Grace

 
My friend Grace arrived just as dusk was dusting the treetops. The air was so cold that it stung my nose, as I opened the front door to chivvy her inside, her head wreathed in the frosty fog of her own breath.
 
As she scurried in, I couldn’t help but notice her hat and matching gloves. They were splendid: deep delicious burgundy-coloured cashmere with delicately ribbed cuffs. The hat had clean lines free of unnecessary adornments. ‘What fabulous hat and gloves, ‘ I trilled, ‘such a glorious colour!’
 
'D’you like them?’ she asked girlishly. ‘I couldn’t resist when I saw them. I was supposed to be shopping for a gift, but I ended up treating myself instead,’ she finished somewhat sheepishly. “I wasn’t 100% sure about the colour though.’
 
Here, as usual, I had to agree with her. Grace had a brilliant aesthetic eye. Her outfits always looked elegant yet relaxed. Her make-up was so understated that I often wondered if she was  wearing any. However, just this once, she had missed the mark.
 
Grace had poreless porcelain skin with lapis lazuli eyes. She blushed easily and winningly, which made her look like an angel. Her white-gold hair crowned the whole cherubic portrait perfectly.  All of her features were dazzling- and, in this case, simply ill-suited to the rich saturated red of her accessories.
 
‘Oh, the colour is absolutely stunning!’ I replied. My skin was dark and uneven, my hair a weird sort of hennaed chestnut (thanks to my latest hairdresser’s experiment), and my eyes cast in muddy brown. But in spite of these features, which irked me daily, Grace’s hat and gloves would have suited me perfectly. We were both wise enough to change the subject.
 
We’d been friends forever and had no shortage of other topics to discuss. Grace was worried about her teenage niece’s dalliance with drugs, and I wanted to rummage through the rubble of my latest crashed relationship – seeking the black box that would reveal how and where things had gone wrong.
 
We happily sipped our wine as the hours slipped by, and suddenly Grace’s husband was tapping his horn, beckoning her back to him. The time was always sweet but too short. Knowing we would meet again soon, Grace donned her handsome camel hair coat and grabbed her big leather bag. ‘After all that lovely wine, I’ll just visit the ‘loo before I go, ‘ she called to me, as she disappeared down the hall. Then we hugged, and she trotted out into the darkness and the waiting car.
 
It wasn’t until a day or two later, when I opened the linen closet to get a fresh towel, that I noticed it: a slip of paper bearing Grace’s scholarly script. 
​
‘The colour is much better on you  - beautiful things for a beautiful friend’
 
And below the note, neatly stacked, lay the hat and gloves.
 
 
15 Jan 2018