If I had any advice to give a writer on how to to unstick yourself from a difficult place I would say just begin in media res; the rest will come. Make your character do something unexpected. The unexpectedness will give you the impetus you need to write your way into the next place, the next point of view. You’ll need to find a way of explaining why she did this: why Edith took the mannequin down from the front window. What got into her?
Later, when she tried to explain, all she could say was she thought the girl looked terribly hot underneath the wig and she wished to relieve her of it. Fantasy is long and hard and brings us much embarrassment: a deep-sea dive without the right outfit on. Invariably we come out of looking foolish and wet, but Edith was determined to persist with it. Something had set in - an idea -- always the most dangerous when elevated by feeling.
If you had to ask her what it was that began all this, she would say his hands on the counter. So neat, like rabbit’s paws. She swore he wore gloves. If a policeman were to ask Edith for her account of Mr. Jarvis it would begin there: with his hands on weighing out Epsom salts from glass jars. She watched carefully; a large metal spoon was descending between white gloves, and everything was looking so lovely and clean because, Mr. Jarvis, as usual, was carefully adjudicating. It was part of his decency, perhaps all of it, this state of infinite cleanliness.
Yes, he was a clean man, a chemist; so exact, and yet so mysterious it was this business of compounds coming together. For Edith, the chemist had always been a place for tissues and cough sweets and cod liver oil, for alleviation of minor ailments. For relief from upset stomachs ending with something-carbonate: bi, with, to, or from – everything ended up in the sea, didn’t it? All forms of life. She assumed that most treatments were natural deposits made by sea creatures with many years of shedding extra pairs of legs and tentacles. Now, they were generously contributing those to prevent Edith’s tickle at the back of her throat. The chemist, so Edith vaguely imagined – and this was only the vaguest of conceptions, the thinnest line drawn through – was made from thousands of years of mineral deposits of generously bestowing crustacean creatures ready to give up surplus parts to provide humans with a way out of their nasty cold. And then, when marine life dried up, there were always fields and meadows to plunder for treatments of bronchial conditions. Syrups and unguents that had once been herbal leaves pressed into opaque brown bottles. Rosemary and thyme and lemon basil, fennel and nettles. Edith was glad to know that the most obnoxious green lives – stinging nettles -- could be turned into something useful.
She was thrown by the introduction of wigs and dyes, cosmetics -- all the stuff of the circus – this was not for a chemist. It was unnerving to see Mr. Jarvis trafficking so dangerously with self-alteration; Edith was quick to sniff out impurity. But she assumed that these days one had to try to be all things to all men in the effort to keep trade flowing. After all, her she was alone in the shop at 9.30 in the morning. All alone in this small corner of the world made pokey by the figure of the tanned woman in the window hogging all the light. That was another reason for removing her: she was blocking any chance of natural light.
‘What on earth are you doing?’
In the police report she would have told one distinct lie. Mr. Jarvis did not address her as ‘Edith.’ She added that to soften the blow. A spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down.
‘She seemed so lonely in the window, and I wanted to check on her colouring.’
‘Colouring?’
‘Her hair. It seems implausibly blonde.’
‘She’s wearing a wig. A wig is artificial, artificial things are often implausible.’
Edith didn’t understand why he was sounding so stern.
‘I’ll put her back.’
But when she tried to lift the girl over her shoulder she found she kept slipping back into her arms.