Scottish Girls About Town: And sixteen other Scottish women authors

In the Garden of

Mrs. Pink

Isla Dewar

If anyone had asked me, when I was ten, what heaven looked like, I’d have described the garden of Mrs. Pink. I thought it gorgeous.

I grew up in Edinburgh, Crighton Street. A row of bungalows facing another row of bungalows. Neat front gardens, behind trimmed hedges or railings uniformly painted black or green. Windows shone, lawns were mown and people went about their business saying polite good mornings, and Lovely day. Respectability was what they craved, part of their reward for their hard work, at their jobs, in their homes and gardens. No wonder, then, that number twenty-four, four doors down from my house, caused raised eyebrows, wagging tongues. Everything at number twenty-four was pink.

Pink railings, pink flowers in the garden—carnations, geraniums, fuchsias, pink clematis spreading up the walls—pink window frames, pink front door. Pink Mini in the drive. For years I didn’t know the real name of the woman who lived there, everyone called her Mrs. Pink. To this day, though I know she is Veronica Watts, she is still Mrs. Pink to me.

In 1972 I was ten. I lived with my mother and Grandpa Mac in 20 Crighton Street; my father died when I was two—cancer—and I have no memory of him. My mother spoke of him often, and never remarried. But his death left us in a state of real penury. For years, till the mortgage was paid off, my mother scrimped and saved and denied herself. We got by. I was a child, that was how I lived, I didn’t think anything about it. It was just how things were.

Grandpa Mac had come to live with us when I was seven. Until he moved down to our Edinburgh suburb, he’d lived in Inverness. He was forgetful, he rambled about times gone by, he was messy. He coughed, he spat. He was old. His oldness had, at first, fascinated me. His hands, spotted brown, veined. His gnarled face, whiskers. The way he ate, moving food slowly about his mouth. His rumbling ancient voice. I blush to recall the way I must have stared at him. I don’t know exactly how long it took me to love him, but love him I did. He told me stories, cooked me soft boiled eggs, showed me card tricks, taught me to play poker. We made jokes, played at who could make the loudest rude noise. Most of all, he had time for me. My mother hadn’t.

Not that she didn’t love me, she was just consumed with the gruelling business of coping. Getting by. I thought her distant. Her shoulders were always tense, her brow furrowed. She moved quickly about the house, picking up after Grandpa Mac and me. I realize now that, for years, she cared for us, and we gave back nothing. For years, nobody touched my mother, kissed her, told her they loved her. We took her for granted.

She worked in the supermarket that had opened not far from us, at first in the checkout, then as under-manageress. She was qualified for higher things, but the supermarket was close by so she didn’t have to leave in the morning before I went to school, and she could be home in time to cook supper. And, she could walk. She didn’t have to pay fares. She got discount shopping, and often the man on the meat counter would slip her half a pound of mince, or stew. The toll of penny-pinching, she was better off working at the supermarket than she would have been with a job as a secretary in town. Happier? That wasn’t an issue. It breaks my heart to think of what my mother went through to keep the roof of 20 Crighton Street over our heads. The endless coping. Coping with bills, repairs, cooking, looking after Grandpa Mac, who wasn’t in the best of health. And coping with me. I was, till Mrs. Pink came into my life, a restless, unruly, rebellious child. What they called a handful.

I did not see my mother as a tired, lonely woman trapped in the endless, draining business of managing day after day to make ends meet. It didn’t occur to me she was doing this for me, for the love of me. I saw her as someone who was constantly bad-tempered. She nagged, fretted. Money was so tight, she knew how many slices of bread were left in the packet, and exactly what she would do with those slices. It wore her down, this worrying. Her face was drawn with the burden of it. Nights she’d come home from work, cook for Grandpa Mac and me, then she’d clean the house, wash clothes, iron, vacuum, dust, wipe. Exhaustion had taken over her life. Squeezed the joy out of her.

That summer, 1972, my best friend, Patricia Harrower, went abroad to France with her family for the whole six weeks of the break from school. I had nobody to play with. Grandpa Mac tried, he’d take the old cricket bat on to the back lawn and have me bowl to him. But, really, he wasn’t up to playing games. He rarely hit the ball, he couldn’t see it, till it was about six inches away. As for chasing, or hide-and-seek, well, he couldn’t run, and if I hid somewhere, he’d look for me, then forget what he was looking for, and go sit in his armchair by the fire and fall asleep. I once spent an hour crouched at the back of my mother’s wardrobe thinking I’d cleverly outwitted him, whilst he snored, legs splayed before him, the Daily Mail draped over his face. So, we played poker on the back step if it was fine, at the table in the kitchen if it rained. But every afternoon at about two o’clock the exhaustion of being eighty-five, bones aching, would sweep through Grandpa Mac and he’d sleep in his chair leaving me to my own devices.

