Free Drowned Sprat and Other Stories by Stephanie Johnson Page B

some of the make-up, making a little group of the bottles. She told me she was going to take the car on to Ruakaka and park it by thebeach and sleep the night. She said she’d gone there when she was a child many times, that her tribe came from up there. I let her chatter on, but a couple of times I asked her questions like, “Was the door playing up before I came along?” and also “Where is your car parked?”
    ‘It occurred to me that I hadn’t seen it, that it must have been behind the building, concealed to me when I came in, but she wouldn’t answer me. She just went on in her quiet, soothing way, smoothing make-up onto my skin, massaging my crow’s feet, using a dark liner around the edges of my lips before applying the lipstick. It made me feel oddly drowsy and I had to fight the desire, after the eye shadow went on, to leave my eyes closed.
    ‘I kept wondering when Robert would come and look for me, which distracted me from listening to her closely, and it was a while before I realised she had stopped telling me about her boyhood, but was talking about me.
    ‘“It’s hard, losing your femininity,” she was saying. “Women like you get to a stage in their lives when it’s easier to be male than female. Look at you — not a lick of paint when you came in, that horrible suit, those dreary shoes, ghastly haircut. No perfume, no jewellery except for your hand-crafted brooch. You’re a tragic case. D’you still turn it up? You don’t need to answer that, love, not if you don’t want to. I’m presuming you still give Robert a hand if he asks you. It’s important for a man. Use it or lose it, that’s what I tell my older men friends. Some of them require more of a pumping motion than a stroking one, if you get my meaning, though you can do both at the same time if you’re clever. Famous for it, I am.”
    ‘On and on and on she went! I can’t remember all of it; most of it was inutterably vile. I wanted her to stop but I couldn’tmove. There was something in the make-up, maybe — some chemical I was absorbing through the skin that paralysed me. I couldn’t fight her off.’
    Coral is back on the sofa, picking up one of the cushions, laying it across her lap, picking it up again, holding it tight against her. Her cheeks are flushed.
    ‘Then?’
    ‘I let her … I —’ She gulps, stops.
    ‘You let her what?’
    ‘Touch me. You know, she — when she’d finished making me up, she said it was time to play with the old red button and I thought she meant she was going to open … but she meant …’
    Tears are close to the surface, perhaps. I push the box of tissues closer to her.
    ‘It was so intense — I’ve never experienced anything like it. She had me against the wall, she had her hand … her hands … and I … I must have blacked out.’
    ‘Fainted?’
    ‘The next thing I remember was opening my eyes to the sunlight streaming through the open door and Robert standing there with an expression of horror on his face and me realising I was spread-eagled on the floor with my knickers around my ankles. He helped me up — he thought I’d had a stroke or something, a heart attack. I asked him where she’d gone, and he said “Who do you mean, there’s nobody else here.” He’d fallen deeply asleep for over an hour before he’d got out of the car and come looking for me. The door was standing open and there I was. He said I must have taken a turn and passed out while I was sitting on the loo. He put his arm around me and we went outside.’
    Coral is quiet, breathing evenly, her eyes fixed on her glass of water, though she doesn’t move to pick it up.
    ‘And drove off?’
    ‘Yes. But before that, on the way to our car, I saw her again. She was sitting in the front seat of the Cortina. I could only just make her out through the streaming cracks in the windscreen, but she leaned in close to the side window to give me the thumbs up and a lascivious wink as we passed by. I clung to