Didn't I make you feel
Like you were the only man?
Didn't I give you everything that a woman possibly can?
Her flat is in Dean Street, tiny, first storey up in the ugly concrete block which replaced the hole left by a wartime bomb. A single space divided with cheap partition walls into bathroom, kitchen, her cluttered bedroom, and the remainder forming a poky, awkwardly shaped living-room.
There is noise at all times through the uninsulated walls, shouts and crockery smashes and ladle clangs from the Chinese restaurant next door, shrieks and laughter and traffic clamour from the street below. The uproar rather suits Molly Hooper's purposes.
She sits in her underwear - her foundation garments, she thinks with a smile, admiring their hefty structure - and applies an absolute ton of mascara. Too much is only the start in this case.
Twenty gold pins are lined up on her glass topped, kidney-shaped dressing table. They are all the same, except for the new one, today's first eBay arrival, which has a jewel on the end, a ruby globe with many tiny facets to catch the light. Glass, of course. It is comforting to think that even the greats, back then, wore costume jewellery. It was all they could afford, all their record companies were prepared to spend. Eat that, Rihanna: Aretha and Ronnie and Dusty in paste jewels belting out numbers like you can only dream of in your diamond-encrusted stretch Hummer.
It was a different world then, and tonight Molly will step into that world for a while, and leave this one, with its work stress and traffic fumes and mobile phones and ... she is not even going to think of him, she is ignoring him - leaving it all far behind. She smiles, turns the ruby pin over in her hand, then slides it into her piled hair, above her right ear.
They say you should not wear red with red hair, but she likes the combination. Is red something to be ashamed of, to minimise, to try to tone down or disguise? Are brunettes forbidden to wear brown? Ridiculous. Yet redheads have a whole list or proscribed items, red clothes being first on the list. And then there are the remedies. Ways to conceal freckles. Ways to make red hair look less red. Mascara and eyebrow pencil and foundation which is right for your (probably pasty) complexion.
"Sod that," she says to the mirror. "I like red and I will wear red if I want to." She lifts her chin, bats her loaded lashes at her reflection and pouts extravagantly.
The pin is already working its antique magic.
She slurps a bit of hot choc as well. With the burger she grabbed on the way home from the pathology lab, it's like a proper meal. Almost. "I'll eat at the weekend." Probably.
She opens tonight's second parcel, this one delivered direct to her flat. It is also fresh from eBay, and the seller promised that it is newly laundered and has been cared for lovingly over the last forty years.
"Oh yes," a scarlet dress, shift, heavily beaded all over. In those days, this was done by hand. Molly lifts the dress clear of its wrap and holds it up against herself. It drapes heavily, will cling, will shimmy with her. It adds weight, adds substance. There is more to her, with this dress against her skin. There is certainly zero chance of invisibility.
Perfect.
She already knows where she is going - a big benefit of living in Soho - and exactly who she is going to do.
It has been a long week already and it is only Tuesday.
She needs her relief.
She pays her tenner at the Beehive and slips past the man at the counter with her coat huddled around her. If the guy recognizes her, he never lets on. At the row of hooks -Belongings Left at Own Risk Don't Blame Us! - she shivers the coat away and some of the karaoke club's punters look round as the ruby red dress is revealed. People nudge each other. She's keen. Blimey. And even, Wow.
Then one voice, a woman's, exclaims, "Oh my god. It's Billie Rae!" and Molly smiles.
Author's Note:
Piece of my Heart - Erma Franklin