Angela took her clothes off and hung them on a peg in the changing cubicle. When she was naked she looked at herself in the full-length mirror. The harsh fluorescent lighting overhead was merciless. It showed every discoloration of skin, every pucker of dimpled flesh.
“How can he love me?” she thought.
Then she thought, “How can they love me?”
She turned her back on her own reflection and reached for the red satin outsized underwear she’d chosen with the help of an assistant. She disentangled the bra, the French knickers and the camisole from their fiddly little hangers. She was pleasantly surprised to find that they fitted perfectly. Still with her back turned to the mirror she took a red lipstick out of her bag and drew a cupid’s bow on her lips. Then she brushed her hair, and only then, when she was looking her best, did she allow herself to turn around and look at her reflection. “Yes,” she said to herself.
She couldn’t bear to re-dress in the sensible cotton underwear she’d been wearing when she entered the shop. She called the shop assistant guarding the entrance to the changing rooms, and gave her the satin things and cash which she’d drawn without Gregory’s permission from their joint account earlier. While she waited for the girl to return she tried to look at her naked reflection with more kindly eyes. Centuries earlier her voluptuousness would have been highly desirable she reasoned: paintings of women like her were admired in art galleries all over the world. The girl came back with her things and her receipt. As she re-dressed in her new underwear she thought about Christopher. When she met him in the café at lunchtime today she would tell him what she was wearing under her dowdy blue uniform.
Red used to be his favourite colour.
On the way back to work she was conscious of the satin gliding next to her skin. She looked into the faces of the middle-aged men and women she passed on the pavement and wondered if they had somebody to love them. She wished fervently that somebody would love Gregory one day, and that he would reciprocate this person’s love. She dawdled past shop windows. Everything she saw she related to Christopher. She mentally refurnished his house from the Habitat window. She fantasised about buying a pair of brogues for him in Lilley and Skinner. In her imagination she fastened a Rolex watch costing £3,000 around his wrist. She understood why people in American musical films danced down Fifth Avenue singing about their love.
There was a sullen atmosphere in the agency when she got back. She’d been out longer than she’d said, and the girls behind the counter looked beleaguered as they faced the long queues in front of them. She tried to appease them by insisting that they each take a longer tea break than usual, but when Angela left for her lunch hour, the cold atmosphere between them all remained.
Her route from the travel agency to Veronica’s Cafe led her past Woolworths. She walked automatically through the doors and approached the Pick ‘N’ Mix before remembering that she was wearing red satin underwear and would probably be having sexual intercourse with one man in the evening and perhaps another man at night. The thought made her sick with excitement and fear, and she turned her back on the cornucopian sweet counters and left the shop.