Sixteen weeks on from the final surgery and still it surprised her to see a different face staring back from the mirror. A finer, prettier face, the one Corinne had wanted ever since she was little. She’d always known it was there, hiding under the skin, waiting to be brought out with some clever nicks of the knife and pricks of the needle: the real her.
The surgeon – that handsome boy with his floppy hair and costume drama accent – had warned her how disorientating the experience could be, how the face might not feel like her own for weeks or months, but even through the initial bruising and swelling she’d recognised this new and stunning woman.
She smiled, feeling silly, told herself not to be so bloody vain.
The face might be perfect now but the body needed its maintenance the same as it always had.
Corinne zipped up her top and, holding the buds from her iPod in place, pulled on a hot-pink beanie, tugged it down over her ears. She set the music playing as she left the house, Beyoncé hauling her out into the dawn light and the spring chill that made her nose sting.
Beauty is pain – isn’t that what they said?
It was worth it, though. Every needle, every drawn-out recovery period, every one of these early-morning miles while Sam slept on in their bed, keeping it warm for when she got back home, sweating and buzzing, ready to slip between the sheets and work out the endorphins and adrenalin arousal that had to be satisfied before she could shower.
The thought almost turned her around but that heat was forty minutes away yet. Now all she felt was her cold muscles straining as she hit the main road and the air frost biting the skin across her cheekbones, sharp enough to raise tears in her eyes.
God, what she wouldn’t give for some sun on her bones.
Feet pounding the path, breaths deep and even, icy into her lungs, she pictured a white sand beach and endless blue sea, her tan skin glistening and hot in a tiny bikini, eyes following her as she moved. Lust from the men, envy from the women.
That wasn’t vanity.
People did notice her. Always had, but more so now.
Forty-something women were invisible – didn’t they say that too? What did they know? Those women she saw everywhere who hit forty-five and gave up, embraced the greige, no time for make-up, some low-maintenance haircut that murmured, oh, don’t mind me. If they were invisible they only had themselves to blame.
She sensed the attention as she ran along Oundle Road, commuter traffic already beginning to flow into the city centre, a prickle across her backside as they checked her out.
Ten minutes, right on the dot, the song changed, and she broke through the first wall of resistance, a fresh flood of energy singing in her veins.
She hummed along, kept pumping onwards, nodded good morning to an old guy with an Alsatian who she’d seen every day for the fifteen years she’d lived here. Nice old guy. His second dog and this one would outlive him, she guessed.
Without thinking she glanced at her former home, its reassuring bulk sitting behind high black metal gates which were closed to her now.
It tugged at her, the sight of the light on in her daughter’s bedroom window. Knowing Lily was in there getting ready for school, teasing her hair into a fat bun on top of her head, painting the perfect cat-flick of eyeliner Corinne had practised with her … it was like a punch to the heart.
It would be easy to scale the gates and march up to the front door, kick it down if she had to do that to see her girl.
Don’t give them the ammunition, she thought, hearing Sam’s voice. Just stay calm, they can’t drag this out forever.
All Corinne could do was call Lily during school hours and hope she kept answering her mobile. So far she had, despite the fact that they hadn’t seen each other for almost two months, and she still seemed happy enough to talk, the same girl she always was, bright and chatty, even though Corinne’s last visit had ended in a blazing row.
Corinne would be the first to admit she’d started it. That didn’t mean she was wrong though.
She ran on, feet slamming down hard in her barefoot trainers, the impact shaking her spine as she turned into Ferry Meadows.
Ahead of her the parkland was wreathed in low mist, bare trees resolving through it. The acres of dull green were spiked with the brightly coloured coats of other early risers, following the narrow pathways snaking around the lakes. Runners and dog walkers. The usual crowd.
Her route took her down to the lock and over the River Nene, which was sitting high after the recent rain, churned up and muddy-looking, the smell of it catching in her nostrils as she crossed the metal bridge, damp and dirty and brown. They’d pulled a man out of there last month. Some drunk who’d fallen in as he relieved himself. Drowned with his dick out.
Such a stupid way to go. The same way her father died. The same river. Except he’d been further upstream, where the current was stronger. It took them months to find his body, snagged in the branches of a long-fallen tree, out towards the Wash. The coroner ruled it accidental but with the cancer eating him alive Corinne wondered if he hadn’t decided to end it. A bellyful of whisky. A plunge into the water.
It was a kinder end than the old bastard deserved.
A pair of spaniels were playing on the path in front of her and she weaved around them, smiling at their owner, who mouthed an apology.
The path led her into shadow, narrowing to barely a body’s width, tangled branches in need of trimming, hanging low. She ran on with a protective arm raised. Skirted piles of dog shit and a broken bottle. She winced as a piece of glass stuck in the thin sole of her trainer. Not sharp enough to cut but at every step it poked at her heel. After a few metres she stopped to dig it out, bracing her hand against the trunk of a big, old oak tree.
Bloody kids, using this place like a beer garden. No thought for anyone else, no respect for nature.
Corinne swore, trying to pick out the chunk of glass, her gloved fingers unable to gain a grip on it. It was in too deep, needed a point to lever it from the moulded sole.
Her pulse thudded in her ears, beating faster than the music coming from the buds.
Straightening away from the tree she looked at the ground around her feet, hoping to find something she could use to prise the glass out, but there were only twigs and dead leaves and small stones.
She was pulling her right glove off when a body crashed into her back.
Her hands shot out but not fast enough to save her face. She felt her nose breaking, her mouth bursting open, heard the crack of her fine new bones fracturing. Then the ground was moving, as he dragged her off the path and into the trees, her fingers desperately scrabbling through damp earth.
He pulled out her earphones and she tried to push herself up, ignore the pain, the blood in her mouth, the tears in her eyes which she couldn’t blink away. She planted her palms firmly in the mud and shoved away from it, but he had her pinned down, the full weight of him pressing on her spine. If she pushed any harder it might snap.
Then she was choking.
The music kept playing, a high voice singing tinnily as she gasped and clawed at the thin wire cutting into her throat, spots popping in front of her eyes, and she thought of Sam and Lily and her old face and her new face and the spots kept popping, red and black and getting bigger and overlapping, a rush like the blood in her ears, everything pressing in on her, the weight of the man crushing her, and it wasn’t meant to be like this. She was meant to have a new life, be a new woman, the one she always wanted to be.
She saw her father, dripping wet and smiling, waiting for her in a blaze of white light. Heard his voice, that hateful, bitter voice of his, close to her ear, ‘You asked for this.’