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most of the show, but with the thrill of being kissed by David Ingram in the final scene for three nights running.
    I was given the part of The Oak Tree in the Magic Forest. As the daughter of an actress, people might have imagined that I wouldn’t suffer from stage fright, but I did – horribly - even when I was completely unrecognisable in the depths of a brown and green tree costume that made me look like someone stranded in a Disney Film on an SAS mission gone wrong. I remembered my line every night: ‘Maybe we’ll have one at our Wood Green Branch.’ But my throat seemed determined to strangle the words as I formed them and nobody beyond the first row could hear a word I said. After that, I vowed I would never venture into amateur dramatics again, but I was always secretly grateful to that production of Sleeping Beauty for bringing my best friend into my life.
    Michelle also credited it with meeting the love of her life. Twenty two years and three kids later, she knew all about covering stretch marks, eye bags and saggy tummies, and she could silence a yowl from a toddler with one icy look, but put her together with David still, and within an instant they’d be holding hands and gazing into each other’s eyes like smitten teenagers, all cynicism forgotten, as much in love as they ever were.
    I owed a lot to the pair of them, and not only because they’d helped me survive Corinne’s death. My studio was at the back of Michelle’s hair and beauty salon. We had a good High Street location and we’d been lucky enough to get the business established before the recession really hit the South.
    Today, I stared hazily after Michelle as she disappeared through the white louvre doors and into the salon, wondering, not for the first time, if the doors had been a mistake and whether, maybe, we should think about getting something more sturdy. The current ones protected me from Michelle’s tiny army of stylists and their boyfriend problems, but not always from the smell of perming lotion and the rowdier bits of ‘Steve Wright in the Afternoon’. I wondered vaguely if I should go into B&Q and price up some new ones. Then I wondered why I was making a problem in my head out of something that didn’t generally bother me at all.
    The real problem was that I should have been feeling good, and I wasn’t. Deep in my heart something nasty was stirring and it didn’t feel like it belonged to me. I sprawled back in my swivel chair and hugged the coffee mug to my chest, feeling lousy. Even the arum lilies Michelle had brought in didn’t smell good. She’d arranged them in a tall black vase on my reception desk. They looked great... really classy. But their scent felt heavy in my lungs. It reminded me, for some reason I couldn’t quite place, of the smell of death.
    I turned on the fan to try to circulate some air before my first client arrived.
     
    From the front of the shop, I could hear the smile in Michelle’s voice. ‘Mrs Rigby. Do come through.’
    I ran my hands down my white T-shirt to get the sweat off them for the professional handshake, and found myself remembering Saturday night as I stood to greet the sixty year old who came uncertainly through the louvres in Michelle’s wake. I sized her up quickly. She looked more nervous even than I was, and she had a beautiful bone structure.
    ‘Mrs Rigby,’ I said. ‘I’m delighted to meet you.’
    I had a special way of observing my clients. It sounds corny, when I put it into words, but to get the right effect, I knew that my camera had to record them with a new lover’s eye – accentuating the best points, oblivious to the flaws; creating an image as close to perfect as possible through the use of light and shade. I think every time I photograph a woman I become, just a little, in love with her. Maybe that was one of the many reasons I’d been able to go so long without the real thing.
    Mrs Rigby was beautifully dressed. There was an echo of the East End in her