Drop Dead Gorgeous

by Anna Cheska

  If it did, she reminded herself, her tape would remain conspicuously empty. First things first …

  And then there was age. Absent-mindedly, she fiddled with the edge of one of her acrylic nails. You couldn’t not say. But how specific did you have to be? She might feel young at heart on a good day, but apparently she was middle-aged in all the other places (and who could see her heart?).

  Leaving her nail alone before a massive repair job became necessary, Jude took a sip of her coffee, pulled a pen out of the top pocket of her black shift and began to write. She compromised with, ‘young, early-40s’.

  The salon phone rang and she spoke to a client who was coming in that afternoon for an aromatherapy massage. They discussed the advantages of The Energiser (4 drops Tangerine to 4 drops Bergamot) over All Systems Fortifier (4 of Tea Tree to 2 of Lavender and Eucalyptus). Yes, she could decide on arrival. Yes, it was OK to be ten minutes late – Jude raised her eyes heavenwards – and yes, Jude might be able to fit in a rapid shampoo and blow dry afterwards. But she couldn’t make any promises. She replaced the receiver. People were so selfish sometimes. It was a pity her appointments book had so many spaces, but times were hard and more women made the business of beauty a DIY job these days.

  Now where was she? Cuddly or curvaceous? Jude reached for a cigarette, flicking her lighter and drawing the smoke into her lungs gratefully. Very different connotations. Comfort or sex. She frowned. Voluptuous was going too far, while generous build made her sound like an all-in female wrestler.

  WLTM … who? She flicked ash in the glass ashtray on the desk. A knight in shining armour? All very well, she smiled, but would he be a control freak? A David Ginola lookalike? She exhaled with a sigh. Anything less than the real thing would be such a disappointment, and she doubted whether he needed to read the Heart to Heart personal ads in the Chichester Echo.

  ‘Where are you, Imo?’ She picked up the phone and dialled the number of Say It With Flowers. She couldn’t do this alone.

  * * *

  ‘What are you looking for?’ her friend asked. She sounded busy and distracted, as if Jude had caught her elbow-deep in liquid nitrogen or something.

  ‘A good question.’ She inhaled once again as she gave the matter more thought. ‘I’m not crazy enough to expect a Mr Right.’

  ‘You’re not?’ Imogen clearly didn’t believe her – though whether about the crazy bit or the Mr Right bit, Jude wasn’t sure.

  ‘No. Mr Flawed-but-interesting will do. So long as he’s got some sex appeal.’

  ‘Ye … es.’

  ‘But I don’t want a slob,’ Jude added. What she did not need were toe-nail clippings in the sitting-room. ‘Nor anyone who shouts at me. I can’t bear uptight, irritable men.’ She stubbed her cigarette out with some feeling, thinking for some reason of her landlord, James Dean. ‘And he’s got to love me to bits – at first sight preferably.’

  ‘You can hardly put all that in the ad. It’ll cost you a fortune if you start rambling.’

  Rambling? The cheek of the woman. ‘How about WLTM someone to restore her faith in men?’

  ‘A bit corny. And it sounds as if you’ve been dumped ten times in the last month.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Jude stretched out her legs. She’d been right to consult Imo; she had a fail-proof bullshit button. ‘Size of parts relatively unimportant?’

  Imogen giggled. ‘Is that what you really, really want?’

  A picture flashed into Jude’s mind. ‘On reflection, no. How about WLTM man to make her purr?’ She put on her thirty-a-day sexy growl.

  ‘Sounds a bit of a come on. You might get some perverts.’

  ‘Sweetie, you always get perverts.’ She laughed, but Imo became serious.

  ‘Be careful, Jude,’ she warned.

  ‘I always am.’ Jude shifted the telephone receiver to her other ear and glanced at the appointments book once again. How was she supposed to fill it? She did her best to drag ’em in and be sweetness and light while they were here, but all she got were clients like the acrylic nail extension refill due in … what?… five minutes. She was a pain. And always on time. Jude located her fresh air spray and depressed the push button to waft away any remaining cigarette smoke.

  ‘Perhaps it’s safer to say. “Spent last Saturday night reading Argos catalogue, this can’t continue, urgent rescue required”.’ She broke off as her ten o’clock client opened the salon door.

