Sheila took to walking in the shoes at night. She would leave the house at seven o’clock, her clandestine purchase hidden in a large shoulder-bag that Tess had left in the cupboard under the stairs. Once she had sauntered a couple of blocks away from home, she would change her shoes. They hurt her at first. She would walk with her hands deep in her pockets, the collar up around her ears. She liked the sharp tap of her heels against the damp sidewalks, although the new leather, stiff with cold, ate into the soft flesh of her feet. She carried the lip-stick print in her coat pocket, her fingers barely touching it. As she walked, impressions of Francesca’s life would flood her mind: impromptu parties, city lights, music, laughter. And Francesca’s shadowed profession; the secrets of the enchantress had been revealed.
Sheila was now sure that Francesca was involved in dangerous business. She had visualised Francesca seducing men of power, stealing information from them with soft words and deft hands, then selling what she had learned to other men, who paid her highly: politicians, industrialists, high priests from the inner cabals of mega-corporations. Francesca was cold and greedy, wrapped in a veil of ice, yet she slunk with movie star gloss through the adventures that Sheila applied to her. The evening walks were spiced with endless day-dreams of Francesca’s exploits, yet even as she fleshed this fantasy out, Sheila couldn’t help feeling impatient about Francesca’s failings. The woman had so much, yet abused her privileges. She was the kind of person Sheila normally despised - spoiled, selfish and avaricious - yet their lives had inexplicably become entwined. It could be no coincidence. They were linked by more than a chance meeting at Euston.
About a week after buying the shoes, Sheila went into a cosmetic store on the way to work and bought the brightest red lipstick on sale. She did not attempt to use it, but removed it from its paper bag several times during the afternoon and twisted the colour up out of its casing. Later that evening, during her walk, Sheila went to rest her aching feet in a cheap café. A couple of down and outs mumbled at one another in the dim light, and the only other occupants were a group of teenagers who were clearly on their way to somewhere more interesting. Sheila ordered coffee and spread out the tissue on the Formica table top. The fibres were fragmenting badly now and would soon would be nothing more than wisps of fluff in the bottom of her pocket. The lipstick print had faded to a mere filigree of lines and looked aged. When the tissue had fallen apart completely, would she lose this strange half-life she had begun to enjoy? No, Sheila thought, determined. I took some of her into me. I kissed the mirror. The print has sunk into me. These thoughts made her heart beat faster, shortened her breath.
She stared at the lip print without blinking, until her eyes watered. Tell me, tell me… She had exciting images of Francesca’s life, but she wanted more: the future. Some of the lines were broken, perhaps because of natural decay. Perhaps they had always been broken, but the details were only now becoming clear. The print itself, while fading, had spread outwards, almost as if the lips were bloated.
Strangled lips. Breath squeezed out. The heat. The darkness. Gasping, struggling.
Sheila shuddered, and nausea churned through her body. She almost cried out, but managed to control herself and stuff the tissue back into her pocket. Her heart was pounding now and specks of light boiled before her eyes. She mustn’t faint - not here.
She lurched from her seat and felt her way between the tables to the rest room at the back of the café. Here, she pushed open a door and virtually fell into the cramped cell beyond. She leaned over the stained sink, taking deep breaths. A bare electric light-bulb hummed over her head, echoing the buzzing in her mind. She splashed some cold water on her face. Mustn’t think about what happened. It’s fantasy. I dreamed it up. Her hand dipped into her coat pocket, seeking the tissue in reassurance. She found instead the smooth plastic case of the lipstick she had bought. Sheila couldn’t remember having put it into her pocket. Her fingers were steady as she took it out. She removed its case and with one twist exposed the rod of colour. Almost involuntarily, she applied a layer of it to her lips. The colour glowed like neon in the dim electric light. It made her look startled. Shoes and lips. Top and bottom. But what about the expanse in between? Was it still hers? She shuddered and remembered she’d left her bag outside at the table. She must go back: someone might steal it.
