No! I Don’t Need Reading Glasses! by Virginia Ironside Page B

a note written in blood which reads, ‘For the treasure, go to the church. Turn left outside the iron door, go North five paces, then East two paces, dig deep and you will find jewels beyond compare!’ I must have these fantasies from reading all those
Famous Five
adventure stories when I was small. Of course I’ve never found anything like that, but I live in hope.
    Putting the framed pictures on the kitchen table, I removed the tape behind, pulled out the panel pins with pliers and then removed the pictures themselves. Luckily I’d hung them in a shady bit of the room so they weren’t faded by the sun, but I could see the glass needed cleaning, even on the inside. And what I found at the back! It was like a wild-life park. Dead flies, discarded chrysalises, endangered species, tiny squashed beetles and even a leaf. It’s amazing what collects behind pictures. No treasure map, sadly. But I still had great satisfaction putting them backtogether, having cleaned everything up, and it was a relief to find that both pictures were actually signed, though the signatures were hidden under the mounts. So there won’t be any argument about provenance, thank goodness.
26 March
    Daily Rant
: ‘MORE RATS THAN PEOPLE IN LONDON!
Scientists predict plague!
’
27 March
    Very sad phone message from Archie, who said, ‘Come and see me soon! I so long to see you, darling. I sat under “our tree” the other day, and thought of you. Loads of love.’
    The fact is that I ring every day now, and constantly offer to come down, but he always makes some excuse. ‘Our tree’ … oh dear …
29 March
    Well, I’ve done it! I’ve been to see the first cosmetic surgeon. He was called Mr Mantovani and he hangs out in Wimpole Street, next door to Harley Street, home of super-expensive doctors. (The very grandest surgeons are always called Mr rather than Dr apparently.) His reception room was one of those places with giant furniture of the kind you see in
Jack and the Beanstalk
pantomimes. You sit on a chair and yourlegs don’t reach the ground. That sort of thing. Opposite me in the ballroom of a waiting room was a battered-looking woman in a fur coat, dark glasses and swathes of expensive scarves up to her chin. There appeared to be tiny little bottles of what looked like blood suspended on tubes hanging from her ears.
    Not a good look.
    I wondered what on earth I thought I was doing. Did I really want a facelift?
    From the moment he welcomed me into his office, I realised that Mr Mantovani was a slimy old thing. His face was such an orange colour it looked as if it had been smoked, and his skin was tightly pulled back to his ears, giving him a sinister, ageless look. I immediately thought: I don’t want to go to the guy who gave
him
a facelift. Or had he done it himself? Surely not. He had silver wings of hair at his temples, a very well-cut suit and a bright-yellow silk bow tie. (Why is it that all private doctors, particularly surgeons, are not only uniformly tall but also sport ridiculous bow ties? Some I’ve consulted even have red silk linings in their carefully tailored suits. Is it that they want to show how much money they’re making, by these displays of ostentation? Or is it because they all harbour ambitions to play a clown in a circus? Actually, now I come to think of it, it’s probably because if they were performing surgery, their conventional neckties would be dangling down into the blood and liver and kidneys and what-not. Not very reassuring. But then the idea of being operated on by a man in a hilarious bowtiewho looks like Coco the Clown isn’t exactly comforting either.)
    Mr Mantovani showed me to a huge chair and then sat down behind an enormous desk. Perhaps this ludicrous furniture is installed to make the patients feel even smaller than they do already. His desk was crowded with executive toys and lumps of crystal – presents,