She put on her only high heels, a really smart pair of black suede stilettos that a customer – elegant little South American woman – had left behind in the shop still in their box and bag. They had hung on to them for a few weeks but she never came back. The senior salesladies had wanted them very, very badly but they weren’t a three and a half double A and Jane was. She walked – always leading with the thighs – towards the mirror.
Next she practised sinking down on to the corner of the bed and pretending to tuck her legs into the passenger seat of an imaginary sports car, raising her knees slightly so that the skirt slid up, exposing her lovely young knees, all cobwebbed by her cheap, laddered stockings.
Jane tilted her head into her mirror face – three-quarter profile, sucked-in cheeks – and gave herself a snooty model-girl look. The hair wasn’t right but it was a wonderful suit. Smiling with satisfaction, she perched on the dressing-table stool, crossed her legs – high on the thigh so that they are absolutely parallel from the knees down. Her reflection was deliciously rich and expensive, very ‘Can I help you, madam?’ She answered herself softly in her best elocution voice. A five-year scholarship to a convent school had given Jane lots of voices: dressy, casual and several grades in between.
‘I’m looking for something to match this,’ she said in her posh, world-weary whisper.
She passed the pot of hairpins to her reflection, smiling flirtatiously. As you sit before the glass, pick up various small articles and pretend you are passing them to your reflection.
Jane placed the magic handbag on her smooth, dogtoothed lap and began emptying its contents on to the glass top of the dressing table: handkerchief, envelope, compact, photograph, a tiny pair of nail scissors, a wallet full of hairpins, a pair of really good-quality stockings in a little cellophane bag (spares: very organised), a pair of gloves (always carry extra gloves in your bag in case the ones you have on become impossibly soiled), three keys (one Yale, two Banham) and a red leather purse – a very Norbury purse for such a beautiful Bond Street bag – with a ten-bob note and some silver. There was a tiny jeweller’s brooch box and Jane was half expecting diamonds but there was only a pair of fluffy black false eyelashes and a tiny tube of glue inside. Two expensive twist-up lipsticks – one for day, one for evening – and a brown eye pencil. There was the mirror in its little pocket and – bit funny – the price ticket. One hundred and ninety guineas. Export Only. Blimey. A good saleslady usually took the price off in case it was a present.
There was nothing with the girl’s name on it. No letters. No cheque book – you’d expect someone with a crocodile bag to have a cheque book. There was an expensive-looking diary covered in ginger pigskin that told you when to stop and start shooting things. The personal details page was blank but there were twenty, maybe thirty birthdays in written in the same colour ink – as if whoever she was had sat down in January and copied them over. Some of the other dates were circled (for fairly obvious reasons) and the next few weeks were peppered with mysterious meetings: ‘Bergman’s (day for evening) 10.30 5gns’; ‘Earl’s Court. West Door. 9am. Short sleeves.’ There were some gin rummy scores on the inside cover – S, P and M – and a few phone numbers in the back – all men’s names, all West End exchanges. But Jane could hardly ring some strange Dick or Harry (Regent 4121) and ask about a mysterious brunette and a crocodile handbag.
There weren’t any cigarettes but there were two books of matches: one was from Carpenter’s oyster bar, the other was the photographic kind they made at dances and had ready by the time you went home. The girl was sat on the lap of a middle-aged man in a dinner jacket. They were both wearing party hats. The man just looked old and a bit drunk in his but the girl, in her strapless satin gown, made the funny little fez seem larky and exotic. She was having a very good time – or knew how to photograph that way. The more dress rehearsals you have with your make-believe audience, the better the real performance will be. Jane threw her head back and laughed lightly at the mirror, dislodging some of the pins in her hair so that the whole lot fell down.
She brushed it all out again and hung the suit back on its hanger ready for the morning. It was far too good for work really but where else was she going to wear it? Shopping in Croydon? The shop closed at one on Saturdays. If the worst came to the worst she could always go back to that dreadful pub but she’d try the oyster bar first – in her suit. See if anyone could remember seeing the girl. She looked at the photograph again, unconsciously tilting her head to the same angle, smiling the same smile. They were bound to remember.
Chapter 4
Just remember that your personality
isn’t printed on you like a birthmark.
It can alter for better or worse –
and you’re the girl who alters it.
Jane’s alarm went at half six, a strange soft sound from inside a sandwich of cushions – whoever woke Georgette had to change her and poke Ready Brek into her with a special pink spoon. Jane was most at risk (she got up a good hour before anyone else) but it was usually June who was unlucky. She was rather heavy on her feet but Jane suspected she did it on purpose. She liked taking the pram out as well. Creep.
Jane’s stockings, underwear and quilted nylon dressing gown were already hanging over the back of the chair in front of the fire. She leaped out of bed, switched it on, drew the curtains then jumped back under the covers. A fancy lace of frost had grown on the window panes overnight. It was even colder today. A few more minutes in the warm and Jane was up, huddling into her dressing gown and slippers and tiptoeing along the corridor to the bathroom. Georgette had taken her time getting off to sleep the night before but was dead to the world now, grunting and snoring through some dreamland tantrum.
Jane met Kenneth just coming out of the bathroom, spots glowing after a good wash. Kenneth usually spent his Saturdays loitering at bus stops. But today he was off to Streatham bloody Garage – a lot of really important routes didn’t come as far as Norbury apparently.
Kenneth had left the heater on but it hadn’t even started to take the chill off the room and only ever really heated the ceiling. The bathroom was very bare (Doreen couldn’t abide clutter). There was a bottle of medicated shampoo, a pale blue nailbrush shaped like a swan, a rack of curling toothbrushes and a yellow bar of soap with a label glued into the middle of it. Uncle George liked to keep the Steradent in the bathroom cabinet with the Elastoplast and the iodine bottle but his wife was forever taking it out and putting it in the middle of the glass shelf – in case anyone forgot. On the ledge behind the lavatory sat three wrapped bath cubes. June had once given Doreen a Mothering Sunday present but it wasn’t a mistake you made twice (‘I’m not your mother, thank Gawd’ was the thanks she got). The bath cubes (Goya, Black Rose) had sat there unused and dusty ever since: ‘they dry the skin’.
The Ascot water heater had a big red sign hung round it from the Gas Board pointing out that it had been condemned as unsafe to use. Doreen couldn’t see anything wrong with it. All them water heaters made a noise. The notice was all curled up with age and damp. Either Doreen was right, or they were all living on borrowed time. A smart female will earn enough (or marry enough) to live in a world where constant hot water is never a matter for comment or concern. Jane was prepared to be hissed and banged at for her twice-weekly bath but managed the rest in cold. There was also the danger that the boiler would wake Georgette. She washed quickly with her own soap (Bronnley, English Fern) that she kept in a sponge bag with her shampoo, her face cream, her depilatory cream and a secret supply of tampons: Smart young moderns choose Tampax. Nothing could be daintier. Doreen called these ‘pessaries’ and said only married women could use them but that wasn’t what ‘Sister’ said on the leaflet inside the box.