She removes her gloves temporarily, to look at the picture of Aimee as a child she keeps on the little side table next to the telephone. The frame is covered in a thin layer of dust, the wood a little chipped and scratched in places. The photo inside the frame is old now, and a little faded. Maggie shakes her head, unaware that she is doing so, and narrows her eyes at the smiling face of the child in the picture. After all I did for you, she thinks, and tuts. Maggie believes that she is responsible for Aimee’s success; she helped raise her as a child after all, taught her things, gave her opportunities that Maggie herself never had. And what did the child ever do for her in return? Nothing, that’s what. Doesn’t even acknowledge her existence.
She holds the frame right up to her face, as though she might kiss the glass. Then she breathes on it and wipes the dust and grime with the sleeve of her hoodie, to get a clearer view of the face beneath the dirt. Aimee was only five or six when the photo was taken. She was a good girl back then. She did what she was told.
Not like now.
Maggie prefers to remember Aimee as the child she used to be, rather than the woman she grew up into; a woman who acts as though Maggie doesn’t exist. She spent years wondering what happened to the sweet little Aimee in this photo, but she knows the truth about that now, too, no matter how badly it still hurts. Sweet little Aimee found a new home for herself with a series of foster parents and started acting. She was so good at pretending to be someone she wasn’t as a child, she went and made a career of it—a lifetime of lying to everyone, including herself. But Maggie knows the truth. Maggie knows who Aimee really is. Perhaps that’s why Aimee acts as though Maggie is dead.
Maggie reads all the online articles about Aimee, checking Twitter and Facebook and Instagram for updates at least once an hour. She buys all the newspapers and cuts out all the reviews, then saves them in her giant red album of Aimee. She’s read every single interview, and despite searching for some scrap of gratitude or recognition, Aimee has never, ever, mentioned her. Not once.
Maggie looks down at her ugly hands again and sees that she is doing that thing that she does from time to time. She can’t remember when she started doing it, but wishes she could stop. She holds the three smallest fingers of her left hand inside her right one and closes her eyes; it’s easier to pretend she’s still holding the little girl’s hand when her eyes are closed. Aimee used to like holding Maggie’s hand, but then she went and grew up into someone who didn’t look or sound like Aimee at all. The children we raise are supposed to love us, not leave us behind.
Maggie keeps that picture of Aimee by the telephone because she knows that the girl will call her up one day, she just knows it. Her eyes move from the smiling child in the picture back to the sight of her own ungloved hands holding the frame. She is equally disgusted by what she sees and puts her white cotton gloves back on.
You can do all sorts of things to your face and your body to make them look younger and more beautiful. A variety of potions and lotions for the amateurs, a wide range of procedures and operations for the more dedicated followers of self-preservation. But the hands are always a giveaway. She stands and stretches, her back aching from leaning over today’s newspapers for too long.
Maggie walks around the tiny front room, negotiating a path around the clutter. Some of it her own, most of it inherited from people who didn’t need whatever they had wherever they were going. She runs a house-clearance company now, a rather successful one too. She often has to turn down work lately; she can only do so much on her own, and she likes working alone; she learned a long time ago that other people can’t be trusted. Clearing out the homes of dead people is hard work, not like acting, but it does have its rewards.
She stops pacing to examine her reflection. The mirror on the wall is nice, with a good, solid frame. She recovered it from an old lady’s house in Chiswick last week. Maggie only takes things she knows won’t be missed. She is mostly pleased by what she sees when she looks in the glass. Mostly. She’s worked hard on this face and body, really hard. She’s had some help: a nose job, liposuction, eye-bag removal, Botox, fillers. Her face looks very different from how it used to, but it still isn’t quite right.
She pulls her long black curly hair across it like a curtain, then flicks it back over her shoulder before lowering her gaze, unbuttoning her shirt a little. Her chest is still her worst feature, the sight of it inflicting daily damage on her self-confidence, but the doctor in Harley Street is insisting on yet another meeting before going ahead with the procedure. She closes her eyes, touching her chest with her fingertips, imagining what her body will feel like when everything has been done.
Technically she is middle-aged now, and it’s about time she had what she wanted in life, everything she has worked so hard for. She leans closer to the mirror, sees a black hair on her chin, and reaches for a pair of tweezers on the mantelpiece—there are several pairs all over her home. Maggie only sits down to relax on the sofa again when the face she has tried so hard to perfect is hair-free.
She refreshes her laptop and smiles at the new tweets she reads about Aimee, taking screen grabs of each one. Then she checks her emails, but there is nothing new. Maggie has tried dating websites in the past, but true love is a luxury that she has never quite been able to afford. And she hasn’t spent all these years, working hard on this body, just to share it with some loser. She glares at the letter on the mantelpiece from the Harley Street doctor because she often thinks that her current situation—being alone—is his fault.
Maggie returns her attention to today’s newspapers, slipping her glasses up onto her nose and licking her finger before turning the pages. She sips her lukewarm green tea with a series of loud slurps. She hates the flavor, but the proven antiaging and antioxidant benefits far outweigh any displeasure experienced by her taste buds. She reminds herself as she gulps it down that green tea can help delay several signs of skin aging, such as sagging skin, sun damage, age spots, fine lines, and wrinkles. Maggie thinks the idea that what is on the inside of a person counts the most, is nothing more than a myth invented by ugly people.
Her gloved hands hover in midair when her eyes find what they have been looking for, forming a bird-shaped shadow on the wall. A picture of Aimee Sinclair is staring right back at her from the newspaper: Aimee the actress, all grown-up, with a big smile stretched across her stupid, lying face. It must be an old picture; she’s quite certain that Aimee isn’t smiling anymore.
Maggie’s eyes stick to the words written in the headline, as if she’s fallen under a spell. She removes her glasses and wipes them on her hoodie, ignoring the stains from last night’s spilled baked beans on toast. Then she rests them back on her nose to get a better look. She stares at the words as though she were in a trance, translating them into something that makes her smile so hard it hurts.
AIMEE SINCLAIR ARRESTED FOR HUSBAND’S MURDER
Maggie reads the story three times. Slowly. Some meals for the mind are too delicious to rush. She picks up her left-handed scissors and takes her time cutting out the article, careful not to tear the thin paper. Then she lifts the heavy photo album from its place on the coffee table, and turns to one of the few empty pages at the back. She peels away the transparent sleeve and sticks the new Aimee Sinclair clipping right in the middle of the page.