  ‘Oh, Jude.’ Imo seemed to be taking a deep breath. ‘Is it so awful to be on your own?’ There was a silence.

  Jude motioned the ten o’clock to remove her coat (brown suede, very nice, soft and classy) and sit down. ‘’Course not,’ she said cheerfully. ‘But I think it’s high time you and I hit the town. Come round to the flat tonight. We’ll finalise the wording of this ad and discuss tactics.’

  ‘You’re on.’

  Jude knew Imo almost as well as she knew herself and realised she was trying too hard to sound cheerful. Ergo, she needed a friend. ‘As early as you like,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a client. Must dash.’ Onward to the land of acrylic nail extensions and penetrating pinnacle cream. Heigh ho.

  * * *

  Imogen put down the phone. It would do her good to go out. It might stop her brooding about Edward and photographs, secret lives and other women.

  Mondays were quiet at Say It With Flowers and she was just wondering about tackling the late pruning out back when Warren sauntered in.

  ‘Oh, it’s you.’ For some irrational reason, a streak of fear shifted across her shoulders and settled on her spine.

  ‘Tiffaround?’ he demanded.

  ‘What?’ Imo blinked. It was hard to imagine that he’d said he could fancy her. Quite worrying too.

  His expression mellowed into irritated patience. ‘Tiff. Is she around, like?’

  ‘Oh.’ Imogen regained control. ‘No, Warren, she’s not. She’ll be at school, won’t she?’ Tiffany was only fifteen, though going on twenty. Imo tidied away some cellophane from the counter, hoping he would take the hint and leave.

  ‘School?’ His mouth (did he ever clean those teeth? she wondered) twisted into a nicotine-coated sneer. ‘Oh, yeah, like yeah. At school, yeah. As if…’

  Very intelligible. She took a cloth from the sink behind her and wiped away the debris of leaves and faint traces of sap from the last bouquet she’d wrapped.

  Warren remained where he was. ‘She didn’t leave nothing for me then?’

  Didn’t leave nothing? Did leave something? Imogen was tempted to say that she was not a messenger service. But something in his expression as she shook the cloth into the bin and glanced up made her think better of it. Of course she wasn’t scared of him – though she wouldn’t like to meet him on a dark night when she was wearing her leather coat.

  She gave a cursory glance under the counter to satisfy him. ‘No. Nothing.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Absolutely.’ It had become a battle of wills that Imogen had no intention of losing.

  ‘So what time’s the tartduin?’

  ‘What time’s what?’ Imogen couldn’t help feeling relieved as a customer opened the door and strolled in. Hair a little long, leather jacket (but thankfully not with metal studs and silver-stitched New-Age-witchy diagrams like Warren’s), jeans, big smile. Him again. Did he need more flowers already?

  The man hesitated on the threshold, seeming unsure.

  Imogen didn’t want him to walk straight out again and leave her alone with Warren, so she leaned on the counter and beamed at him. ‘Hi!’ she trilled. ‘Don’t go away. I’ll be with you in a moment.’

  The man frowned at her. ‘OK.’

  Imo turned her attention back to Warren. He was little more than a boy. There was certainly nothing for a woman of the world (though Imo wasn’t sure she really was one of those) to be afraid of in him. ‘What time’s what?’ she repeated very slowly.

  ‘The tart due in. Tiff.’

  It wasn’t exactly an insult; she’d heard enough te
en-speak to at least know that. ‘A quarter to four.’ She moved to the other side of the counter to make it clear their conversation was at an end. ‘Excuse me, please.’ And if he started hanging around when Tiffany was supposed to be working, she would have words, she really would. It was coming up to her busiest time – bar Mother’s Day and Valentine’s – but there would always be other assistants she could find. She just had to make it plain to Tiffany that work was work and Warren wasn’t welcome there.

  ‘I’ll be back,’ he snarled as if she’d said all this out loud.

  ‘Fine.’ But it wasn’t. Imogen felt under threat and paranoid. She certainly would go round to Jude’s tonight, she decided. She needed to regain some perspective. And perhaps her friend was right. Perhaps she also needed a good night out.

  * * *

  Jude turned her attention to the jagged broken nails of her ten o’clock appointment. She was a stunning girl in her late-teens or early-twenties perhaps, with strawberry-blonde hair, long, curling dark eyelashes – both natural – and clear ivory skin.

