“She’s never gonna believe me,” I reply. “Ugh. We were just starting to be friends.”
The car behind him honks again, and Ash puts his arm outside the window and waves the driver on.
“Go. Go. I’m going to lie on the sofa with some frozen peas on my face,” I say. “Thank you for picking me up and trying very hard not to laugh at me.”
“Are you going to be able to see the front door?”
“I just have to tilt my head this way,” I reply, hitting my head on the car doorframe as I do.
“Careful!” he yelps.
“I’ll be fine.Fine.Just fine.”
I close the door of the van and haul myself down Sandhill Way toward the house. It takes a minute to line the key up in the lock, and then I almost trip over a backpack on the floor. I make my way to the bathroom to inspect the view.
It’s bad. Even with my sight line so tightly obscured, there is no missing this mess. My eyes look like the worst three-day bender you could imagine. They are swollen and red both on the upper and the lower lids. Like a bee has stung both, if you imagine the bee is an entire swarm of bees or maybe even a family of Japanese hornets.
I am almost too shocked to cry. Plus I’m not sure my tear ducts still work.
I pull my phone out of my back pocket and I call Charlie, who for the first time this year answers on the first ring.
“Charlie?”
“Hi, Mara! I thought you were Alex with the shopping list. I’m just at Tesco; what’s going on?”
“I...” I am not sure how to tell her, I realize. Just a few daysago I had laid out all the amazing things I was going to do, and now here I am, a disaster at the first turn.
“Have you ever had Botox or anything?” I try wearily. “Are you against it? I can’t remember. Is Botox feminist? I think you said it was, but I’m not sure if it is anymore.”
“Botox? Hang on! Excuse me!” Charlie starts a conversation in the background. “Do you have a shoulder of lamb? No? What about chops? Oh great, can I have four, please? Fuck’s sake, I hate this shit. No, sorry, I was speaking to my friend about something else. Mara?” she whispers into the phone. “I just offended the lady at the meat counter.”
I look back into the mirror and marvel at the size of my swollen eyes again. I look like a lamb chop.
“It’s okay,” I say, prodding the skin around my eyes.
“So, what about Botox? I’ve not had it. Not yet anyway. You could call my friend Jenna. She’s been doing it since she was twenty-three, although sheclaimsit was to help with migraines, but whatever.” Charlie laughs at this. “Wait. Didyouget Botox?”
There is a pause, where I know I should say something, but suddenly I’m not sure I can handle telling Charlie.
“Did you get Botox, Mara?”
“Um. No. The real issue here is what I did to my eyes.”
“Oh my God, what’s happened?” she says, and I can hear her trolley stop rolling, her voice pitching down to deep concern. I have all her attention.
“I decided to get eyelash extensions. Nothing major, just a little subtle extra pop, as they say. A sort of Zooey Deschanel inNew Girlthing. And, well. I’ve had a major reaction. I look like I’ve got a bad case of pinkeye. Or I’m really stoned. And I’ve been beaten up. A combination of all three?”
“So, it went wrong?” Charlie says, rather too excitedly.
“Yes,” I say flatly.
“Oh, Mara.” She is proper laughing now. Maybe I need to find this funny. Can I possibly find this funny? I look at my reflection in the mirror and imagine Joe’s face when he walks into the Star and Anchor and sees me looking like this.
“Mara, you’ve gone all quiet—it will all beokay. They’ll go down after a bit, I’m sure.”
“Do you think so? They look like they’re getting worse.” I prod the top lid and wince. “I’ll call the doctor again in a bit.”
“You’ll be fine. I promise you’ll be laughing about it in a few days.”