By the time she returned to her seat, Sheila had managed to compose herself, and was relieved to find her bag where she’d left it under the table. She forced herself to examine the lipstick print again. Red waves of danger and darkness seethed up to her, yet she could fix on no definite image. The fading image of Francesca’s mouth looked misshapen, bloated. Sheila took a sip of coffee to calm herself and an unusual craving crashed through her. She wanted a cigarette, badly, but she had never smoked.
Numbly, she found herself outside, tapping down the sidewalk to a convenience store, where she knew exactly which brand to ask for. The implications of what was happening disorientated her, yet at the same time she felt calm and focused. Sheila lit a cigarette, took the smoke into her lungs. Her body coughed and spluttered, yet her inner self revelled in satisfaction. Leaning against the shop wall, Sheila closed her eyes to the night and forced herself to examine what had happened in the café. She can’t be dead, can’t be… Yet how could she doubt her talent? It had never failed her before. What she’d experienced in the cafe must have been an intimation of the future. Sheila opened her eyes. She had no choice now but to find Francesca, seek out her home, make sure the dreadful prophecy never came true. Although she did not wholly like the woman, Sheila realised she looked upon her as a wayward sister. She could not judge Francesca for her actions; she could only love her - unconditionally. Sheila glanced at her watch. Was it too late to start looking now? There was a train to London in fifteen minutes. She could make it; if she hurried, if she ran.
On the train, breathless and hot in her raincoat, Sheila removed the tissue from her pocket once more. She needed to direct all her energy and intention into the print now. She needed hard information. Her vision blurred as she stared unblinking at the red stain, and an image of a cat filled her mind; an animal wholly suggestive of Francesca’s nature. No, no, concentrate! Sheila saw a hill, a spire and superimposed over it, a cat’s face. Cat, church, hill. Perhaps the cat was relevant then; part of a road name. She would have to buy a street guide as soon as she got into town.
Sheila sat in the smoking carriage, lighting cigarette after cigarette. Her body protested, but her mind ignored the physical pleas, some distant part of her mind.
The station shops were just closing as she charged up the ramp from the platform into the concourse at Euston. She marched into a Menzies shop and snatched an A-Z street guide off a shelf, setting her face in a determined expression. The bored assistant behind the till clearly wasn’t going to argue the shop was closed.
Sheila made her way down to the tube station. It was only ten o’clock; there was plenty of time to search. She could look all night if necessary. Her body bubbled with energy. If by any chance tiredness overcame her, she could go to Tess’ place. Some explanation would be needed, but - it just didn’t seem important now.
As she glided down an escalator, Sheila scanned the index of the book. It was almost too easy. There it was. Catchurch Hill. Virtually tearing the pages, Sheila found it in the map section: a tiny curl of a road on the fringe of the West End.
The last time she had been in London, the tubes had terrified her, with their crowds and labyrinthine lines. Now, she marched directly to the escalator for the Northern Line, ignoring the people who pushed past her in needless hurry. Some part of her seemed to know already exactly where she was heading.
The streets were empty around Catchurch Hill. No raucous crowds, no brightly lit bars. It was a quiet little corner of London, a place where it was easy to forget you were in the heart of a sleepless city. It was a cul-de-sac, used mainly by vehicles belonging to the residents. At the end of the street, beyond some black and gold
painted iron bollards, the bulk of a gas-works rose ghost-like in the non-dark of the city night. Naked lime trees reared before it, promising that in warmer seasons, the power plant would not seem so imposing. The street did have a slight rise to it, but could hardly be termed a hill. Its lights were ornamental, and the four storey houses, which ran down the right side of the road, had an almost continental appearance: wrought iron balconies girdled it on every floor and it was plastered a pale pink. Ivy seethed up the walls, gripping the curlicues of the balconies, where lanterns burned softly. On the other side of the street, bare magnolia trees in bud murmured of spring. Sheila thought of summer evenings, and what it would be like to own one of these apartments, to sit outside in the warm air among sighing trees, sipping icy wine, with music drifting out into the perfumed dusk. She could almost see herself in that situation, as if she’d already experienced, or would.
