of birds disturbed and rising into the air en masse.
She walked quickly towards me and stretched out a long, slim arm to the rack of clothes, so close to me that her wrist nearly brushed across my breasts. I felt my nipples harden and hoped that
they weren’t visible through the regulation white blouse that formed the top half of my uniform. Her forearm was stacked with silver bracelets that clattered as she held the hanger out to me.
I took it, careful to not allow the material to touch the floor and collect any dust that might linger there, and looked around for a changing room, but there was evidently nowhere set aside for
that purpose, not even a screen.
‘Not shy, are you?’ she said.
I shook my head to indicate that I wasn’t, although it was a lie. I felt lumbering and awkward, like I was swimming, the support of water turning my limbs lithe and supple. On dry land, my
body just ‘was’. A vehicle for my thoughts and dreams and passions, nothing more. I thought of the bodies of others as something enticing to look at, but I thought of my own as merely
functional. Being nude in front of Iris was different. We had known each other’s bodies for so long, it became second nature to be unclothed in her gaze. But I never felt as though she looked
at me the same way that I stared at her. Lustfully.
I fiddled with the clasp and zip at the back of my thick, plain black pencil skirt. My nerves had made me clumsy and turned my fingers into sausages.
‘Allow me,’ Patricia said, softly. The tone of her voice changed as she drew nearer to me. She spoke in a hushed whisper, as if we were sharing a secret.
Her knuckles grazed my spine as she searched for the zipper. Undone, the skirt slipped down to my hips where it stopped, prohibited by the rounded flesh of my buttocks. Patricia gave the fabric
on either side a sharp tug until the garment dropped to the floor. I expected her to move then, but she didn’t, and I stood frozen to the spot in front of her, half unclothed, my usherette
uniform pooled at my feet.
Goosebumps rose on my flesh, and not in response to the temperature. The silence between us became a palpable thing, and the longer it lasted, the more any words that I might speak seemed
unnecessary and hollow.
At that moment, the door burst open with a bang so loud in contrast with the tomb-like quiet that we had been standing in that I cried out ‘Oh!’ and jumped into the air.
‘All those murder mysteries affecting your nerves, girl?’
‘No, no . . .’ I shook my head. ‘I’m fine.’
Clarissa. I recognised her immediately. Her hair was indeed short, and had not just been pulled back from her face in the picture. She wore it styled in a pixie cut that only served to elongate
the pointed edge of her chin and nose even further. She had the look of someone who would slice through the air instead of move through it, her body a collection of angular points carving its way
from one perfectly aligned geometric position to another.
Her arms were draped with long bolts of fabric, one grass green and the other ocean blue and both evidently so heavy that they slowed her progress towards us. The colours of the swathes of
material weighing her down were all the more vivid as she was dressed all in white in a flowing jump suit with a drawstring tie that sat at her hips. I moved forward to help her, forgetting in my
haste that besides my underwear I was naked from the waist down, and my skirt was wrapped around my ankles.
‘Oh, don’t let me interrupt you,’ she said, and strode towards the nearest trestle table and carefully laid the lengths of silk down. Her high gold heels clip-clopped against
the wooden floor as she walked.
Every word that came out of her mouth sounded as though it meant something else. I didn’t know how to respond.
She bustled over to us before I could think of a word to say and placed two fingers under my chin, lifting my mouth closed.
‘You have a very pretty pair
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