This is Harmony, twenty-eight years old.
The day after the first spot appeared on her chin, another appeared just above her right eye, and a slight bulge emerged around her hairline that promised future explosions.
She tried to get the day off work again, but Graham barked, “Harmony! We can’t cover your mistakes!”
With shaking hands, she lathered her face in pale pink foundation and wore her long hair loose to try and hide the growing, erupting pores around the side of her cheeks and jawline. A few guys in the office looked at her a little longer than was necessary just to acknowledge that she’d walked through the door, and she knew they knew, and knew they probably didn’t, or maybe didn’t care, and was certain they did, and that she’d ruined everything.
The afternoon appointments were a disaster. A family from Lebanon was looking for the perfect penthouse – knew they couldn’t afford to be by the river, but wanted to be no more than five minutes’ walk from the Thames. She took them to several properties which, on paper at least, were phenomenally stylish and within their price range, but the dad just kept on knocking on the walls and exclaiming, “It’s made of paper! Who did the internal layout? This is an inefficient use of space!”
Words – her usual, perfect, gushing words – faltered.
“The kitchen’s modern design actually maximises the efficiency of the . . . ” she tried, and then caught the mother looking at her sideways, and felt herself flicker with shame and fell silent.
“The historic warehouse conversion was once a brewhouse which overlooks the . . . ”
But Dad just huffed and grumbled that he would never have expected such weak plastering in such an expensive place.
No sale.
Three days later, she glanced at her hairbrush and realised there was a felted fistful of hair caught in the twines. Bending to examine her skull in the mirror, she saw a hollow patch of pink emerging at the crown of her scalp, which no amount of ingenious combing or spray could cover.
By now, her face was cracking under the weight of make-up, and when she went to work, the guys were obviously whispering about her.
She ignored the bills on her doormat, the emails marked with red flags and capital letters on her computer, and scrubbed her teeth until they hurt, which couldn’t get rid of the slight yellow tinge spreading out from the tops of her gums.
Two weeks after the beginning of Anno Acne, as Jazzy, the only other woman on the floor dubbed it, Graham called her into the office. “Harmony,” he grunted, feet up across his desk, long body rolled back, hands knitted over his six-pack as if he needed to remind himself of its firm presence beneath the blue shirt. “Let’s talk about your current performance. How do you feel it’s been going?”
When she got back to her flat, the landlady was waiting for her.
“It’s not that I’m unsympathetic,” she explained, “but I’ve got to do what I’ve got to do. Rent is rent, you know.”
Harmony lay awake that night, as her armpits prickled with the strange, unfamiliar itch of wiry dark-brown hair beginning to grow, pushing up like hedgehog spikes through her flesh, and in the morning realised that the itching wasn’t detergent left in her underwear, but vaginal thrush.