‘Of course.’ Ida pursed her lips and shook her head, and said, ‘It’s not right,’ but because she was English, Petra wasn’t entirely sure whether she was being ironic. She couldn’t be certain, but she thought she detected a smirk around Ida’s lips.

After a moment when the conversation had dried up, Petra got up and started to gather the glasses and mugs onto the tray. As Helena had predicted, Ida’s mug was untouched, the coffee in it slick and cold.

‘Can I refresh that for you?’ she offered.

‘Not for me.’

She picked up the tray and turned towards the kitchen, and a cloud shifted and sunlight from the window fell full onto Ida’s face and reflected off the TV screen back to Petra. Petra stifled a gasp. She jerked to clutch at the tray and only just avoided tipping it and smashing it all over the hallway tiles.

The face that stared impassively at her from the black mirror was younger than Ida’s but also far more ravaged. Her eyes were puffed with grief – the same swollen eyes that she’d seen the other night, downstairs in the lobby. This was the same woman looking back at her now. The smirk was plainly plastered across her mouth, as a black tear drained from one of those empty sockets.

Petra scurried into the kitchen to shove the tray onto the countertop and try to remember how to breathe, before she would rush back out again to confront the false apparition. For what? For posing as her mother’s friend? For looking fine when she was really brutalised? What the hell was happening? But when she got back to the sitting room, the clouds had obscured the sun again and the reflection was gone, and Ida’s voice sounded as it had all morning.

‘You alright, love?’

‘Yeah,’ Petra started, rounding the back of Ida’s chair to get to the couch.

Ida pushed back the loose tendrils of her hair from her face and gathered it back behind her ears, collecting it and repositioning her ponytail. ‘This weather, it makes my hair insane.’ Holding her hair with her left hand, she fished in the handbag at her feet for a barrette and clipped her hair back tidily. The barrette was covered in rose velvet.

Ida turned, looking over her shoulder to where Petra was immobilised. She smiled. One top incisor was missing and the other was shattered diagonally, and there was blood behind her lower lip.

The light shifted.

No, not blood – a smear of lipstick.

Not a broken tooth – a raisin stuck in her teeth.

Pull yourself together, Petra.

15