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carefully draped with a selection of scarves which hung down from the top of the frame and covered up the glass. Dee, who was nine now, had asked about it once when she was much younger. ‘Why, Granny? Why do you cover up the mirror?’
    ‘I’ve always done it, since I was very young. I feel a bit funny about mirrors, that’s all.’
    ‘You
could
not have a mirror in your room,’ Dee said, sounding a little doubtful.
    ‘Unfortunately I need one because I’m vain,’ Eva told her. ‘I like to see that my lipstick is on my lips and not my chin. And that my hair is properly brushed. You know …’
    ‘But you have to move the scarves whenever you want to look at yourself,’ Dee said, and then another thought occurred to her. ‘You could call me and I’d tell you if your lipstick looked nice.’
    ‘Well, that’s very kind, darling, but what if you’re at school? Don’t you worry yourself about my mirror. I’m used to it being covered up.’
    Eva had avoided mirrors for most of her life. Even though her work had involved much looking, pinning, draping and rearranging of garments; even though she’d spent hours redoing hair or fiddling with accessories, tying scarves and adjusting hemlines, most of the mirrors she’d encountered during her long career were public ones. They were in her studio, backstage at fashion shows and, for the most part, there were so many other people crowded in front of the glass alongside her that what she tried to avoid seeing had scarcely any opportunity to float on to the silver, to hover and shiver in the background. She’d hung scarves and necklaces over the corners of every dressing-table mirror in every bedroom she’d ever slept in, so that most of the surface was obscured. Anyone who came in and saw them assumed that such decorations went with being a famous designer given to extravagant effects. What a lot you can get away with, Eva thought, if you have a reputation for being artistic!
    And all of this because of something that happened when she was seven. She knew it was a ridiculous prohibition she’d laid on herself, after just one bad experience, but there it was: she didn’t like to see herself reflected because of that summer evening, so long ago. There had been other bad experiences, but this was the first: the one that set the pattern.
    1941
    The mirror in Eva’s bedroom was fixed on to a stand and could swivel right round and Eva loved it. She used to like making it swing backwards and forwards to catch the early evening light that fell through the window as she was getting ready for bed.
    One summer evening, after a particularly sunny day when she’d been playing with her friends in the field that lay behind the hedge at the bottom of the garden, Eva went up to her bedroom feeling hot and tired. Agnes had bathed her, in lukewarm water, only an inch or two deep, on account of the War. After the bath, she’d put Eva to bed as usual, kissing her goodnight and telling her not to let the bugs bite. Then she went downstairs and Eva was left alone. As soon as she heard Agnes walking about downstairs, Eva got out of bed. She knew that the trees at the edge of the field would be spreading dark shadows on to the lawn and she wanted to see them. She stared at the garden in the last of the sunshine. She pushed aside a corner of the black-out curtains and stood there for a few moments.
    Then she’d turned to get back into bed, and caught sight of someone reflected in the mirror. Something that was not Eva was there in the glass.
    She wasn’t scared at first. She didn’t know what it could be. Then the shape moved in the glass and turned into
someone
. There was a girl reflected in her bedroom mirror, but even though Eva saw her through a kind of thin mist, she knew it was her sister. Her hair was red, like Eva’s, and she was wearing her dark brown hat and coat which Eva recognized. She trembled. She had no need of those details like clothes or hair to tell her it was