Читать книгу Envy - Amanda Robson - Страница 39

Lunchtime. I walk out of my office past the bank, turn right past the doctor’s surgery, then right again. The road curves into a cul-de-sac of 1930s semis. I slip down a cut-through passageway full of tree roots and cigarette butts, along a wider street lined with red brick Victoriana; to number 133 – the house at the end of the road. Beautifully kept. Garden manicured. I walk, the soles of my shoes resonating on slate, up the tiled pathway and ring the doorbell.

Anna must have been waiting for me because the door opens immediately. As I step into the red-carpeted hallway, she gives me a tired smile.

‘Sally is ready. You can go straight upstairs.’

Sally invites me into her bedroom with an artificial smile, and a thick Brummie drawl. She is wearing a silk dressing gown that is too busy; duck egg blue with birds flying across it. Too many beaks and feathers.

‘Welcome,’ she says taking my coat and hanging it up behind the door.

‘Did Anna tell you I want you to wear a wig?’ I ask, looking into her pale green eyes.

‘Yes.’

I rummage in my briefcase and pull it out, black tresses freshly washed and styled.

‘If you sit at the dressing table I’ll help you put it on.’

She walks towards the dressing table, continuing to smile. I step behind her. She sits down and shakes her shoulders a little to relax them. I lift the wig carefully in my fingers, holding its crown wide open and gently, gently, starting at her forehead, coax it onto her head.

‘What do you think?’ she asks, standing up and shaking her head so that the bottom of the wig vibrates lifelessly against her shoulders.

‘Not bad. But your eyes are the wrong colour. They need to be violet.’

‘Next time I’ll wear coloured contacts,’ she says as she walks towards me, and starts to undress me. When I am naked she pushes me onto her bed, onto her floral counterpane that has seen better days, and removes her dressing gown, revealing sagging white breasts. So unlike your perfect curves that I have to turn her around and enter her from behind, burying my face in the wig. My crescendo takes a while as the girl is so unresponsive. In the end I manage, by playing with the curls of the wig and imagining I am rubbing up against your sweetness, Faye.