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from a couple of tiny curls of paper Agathe could see hiding under the bath. She shuffled to the sink and groaned at her reflection in the mirror. What a mess. A gorgon. No wonder he wouldn’t. She ran the taps and scrubbed her face clean. Her eyes were still red but there was nothing to be done about that. Agathe was exhausted. She felt as if she had spent the night sleeping on a pile of rocks. Her throat burned from sobbing, her chest was thick, her nose was blocked and swollen to the size of a beetroot and she creaked in every joint. “This is what it’s like to be old,” she said.

    But mirror Agathe said, “You’re not old. Don’t let him make you old.”

    Agathe reached to the bathroom stool where the makeweight undershirt still lay neatly folded. She picked it up and slipped it over her head. She failed to notice the tiny impacts of the last few lavender blossoms as they fell to the floor. “See! An old lady in an old lady’s undershirt!” It wasn’t true.

    The sad red-eyed figure in the mirror was more alluring and erotic than the seductive strumpet she had tried to be the night before.

    The thick undershirt clung to her curves like syrup and barely skimmed the outer edge of decency. Agathe could not look anythingless than sumptuous—it was beyond her. She walked flat-footed to the kitchen. She had intended the place to be filled with the smell of bacon and coffee and cinnamon bagels. Instead it smelled of bleach and turpentine from the brushes Stopak had washed in the sink. She groaned, took them out, put them in an old cup and scoured the remains of the paint away. “Oh, what’s the point?” she muttered. “What’s the bloedig point?”

    Agathe stopped cleaning. She threw the scouring pad in the sink and put the coffee pot on the stove as she stamped angrily out of the room. She stamped angrily back again and took the coffee pot off the stove.

    She left again and sat down on the stool in front of her dressing table.

    “What’s the bloedig point?” This was going to take some time. “What’s the bloedig point?” She combed her hair furiously. It fell around her face in deep dark coils. “What is the bloedig point?” She stood up and went to a chest of drawers, took out a clean pair of knickers, visible knickers, enormous knickers, boiled grey, cheese-holed, comfortable knickers, and put them on.

    “Undershirt and knickers. Old lady undershirt and old bloedig lady bloedig knickers! Bloedig! Bloedig! Bloedig!”

    Agathe sat in front of her mirror and did her make-up, never halting her mantra of curses except when that tiny little brush, loaded with dark red paint, was hovering over her mouth. Then she cursed inwardly. It meant she had to hold the fury inside until she had blotted the paint away with a tissue-kiss and then, through perfect lips, she spat vile things at the mirror.

    Then she felt better. “Better. Yes, a lot better. Get a bit of slap on, girl, and face the world.” In the mirror, the rumpled bed lay like a relief map of the Andes. “To hell with the bloedig bed—let Stopak make it.” She reached into the wardrobe and pulled out her blue dress, the one with the white piping, slipped on her shoes and walked out of the flat.

    It was dark on the stair. She walked carefully with one hand on the old wooden banister, one hand on the central stone post. Agathe was glad to reach the street. She stepped off the last unsteady treadof the stair and she was about to hurry off to work when … “Good morning, Agathe!”

    Agathe’s hand shot to her chest. Hektor. She hated Hektor. She hated him because he was gorgeous—all dark and tall and dangerous. Always that same black coat sweeping the pavement winter and summer, his hair all lank and floppy, his face so pale, his eyes so hot like a saint or a devil. Women looked at him and wondered things out loud—women Agathe knew, decent married women who should know better, women who should know the value of a good man with a