She was sure that under something less honest her face wouldn’t look anything like as lived-in. She’d been a still-optimistic thirty-five when she and Joe had opted for the high-tech low-voltage lighting makeover. ‘Then when you’re old and your eyes have gone, you won’t get lipstick all over your chin,’ he’d joked at the time. At thirty-five, you were still a year or two from the end of thinking that was funny. Six years on, bloody Joe was no longer around to see (or care) where she smeared her make-up. She could be squinting into a powder-speckled hand mirror, or the reflection from the switched-off TV for all he knew. ‘Oh what’s the point?’ she sighed, carelessly whisking blusher over her cheekbones. She placed her fingers each side of her jaw and eased the tiny amount of slack skin upwards. The years since the lights were installed disappeared, or at least she assumed they did, because that’s what everyone who was slyly checking out the potential results of cosmetic surgery said.
