Jon crossed back to the dressing table and sat down carefully on the padded stool in front of it. The mirror returned his gaze. He saw his own face, disconcertingly familiar, and yet framed by all of that hair and the softly lit clutter of pots and bottles arranged neatly before him.
He picked up a hairbrush. It had a long, oval-backed handle with a floral pattern pressed into it, the kind of thing he'd never have given a second glance to. He turned it over in his hands, then looked back at his reflection. The hair was tangled from sleep, several strands catching the morning light. He had absolutely no idea where to start.
He dragged the brush through the front of it experimentally. It snagged immediately and he winced. He tried again from a different angle. Another snag.
Right. Okay. He set the brush down and picked up a small pot of something instead, unscrewing the lid to find a pale cream inside that smelled faintly of roses. He had no idea what it was for. He put it back.
He picked up a lipstick, extended it to see a deep rose-red colour, looked at it for a moment, then retracted it and set it aside. He tried to recall every film he'd ever seen with a woman putting on makeup. Mostly it had looked effortless, a couple of confident passes and everything was done. He suspected it was rather more complicated than it appeared.
He tried the brush again, starting from lower down the length and working upwards in short strokes, the way you did with a badly tangled rope. That worked better. Slowly, haltingly, he got through it. The hair fell in a smooth dark-blonde sheet when he was done, but he hadn't the first clue what to do with it next. Clip it up? Leave it down? Pin some of it back? There were several different clips and pins and grips sitting in a small dish at the back of the table, along with what looked like a velvet headband and a selection of ribbons.
He put both hands down flat on the table surface and stared at himself.
Come on. You managed the brassiere when you stopped fighting it. That had surprised him, the way his hands had simply known when he'd stopped overthinking the hooks and eyes, as though the fingers remembered what the mind didn't. You got the blouse buttoned without concentrating. The same thing must be in there somewhere.
He picked up the brush again and closed his eyes.
He breathed out slowly, the way he sometimes did before an exam when his thoughts were too loud. He let his shoulders drop. He stopped trying to think about what he was doing and just... held the brush and waited.
After a moment, his hands began to move.
It was the strangest feeling. It wasn't quite like sleepwalking, not quite like muscle memory in the ordinary sense. More like the sensation of a word finally arriving on the tip of your tongue. His right hand drew the brush through the hair in a long, smooth stroke from above the ear. His left hand gathered a section of it near his temple. The movements had a quiet, practiced confidence that felt entirely foreign to his conscious mind, and yet there his hands were, doing it. They were gathering, twisting, pinning a section back from one side with a clip that his fingers had located without him looking. His eyes opened to watch in the mirror. A neat, simple half-up style was forming, the kind that looked effortless precisely because it was, for this body at least.
He kept breathing steadily, not letting the surprise break the spell. His hands moved to the other side. Another gathered section. Another clip. He watched himself do it like watching someone else at a great distance.
Then he set the brush down and his hands went, without hesitation, to the powder compact. They opened it, picked up the puff, tapped it gently on the edge, and applied it to his face in the same light, circular strokes that he'd seen illustrated in advertisements without ever giving them a second thought. A little colour to the cheeks, the small pot of something rose-tinted, applied sparingly with a fingertip. A pencil from the narrow wooden pot at the back, to draw a neat line with a steadiness he could never have consciously managed. The lipstick: two careful passes, pressed together, a small fold of tissue from the pot on the right to blot.
He stopped.
He blinked at the mirror.
The face that looked back at him was composed and neat and, he had to admit, rather pretty. The hair was tidily done, the makeup applied with the practiced lightness of long habit. It looked entirely natural, entirely of its time. He looked like someone who had been doing this since they were old enough to be trusted with a lipstick which, he supposed, this version of him probably had been.
His hands settled in his lap and felt like his own again.
Jon let out a long, slow breath.
So that's how that works.
He sat for a moment longer, looking at his reflection. The strange, composed version of himself who looked back at him from the mirror gave nothing away. Whoever he was had clearly done all of this a thousand times before. The hands remembered. The mind was just going to have to keep up.
He straightened his blouse, checked the clip in his hair, and stood up.
First day at McMillan and Daughters. Whatever that was.
Time to go and find out.
