Turn 2 of 15

Wait a few days and watch who goes in and out of the shop

I spend the next three days watching. From my flat above, the window becomes a periscope trained on the pavement below. The movers finish unloading on Tuesday, hauling in the last of the strange, shrouded equipment. A woman arrives in a silver Astra, unlocking the front door with a key she produces from a handbag the colour of a bruise. She is tall, sharp-featured, and wears a grey velour tracksuit that seems to absorb the light. She does not look up at my window.

By Wednesday, the first customers arrive. They are mostly local women I recognise from the bus stop or the chippy—familiar faces from the neighbourhood. They push through the new glass door, which now sports a frosted decal of a smiling, featureless silhouette. They do not emerge for at least an hour. When they do, something is subtly different. It is not just the tan, which is a deep, uniform bronze that looks more painted on than absorbed. It is the way they hold themselves, a new, unearned confidence in their posture. They walk differently down the high street.

On Thursday, I see Denise from the bakery. She has worked there for years, a quiet woman with a perpetual dusting of flour on her apron. She goes in at half two. When she comes out an hour later, she is not wearing her apron. She is in a matching grey velour tracksuit, her lashes thick and dark, her lips pursed in a way I have never seen on her before. She walks past the bakery without a glance and stands at the bus stop, scrolling through her phone with an air of immense boredom. Her old life seems to have been shed like a snake's skin.

I try to talk to her later, catching her as she waits for the 214.

"Denise? Everything alright?" She looks at me, and for a moment, her expression is blank, as if she is trying to place my face.

"Yeah?" she says, her voice flat. "You're Gemma, aren't you? From up there." She juts her chin towards my flat. The familiarity in her tone is new, but it feels rehearsed, like a line she's been told to say. She turns back to her phone as if the conversation is over.

The pattern repeats. Women I know go in as themselves and come out as variations on a theme. The tracksuits are always grey velour. The lashes are always thick. The attitude is always a kind of glacial, unbothered superiority. They start to congregate outside the salon, a silent, watchful herd. They do not seem to talk to each other much, but they are always there, leaning against the wall, smoking, scrolling. The high street is quieter than ever, the other shops feeling like empty stages. I feel a growing, cold certainty that something is very wrong, and that I am the only one who can see it.