“My eyes are swollen from a... thing, and I can’t really see very well,” I explain.
“You can’t see?” Ash says, his voice rising with immediate concern.
“Not really. I’m not sure I can catch a bus or walk. Can you come pick me up? I’m at the train station car park. Please, Ash.”
“Of course, of course,” he says.
I’m cowering behind the timetable so no one can see my face. It’s stormy, mercifully, so most people are focused on the sky—holding newspapers, wrestling with umbrellas, darting across the road to waiting cars.
I’ve given up trying to keep dry myself.
“Excuse me?” I hear a very sharp voice behind me.
I spin around and there is a tutting office worker, irritated that she cannot read the timetable.
“Sorry,” I say, stepping back when I catch her gawping at my face.
“Ash, please can you hurry?” I shout into the phone.
“I’m already on my way.”
Five minutes later, Ash pulls up in a white van, leaning across and wrestling the passenger door open so I can climb in.
“Are you okay? Is it your eyes? Can you see?” he asks, his voice hurried, concerned. Perhaps also very slightly amused by the sight of me. Drenched, my chic, shaggy French bob with fringe now definitely lost to the weather, hand across my forehead like a visor so he can’t see the full extent of this latest Project Mara misadventure.
“What happened?” he asks as I shake the rain off my hair, keeping my face turned away from him.
“It’s a catastrophe,” I say.
“What is?” He crunches the gears as he rounds the corner away from the station.
“I’m too embarrassed,” I say, shaking my head slowly.
Ash nods, cutting down a back street, and even takes someone’s private drive to get me home in record time.
“I have to go back to work,” he says, as we pull up at the end of the street.
I can picture Ash, even if I can’t see him that well, in his gray boilersuit, withASHemblazoned across the left breast. A pen sticking out of his pocket. His hair pushed back under a cap with a yellowBONDS PLASTERSlogo across the front. Ash so far seems to be the least judgmental person I’ve ever met, and he is going to find out anyway.
I slowly turn around and look at him.
“Oh shit,” he says, his face completely still.
“Apparently some people can have a reaction,” I say.
“I’mdefinitely having a reaction,” he says.
“Everyone is going to have one,” I reply, nodding. “I should have known when I walked in to find the Faversham Beauty Barn is also a veterinary clinic.”
“It’s in the name,” he says, biting both his lips to stop himself from smiling. I can see he’s now looking at my eyebrows, which, although beautifully shaped, did come out a little too dark. But then his eyes drop back to the real stars of the beauty shit show. The full-bodied Russian flutter eyelash extensions that look something like two tiny brooms affixed to my upper and lower lids. Both of which caused some kind of reaction, making my eyelids swell to the point that it is almost impossible to see.
There is a loud honk behind us, and I gather up the bags and go to head inside. “I have to wait until the swelling goes down, and then they will decide on a remedy.”
“How long do you have to wait?”
“Forty-eight long, humiliating hours. So, until Monday. I was supposed to have my first day out with Samira tomorrow. She was taking me shopping,” I say glumly.
“Say you’re sick,” he says. “Stomach flu.”
