Watching Her

Chapter 1

Lucy Gilmartin smiled as stepped back in her new bedroom. The large darkly varnished mahogany dressing table had been taken out of storage by her dad last week. After much effort it was finally installed in her new house. It only just fitted in against the wall at the end of the bed.

She had worked bloody hard to get to her position in sales to afford to buy on her own the house, with a little help from her Mum and Dad with the deposit. As such along with the financial help there was also some assistance with furniture for the house. There were things that her Dad had emotionally just not been able to throw out when he cleared his parents' house after his mum had died. A truck load of old old fashioned brown furniture and memories had been stored in a self-storage container for almost twenty years.

Along with the antique dressing table there was, matching chest of drawers, along with an old pine Welsh dresser which was currently downstairs currently in the middle of the dining room, with a folded over matching dining room table, and of course one of these very items was the full wall length dressing table she was currently looking at. It was rather imposing in the fairly modern house. It could be said that it was almost too big for the room. Lucy did not want to disappoint her dad, seeing as they had given so much money to help with the deposit towards the house, as such she eagerly agreed, without looking at them, that they would come with her.

She stood looking at the three stately large movable mahogany backed, brass lined mirrors. Below the table top are tens of small drawers with weathered matching brass handles. It looked heavy and carrying up the stairs, it was heavy. Lucy puffed her cheeks out and ran her hands through her long strawberry blonde hair, another trait from her granny Gilmartin, as she peeled the white fluffy hairband off her arm and put the hair up in a long ponytail. She was proud of her long hair, even if it was ginger and all the bullying she got when younger. She had survived school eventually. She loved her hair. She enjoyed it when it swished and tickled her lower back when she walked.

She leaned forward and turned on the cheap little yellow lamp she had got a charity shop last week and glanced and studied the large mirror closely there was some foxing's in the corner where the backing had disintegrated, she smiled her white teeth in the mirror as her 'strawberry and cream' complexion on her still young-looking face smiled back.

With that she shrugged her shoulders, turned, took a deep breath for confidence, and headed down the stairs to start rearranging the living room. It currently consisted of four full cardboard boxes and her favourite large tatty cushion from her days at university.

That evening after spending a great deal of time swearing at the thermostat, even she acknowledges that it was her dad in her. It dawned on her that she should have listened about how to work the boiler. She eventually headed to bed, it was dark on the stairs she sprinted up the stairs. One of things on her list was a new lightbulb for the fitting at the top.

She flicked on the lamp again and sat down on the almost ghastly flower-patterned matching stool. Lucy again looked at herself in the mirror, her face was red and puffy from spending all evening head down, bum up, cleaning cupboards, and then emptying boxes of cutlery, pans, vases and a mountain of tea towels into the now spotlessly clean cupboards. Her mum and dad were again coming over tomorrow to help again move some more things around. She looked down between her legs and pulled out the supermarket carrier bag with all her toiletries that she had emptied from her rented flat and pulled out the face wipes.

Lucy studied her face again as she wiped the sweat and tears off her face, she instantly stopped and was taken aback by the triptych of her face reflecting back in the three mirrors, her face was lit from the uncovered energy saving bulb above her head and the lamp beside her but when she wiped her the mirror was ahead of her in time, it predicted where she was going with the cloth, her reflection was ahead of her actions. She was wiping her nose, whilst her reflection had already moved on to her neck, just before she did.