Anne Billson - Stiff Lips

'I'd like that,' I said. I thought Walter O. Cheeseman was a little bit weird, but quite dishy. Maybe he was just the ticket to help me get over Miles.

'Good,' he said. 'Better make it soon, though. I can't stick around too long.' He gave me one last grin, this time making no effort whatsoever to inject it with warmth, and clattered down the steps.

Marsha playfully whacked me between the shoulder blades as we went into the house. 'Go for it.'

'He's strange.'

'He's American,' said Marsha.

I wondered if Sophie had run into Walter before she'd been dispatched to the continent. Probably not; Sophie hadn't been out and about much after her breakdown, and now she wouldn't be back for another week. With a bit of luck, and some canny manoeuvring, I would have established a substantial head-start with Walter Cheeseman by the time she returned.

In the meantime, there were a few things that needed to be sorted out. One of them was the bathroom. I was having problems with it.

It didn't help that there wasn't a window. Now that Lemmy had fixed the wiring, it wasn't just the light that came on when you tugged the cord; it also started the death-rattle of an old extractor fan. It was so loud I'd almost had a heart attack the first time it had throbbed into action. It was so loud it drowned out the radio when I was in the bath.

But, in truth, the bathroom was so depressing with its chipped tiles and yellow walls and flourishing arachnid population that I spent as little time in there as possible. Lemmy had managed to get the ancient immersion heater working, but it was on its last legs, and though tubfuls of water were a possibility, they usually turned out more tepid than hot, and I had a horrid suspicion that the ventilation had been worked out by someone who thought carbon monoxide poisoning was something you got from chewing typewriter ribbons. Most of the time, I found it more convenient, not to mention safer, to use the showers after my sessions at the swimming pool.

It wasn't just the tiles in the bathroom that were cracked. There was also that crack in the mirror, an emphatic fissure that ran diagonally across the middle, so that it was impossible to look into it without seeing your face split into two halves which didn't quite match up at the edges. It could have been the cover design for a book about schizophrenia.

That mirror gave me the heebie-jeebies, and not just because it was impossible to forget what had once happened in front of it. One night, while I was brushing my teeth, I had the distinct impression that each half of my face was following its own separate game-plan. I'd already removed my glasses in readiness for bed, so I had to squint at the reflection to bring it vaguely into focus. One half of my face was drooling liquidised toothpaste over my chin like a rabid dog; the other was wreathed in yellowish shadow and scrutinizing me through brown eyes so dark and narrow they appeared almost black.

Normally, I wouldn't have worried. Except that my own eyes were blue.

It was a trick of the light, of course. The eyes in the mirror were not brown at all. How could I have thought that? I shifted on to my other foot and squinted even more, and — sure enough — the mirror reflected back eyes that were very definitely that insipid baby blue I despised so much.

After that, I tried to replace the cracked mirror with something more wholesome and flattering, but it had been fixed to the wall with some sort of superglue. I tried to pry it off with the corner of a metal ruler, but only succeeded in chipping one of the bevelled edges.

There was nothing for it but to let it stay there, though from then on I looked into it as little as possible. For putting on make-up, I switched to a magnified shaving mirror in the bedroom. And the market yielded a full-length looking-glass for the living-room; it was a scruffy old thing in need of resilvering, but it served its purpose.

They were useful, these new mirrors, and not at all frightening, but even so I didn't gaze into them any more than I had to, especially after dark.

One lunchtime I met up with Dirk and Lemmy and, even though I hadn't been intending to have the bathroom painted just yet, offered them another twenty-five quid to go over the yellow walls with a roller and some white paint. It wasn't a lot of work. They'd be able to knock it off in a day. I was confident they would say yes, so it was something of a shock when they both stared mournfully at me and, in unison, shook their heads.

I couldn't understand it. They needed the money. Dirk and Lemmy always needed the money. 'Why not?' I asked, trying to keep the petulance out of my voice. I was feeling a little let down. If friends weren't willing to help out with the decorating, then what on earth was the point of them?

'Bad vibes, man,' said Dirk.

'Armani campanella viscose dead men ,' said Lemmy.

I frowned at him, trying to catch his drift.

'Lemmy says that nothing on earth will get him to go back into that bathroom,' Dirk translated, though as usual it seemed as though he was intermingling Lemmy's observations with more than a few of his own. 'Just after we started on your living-room, he went for a slash and came out looking like he'd seen a ghost. You should have seen him, Clare. His face was whiter than a tab of Amytal, and I swear his hair was standing on end.'

Lemmy's hair was shoulder-length so this had to have been a sight worth seeing.

'After that,' Dirk said, 'whenever one of us wanted to take a leak, we came down here to the pub.'

I'd noticed they'd been spending more time in the Saddleback Arms than in the room they were supposed to be painting, but since I'd been paying them by results rather than by the hour, there hadn't seemed much point in getting stroppy.

Dirk went to the bar to get more drinks. Forgetting for a minute that I needed him to act as interpreter, I leaned over to Lemmy and asked, 'What exactly was it about the bathroom that you didn't like?'

He looked straight at me and said, very slowly and clearly, 'Some guy cut his throat in front of the mirror.'

I jerked my head back as though he'd spat in my face.

Dirk came back to the table with the drinks. 'All right?' he asked brightly.

I managed to stammer, 'Wha-what did you say?' I could have sworn I hadn't mentioned Robert Jamieson's suicide to either of them.

'Deuteronomy costermonger mussolini,' replied Lemmy. 'Dick van dyke bad vibes.'

'Yeah,' said Dirk, nodding in agreement. 'Really bad vibes , Clare.'

Robert Jamieson might have been dead, but evidently there were people who were not yet apprised of the fact, because they kept on sending him mail.

'You'd think they'd have given up by now,' I remarked to Marsha one morning after we'd met in the hall to sort through the morning delivery. I was expecting a cheque, as well as half-hoping that someone somewhere would have sent me a postcard or invitation to a private view or launch party, but most of the post turned out to be for Marsha or Walter.

'What?' said Marsha, opening the latest of the many envelopes she received from all around the world. The picture on the stamp was of a red and yellow bird with an enormous fish sticking out of its beak. Marsha had friends in exotic places.

'That for Robert? Give it here.'

I handed the envelope over, a little reluctantly. The address was handwritten, and I was curious about the contents. 'What do you do with them?'

'With Robert's letters? I forward them. We're supposed to forward everything that isn't addressed to us.'

'What do you mean, forward them? Where on earth do you forward them to? The cemetery? The posthumous office? Isn't it all a bit Twilight Zone? '

'I send them to the agents,' said Marsha. 'Don't ask me what they do with them. Maybe everything's sent on to the family.'