I read Kidnapped, The Railway Children, Treasure Island. I wandered and played games on my own. There was a municipal golf course behind the bungalows at the other side of the road. Golfers saw fairways and greens, I saw a vast open space, a landscape that became whatever I wanted it to be in my playing imaginings. When I read Kidnapped, that golf course was the Highlands, the golfers were the enemy. They wore checked pants and Pringle jumpers, but I knew they were really Redcoats, looking for Alan Breck. I would foil them. The first hole was a long one. To the left was rough. I could sneak through Mrs. Borthwick’s garden, wriggle through the hedge at the end and onto that rough. I could hide. Golfers whacked their balls up that first fairway, then started the walk towards them. This took a few minutes. Long enough for me to run out, grab the balls and disappear back through the hedge, run the length of Mrs. Borthwick’s garden, across the road, and home. When I amassed ten balls, I’d take them to Jean Mackintosh’s shop on the corner and sell them for five pence each. She sold them back to golfers for fifty pence. A fair profit.

Damnedest thing, they’d say to her. A little girl ran out and grabbed the balls as we were walking up to them.

Children these days, she’d say.

That isn’t you? she asked me.

No, I said. Course not, I found these balls. I go looking for them every night after tea.

I bought ice lollies and Mars Bars with the money. I didn’t think I was doing anything wrong. In my mind, I was doing it for Scotland, and The Cause. Like Alan Breck, I had cunning, and style. I wore hand-me-down corduroy pants (elastic-waisted, very chic) and T-shirts that Fiona Smith across the road, four years older than me, had grown out of. Her mother would hand things in to my mother. Just can’t see good clothes going to waste, Mrs. Longmore, she’d say. Maybe your Abby would get the good of them.

One day, the green keeper was waiting at the gap in the hedge at the end of Mrs. Borthwick’s garden. He grabbed me. Heart thumping, I wriggled, kicked and tried to bite his hand and got away. He went to Mrs. Borthwick’s door and accused her children of stealing golf balls. She got very angry, telling him she and Frank, her husband, had no children, and she had no idea what he was talking about. But she knew. Next day, she gave me such a glare and said, You behave yourself, Abigail Longmore. She never told, though. So my mother never found out about my efforts to rid the golf course of the scourge of the Redcoats.

She did, however, find out about my plans to save the passengers of the Flying Scotsman from certain doom. The railway passed the end of Crighton Street, long trains going to and coming from London. Inspired by The Railway Children, I wrote a warning on a sheet of paper. Danger, it said, line ahead blocked. I stood by the line holding it up. The train whizzed past, only inches from my face. Nobody saw my warning, which was a good thing really, as the line wasn’t blocked, and stopping the train would have caused no end of bother. But my neighbour saw me by the railway line, forbidden territory, told my mother, and I was spanked and sent to bed without any supper. That was the first, and only, time she ever hit me. Of course it was a reaction. Fear. I could so easily have got sucked under that speeding train. Death plagued her. It would have been another one lost, and she couldn’t have withstood that pain. She hit me for the love of me.

Grandpa Mac was scolded for not keeping an eye on me. At ten o’clock that night, when Mum was in bed, he brought me a slice of bread and jam and a glass of milk. He wiped my tears with his big white hanky and held me close, a snuffling, sobbing child. He told me I should try to be a good girl. My mother worried about me, and I was a handful. He kissed my cheek and said, Well, your old Grandpa Mac still loves you. He was my best friend, ever. But, after that, I was forbidden to leave the back garden.

As back gardens go, ours was fairly boring. My mother couldn’t afford to do anything more than grow a few flowers and shrubs, though she tended them with love. So, there was a lawn surrounded by flower beds and beyond that a vegetable patch where we grew onions, potatoes, beans, peas, cabbage, cauliflower. My mother was ahead of her time, growing what we ate organically. My taste in food, though, was still juvenile. I thought the best things to eat came out of a tin.