  Being in the beauty business, Jude – who had never had any of these natural accoutrements – could only admire. But unlike some clients to whom the intimacy of the salon was like a confessional box, this girl was a closed book. She never talked about herself. She did, however, put her hands, palms down, on the black imitation leather of the manicure cushion.

  Jude tutted as she pulled the trolley closer and locked the wheels. Many clients came to her for nail extensions because they were fed up with ugly, bitten nails. But not many bit the acrylic ones. ‘Been under a lot of stress?’ she asked her, plugging in her tools. It took so much time when you had to reshape the tips as well as infill and build the base. She should charge extra really, but she couldn’t afford to risk losing the business.

  ‘Not ’specially.’

  Cool as cucumber in an iced Florida cocktail, Jude thought, going to work with the cuticle clippers. ‘How’s it going then?’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Good.’ This would be a long job, an hour at least. Plenty of time to chat. And yet after six months Jude still knew zilch about this girl. And wasn’t it every woman’s duty to confide in her beautician? So she took a deep breath. ‘What do you do, by the way?’ Hard manual labour, judging by the state of these. Very carefully, she began creating a fine dust on the nail surface with the arbor band.

  ‘I model.’

  The arrogance was in the understatement. Jude should have guessed. And no wonder the girl had her nails done – they were her only blemish. ‘Really? That sounds terribly glamorous.’ Jude motioned to her to bend her fingers slightly. Uptight or what?

  The girl was staring down at her nails. ‘It isn’t,’ she stated. ‘It’s incredibly draining.’

  That was an improvement. She might even be human. Jude switched her attention to the other hand. ‘Do you do photo shoots?’ She’d bet that this girl was good at her job. Few of her clients were so expert at keeping still.

  ‘And life modelling for artists.’ She lowered the green eyes.

  Artists, hmmm? Jude paused to glance across at her. She quite fancied the idea of an artist. Laid-back, expressing all that sexy, creative energy. She could see it now … She stuck on the first nail form … Someone with a beard and a wonderful bone structure flinging his arms around and being creative all over the place. He would paint her and discover the beautiful woman underneath the superficial gloss, the original vulnerable vamp just waiting to get out from under her black-corseted body stocking.

  Nail forms numbers two and three. This girl was the only client who needed all ten tips redoing every single fortnight. But Jude had found out more about her this morning than she had in the previous six months, and decided to persevere. She started on the other hand. ‘Married, are you?’ Last nail form, all present and correct.

  ‘No.’ The girl didn’t bite – only watched as Jude began to apply the primer coat.

  ‘Can’t say I blame you. Men…’ Jude finished priming and selected a fine art brush for the acrylic cementing. ‘Are they worth it? I ask you.’

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw a lip curl. Jeronimo!

  ‘It depends what you want them for.’

  Ah. And what did this girl want them for? Money? The right arm at the right party? ‘It must be a biological urge or something,’ Jude said as she began reshaping and forming the acrylic into consummate shapes and square tips. She’d had this conversation with herself (and Imo) many times; she didn’t particularly need any response and temporarily forgot her mission of achieving client confidences from Miss Tight-arsed ten o’clock. ‘I mean, we know they’re not good for us, we know they’re just children who look a bit more grown up than the other kind, we know they can’t respond to us on the emotional level we need them to. So why do we bother?’ She looked at her client. Over to her.

  The girl shrugged. ‘You tell me.’

  Jude would. ‘Because we want that dizzy feeling again, that’s why…’ She waved the brush at the girl sitting opposite her – even her eyebrows were perfectly plucked, she realised – before dipping it into the powder. ‘We want the excitement, the feeling that we’re in love, the adrenaline rushing around all our bits. We want to believe someone loves us, would die for us even … we want to be thrown on to a draining board in the name of passion occasionally.’ Jude sighed. ‘Of course none of it’s true, but we need to believe it could be.’ At last she came to a halt. The emotional temperature on the other side of the manicure trolley was sub-zero. ‘Don’t you ever get excited about anything?’ Jude asked curiously. She was cold as cut glass, this one.

  ‘I like sex.’

