Makeup brushes and lipstick heart tattoo

The good scissors lived in a biscuit tin under the mirror with the lipsticks, eleven of them, each wrapped in a scrap of tissue like a boiled sweet. Marjorie had been doing faces on this stage since the year the pier lost its second roof. Her hands had stopped shaking the winter Dennis left, and they had not started again. Tonight she was dressing Cherry Blossom for the closing number, and Cherry had rung the desk at four to say her lashes had come unstuck in the car park. This was a lie. Cherry had been on cheap fizz with the stage manager since lunch.

Marjorie laid out the three brushes in a row: the big fluffy one for powder, the flat one for cheekbones, and the stubby one she kept for emergencies. She took the red lipstick from its tissue and wound it up slowly, like a headmistress opening the register. Then she pressed the lashes onto the lid with a steady finger and said, out loud, to nobody, "Right. You betta werk."

Cherry came down the corridor twenty minutes later in a sequinned bolero, glowing, lashes perfect, and kissed Marjorie on both cheeks without smudging a thing. Nobody in the building noticed that Marjorie had written the slogan in pink biro across the back of the call sheet and folded it into her apron pocket for luck. The curtain went up on the last number at half past nine. Marjorie watched from the wings, one hand on the cold brass of the rail, and clapped until her palms stung.