I played Treasure Island on the lawn, using an upturned kitchen chair as a boat. Grandpa Mac was Long John Silver, which he enjoyed. Or Blind Pew, which he enjoyed even more. Lumbering after me calling, The Black Spot, the Black Spot. You’re doomed. Me squealing. But always, always after lunch—an egg sandwich, or beans on toast—he’d shuffle off to his armchair, and sleep.

I wandered about, pulled petals off the roses, hid between the rows of peas, picked, shelled and ate some. But I was bored. I longed for the open spaces of the golf course. Eventually, I squeezed through the hedge into Mrs. Edward’s garden next door. It was pretty much the same as ours. Except she grew strawberries. So I ate some of those. And spied on her from behind her goose-berry bushes as she hung out her sheets. After that, I squeezed into the Hendersons’ garden which was posh. It had a flowered sofa that hung on a frame, a canopy over it that matched the covering on the sofa. I sat on it, swinging, playing at being Doris Day. But Mrs. Henderson saw me, banged on the window and shooed me away.

The next garden belonged to the Taylors. It was interesting because they never tended it. Weeds grew high as the sky. In amongst the nettles and thistles were bits of bicycle and rope and abandoned garden tools. Trouble was they had a big alsatian, Luther, tied to a post at the far end. He barked and strained at his rope when he saw me. I had to scarper, which I regretted because it would have been wonderful to explore. I squeezed, once more, through a hedge, and found myself in the garden of Mrs. Pink.

Oh, wondrous place. It was laden with blooms. Large blowsy blooms, peony roses, dahlias, mostly pink. But yellows and reds, too. At the far end, where I entered, was a rose-covered arch, and beyond that a fountain made by a bronzed sculpture of a small cherub peeing. Crazy paving wound down the centre of the lawn to a patio where there were elaborate wrought-iron chairs and a table with an umbrella. On the lawn was a huge seat; wrought iron again, it was painted pink. The back of this seat was heart-shaped and in the middle of the heart were the entwined initials, VW and JD. I thought it beautiful. But the thing that brought joy to my young heart was the pond. Lilies grew round it, goldfish moved slowly just below the surface. And a ruddy-faced gnome wearing green trousers, red waistcoat and yellow pointy hat fished in it. I know, I know, Mrs. Pink’s garden was hideous. Kitsch. But I was ten; sophistication, subtlety were nothing to me, I thought it glorious.

After that, I visited the garden of Mrs. Pink every day. I called the gnome Robert, after Redford who was my love and heart-throb. Grandpa Mac had once taken me to see Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid; though he’d slept through it, I had been thrilled. For weeks after that Patricia Harrower and I played Butch and Sundance on the golf course. She was Butch, I was Sundance, the golfers were the posse of men, led by the man in the white hat, chasing us across the Wild West. Once, when we made the Big Leap into the furious river at the bottom of the canyon, which in our case was into the steep bunker at the fourteenth hole, Patricia sprained her ankle. She told her mother it was all my fault, I had made her do it, the rat fink. And her mother complained to my mother that I was a tearaway and Patricia was forbidden to play with me. My mother told me not to go near Patricia, I seemed to be leading her astray. We didn’t talk for about a fortnight. But then we patched things up and were back blowing up trains on the golf course.

I told Robert, the gnome, about all this. I told him about Mum and Grandpa Mac, and Patricia being away for the whole of the school holidays and me having nobody to play with. I told him about trying to stop the train and about stealing the golf balls. He understood. He had a cheery face, big smile. He was a very good listener.

Sometimes Mrs. Pink would be in her garden, and I would spy on her. She always had a man with her, different men. In time, I saw that on certain days the same man would be there. She’d sit with them on the patio, or on the heart-shaped seat, laughing, smoking, drinking from a long glass, ice cubes clinking. I was in awe.

Once, when I thought she was away I sat on the heart-shaped seat, playing at being Mrs. Pink. Oh, JD, I said, taking long draws on a twig, blowing out pretend smoke, I love you. You are my own true love.

And Mrs. Pink laughed. She laughed and laughed and laughed. Oh my, she said, wiping tears from her eyes, is that meant to be me? Then, Who the hell are you, anyway? And why do you keep coming to my garden?

This was a surprise to me. I’d thought I’d done a pretty good job of sneaking unseen up to Robert to chat to him. I’m Abby, I told her.

Abby Longmore, she said. I’ve heard about you.

I think this must have been because of the milk. The previous winter, when it was icy cold, especially in the mornings when the milk was on the doorsteps, I’d gone up every path in the street and poked off the tops of the bottles and sucked out the frozen cream from every one. All the neighbours had come to our door and complained about me. I hadn’t thought it naughty. I’d just got carried away. I got grounded for two weeks and had to wash the dishes every night for that.

