Read Blue Moon (Book One in The Blue Crystal Trilogy) for Free Online

had beautiful, smooth white hands right up
to her death the previous year.
    She put the thought out of her
mind and picked up the phone.
    “Can you get me Mr Burrell of
Bushell Burrell and Brown on the phone please?” she instructed her
secretary. “I need to check where we’re up to on the Oakfields
Drive sale. It should have gone through last week. I can’t think
what’s delaying things.” Replacing the phone in its cradle, she
muttered to herself, “Well, I can actually. Solicitors. It’s always
solicitors. They think they’re so superior. But who does all the
work? Who phones up everyone in the chain to make sure the sale
goes smoothly? Estate agents, that’s who. If it wasn’t for us,
nothing would ever get bought or sold.”
    She picked up a little hand
held mirror on her desktop so she could watch herself as she spoke
to Mr Burrell. Just a little quirk she’d developed that made her
feel so much more professional. So much more confident and
superior, a necessity when dealing with solicitors. Let’s face it,
you needed every small advantage you could find when dealing with
them. The phone rang and she picked it up, hearing her secretary
announce she had Mr Burrell on the phone for her.
    “Mr Burrell,” she began, in her
firmest, most professional voice, admiring in the mirror her new
shade of lipstick. ‘Deadly Nightshade’ really suited her so well.
Added the perfect extra touch to her professional appearance. “I
was wondering if you could explain to me exactly what the delay is
on the Oakfields Drive sale. Really, it is too……”
    But she got no further. With a
shriek, she threw down the phone, staring aghast at the face that
was reflected in her mirror. Surely this was not right? This had to
be a joke. She rushed from her office to the small ladies’ toilet
at the rear of the building, locking the door carefully behind her,
then forcing herself to look in the large mirror above the
washbasin. What she saw made her gasp in horror.
    Instead of the immaculately
permed tresses her hairdresser had perfected only that morning, her
hair hung about her face, wispy and lifeless. And instead of the
Honey Blond hair colour with white blond lowlights she’d so
fastidiously selected earlier that morning, it was matted and grey,
with streaks of dirty white, like old cotton wool. But it wasn’t
the hair that caused her to gasp so much as her face. Gone was the
carefully made-up, cleansed and toned skin of which she was so
proud, to be replaced with sagging, bagging, ancient pouches that
hung beneath her eyes and either side of her mouth, like an ageing
elephant. Her skin was now the colour of old parchment, dried and
brittle. Her eyes once clear and bright were now red ringed and
bloodshot, drooping downwards to match the general direction of the
rest of her face. Feeling something in her mouth, she spat it out
and was aghast to see two yellowing teeth fall into the basin,
leaving her with a witch-like gap in the middle of her mouth. The
remaining teeth were blackened and decayed. Her posture she noticed
was stooped and low, and her clothes hung on her shrunken frame,
now at least three sizes too big for her.
    “My God, I’m an old hag,” she
said breathlessly to the mirror and her voice sounded rasping and
cracked. “With every minute that passes, I’m getting older and
older,” she stopped abruptly, as she took in the ramifications of
what lay ahead. “At this rate, I’ll be dead by tonight…..”
    A knocking on the door brought
her back to her senses and she panicked as she heard her name being
called out. No one must see her like this, of that she was certain.
The knocking and shouting sounded again and she looked around for a
means of escape. There was none. No small back window, no other
means of getting out. She was trapped and about to be
discovered.
    Once again, she heard her name
being called and then felt someone gently rocking her shoulder.
With a jolt, she sat upright, and uttered a