Before and After by Laura Lockington

have no truck with them, and I suggest you do the same. Anyway, if you have to be up at some ungodly hour, simply programme yourself the night before, it’s easily done and very efficacious. Of course, some would call all that clutter, but you and I know differently, don’t we?
    I turned the light off and listened to the house settle into the darkness. Marmaduke was breathing heavily just outside my door on the landing and it was a comforting sound, perhaps taking me back to primeval times when we all, so we are told, huddled together in caves for warmth and relied on hearing other breathing patterns for safety and comfort. I say so we are told, because, frankly, after having visited some of these so called Neolithic sites it strikes me as highly unlikely that any ancestors of mine would have willingly settled for such a bleak existence. All those sites are depressingly barren and windy, miles away from water or shelter. We may all have been Cro-Magnon or Neanderthal but we weren’t all stupid .
     
    The house creaked and groaned with the end of the day’s warmth and activities and all that could be heard was the light sound of Flora Tate sleeping the sleep of the just, perhaps unjustly.
     
    Along the corridor Archie Amble was muttering curses under his breath and debating whether to invade Sylvia’s bedroom where a perfectly decent three-quarter bed was his for the taking. Wasn’t it? He eyed his single billet with distaste. It was bloody uncomfortable. No wonder Aunt Edith didn’t like staying there. He thought of Flora lying in his bed, and groaned softly to himself. Bloody woman. He could surely go to his wife and sleep with her? Indeed, he got as far as the door, when he stopped. Sylvia hadn’t exactly been inviting. Maybe she was enjoying a room of her own? Wasn’t that the title of some damn silly book by that Bloomsbury woman who looked like a horse? He sighed again and gloomily wrapped himself in a duvet. He thought wildly of taking a room in a hotel for the night, but dismissed it as frivolous and extravagant and with the money that was being thrown around with the re-decoration, not to mention Flora’s more than generous fee… How old was Flora, anyway? He couldn’t tell. Sometimes she looked like a damn fine filly, other times a touch of mutton dressed as lamb. It was all very confusing. And what the hell was his daughter doing rubbing her feet? Archie suddenly thought of a picture he’d once seen in an art gallery somewhere long ago in the days when, to keep Sylvia happy, he’d traipsed around the major cultural buildings in Europe. Where was it? Florence? Paris? Amsterdam? He couldn’t remember. But the picture came, clear and unbidden into his head. The washing of Mary Magdalene’s feet. A jumble of Lapis Lazuli blues and golds flooded his memory, but the face, oh the face was Flora’s, with an almost ecstatic sacred rapture on her face as he remembered it. He also remembered thinking that there was something damn fishy, not to mention very queer , about a woman who could practically have an orgasm by having her feet cleaned. But that’s artists for you. Daft buggers.
     
    Sylvia Amble was sitting at a dressing table, gazing in the mirror whilst brushing her hair. Her face was a picture of puzzlement. The confusion came with the knowledge that she could brush and brush her mousy jaw-length hair and it would never reach the cascading glory that was Flora’s. Although with a moment of unclouded vision Sylvia knew that Flora must dye her hair. Nothing was that colour naturally. Nothing. Sylvia reached for a pot of cold cream and began rubbing it gently into her face, but nothing that she knew of, up to and including a date with the top plastic surgeon in Europe, would give her the glowing healthy skin of Flora Tate. On impulse Sylvia shifted her lips into a snarl to expose her teeth in the reflection. Up till now she had been proud of her teeth, even, regular and small with very wet-palmed,