lip print were more defined now, as if the colour between them was bleeding away. Hyper-sensitive with exhaustion, Sheila’s eyes had blurred as she stared at the shape. The lines were widely spaced, most of them without fork, which to her spoke of an open personality, but at the corners of the mouth, a series of links hinted at secrecy and deceit.
Sheila’s mother breezed into her room without knocking, bearing a large mug of weak tea. Sheila loathed weak tea. ‘Morning, love,’ said Sheila’s mother, whipping open the curtains. Sheila blinked in the light and accepted the warm mug. It had clearly been standing on the kitchen table for some time. Full-cream milk fat made oily puddles on the surface of the liquid. Sheila looked up at her mother’s face. She wore thick lip-stick too - some of it had smeared onto her front teeth - but the effect was not the same.
‘Good trip? Why did you come back at that godawful hour? Why didn’t you stay with Tess?’
Sheila began to reply, formulating excuses, but her mother breezed on,
‘Oh, Sheila love, Marj is round, with her sister. I told her you’d do the cards for them in a bit. You won’t be long, will you?’
Sheila sighed. ‘No.’
Sheila’s mother paused, frowned at her daughter. ‘What’s that on your face? Lipstick?’ She laughed. ‘Don’t tell me Tess gave you a make-over!’
Sheila felt her face grow hot. She mumbled incoherently.
‘Right,’ said her mother. ‘I’ll pop down and put some toast on for you.’
Left alone, Sheila stared glumly into her tea. Why must her mother make her feel like a freak show? Her gift was special; it was wasted on divining the narrow lives of her mother’s friends. This was not the first time Sheila had thought it, but now there was anger behind the thought rather than simply numb acceptance.
Sheila dressed herself and went to her mirror to brush her hair. She was taken aback by the red stain, which still covered her lips. Rubbing it, she found it would not come off. Soap and water, then. She glanced down at the lip-stick print on the tissue, which seemed to smile up at her provocatively. Those lips had not felt soap and water for years, not since their owner had been a child. Only the best, silky cleansers and toners had stroked them clean, only the richest of moisturisers had nourished their soft folds. Sheila lifted the tissue and sniffed at the print. A faint aroma of fading perfume, cinnamon or ginger. And something else. Tobacco smoke, wine, the bloody smell of rare meat; the tinkle of silver against china; the glint of candlelight reflected from diamonds and eyes. Sheila closed her eyes and inhaled. A glimpse of that life, the sureness of it.
Among Sheila’s many prognosticative talents, psychometry and palmistry ranked high. She knew that the lipstick print was
a gift. It would give her a story, a life to invade and explore. What was she doing now, that woman who had kissed herself in the mirror?
I need a name, Sheila thought, and willed it to come to her, but then her mother was calling, ‘Are you coming down, Shee? Marj has only got an hour.’
The impressions fled; back into the print, back into the past. Sheila sighed again, more heavily, and carefully placed the tissue in the top drawer of her dressing-table, so that her mother wouldn’t inadvertently throw it away.
Downstairs, Sheila came across Marj and her sister, Joyce, who were sitting with her mother at the kitchen table. On the stove, greens boiled for later consumption by her timid father when he returned home from work.
‘Oooh, Sheila!’ Marj exclaimed. ‘Bit of a cold sore there, is it?’
Sheila rubbed her lips, went red. She had washed her face thoroughly, but the scarlet stain still haunted the corners of her mouth. Her mother swept over to investigate, and gripped Sheila’s jaw in a fierce squeeze. ‘Dearie me,’ she said, squinting. ‘Does seem inflamed, you know.’
‘It’s nothing,’ Sheila snapped, pulling away. ‘Lip-stick.’
Sheila’s mother nodded to her friends. ‘Tess has really fancy make-up. Expensive, you know.’ She shook her head. ‘Not really your thing, is it, Shee!’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Marj rejoined. ‘She is looking a bit perky. Must’ve done you good, girl, a nice day out.’
Sheila had to admit she did feel more energetic than usual. She associated it with the anger she’d experienced after her mother had left her bed-room. She felt more alive than she had done for months.
Breakfast eaten, she spread her old tarot cards on the kitchen table. What could she tell Marj and Joyce? Nothing. Because nothing much happened in their lives, other than petty squabbles with friends and families, along with the occasional unexpected pregnancy from younger and wilder relatives. ‘You will be feeling reckless,’ Sheila said, ‘but there could be disappointment.’ An extra round on the lottery perhaps - to no avail.
As the women stared down at the cards, Sheila couldn’t help but examine their lips. Could they possibly reflect what lay in the readings? Joyce, silent and with a perpetual worry line between her eyes, had flaking lips; dry and bitten. They didn’t seem to have lines, as if she’d nibbled away all her personality. Marj’s upper lip was virtually non-existent, while her lower lip stuck out petulantly and always appeared slightly wet. Marj was hungry - for gossip and control. Sheila smiled to herself. Over the years, she had trained herself in many disciplines of divination. Now, she had something new to work on.
The lipstick woman’s name was Francesca. It came to Sheila as she went back upstairs after giving Marj and Joyce their reading. She wasn’t entirely sure whether she’d simply dreamed up the name because it seemed so appropriate, or whether it really belonged to the woman whose mouth print lay hidden in the dressing table drawer. Francesca. She could not be called anything else.