You, Mrs. Pink said, have a reputation. You’re meant to be a very naughty little girl.

I’m not naughty, I said. I just do things. Then I find out the things I do are naughty. If I knew they were naughty before I did them, I wouldn’t do them.

Excellent excuse, she said. I might even use it some time.

She looked at me. Her face underneath the layer of make-up was gentle. Her lips were painted red, blue shadow round her eyes, her brows plucked into a permanently surprised arch. Her hair was long, pinned at the back into a tight roll. Close up she looked older than she did from a distance. She must have been in her mid-forties. Older than my mum. In those days I thought my mum very old and sometimes wondered if she remembered covered wagons, and had worn a crinoline dress when she was little.

Mrs. Pink offered me a drink. Brought me Coca-Cola in a tall glass, ice cubes clinking, a striped straw with a bendy bit at the end. I was impressed. I asked her if JD, the initials on the bench, was her husband.

No, she said. I’m Veronica Watts, that’s the VW bit. I’m not married. JD is John Davis, the man I loved.

Is he dead?

No, sweetie, she said. He just went back to his wife and kids. The way men do.

Do they?

Yes, sweetie, patting my cheek. They do.

Sweetie. Nobody had called me that before, I felt special. I looked at my Mickey Mouse watch (a Christmas present from Grandpa Mac): four o’clock. I had to go. Grandpa would be waking up soon. I swigged the last of my Coke, belched, because that’s what gassy drinks did to me, and ran the length of the garden, through the hedges and home. When Grandpa woke, I was sitting on the back step, reading Little Women. That was my daytime literature. Nights, under the bedclothes, using a torch, I was working my way through Valley of the Dolls. I was learning a lot.

After that I had daily chats with Mrs. Pink in her fabulous garden. I sipped ice-cold Coke, and never forgot to say a few words to Robert, the gnome. I’d stroke his cheery face, I thought him wonderful.

Sometimes, Mrs. Pink would have one of her men friends with her, and she’d wave me away. I’d slip back through the gardens, and wait for Grandpa Mac to wake up and play poker with me.

Once she took me in her pink car to Portobello, to Demarco’s ice cream parlour. She bought me a knickerbocker glory. A huge concoction in a long, long glass. I had to kneel on my seat to get a proper eating angle on it. It was the loveliest thing I’d ever eaten. Demarco’s the most beautiful place I’d ever seen. Dark tiles round the walls, a sweeping staircase that led to the seating area above, and the lavatories. I had to climb it. When I came down, slowly, queening it, hand on the banister, I pretended I was Rita Hayworth. I’d seen her on movies, Sunday afternoon on the telly. Gilda.

Mrs. Pink drank dark coffee from a tiny cup, smoked and smiled all the time I was eating.

And afterwards we walked along the sands.

Where did you go for your holidays? Miss Wilson, my teacher, asked me when I went back to school.

Portobello, I said.

Everyone in the class laughed. Portobello was only ten minutes away from my street. But I didn’t mind. I’d had a grand time. Mrs. Pink held my hand as we paddled.

On the way home, she said, Your mum must have a time of it. Looking after you and your grandpa. Cooking when she comes home. Bet she cleans the house after she gets back from work, too. I hope you help.

I stared at her. It hadn’t crossed my mind to help. I did my homework, I watched telly, I went to bed. Helping wasn’t on my agenda. That afternoon, after my visit, I peeled the potatoes for supper. Mum couldn’t believe it. Thank you, Abby. That was thoughtful of you. She looked at Grandpa Mac. Did you tell her to peel the potatoes?

He shrugged and shook his head.

Mrs. Pink suggested I dust a little and maybe vacuum the living room before Mum got home. So I did. Then Mrs. Pink thought it might be a good thing if I went to meet Mum when she was coming back from work and help her carry her groceries. Even though I was confined to the back garden. I did. She didn’t mind at all. In fact, she was glad to see me.

Mum could hardly believe it. Keeping Abby in the back garden has brought about such a change in her, she said. I should have done it years ago.

I went to meet her every day. And on our walks back home together, we talked, teased one another, made jokes. She wasn’t the worried-faced, anxious mum I’d always known. She seemed younger, funnier. We’d stop and stare into gardens, decide which was the prettiest. We talked about favourite things, food, television programmes, books. She told me about the books she’d read when she was a little girl. And games she’d played. My mum wasn’t just a mum, she was a human being. Mrs. Pink taught me that.

