‘Don’t you think that there might be another explanation?’ His voice is gentle.
She thinks hard, he’s trying to tell her something. He’s being gentle about it and then suddenly – bam – it’s all so clear. What an idiot she’s been! She throws her head back and laughs.
‘Of course! Why didn’t I think of it before? It’s so obvious! It’s not my eyes that are the problem at all.’
He seems relieved that she’s not going to fall to pieces on his chair, in his office. He sits up and smiles.
She claps her hands gleefully and stands. ‘Thank you so much for your time, Harry, you’ve been a fantastic help.’
He stands too, awkwardly. ‘Have I? I’m glad. You know, I won’t charge for this session.’
‘Oh, don’t be silly,’ she reaches for her purse. ‘I’ve taken plenty of money from you – or your family at least – over the years, and both of us know I wasn’t worth it.’ She laughs, so happy to have this resolved. So pleased it’s not an eye problem.
He takes the money awkwardly. She waves away the receipt.
‘So … what are you going to do, may I ask?’
‘Well, if it’s not my eyes, Harry, what else could it be?’ she says. ‘I’m going to get the mirror fixed of course!’
The mirror man, Laurence, stands before the full-length mirror in her bedroom, scratching his head.
‘You want me to do what?’
‘Fix it, please.’
Silence.
‘That is what you do, isn’t it? According to the website, you’re an artisan glass and mirror company.’
‘Well yes, I mainly design custom pieces. But we also do mirror and glass installations and replacements, repair work to the frames, chips in the glass, that kind of thing.’
‘Perfect.’
He still looks confused. He’d taken a quick sweeping look at her bedroom as he entered, she’s not sure if he noticed that only one person sleeps here, just her, no husband, not any more. Apparently they’re almost through the worst of it; her separated friends tell her the light is at the end of the tunnel. She certainly hopes so, she’s nearing the end of her tether and thinking her eyes are a problem isn’t helping things.
‘What’s the problem?’ she asks.
‘The problem is, I don’t see a problem with this mirror.’
She laughs. ‘Do I pay for that diagnosis?’
He smiles. He has dimples. She suddenly wants to fix her hair. She wishes she’d paid more attention to her appearance before he arrived.
‘Well there is a problem, trust me. Can you replace the glass? I’d like to keep the frame. It was my mother’s.’ She smiles, a bigger than she’d intended; his smile is contagious. She chews the inside of her cheek to stop herself, but it doesn’t work. His just grows. His eyes start to wander over her, goosebumps rise on her skin.
‘Is it cracked?’ He drags his gaze away from her and studies the mirror, running his hands over the finish. She can’t stop watching him.
‘No. It’s not. But it’s broken.’
‘How is it broken?’ He frowns, scratching his head again.
And so she tells him how she went to the optician but there seems to be no problem with her eyes; so the logical conclusion both she and the optician came to was that the mirror must be broken.
He stares at her, curious; but gently so, not in a judgemental way.
‘Maybe you’ve heard of this problem before?’ she asks.
He goes to say something, then stops himself. ‘Sure,’ he says. ‘It’s a common problem.’
‘Oh good,’ she says, relieved. ‘If it wasn’t the mirror, I wasn’t sure who to go to next.’
‘Is this the only mirror you use?’ he asks.
‘Um …’ It seems a strange sort of question. She’s never given it any thought before. ‘Yes. Yes, it is.’ She has been avoiding mirrors for a while. Since everything in her life went to shit, she couldn’t be bothered to look at herself. It was only when she started looking again that she noticed the problem.
He nods. Quick look around her bedroom again. Perhaps he sees now that only one person sleeps in it. Is it that obvious? She wants it to be obvious.
‘I’ll have to take it with me, back to the studio. I’ll have to take out this pane, cut one that will fit just right. And I could freshen up the frame for you too, bring life back to it.’
She’s hesitant to let it go.
‘I’ll keep it safe, don’t worry. I know it’s important to you.’
The woman sees her mother posing in front of it. Pictures herself as a little girl, sitting on the floor beside her, watching her get ready to go out, wishing she could go with her too, thinking her mother is some exotic creature that she will never resemble. She smells her mother’s perfume, the one she saves for her special nights out.
Twirl, Mummy.
And she would. She always did. Swirling pleats. Billowing skirts. Revealing side splits.
She glances in the mirror again. She doesn’t see the little girl. She wasn’t expecting to see her, was she? She sees a version of herself that she doesn’t like. Older. She looks away. She’s not herself. Nope. This mirror has to go.
‘I could use another mirror, I suppose …’
‘No, don’t do that,’ he says. ‘This is the one you want.’ He rubs the frame lovingly, delicately. ‘I’ll make this perfect for you.’
She stifles a school-girlish giggle. ‘Thank you.’
And before she closes the front door behind him he says, ‘Promise me you won’t look in any other mirrors until this one is ready?’
‘I promise,’ she nods. When she closes the door her heart is pounding.
He rings the next day to tell her that he’d like her to come to his studio to pick out a piece of glass. She wonders if it is necessary. She wonders if he is just trying to see her again, hoping that’s the case.
‘Aren’t they all the same?’ she asks.
‘The same?’ he cries in mock outrage. ‘We have plane mirrors, spherical mirrors, two-way and one-way mirrors. I don’t want to decide until I see what it is you like.’
She pulls up to his business address in her car the following day. She has spent more time on her appearance. She used the bathroom mirror, it seemed a little off too but certainly closer to the version of herself that she was used to, as she applied make-up, feeling giddy, and also like an idiot for getting ahead of herself.
She expected a dirty warehouse or a retail outlet, somewhere cold with hard surfaces, soulless, but it’s not what she finds. Down a pretty country lane, she travels to a converted barn set off from a thatched cottage. The inside looks like something from a design magazine; a studio filled with the most stunning mirrors she has ever seen.
‘I use reclaimed wood for the frames,’ he tells her, bringing her on a tour around the studio, lined with mirrors of all shapes and sizes. ‘This is the most recent. I’m almost finished, the wood is from a tree root I found while out gathering,’ he explains, pointing to the woodland stretching out for acres beyond the barn. ‘It doesn’t have to be grandiose wood.’ He points at a bathroom mirror: ‘That was made from reclaimed pallet wood.’