All of the residences were apartments, but which one was Francesca’s? Sheila became aware of her throbbing feet, and also the fact that she hadn’t felt or seen any spirit presences since she’d boarded the train back home. Her vision had been wholly focused on the search, eclipsing all other thoughts and impressions. She stared up at the curtained windows. Too close now. Hard to tell. She dug into her coat pocket and took out the tissue and with one hand, flung it up into the air. It seemed the scrap of crumpled paper would fall immediately back to earth, but then a breeze took hold of it, and it was swinging up and up, spread out like a white leaf, until it came to rest among the dead twigs of an ornamental shrub that stood in a pot, decorated with dragons, on a balcony of the third floor.
There must be security locks, Sheila thought, and sure enough a dimly-lit intercom system was placed next to each front door. She went to examine the list of residents of the building she was interested in. Most were listed only by their surnames, without even an initial to give a clue. Green, Chevalier, Elstone, Buckingham. None of them seemed to fit Francesca. But she could be wrong? A disorientating moment of panic spun through her. What if she was in the wrong place entirely? The list of names blurred before her, and then she saw it. Flat 7. On the third floor. Sancha. That was it. She just knew it.
Sheila reached out and touched the plastic covering the name, then pressed her finger against the buzzer button. When Francesca answered, what would she say? Now, her adventure was real. She would have to explain herself.
There was no response at first. Perhaps Francesca wasn’t at home. She pressed the button again. After a few seconds, she heard the intercom click into life, but there was no voice at the other end, just the rushing of empty wires. ‘Hello,’ Sheila said. ‘Ms Sancha?’
There was still no response. Sheila leaned forward and pressed her cheek against the intercom, willing her intention into the mechanism. Answer me, answer me… There was nothing but the hiss, and a sense of waiting, of observation. Then, the front door clicked too, and Sheila realised its lock was open.
Quickly, she went through it, afraid she was being offered only a fragment of time during which to enter the building. She found herself in a plain hallway of dark grey stone. Two black doors clearly led to ground floor flats. Against one of the walls, a large dead yucca plant listed in an earthenware pot, but otherwise the hall-way was unadorned, disappointing. The steps leading up to the next floors were concrete with a functional metal hand-rail.. Sheila began her climb. Her heels clicked dryly against the stone.
On the third floor landing, the ceiling lights were set into the plaster and covered with metal grilles. A corridor yawned before her, disappearing into darkness, because a couple of the bulbs had blown. Sheila did not like the atmosphere. It seemed polluted somehow, or perhaps essentially unclean. There was an emptiness to it; loneliness too. She couldn’t hear a single sound of human habitation. Shivering, she made her way to the door of flat 7. The tap of her heels seemed dull against the bare floor. The building seemed like a representation of Francesca herself: decorative on the outside but bare and cold within.
There was a small spy-hole in the centre of the door. Sheila approached it cautiously. Was Francesca looking out at her now? She placed her hand against the door, then knocked. She could hear nothing, aware only of an air of desolation. She knocked again, and again, then tried the handle. It was unlocked. Sheila froze, afraid of opening the door. What might she find beyond? Someone was in there, because someone had activated the intercom and the door mechanism downstairs. That someone might not be Francesca. Francesca might be…
Sheila opened the door and flung it wide. It took a moment for her senses to register what she saw. The door opened directly onto a large living room. The windows must be open, for it seemed to be full of a whirling wind, that had sucked up tatters of paper and scraps of cloth, creating a tornado of debris. But the room was derelict. Sheila could see that through the maelstrom. The plaster had fallen from the walls in places, revealing a skeleton of wooden slats. There was no furniture, just bare brown drabness. No-one lived here. No-one had lived here for a long time.