The only thing I didn’t like about visiting Mrs. Pink, was Kenneth. It was hate at first sight. We loathed each other. I think, now, that he resented me. When I was there, Mrs. Pink spoke to me, and virtually ignored him. He was a tall man, thick dark hair. He wore his shirts open at the neck, with the collar flapped over the lapels of his jacket. A small curling of dark hair sprouted at his neck. His gold chain lay strangely on top of it.

If I was there when Kenneth arrived, he’d tell me to bugger off. I’d look at Mrs. Pink, who would nod. Off you go, sweetie. And I’d go to the hole in the hedge and make my way back home. Mrs. Pink always did what Kenneth wanted. Well, she would. I later found out that 24 Crighton Street was his house. And the men who visited Mrs. Pink, her clients, had all been sent by him.

Prostitute was a newish word to me. One of the first times I ever encountered it was when I read about Mrs. Pink in the newspaper. It was three days before school went back, I was standing by her front gate when the police arrived. This was a huge thing in Crighton Street, the police. They never came here. Patricia and I were doing what we were going to be doing for the next few years of our lives, hanging about. Somehow, now that we were both approaching eleven, playing Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid had lost its appeal. We were more of a mind to stand swinging on the gate, drinking Coke straight from the tin, chatting and singing the latest Rod Stewart song.

So, there we were, swigging, singing, swinging when the police drew up, two black cars, outside Mrs. Pink’s house. They went in. And about fifteen minutes later came out with Mrs. Pink, Kenneth and the small balding man that I recognized as Mrs. Pink’s Friday man. He looked very furtive and shocked. Mrs. Pink stared straight ahead, as if she didn’t care about anything. A police-woman held her arm.

It was in the papers next day. Miss Veronica Watts and Mr. Kenneth Edwards were charged at Edinburgh Sheriff Court today with running a house of ill repute at 24 Crighton Street. Miss Watts was also charged with prostitution. There was more. But, basically, I was quite glad I’d been reading Valley of the Dolls. Now I knew what prostitution was. The trial was set for the fourteenth of September.

In the weeks before the trial I visited often. Mrs. Pink still sat with me on the heart-shaped seat, and we chatted. I told her about school, about my problems with long division, which I hated, and how, soon, next year, I’d be going up to the big school. I was looking forward to it. And I was scared of it.

That’s how it always is, sweetie, she said. All your life you’ll be scared of the next big thing. But if you don’t do it, go forward, you’ll be sorry. And that’s worse. Besides, scary things are never that scary when you get to them. Go forward, boldly. That’s the thing to do.

She was going on trial for prostitution. She must have been scared stiff, but it never showed. She put on her make-up, she served me iced drinks, she let me chat to Robert, the gnome.

But on the night before the case came up, she said, After tomorrow you can’t come here any more. I’m going away. I’m never coming back.

I thought she meant she was going to jail, and started to cry. But she hugged me. Told me she wasn’t going to jail. She was a first offender. She’d get a fine. A big fine, she said. But Kenneth will pay. But I won’t come back here. Kenneth is selling the house.

I won’t see you again? I said.

She shook her head. Best not to, love.

Or Robert?

Tell you what, you can have Robert. You take him home.

Oh no, she’s not. She’s not having the gnome. Kenneth had been sitting at the kitchen table, playing patience, listening.

For God’s sake, Kenneth, let her have it. You don’t want it. You never liked it.

That’s not the point. It’s mine, and she’s not getting it.

The air was charged. They were both nervous about the trial. And it wasn’t that Kenneth didn’t want me to have the gnome. He didn’t want me to have anything. It was a revenge thing. He hated me.

I’ll play you for him, I said. I looked him straight in the eye, and knew I could take him. He was the nervy kind, drummed his fingers, his eyes roamed the room. His lips twitched. Every thought he ever had moved across his face.

Play? he asked.

Poker, I said.

He laughed. Okay. Poker. He thought he was dealing with a kid. But he was dealing with Abby Longmore whose Grandpa Mac had taught her well.

I fleeced him. I just sat there at Mrs. Pink’s kitchen table, I had a dreadful hand, and his was pretty good. I knew it just by looking at him. But I was still of face, this was serious, Robert’s fate was at stake. I just kept my face impassive. Easy, I just thought about long division, and geography, capitals of the world. Things that bored me mindless.

