Page 33 of The Cottage in the Highlands

“I’m fine, thank you,” I reassured her, waggling my half-drunk champagne flute, before setting my goodie bag and the flute down on top of the fancy showbiz dressing table.

“Excellent!” said Tilly, scrutinising my face.

She prodded the skin around my nose. “A little dry in places. Not enough water, you naughty girl.”

“If I was a dog, that would be more of a worry,” I joked.

That didn’t illicit much response, except for a polite smile.

“Mediterranean glow,” she gasped, taking a step back to evaluate me. “Spanish?”

“Italian. On my mother’s side.”

“Gorgeous! Gorgeous! Well, we’ll soon enhance that,” she assured me, reaching for a new-age glass bottle with a bright-purple lid. It contained a gloopy-looking liquid that reminded me of what Harley had produced on the odd occasion after too many treats.

A plastic purple cape was theatrically fluttered by one of Tilly’s minions and secured around my neck and she got to work straight away with a cleanser and toner. Then she squeezed some of the suspicious-looking foundation into her palm, dabbing, blending, and blotting it with a sponge against my skin.

She was jumping about, backwards and forwards, like an artist scrutinising her easel – or a manic glove puppet.

As I sat back, my cape rustling, I struggled not to dwell on my first morning at Goddess. It couldn’t be described as a runaway success.

It was as I shifted in the chair that I became aware of a sudden, odd sensation in my face. “My skin feels a little tight,” I commented after a few minutes.

Tilly ignored me and carried on applying the foundation via a damp sponge.

My complexion continued to protest and the skin around my left ear gave an indignant tingle. What was going on? That didn’t feel right.

When she had finished, she stood back and revelled in her own work. “Look at you! Look at you!”

I can’t look at me, because you are standing in the way of the bloody mirror, I wanted to shout.

“Right. Take a look.”

She stepped to one side out of the way of the lightbulb mirror.

I popped one eye open and then the other.

A strange mask-like creature stared back. Where had I gone? I didn’t recognise myself. Bloody hell! I looked awful!

I tried to speak but it felt like my whole face had been dipped in concrete. I was a caricature of myself – a scary waxwork from a Hammer Horror movie.

I tried to smile, to see if I could gain any mobility in my jaw. That was even more terrifying.

“I don’t look like me,” I managed out of the corner of my mouth, like a second-rate ventriloquist. “What have you done?”

“You look like an even lovelier version,” she grinned manically back. “An Italian goddess!”

“More like a Madame Tussauds exhibit,” I ground out under my breath.

“Pardon?”

I repeated what I just said, my indignation piquing. “Look, Ms Crabtree, I know you wanted Goddess to give you a glowing review of your new foundation, but this…”

I thought of the floaty, dreamy-eyed girl in the advert playing on repeat in the main function suite. I was like the beast to her Belle!

My face felt like it was swathed in several elastic bands!

“What’s wrong with it?”