She felt compelled to step over the threshold. What did this mean? Was she seeing reality now, or something else? She had lived with strange phenomena all her life. This was no different. She just had to interpret it. The wind snatched at her hair and flapped the skirt of her coat. The air smelled acrid, and it was very cold.
How dark the room was. Shadows swirled and spun amid the litter circling in the wind. As Sheila observed, the shadows coagulated to form a figure in the centre of the room. At once the scene before her became flooded with brightness, bleaching out like an over-exposed photograph. The figure was its dark core. Francesca. Her body was erect and rigid; the eye of the storm. Her hair was a writhing halo around her head and she was wrapped in a black cloak or sheet. One white hand was visible where she clutched the cloth at her throat and her face was startlingly pale. The red gash of her mouth seemed painted onto the black and white image. Her eyes were black holes, open wide.
Sheila stared at this vision, involuntarily holding her breath. Francesca’s full lips opened up. It looked as if she was screaming, but there was no sound. There could be no doubt now. This was not the image of a living woman. As the red mouth worked noiselessly, the lips became engorged, their colour bleeding from red to blue. A series of bright flares dazzled Sheila’s eyes, like the acidic splash of a camera flash. She glimpsed broken images, in black of white, what she assumed were freeze frames of the past. A hotel room. A man. Francesca’s wide eyes. Furniture falling. A struggle. But when? In the past? Recently? Soon?
Sheila felt as if the images were crowding in upon her, until she would be crushed beneath their weight. She had to take a step backwards into the hallway, and the door slammed shut immediately in her face. She was held in a caul of silence; there was no hint of the chaos beyond the door. For a few moments, she stood motionless in shock, then began to back slowly away down the corridor. She heard a sound of a woman’s voice, speaking low and quickly. It came through the walls of the flat opposite Francesca’s. A domestic dispute or a heated debate. She passed the door to flat 8, which hung open. It too was derelict. There was no-one there.
Sheila fled the building, out into the night. The stars wheeled crazily over-head and the gas-works pumped like a bellows. Spirits fled in scraps of mist through the branches of the trees, wailing in torment. Litter pursued her out of Catchurch Hill into the main street beyond. Traffic flashed past too fast; she could see only the coloured blurs of their tail and head lights. She knew where she had to go, what she must do.
As she marched back to the nearest tube station, her feet were bleeding in their high, spiky heels. Her mouth was bleeding red lipstick. All she could see in her mind was the wide expanse of mirror in the ladies’ rest room of Euston Station. She was compelled to return there, hoping that by going back to the beginning, she would somehow acquire more information, answers.
By the time she reached Euston, Sheila was surprised at how late it was. Perhaps she had stood, transfixed, in the strange ap
artment for longer than she’d thought. Had that really been Francesca’s home? The experience was blurred in her mind now. It didn’t seem real.
Two women came out of the rest room as she pushed her way through the turn-stile. Inside, she was relieved to find it empty. This time, there were no shadows to distract her.
Before she turned to face the mirror, Sheila experienced a moment of pure fear. She could turn back now, abandon this ridiculous obsession. Her life waited for her - grey, temperate and safe - at the end of a line. If she followed this through, there would be no going back.
Sheila turned round. The room in the mirror looked larger than reality, an endless tiled corridor, a clinical representation of Hell. The first thing she saw in her reflection was the red of her lips, then she realised the face was not hers, and that it was Francesca looking back at her. Her eyes were steady, full of knowledge, yet hooded. The mirror was a veil between the worlds of the dead and the living, and the realm of the dead lay beyond the glass.
With business-like economy of movement, Sheila delved into her pocket and removed the lipstick. Thoughtfully, almost reverently, she removed its cap.
It was then she became aware that someone else had come out of a cubicle behind her. Another woman stood next to her, dragging a brush through her drab hair. The woman caught Sheila’s eye in the mirror. Sheila’s 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. The other woman withered in its beam. Then, Sheila focused in upon herself and pressed the waxy colour against her mouth. When she had finished, she took the old tissue from her pocket, and pressed it to her mouth, then 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.