Twenty minutes, three hands (Kenneth demanded best of three when he lost the first one) later, Robert was mine. Mrs. Pink helped me carry him along the road. It was the only time I ever left her house by the front door.

My mother was appalled. A garden gnome. She was hard pushed to think of anything she wanted less.

But he’s mine, Mum. I won him.

Won him? How?

Poker. Grandpa Mac taught me.

Grandpa Mac was standing behind her, looking shifty. She plays a mean game.

So far Mrs. Pink had said nothing.

Does this thing belong to you? said Mum.

Mrs. Pink nodded. I won’t be needing him after tomorrow. I’m moving away.

I expect you are, said Mum. So you’ve given us a garden gnome. A fishing garden gnome.

I had my arms round Robert. Isn’t he lovely?

My mother didn’t have to say that no, he wasn’t. Her horror was there, on her face. She’d have been rubbish at poker. How do you know my daughter? she asked Mrs. Pink.

Abby’s been visiting me. Most days this summer, actually.

My mother looked at me, looked at Mrs. Pink, thought about the back garden confinement, and everything clicked. Mothers are like that. Things click quickly with them.

We’ve had some lovely chats, haven’t we, Abby? said Mrs. Pink.

I nodded. I was for it now. I’d been breaking out of the garden.

But, I’ll say something for mothers, when things click into place, everything clicks into place. The change in me. The help I’d been giving her in the house, going to meet her coming home from work. The talk, the jokes. The new understanding. Well, thanks for caring for her when I’ve been at work, Mrs.—

Pink? said Mrs. Pink. I know what I’m called round here. Lovely name. I love pink.

They shook hands, my mum and Mrs. Pink. Mum said, Thank you. And kissed her cheek.

In front of the whole street, my mum kissed Mrs. Pink, and people would have been watching from the dark of their living rooms.

Mrs. Pink walked down the path, stopped at the gate and waved. That was the last time I saw her.

She was fined. It was in all the papers. House of ill-repute in sleepy Edinburgh suburb.

Mrs. Pink had stood in the dock looking defiant. I don’t think prostitution is wrong, she said. If I thought it wrong, I wouldn’t do it. There was something oddly familiar about that. Number twenty-four was sold to people who painted the railings green, uprooted all the pink plants and replaced them with blues and yellows. I never found out what happened to the heart-shaped seat.

A year later, Grandpa Mac died. I went on to secondary school. Boldly forward, I thought. Six years after that to university. I became a lawyer. I married. I divorced. Last year my mother died, she ended her days at number twenty Crighton Street, the house she struggled to keep. She wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else.

I live in Edinburgh’s New Town. A garden flat. I’m considered to have taste, style. So nobody understands why I have a hideous fishing garden gnome, grinning amongst my delphiniums. When asked, I shrug, and I smile and say he’s Robert, and that we go way back. To the summer of 1972, in fact, when I started to grow up, lost my innocence and learned from Mrs. Pink that my mother loved me.

Born in Edinburgh, ISLA DEWAR now lives in Fife with her husband, a cartoonist, and two sons. Her first novel, Keeping Up with Magda, published in 1995, has been followed by a string of bestsellers: Giving Up on Ordinary, It Could Happen to You, Women Talking Dirty, Two Kinds of Wonderful, The Woman Who Painted Her Dreams, and, most recently, Dancing in a Distant Place.

Country Cooking Countdown

Siân Preece

"You’ll not need a lot done," said the make-up girl. I breathed a discreet sigh of relief—her lipsticks and pots were gluey and caked, with hairs sticking out of them, her brushes still coloured red and blue from their last use. She obviously didn’t clean the tools of her trade between victims, or even between decades. In fact, the whole room was shoddy; it had been decorated back in the seventies, and no one had seen fit to change the orange carpet and peeling, swirly wallpaper since then. This television studio wasn’t turning out as glamorous as I’d expected.

You’ve got lovely skin, said the girl. Fiona, come and have a look at her skin, it’s lovely!

Lovely, murmured Fiona, who was the Studio Manager on Country Cooking Countdown, and obviously too important to be looking at people’s skin.

What do you do for it? the make-up girl persisted. What products do you use?

Soap and water. I paused for effect. And dermabrasion.

"Dermabrasion! What, where they scrape your skin off with that machine? Like sandpaper! Ugh, did it hurt?"

Total nightmare, I nodded. "My head was just a big scab