Looking at the print once more, Sheila strained her psychic sight to acquire more details of Francesca’s life. She was a woman who lived on the edge, who was often disliked, especially by other women. Sheila saw an indolent selfishness in the lines of Francesca’s mouth, perhaps even a streak of cruelty. But she also had humour and hedonistic desires. Sheila glanced at herself in the mirror and was surprised by the expression she saw on her face; a watchful sneer. Do I want to be like her? Sheila wondered. Francesca was glamorous and beautiful, but had few female friends. Sometimes she felt lonely although she never admitted it. Sheila realised that she herself never felt lonely, despite her own lack of close friends and the gulf between her and her family. She liked her own company and was not totally dissatisfied with herself. Her part-time job at the local news-agent fulfilled her modest financial needs and gave her more than enough contact with the world. Why then this growing obsession with an alien creature, this woman of secrets and dangerous passions?
Sheila put the tissue back into her drawer. She shivered involuntarily, suddenly craving a walk in fresh air.
Sheila strolled across the common, where people walked their dogs and children played in the cold, winter sunlight. The trees were stark against the sky and crows rasped from the naked branches. The town beyond the expanse of grass looked squat and grey. There was so little colour in the hibernating world. Sheila thought of red lips and heard a peal of free laughter in her head. A ghost of giant lips kissed the grainy sky and Sheila knew that somewhere Francesca was sitting in a wine bar with a group of men, her eyes restlessly scanning the room, searching for someone. She despised her lecherous, overweight companions, but she had information now; information to sell. Sheila could feel Francesca’s impatience and also a shred of uncertainty. It was a seed of fear, hidden in darkness. Perhaps Francesca could not sense it herself.
Sheila closed her eyes to blink away a band of pain that gripped her temples, her eyes. Her glimpse into Francesca’s life scared her, but she was still curious, still wanted to know more.
On the High Street, Sheila ambled along gazing in shop windows. It was one of her favourite pastimes. She passed an array of satiny continental chocolates, then the winter coats of the ladies’ dress shop, on to the garish jumble of children’s toys and the sleek, sinister pyramids of electrical goods. The shoe shop, Sole Partners, lay at the end of the street, where what had once been a market square had been turfed over, flower-bedded and stuck with benches, bearing the names of dead town councillors on small, metal plaques. Sheila decided to go and sit there for a few minutes, watch the clouds of scavenging pigeons lift and fall, before making her way home via the coffee shop in Church Street. She looked into the shoe shop window as she passed, and her attention was caught by a pair of shoes in the display before her. Shiny black patent leather with high, high heels. A strong impression assailed her: they were power shoes, designed for treading on human flesh; figuratively if not literally.
Sheila wanted the shoes immediately and with a hunger she had never experienced before. The lust to acquire flooded her system. Her heart beat fast.
The shop assistant looked at her strangely when she stammered her request and pointed at the window. Sheila knew she did not look like the kind of woman who would buy shiny, spiky shoes. As the assistant flounced out from behind her counter, she glanced down, taking in the worn-down, flat-heeled pumps that currently encased Sheila’s feet in scuffed, tan leather. The black shoes were removed from the window display and presented with reverence for the customer to inspect. Sheila looked at them nervously and the assistant suggested she try them on. For a moment, Sheila considered saying that they were for someone else - a gift - but then she was told the size of the shoes, which was hers, and it seemed too much of a coincidence. ‘All right,’ she said, and sat down on a plush-covered seat and bared her stockinged feet.
The stiff patent leather slid over her right foot, crushing her toes. ‘They’re too small,’ she said, with some relief, but the assistant frowned and lifted Sheila’s foot, declaring that no, they were a good fit.
‘You’re just not used to wearing shoes like this,’ the assistant said. ‘Slip the other one on. Stand up, walk around.’
Of course, Sheila could not walk in them and suffered the humiliation of staggering up and down in front of the mirror, while the assistant chewed the inside of her mouth in a clear attempt to stem her laughter.
‘Yes, I’ll take them,’ Sheila said.
What am I doing? she thought as she numbly made out a cheque for what was to her an extortionate amount. The assistant packed the shoes into a box amid a froth of black tissue paper.
Out in the street, the maroon and gold carrier bag weighed heavily in Sheila’s hand. She could no longer face sitting among the empty flower beds of the square and made her way directly home. She would never wear these shoes. Why had she bought them?
The answer was obvious. These were Francesca shoes, worn with sheer black stockings, the toenails hidden within lacquered to a red gloss.
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Back home, Sheila scuttled into her bedroom and sat panting on the bed, the carrier bag lolling between her feet on the floor. After some minutes, while her ears strained to detect the approach of her mother, she took the shoe box from the bag. She could hear her mother’s voice downstairs; a monologue to her father, who was silent. Sheila lifted the shoes from the box, held them in one hand. She felt guilty, ashamed, as if she was about to examine a pornographic magazine.
Her feet seemed to slip into the shoes more easily now. She looked down at her feet, the toes pointing inwards. Her ankles looked slimmer, although her beige tights spoiled the effect somewhat. Sheila stood up in front of the mirror and was surprised at how tall she appeared. She took a few tentative steps. Away from the deriding eyes of the shop assistant, she could take her time, and realised she could learn to walk in these torturous contraptions, if she wanted to. But still, the feeling of shame persisted. Sheila knew that in some way she was stealing something, from a woman who was unaware of the theft. Like a magpie, she had snatched up the glittering fragment of Francesca’s life and taken it back to her nest to gloat over. She could never truly appreciate the glittering thing, because she was not a creature who could make use of it properly. She could only admire its lustre.
Sheila paused before her mirror and straightened her spine. She lifted her hair in both hands and held it on top of her head. With the extra height of the shoes, she did not appear so chunky, and her face, free of its customary veil of drab hair, looked stronger somehow. Sheila was suddenly filled with fear. She sat on the bed and kicked off the shoes. Do I want this? She asked herself. Do I really? The shoes lay on their sides before her, provocative and gleaming. Waiting.