Anne Billson - Suckers

The black didn't make her look sallow, as she'd always feared, but she seemed paler than usual, powdery white, and the contrast with her skin made her mouth appear luscious and red. At first I thought it was lipstick. Then she licked her lips, and I saw she'd had her teeth done, but the dentist had made a hash of it; some of them were too sharp. There was a small red bead clinging to her chin, and even from where I was standing I could see minute flecks of white powder suspended on the curved surface. I stared very hard, but I had a feeling I was concentrating on all the wrong things.

'Dora,' she said. 'How nice.'

She rose and came towards me. She'd always been tall — five nine, bumped up to five ten or eleven for professional purposes — but I'd never felt her towering over me quite as much as she did now. Her feet were touching the ground, but she wasn't walking so much as gliding , I couldn't actually see her taking the steps, no matter how hard I stared. She was getting nearer, and I realized I'd been standing there for ages, staring, when I should have been doing something else, such as making a run for the front door, or shutting myself in the bathroom. But I was no longer sure where the bathroom was. I'd been thinking it was right behind me, but somehow I must have been moving away from it without I realizing because now I was standing right in the middle of the living-room floor, staring into the big mirror on the opposite wall. I couldn't see Lulu there, but I could see myself. At least I assumed that's who it was, because it didn't look like me at all; this unfamiliar-looking person had the expression of a rabbit gazing into the headlights of an oncoming truck.

I might have stared for ever if the ancient springs of the sofa hadn't creaked. I tore my gaze away from the mirror and saw Duncan was still where she'd left him. I said his name once or twice, but my voice was very tiny and there was no reply. He was sitting in an unnaturally stiff position, clutching his brandy glass. The collar and most of the upper part of his shirt were a deep red. Tie-dyed, I thought. It crossed my mind that he might be dead.

I thought, Oh fuck .

It wasn't fair. I wanted to wind the tape back and start again. I'd always been so careful and now here I was, half-naked and defenceless, no garlic, no crucifix, no nothing. Lulu opened and closed her mouth like a guppy — it should have been comical, but it wasn't. She was making a strange whistling noise through her teeth. She hadn't yet grown accustomed to them, and the thought filled me with disproportionate relief, as though it made any difference from where I was standing. Then she said, in a conversational tone, 'Honestly, Dora. You can't leave him alone for one minute, can you?'

'I was just having a bath,' I said with an embarrassed giggle. 'My Ascot broke.' Even to me it sounded pathetic.

She threw back her head and laughed too, but throatily, not like her normal little-girl giggling. Now she was closer, she didn't look quite so good. The make-up was thick, but not thick enough to conceal the state of her skin, which was dry and flaky, dull and lifeless. She hadn't been taking those early nights, after all.

'And you always pretended to be my friend ,' she was saying. 'I was always so nice to you. And now here you are, trying to steal him away as soon as my back is turned. I always knew there was another woman. I just didn't realize it was you, Dora.'

'But it wasn't me ,' I murmured, trying to remember what I'd done with my crucifixes. There was garlic in the kitchen, but Lulu was standing between me and the kitchen door. There was garlic in the pocket of my jacket, but that was somewhere on the bathroom floor. At least, I hoped it was somewhere on the bathroom floor. I tried to remember whether the jacket had been part of the bundle of clothes which Duncan had shoved into my arms, or whether I'd left it hanging in the hall.

'…and you're wearing my bathrobe ,' she said in an outraged tone. 'You think you can waltz right in and steal my boyfriend and wear my bathrobe . But you can't. You look terrible in pink, Dora. It doesn't suit you at all. You should wear black, like everyone else.'

All this time I was edging backwards, and as soon as I found I'd backed into the bathroom doorway, I scuttled inside and slammed the door, shooting the bolt across, but even as I shot it I saw how flimsy a bolt it was. The door shuddered as something crashed against the other side — it sounded much too heavy to be Lulu — and there was a loud splintering as the bolt casing began to part company with the frame. I scrabbled around amongst the clothes on the floor, trying to find garlic, crucifixes, anything. I finally found my jacket, but the only things in the pockets were an old receipt and a couple of mangy paper tissues.

There was a second juddering blow, and the bolt casing flew across the room, and the door was hurled open with so much force it swung free from one of its hinges. 'Look what you made me do,' said Lulu.

I started to gabble. 'We saw your picture in the paper. You looked great.' I thought if I could keep her talking, perhaps she wouldn't get a chance to do anything else with that big red mouth of hers. 'How do you manage to put your make-up on without a mirror?'

'I don't need mirrors any more.' She raised one of her hands and ran it through her hair in a parody of one of her favourite model-girl gestures. 'Mirrors and I have parted company. I'm beyond the world of mirrors now.'

'But you don't eat meat,' I said hopefully.

She smiled and for the first time I had an unrestricted view of her brand-new teeth, which were pearly white and ferocious looking. 'Bugger that vegetarian lark,' she said. 'This is the first time they've let me out on my own, and I'm starving .'

'What about Duncan? You came for him , not me. You could finish him off, and let me go.'

She shook her head. 'You don't know anything. Duncan's special. They said I could come here, as a present. I wasn't supposed to kiss him, not yet, but I was so pleased to see him I got carried away.'

'What was a present? They said? Who said? Violet?'

'Violet? No, no, I'm talking about Rose. She said Duncan would know exactly what to do. Because he's done it before.'

'Done what? ' Lulu's teeth and dietary habits may have changed, but she was as stupid as ever. 'But Rose is Violet, you fool. And if she sent you, she had a reason. I know what I'm talking about, Lu. See this?' I held up my left hand and waggled what remained of my little finger at her. It was hardly a threatening gesture. 'I've been here before.'

A faintly perplexed look skittered across her face, as though an ancient race memory had stirred somewhere in her head, but then it vanished and she was stretching out towards me. 'I'm so tired of talking,' she sighed. 'And I'm so bloody hungry. Now are you going to come to me or do I have to come and get you?'

'Oh hell,' I said. 'Come and get me.'

She stopped being Lulu and started being something else.

She tried to overwhelm me with her eyes, but she had a few hundred years to go before she mastered that technique, and I was wise to it. I concentrated on the teeth and the soft red flesh of her lips. I was groping around the basin, trying to find something — anything — to use as a weapon, but Duncan's electric razor wasn't much use, nor was his aftershave. I threw a can of hairspray and it bounced uselessly off her arm. Lulu feinted playfully, and I jumped, and my elbow sent a clutch of toiletries crashing to the floor. The plastic bottles bounced and rolled, a couple of glass ones smashed. The air was suddenly fragrant with vetivert, and aquamarine jelly oozed out over the shiny white tiles. She advanced purposefully through the wreckage, heels making a crunching, squelching sound, and carefully stepped from the shiny white tiles on to the fluffy white bathmat. As she did so I ducked and grabbed the edge of the mat and tugged it up as hard as I could.