Free The Lie by Petra Hammesfahr Page A

about the price for a single lesson. But it was much too high, and since it wasn’t the Porsche she was going to be driving, she decided she’d manage. At the beauty parlour she just bought the required perfume and body cream. Together they cost over a hundred euros, even though she only took the smallest bottle. Everything else she bought cheaply in the supermarket.
    Then she spent two hours in front of the mirror trying things out. She was a bit out of practice. At her first attempt the rouge was too dark, at the second she jabbed her eye with the mascara brush, but at the third the overall result was reasonably acceptable. She gradually started to enjoy it; it took her back to the time before Dieter and the first months after her divorce. Then it would have been unthinkable to turn up at the bank without make-up. After she’d washed it all off and redone it twenty times, it was almost perfect.
    She spent the evening removing the unwanted hair. Her armpits and pubic area were unproblematic. Her eyebrows caused her to shed a few tears and the epilator proved to be a real instrument of torture. One hour later her legs looked as if they’d got the measles. By Wednesday morning, however, all the lumps and red blotches had disappeared.
    She went to the jeweller. She was amazed how quickly and painlessly holes could be pierced in one’s body and admired the medical studs, which she had to wear for a while. After that she stretched out on a sunbed. She had a slight attack of claustrophobia but the radiation was no problem.
    And on Thursday she was a great hit at Nadia’s hairdresser’s with the amusing story of a man who managed to evade paying most of his taxes and made provision for his old age by sending it abroad by courier. Nadia had advised her to tell them about Herr Schrag and Röhrler so as not to let the hairdresser ask too many questions; she might arouse suspicion if her answers were wrong.

    Nadia hadn’t seemed concerned about the - to her ears - different sound of their voices. The bronchitis she was just getting over explained that. It also explained why she didn’t use the ashtray they provided. No one seemed to harbour any doubts about her identity - and she’d only spent ten minutes on make-up beforehand. She was treated deferentially, pampered with coffee and biscuits, and addressed as Frau Trenkler every two minutes.
    True, the hairdresser was a little annoyed at the awful state of her hair, but she just told him what Nadia had drummed into her: on holiday, forgetting to protect it from the blazing sun, then making the mistake of entrusting it to a foreign hairdresser. This mollified the hairdresser, at the same time providing an explanation for her efforts with the scissors.
    While she was being manicured - which Nadia also considered essential, at least for the beginning - she discovered when Nadia had last been to the salon. It was in July, just one day before their encounter by the lift in Gerler House. Nadia had cancelled her appointment for the following week because of the holiday that she had used to explain the state of her hair.
    In her mind’s eye she could see the line in Nadia’s first letter: “Perhaps I can do something to change that.” And in the mirror she saw the woman who had come out of the lift towards her. A slightly suntanned face with the touch of make-up, which hadn’t suffered under the hands of the hairdresser. The silvery studs glittered, her hair was the right shade and not one strand out of place. All at once her heart missed a beat, as if it had just dropped into a hole. The unpleasant sensation made her aware that it might work. The outward transformation at least was complete.
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    Nadia was waiting in her own car, a burgundy convertible, when her double entered the multi-storey car park shortly after five on Friday. Susanne got in and immediately noticed the holiday snap of the blond man on the dashboard. It gave