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are natural, and even more pink than any lipstick.
    Cat pushes gently up at each side of her wide mouth.
    ‘Smile, darlin’. Life is still worthwhile. If you just smile …’
    No, it’s too grotesque.
    Cat stops and cups Silvia’s face in her hands, enjoying the plumpness of her cheeks against her palms. The softness and warmth feels, just for a moment, like health. She reaches down and kisses her on that fine freckled forehead.
    ‘C’mon Silly. You can do it, so you can. Just hold on.’
    Silvia’s sleek hair falls back and away from her large English face, revealing telltale grey roots all around, giving her a kind of silver halo. She wouldn’t like that, but Cat has always thought Silvia shouldn’t dye her hair. She suspected, quite rightly it seems, that Silvia has the type of grey hair that is strong and thick. Metallic. Cat often tells her it would look phenomenal and that she should let it grow through, proudly. She thinks it would give Silvia an air of elegance, and she isannoyed that Silvia won’t take her advice. But Silvia will have nothing to do with it.
    When Cat and Silvia first got to know each other, Silvia told Cat about how, as a young girl, everyone commented on her strawberry-blonde hair. It defined her and it clearly marked her out as her mother’s daughter. Jo had ‘brooown’ hair – that’s how Silvia always said it, with an elongated vowel to emphasize its dullitude.
    ‘BROOOWN. Soooo. Boooring. Jooooo Boooring Haaair.’
    Jo looked more like Dad whilst Silvia looked like Mummy. Silvia liked it that way. She loved Mummy more, and anyway, Mummy was female and beautiful. Dad was a man and a very archetypal army officer type of man. Yes, let Jo be the butch one, like him. Silvia wanted to be delicate and feminine. That was always going to be tricky to pull off because, much to her annoyance, she was tall and big-boned like her father, but somehow the essentially female pale red hair was her saving grace. It lent her an unambiguous girlishness.
    Why on earth, then, would she allow it to turn grey? No, that was never going to happen, she would go to her grave strawberry blonde. So, Cat thought, she had better organize to get those roots rectified at some point in the next few weeks. She didn’t even know if it would be possible or allowed in hospital.
    So much to find out.
    But for now, she lets her fingers wander from Silvia’s face outward into her hair and she gently massages her scalp.
    ‘Amazing hair, Silly. Wonderful head. Great shape. C’mere, does that feel good? You like this normally, if you ever let me get near you! I do know a bit about massage you know, when I was backpacking as a student in Southern India, I did stay on an ashram for a fortnight and we all learned head massage. Like everyone else of course, I preferred receiving it. It’s glorious if it’s done right. Hope this is good, darlin’. Wonder if you can feel it at all? Oh Silly. I do miss you. I miss that you would be batting me away right now, and not letting me do this. You’d better come through this Sil, I’ll be furious if you don’t. I mean it. Feckin’ fuming.’
    Cat hears herself say this but doesn’t allow herself to dwell on the thought, it’s too grim. However, she is glad she’s said it out loud. Silvia likes honesty and would certainly be saying it how it is, if the roles were reversed. Maybe she’s locked in there, longing for someone to speak truthfully.
    Cat wants to be that person. She yearns for the approval of Silvia, and as yet, she doesn’t feel she is fully granted it. Silvia has stepped up for Cat, most especially in one particular instance that was truly remarkable, but that’s not quite the approbation she seeks. That was more like a show of courage on Silvia’s part, not the pure personal endorsement Cat aches for and feels she deserves.
    The irony, Silvia says, is that until Cat grants herself the permission to be acceptable, she is singularly unacceptable.
    This is