Suzy went upstairs to her parents’ bedroom. Now where would mum keep old glasses? She started looking in her mum’s bedside cabinet which had a small drawer at the top. She opened it but there was just a lot of old rubbish in there – an old watch, some receipts, a couple of postcards, some broken costume jewellery – no sign of any specs. She then went across to the dressing table which had a long drawer in the middle, she opened that – inside were various jewellery boxes, make up bags, hair brushes and ties, but still no glasses. There were also two drawers on each side of the cabinet. The top right contained underwear, the bottom right socks and tights. The top left contained paperwork, instruction booklets, important looking letters still in envelopes, bank statements etc. The bottom left opened to reveal a camera and some spare rolls of film, a hairdryer and, right at the back of the drawer several spectacle cases. Suzy took them all out – there were five in total. The first case was flowery and was held closed by a central popper, the second was soft burgundy imitation leather and stamped “Dolland and Aitchison” on the front, the opticians in town where she knew her mum went. The third case also had D&A on the front but was hard and spring hinged. The fourth had no markings on it was a flowery silk design which had a kind of purse clasp at the top where it opened. The fifth was the largest of all, it was hard and had the brand name “Silhouette” on the top. Suzy sat at the dressing table and opened the cases one by one and laid them out in front of her. The flowery case with the popper contained a pair of gold framed glasses that she now remembered her mum wearing a few years ago, they were a bit larger than Liz’s, squarish but with rounded corners. The burgundy imitation leather case contained a pair of plastic frames – Suzy remembered these were the last pair but one, they were translucent with a hint of purple to them. The hard case snapped open to reveal another metal pair, narrower than the gold ones and silver in colour – Suzy didn’t remember her mum wearing these at all. The flowery silky case contained a large brown pair with tinted brown lenses - she remembered her mum wearing these on the beach to read and so must have been prescription sunglasses. The final Silhouette case revealed her mum’s previous pair with the arms that hinged at the bottom that Suzy had always liked. Looking at herself in the mirror, Suzy opened the arms at the side of the glasses and delicately perched them on her face. She smiled at herself as she looked at her face framed by these large glasses – she thought she looked like a film star – she gave a little giggle, tossed her hair back a bit and then took them off. She didn’t bother with the prescription sunglasses but tried on the other three pairs in succession – the silver ones, she felt, didn’t do much to enhance her looks but the gold ones looked quite nice and she liked the ones with a hint of purple too. She thought she probably had quite a good face for glasses as she didn’t look bad in any of them. What she hadn’t worked out yet was whether any of them helped her vision and she thought maybe she could get away with borrowing one pair at a time without her mum noticing. She put all the others away in their cases and took care to replace them back in the drawer exactly where she’d found them, with the exception of the Silhouette glasses which she took to her own room and hid them at the back of the drawer where she kept some old toys – her parents would never look in there. Later that evening, after dinner and some TV watching, Suzy said she was tired and would go to bed – she kissed her mum goodnight and went up to her bedroom. After getting ready for bed and turning out the main light she took the glasses out of the case, turned on her bedside light and decided she would read a bit using mum’s “film star glasses” to see what effect they had on her vision. She slipped them on and opened up her book. Wow – everything looked so much clearer and bigger. She lifted them to compare her sight without them and they really did make an improvement to her vision. She read a few chapters of her book whilst wearing them and loved how easily she could see the text on the page. It was a bit annoying how they kept slipping down her nose, they were probably a bit big for her, but she loved the clear vision. After an hour or so she put them back in the case, hid them at the back of the same drawer, turned out the light and went to sleep. The next day after school, Suzy replaced the Silhouette glasses case in the drawer in her mum’s room and took out the flowery case containing the gold frames. She repeated the process from the night before, hiding the frames in the toy drawer and slipping them on to read after she’d gone to bed. Again, the effect was amazing – everything looked so clear to read. This time she also tested her vision to see if she could read the posters on the other side of the wall. She could, but wasn’t sure if it was clearer with or without the glasses on. She couldn’t work out whether her vision was better, worse or about the same as when wearing the Silhouette glasses and felt she needed to compare the two – this would have to wait until tomorrow. The following day instead of replacing the flowery case in her mum’s drawer when she got home from school, Suzy instead retrieved the large Silhouette case and took it to her room. She then took both pairs of glasses and placed them side by side on her desk. She took out her Chemistry text book and turned to a page with an annotated diagram on it with quite small writing and then put on the large Silhouette glasses. The writing was certainly clearer with than without glasses, it seemed bigger as well as clearer. She then swapped to the gold framed glasses – again it was better with than without but was it better than the Silhouette glasses? She swapped back and forth, back and forth and concluded that the lenses in the gold framed glasses were slightly clearer for her. She decided she’d repeat with the other two pairs as well and whilst returning the Silhouette case retrieved the cases holding both the purple translucent pair and the silver metal ones. It was quite difficult to tell the difference, they were quite fine margins but she felt on balance that both metal pairs were better than the purple ones. Choosing between silver and gold was really tricky – she couldn’t really tell the difference and could read really well with both pairs. She turned round to look at the posters on her wall and felt that the words “Duran Duran” on the poster of her favourite band were ever so slightly clearer through the silver pair and so decided she’d try these ones tonight. Suzy had homework to do that evening and so after dinner went upstairs to her room to do this. It was biology tonight and she had to write an essay on “Carbon dioxide in organisms and ecosystems”. Suzy set about writing the essay but after about an hour of writing she started to get a headache and had to keep rubbing her eyes. She was finding it difficult to focus on the page too and wondered if things might improve if she put on mum’s silver framed glasses. She retrieved them from the drawer and slipped them on, immediately the words jumped into focus on the page and over the next hour the headache subsided. Suzy completed the essay and concluded that she really did need to wear glasses to help her study. Suzy hung onto her mum’s old silver framed glasses and slipped them on to read whenever she was alone in her bedroom or doing homework. She was always careful to listen for her parents coming upstairs and as soon as she heard them, the glasses came off and were hurriedly shoved into the drawer so she was not spotted wearing the illicit spectacles. This plan worked well for several weeks and Suzy had got quite used to the routine of slipping on the glasses and then slipping them off before she could be spotted until one evening she had earphones in listening to a cassette and didn’t hear her mum coming up the stairs with a cup of tea for her whilst she was writing. Suzy was startled when her mum opened the door and suddenly they were looking at each other – Suzy through the lenses of her mum’s old glasses. Her mum’s jaw dropped and she said: “Suzy, why on earth are you wearing glasses and where did you get them from?” Suzy could feel her face going bright red, she took the glasses off and stammered “Er, I borrowed them because I thought they might help me to read better when studying”
“Who did you borrow them from, did that person not also need them to study, and if you couldn’t see well to study why on earth didn’t you say something to me?” “Well, er – actually I borrowed them from you. I found them in your drawer and thought as I couldn’t remember you wearing them that they were probably an old pair that you wouldn’t miss” “So they’re my old glasses? Are they not way too strong for you?” “I don’t think so, I can see quite well through them” “And how long have you been borrowing these from me?” “I don’t know, a few weeks now – just for homework and reading in bed. I haven’t taken them out of the house. I’m really sorry, I should have asked first” “Oh Suzy, you really should have said something. We need to get your eyes tested properly and you can get some glasses made to your own prescription. Dad’s been saying for a while that he thought you might have a problem with your eyes but I just ignored him. I’m so sorry, I’ll book you an eye test at my opticians tomorrow. Do you want to give me those back as she shouldn’t really be wearing someone else’s glasses, you might damage your eyes” And that was that – Suzy was rumbled.
to be continued….