Chapter 23: Just a GirlCttering heels pursued me into the women’s washroom, where I locked myself into a stall and sank exhausted onto the toilet. Skirt up, panties down; cautious release of cod balls; a deep sigh of relief. Job done, I made the decision to leave my bits free, trusting secrecy to the tightness of the underwear and the heaviness of the skirt. With some reluce I pulled everything bato pce, the unfortable tightness of skirt and stogs reminding me of what y ahead.

  The women’s washroom oozed gentle ess, suffused with gentle lighting from sunken recesses. Soft musikled in the background and a faint st of rosewood drifted on the air. The mirrors were brightly lit and I leaned close and stared at my refle over the ter, as I had so often these past few months. An attractive young woman stared back, though truth be told, the strain of the past few hours was beginning to show, in her makeup, around her eyes. She smiled tentatively. Her smile widened into a grin, into a grimace; a sudden, mad impulse to ugh, to scream, to smash the mirror and howl shuddered through me with an iy that left me panting.

  Deep breath. Instead, I reached for makeup. Dabbily, I started ing away the afternoon’s sweat with blotting paper. Leaning in close to the mirrlittering emerald stared babsp; “Under all that makeup, there’s still something of the old you in the eye,” she’d said, and if so, memory-me, that old-I, watched as I fumbled for a little pot of cream blush.

  And I ’t believe this is happening, dotting and blending spots of colour into my cheeks, that Julia’s rese runs so deeply, what the fuck is wrong with that woman? Yeah, sure, I’d ehing poorly. And she was right: dumpihe way I did was cowardly, weak, wrong; unmanly. Wrong, but for fuck’s sake, it’s hardly like she was the only one who suffered.

  A year on from her death, the memory of Sephy was still too fierce, the guilt and the pain and the loss, all twisted and mixed in with the sense of betrayal ament and fury at the way I’d been dumped oreets for a year, a whole goddamn year lost to hard pavement, indifferent cruelty, and callous anonymity that nearly annihited me. Even now, with a determinedly steadied hand, smoothing out the fine lines where cealer had gathered uhe eyes, I struggled to suppress the residual rage that remaiwo decades ter.

  I never promised her anything! We were together for what, a few months? Three fug month. I old her I loved her. I never asked her to move in with me or offered to marry her. We went out to nice restaurants, I paid for food and drink, and we fucked. It was fun. For a couple of months!—and then it was over. It was over and she must realise that, for all the time and energy she’d poured into practig furious, empty speeches over the years—that I hadn’t thought of her at all.

  Eyes were tricky: a touch of shadow in the crease t some colour bad I left it at that. What, exactly, had she fallen in love with, anyways? What, exactly, had I offered her then that was so fug special? A deeply damaged soul in need of repair? An up-and-ing corporate stud? Had she seen potential, a gemstone in the rough in want of polishing before mounting, dispying, possessing?

  I suppressed a ugh. No. Pig up some powder, quickly and lightly setting my face, I k was so much simpler that that. Julia, twenty-three years old Julia: fresh and young in her first real job out of uy; i and bright, ambitious and hungry; but also… just a girl.

  Just a fug girl, truly on her own for the first time in her life. And that girl of fourteen years ago had succumbed to the same primitive, instinctive hat filled so many women and for which they secretly yearo lose themselves wholly to a man, a real man, to his dominand strength, fidend will. I’d given her all that, and more.

  And maybe Julia looked ba that with regret, with anger and spite; maybe she hated me, or her younger self, or both; but I’d beehing she wanted back then. And I’d bet what little pride I had remaining that she still loved me, still yearned for me, because at some level she probably could not admit to she still craved to give herself over, utterly and pletely, to someone again. To someone like me.

  A touch of lipstick, a darker shade than before, crimson that bordered on purple like a fresh bruise, and the job was done. I stared at my refle and an attractive young woman stared back, her face fixed, fideurned. She posed in the mirror, swept her long hair back, made a little kissy fad grinned.

  Fug hell. Time t this performao an end.

  Author's Notes

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