  Jude’s eyes widened as she concentrated on reshaping with the arbor band. So, she liked sex. On her own terms, no doubt. Had she ever been taken for granted on a shag-pile rug? Been laid on a dining-room table? Probably not. But then neither had Jude – she was always worried the table (or the man) wouldn’t be strong enough to take her anywhere, let alone into ecstasy … ‘You’ve got a boyfriend?’

  ‘Of course.’

  The diamond point was intended to seal in the sides and smooth the top of the nail. Jude could think of other uses for it … Of course. ‘You’re much too young to get serious though, I suppose?’ Who was she kidding? There was no such thing as an age at which it was too young to get serious. Jude knew. She had been the original ugly duckling. She would have got serious at twelve if someone had asked her to.

  ‘I haven’t decided on my next move yet,’ her client said.

  Jude went to work with the baby oil. What could she say to that? Only that she wouldn’t like to get in Miss Ten o’clock’s way when she did.

  * * *

  ‘I was thinking of a hyacinth,’ Alex said. That sounded bloody daft for a start. No wonder the woman (why had she smiled at him like that? Could it be a case of mistaken identity?) now looked surprised-with-a-hint-of-frost. Who could blame her? He sounded like a prat, and what’s more he had never thought of a hyacinth in his life. What would he do with a hyacinth, for God’s sake? What was he doing in here?

  ‘Colour?’ Eyes of grey. Still-warm ash. She was waiting.

  ‘Sorry?’

  She folded her arms. He thought he saw a hint of a smile pulling at her mouth, but maybe not. She was serene and she was also beautiful. ‘What colour hyacinth?’

  ‘There’s a choice then?’ It seemed like a game, a kind of batting about of colours and plants. A new language. Say it with flowers. Inwardly, he chuckled.

  ‘There’s always a choice.’

  For a moment Alex wondered if she were teasing, but he dismissed this thought almost immediately. She wasn’t the type, he sensed, to tease a stranger. She held herself in, kept something back, presented only her smooth exterior to the world. And sure enough her expansive wave of the hand indicated a display of baskets and pots opposite the counter of the shop, all containing green stubby shooting things with various additions.

  ‘Delft Bl
ue, City of Haarlem…’ she smiled ‘… that’s yellow to you. Anna Marie – pink – or Ben Nevis – ivory.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘They come with moss, grass seed, with moss and ivy or all alone.’ She seemed to be enjoying herself.

  ‘Mind-boggling.’ Once again he wondered why he had come here. Five minutes ago he’d been eating a sandwich in the Bishop’s Palace Garden, walking around to keep warm. His gaze had shifted from the Cathedral tower and spire to the conifers and white winter pansies of the garden, and he had thought of her – the woman in the flower shop with the calm grey eyes and hesitant smile. He hadn’t been able to remember if she was wearing a wedding ring.

  Five minutes later here he was, wondering how the hell one might Say It With Flowers. And what he could buy to say it with.

  At last she laughed – at him probably. ‘They’ll be in flower in time for Christmas, I hope.’

  ‘You grow them yourself then?’ Alex wanted to prolong this conversation, not because of a passionate interest in hyacinths, but in the hope of another radiant smile.

  With a finger-nail, she forked the sandy earth alongside a bulb growing moss-less, grass-less and alone.

  No ring, he noted. But he thought he could detect an indentation on the third finger of her left hand. Artists were trained to notice such things.

  ‘I do most of it myself. With a little help from Tiffany.’

  Yes, he remembered Tiffany. All bleached hair, black make-up and punctures. He came across a lot of Tiffanys at the college. They were bold, strung up and confrontational, those girls. They also made him feel ancient. ‘This your place then, is it?’ he asked the seemingly thawing woman. It wasn’t a huge shop but every square metre was in use. Behind the hyacinths was a selection of pots, bowls and plant paraphernalia. In front were the tubs holding the flowers and greenery from which he’d selected Sylvie’s bouquet. Mistletoe and holly hung from the walls, pots of ivy, pansies, white jasmine and other winter-flowering plants no doubt drew her customers inside. On the other side of the narrow shop was the long counter, the gift cards and open books displaying various styles of wreaths, arrangements and bouquets. At the back of the shop was a door. There must be a lot more space out there, he thought, if she grew and cultivated some of the stock.