Read Oh Dear Silvia for Free Online

mumbling and comforting her all the while.
    ‘Hey there, darlin’ one, just get this mess off you. Off your lovely face. Wipe it all off. What’re they thinking? There. Gone. Now, some proper moisturizer …’
    She squirts Silvia’s expensive lotion into her hands, rubs them together and positions herself as close as she can get to her. She places them, creamy palms down, on to Silvia’s faceand starts to rub it in, carefully avoiding her eyes, mouth and so on. She is especially cautious around Silvia’s nose, where the nasogastric tube is taped in. Then she smooths out all the remaining cream. Her fingers follow the contours of Silvia’s face. It’s a face she knows so well and this very intimate touching gives her an unexpected chance to explore it even more closely. Cat relishes this rare opportunity to let her hands echo and confirm what her eyes see. She can’t remember when she last touched Silvia’s face. And until you touch, you can’t know how it really feels.
    Now, and only now, she knows that Silvia’s prominent but pleasing nose has very fine skin on it. Skin you wouldn’t want to be too rough with, lest it split like wet crêpe paper. A fine, large defiant nose, with such a delicate covering. And Silvia’s intrepid forehead which has dared a wrinkle to blemish it. Very few wrinkles have thus far had the courage. Freckles, however, are not so lily-livered, they operate in squadrons and are unafraid to muster in such public open spaces as Silvia’s exceptionally wide and high forehead. Alongside her phenomenally red colouring, Silvia has had to accept that freckles will forever be her constant companions. Cat knows that in her capacity as an extreme control freak, Silvia wishes she could properly designate the precise locations of the freckles. For instance, she would prefer a cute spattering of them across her nose, rather than the unsightly enclave that have herded together just above her eyebrows.
    Ah. Her eyebrows. Cat strokes them with great tenderness. Or rather, she strokes the place where Silvia’s distinctive eyebrows ordinarily are. Only now is it apparent that the unique symmetry and shape of Silvia’s notoriously perfect eyebrows is entirely fabricated by Silvia and her handy eyebrow pencil. She has always used a very particular shade of reddish-brown that is completely believable, expertly applying it with tiny hair-like flicks that go to make a very authentic effect. Silvia copied the shape from the glamorous old Hollywood starlets, Marlene Dietrich, Jean Harlow, Bette Davis, Elizabeth Taylor. A small square box above the nose, with an elegant high arch bowing outwards. Silvia is expert at this and somehow a daily glamour is achieved with this simple but effective trick. Not now though. Now she has two blondey-red wisps, two crummy excuses for eyebrows.
    Silvia’s eyes are closed. That’s the most difficult part. How Cat would love it if they would suddenly open, big and grey and blue and blousey like they are. Cat would know so much if only they would open. She could read Silvia then. Lying there, eyes shut, Silvia is closed, and Cat can’t bear the consequent rejection she feels, however ludicrous that is. A slumbering torment.
    Her fingers are at Silvia’s mouth, where the venom is stored, a dangerous place, a wide, expressive powerful mouth. So many have wanted to kiss it, because those full lips would surely be so well equipped to do a proper job of the kissing.You would be folded into those accomplished lips, they’d surely wrap around your measly mouth, around your resistance and your willpower. You’d be helpless if those lips were kissing you. They are especially impressive when outlined in Silvia’s trademark strong coral red and filled in with a gloss version of the same. Silvia ALWAYS wears lipstick. In colours that argue loudly with her hair. Colours that confound your notion of taste, that dare you to be as loud and brashly confident as her. Now, though, her lips