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yourself?’
    Gabrielle smiled. ‘Of course. Come on,’ she said, holding Nickie’s elbow. ‘Come and see my room.’
    Nickie had never seen a kid’s room like this before. The bed was a double. Opposite was a wooden dresser. On top of it was the make-up. Little black plastic cases with eyeshadows — every colour possible. Rows of lipstick — at least ten tubes altogether — and the colours were lined up in order, starting with the palest pink at one end and finishing with the reddest red. Nail polishes, rouges in little round blue cases, creams and of course the mascara. The cases all had swirly writing on them, either gold or silver. Nickie recognised two names from magazines, Helena Rubenstein and Max Factor.
    Behind all the make-up, on a little wooden shelf slightly raised from the dresser, there were bottles of perfume. Some of them were really tiny, no bigger than a fat pencil lead, but you could tell it was real perfume inside every one of them.
    Nickie knew some of the names — not from real life, but from advertisements in the Woman’s Weekly — Chanel, Je Reviens, Shalimar, Tabu, Arpège, Blue Grass and Musk.
    Nickie sat down at the dresser. She ran her fingers over all the smooth little cases, picking up one now and again to click it open and shut. Even that little click was special; it felt as though secrets were being unlocked and set free. Her own mother was not a glamorous person. She had one red lipstick and that was all. Once, when she’dbeen out, Nickie had sneaked into her bedroom and looked through her drawers, thinking that even if she was boring now, she must have been young once and worn make-up to get a husband. She found nothing.
    ‘Sit still,’ Gabrielle said. She knelt down beside Nickie and looked across the range of lipsticks. Her fingers took one of the little tubes. She held Nickie’s head with her left hand and carefully painted her lips red. Not a single smudge.
    ‘Where did it all come from?’ Nickie asked with her new luscious lips.
    ‘It was Mum’s,’ Gabrielle said.
    ‘So … why did she need all this make-up?’ Who, Nickie wondered, could need so much make-up? Was she really ugly, Gabrielle’s mother? That didn’t seem likely. Or maybe she needed it when she was nearly dead, to keep her looking human.
    ‘She didn’t need it,’ said Gabrielle. ‘She wanted it.’
    Nickie said nothing. If you needed something, like new undies or socks, then sooner or later you got it, in her experience. If you wanted something, you didn’t get it. Not unless you already needed it as well. An example would be shoes — if you needed new shoes, you might get a say in the type or colour of shoes you ended up with. Something like make-up could never be needed.
    Nickie wished she’d met Gabrielle’s mother — a lady who wanted and got beautiful things like make-up and perfume and earrings.
    ‘She was given most of the stuff for free,’ Gabrielle said. ‘She worked in a chemist shop in town, when she wasn’t too sick. The make-up sellers always brought free samples into the shop. The owner let her have them.’
    ‘That’s what I’m doing, when I finish school,’ Nickie said. ‘I’m working in a chemist shop. For sure.’
    They moved on to the perfume.
    ‘Go on, choose one,’ said Gabrielle.
    Nickie fingered the little bottles, one after another. Some of them had the tiniest little black rubber caps in them. It felt as though she would break the glass, just trying to open them. She picked up a bottle called Tabu.
    It fitted into the palm of her hand. The label was black and Tabu was printed in elegant white letters. In the corner of the label, someone called Dana had signed her name. Underneath Dana, New York and Paris were written. Around the black lid of the bottle there was a very thin string.
    The liquid was a deep orange colour, almost brown. Nickie held the bottle up to the sunlight and tipped it to one side. The liquid took its time to move; slowly, more like oil