Norma Maguire looked into the round compact mirror sitting in the palm of her hand at her only good facial feature. Her lips. She drew a scarlet lipstick across the surface of her top lip and was glad it was the only part of her face she could see in the glass.

She refreshed the coating of lipstick on her lower lip and checked that her recently whitened teeth were not stained red.

There was only one way to do it. Small but tortuous steps.

Norma looked at herself in tiny but painful sections, tracking down the lifelong hopeless cause: she was vile to look at.

Her face was lopsided, constructed of two halves that clearly didn’t make a whole. Her left eye was a centimetre higher than the right, which stared at a distinctly odd angle into space, away from its dull and lifeless partner. Within the frame of her ravaged skin, her nose looked like it had been built by the hand of a malicious child and she recalled for the thousand and thousandth time the overall effect of her despicable face: horrid.

Happy birthday, Norma…

Over a chasm of nearly four decades, she heard her mother’s words as she handed her the mirror now in her hand. Mother had wrapped it in gold paper and presented it to her on the morning of her thirteenth birthday.

She watched her mother as she walked out of the large front room, drawn by the ringing of the phone into the cavernous hall outside.

Her mother’s voice danced as she spoke, her tone masterful, small words that seemed to fill the whole house as she answered the call.

Norma picked up the only photograph on her desk.

Mother. Aged thirty or thereabouts. Hair tied up in intricate patterns in a fashion from a classical age. Beautiful. Poised and ladylike. Dressed in a white gown, thin straps on her shapely bare shoulders. Smiling easily into the eye of the camera. Norma placed the framed photograph back on her desk.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

She made out the shape of the person outside her office door through the frosted glass.

Slim, exquisitely slim. Model tall. Young as the rosy dawn.

‘Come on in, Fran,’ said Norma, placing her little mirror and the Christian Dior lipstick back in her Gucci handbag.

The door opened slowly and Francesca Christie stepped into the office. The smile on her face lit up her pretty features but her body language was riddled with nervous tension.

‘You wanted to see me, Norma?’ asked Francesca as she drifted towards the chair on the other side of Norma’s desk.

‘Yes, yes, yes, I do want to see you.’

Norma indicated the seat and Francesca sat down.

‘Very well done, Fran, on closing down the deal on the Elm Hall Drive property. Every other estate agent on Allerton Road who failed, failed miserably, to offload that nightmare house will be kicking themselves.’