Sarah kept a small smile pinned on her face which gave the impression of agreeing with him. He handed her the scribbled number and she put it in her bag. She had no intention of phoning him, but tonight wasn’t the time to make an issue of it.
“Are we ready?” Anna asked.
“We are,” Sarah told her.
She linked arms with her friend and walked out to the waiting taxis, leaving James Ryder staring after her.
Chapter 28
When Sarah first woke, she opened her eyes and then tried to turn her head towards the dark window. It felt as though a ton weight was attached to it. She lay for a few moments and then made a tentative move to sit up. The bedroom suddenly started to spin around. She sank back into her pillows, trying to work out what was happening. And then it hit her. She had drunk too much last night. Sherry, wine and later, other drinks she couldn’t remember. A wave of shame washed over her, but she wasn’t fit to deal with it.
She closed her eyes and went back to sleep.
The second time she woke, it was to the sound of the front door banging. She sat up more quickly, and the room started to move around her again. A feeling of alarm crept over her as fragments of the night before came flitting back to her memory. Fragments of the night she didn’t want to relive. She looked over to the window. It was still dark outside. She turned her spinning head to the clock on her bedside table. The hands showed twenty past three. The door banging must have been the other girls returning. She closed her eyes again.
The clock showed eleven o’clock when the knocking on the bedroom door woke her up for the third time. When she sat up, she was grateful that the dramatic feelings of the night before had subsided enough to let her move more easily. But as she swung her legs out of the bed a wave of nausea hit her and the dizzy feeling closed in on her.
She was still sitting on the side of the bed when Jane opened the door. “Sarah,” she started, “I’m really worried about Vivienne . . .” Then she stopped in her tracks. “My God!” she said, her hand flying to cover her mouth. “What have you done to your beautiful hair? You’ve cut it all off.”
Her gaze moved to the long blonde strands which were scattered on the floor around the chair in front of the dressing-table.
“My hair?” Sarah looked back at her in a daze, and then she remembered. A bolt of alarm hit her. She remembered hacking at it with her scissors last night. She moved her hand to feel it now, and found a strange empty space where all the thick hair used to be. Her stomach started to churn. What on earth had she done? She took a deep breath. “I decided I wanted to have it short . . .”
“But you should have waited and gone to the hairdresser’s. It’s all up and down . . . all uneven . . .” Jane’s voice trailed away.
Sarah felt a sense of panic now, which she struggled to keep hidden. She went over to the wardrobe mirror. And there, looking back at her, was a complete stranger. But, as she scrutinised herself with pin-hole eyes, it wasn’t as bad as she had dreaded. When she turned her head to the side she could see that that the edges were up and down, but from the front it looked something like the bob the dark-haired girl at the dance had.
She turned to face Jane. “I’ve wanted to have it cut for ages, but I didn’t have the courage . . .” She was surprised at her own words, but she knew they were true. Somewhere at the back of her mind she had been considering it for a while.
“What on earth made you do it last night?”
Sarah couldn’t find an answer that would sound sensible or reasonable. She couldn’t say that she had cut her hair off because it drew too much attention from men. Most girls would be grateful for an asset like that and would think she was mad. She shrugged. “I suppose all those drinks made me take the step I was afraid of . . .” She looked back at herself in the mirror. “I think I knew I would never get around to going into a hairdresser’s to get it cut, so I took matters into my own hands.”
“In a funny kind of way it suits you short,” Jane told her. “But you would have been better to wait and have it done professionally.”
“I know, but it’s too late now. The shops aren’t open until tomorrow. I’ll have to wait until then” She looked at the nurse now. “Are you any good with scissors? Do you think you could straighten it up until I get to the hairdresser’s in the morning?”
“Oh, Sarah!” Jane pulled an anguished face. “I’m not sure if I could do it any better.”
“Would you have a go at it?” Sarah asked. “Please? Just to get rid of the raggy bits before anyone else sees it.”
“Have you got a pair of decent scissors?”
“I cut it with my large scissors,” Sarah said, going over to her work table. She opened a drawer. “But maybe if you used a finer pair, just to even it off.”
“I’ll do my best,” Jane said. “But I’m no hairdresser.”
A short while later they both looked at a tidier version of the hairstyle in the mirror.
“I like it,” Sarah said, her voice full of conviction. “And thanks for doing it. It will be fine until I get to the hairdresser’s.”
“You’re very brave . . .”
“I feel as though a weight has been lifted off me.”
“It has,” Jane said. “A blonde weight most girls would have killed for.”
“It was difficult having it,” Sarah told her. “It’s always been a problem. It just draws too much attention. I’m glad it’s short now.” She moved away from the mirror, anxious to end the conversation. “What were you looking for when you came into my room?”
“Vivienne. She’s not in her room – she mustn’t have come home last night.”
Sarah stared blankly at her. “Are you sure? Maybe she’s downstairs . . .”
Jane shook her head vigorously, and Sarah wondered that she could do it so easily, as any sudden movement was still uncomfortable.
“She was in a terrible state last night,” Jane said.
Sarah’s brain was blank at first, and then she started to remember the long, involved conversation that she and Vivienne had. From what she could recall it had ended with them crying and hugging each other. God, she began to feel a sense of having behaved ridiculously. There was another memory lurking at the back of her mind. She had an uneasy feeling it was to do with one of the male doctors. “She didn’t seem that bad to me . . .”
“Well, after you and Anna left she downed even more. I took one drink off her and moved a few glasses away from her but, even so, by the end of the night she wasn’t able to stand up.”
Sarah’s face showed nothing of her feelings. That could have been me, she thought. Another drink or two and that could easily have been me . . .
“I know we all had a lot to drink, but she was far worse than the rest of us,” Jane continued. “The last time I remember seeing her, she was collapsed in a chair in the cloakroom. I woke her up and told her to wait for us and we’d get a taxi home, then I went back into the hall to find Elizabeth. By the time we got back to the cloakroom, Vivienne had gone.”
“She’s obviously gone home with someone,” Sarah said. “One of her other friends from the hospital.”
“I don’t know what to think,” Jane said, “She was so drunk that anything could have happened to her.”
It gave Sarah a small crumb of comfort to know that she wasn’t the only one who had overdone it with alcohol, but something about the situation alarmed her. “What do you think we should do?”
Jane shrugged. “I don’t know what we can do.”
“I’ll get dressed and come downstairs with you.” She couldn’t face the thought of a bath this morning. The manoeuvring in and out and the bending would be too much for her fragile state.
“I’ll put the kettle on.”
* * *
The tea and toast helped, and as she started on her second strong cup, Sarah was beginning to feel vaguely normal.
Then Elizabeth and Anna came into the kitchen, still in their dressing-gowns. They both stopped in their tracks
.
“What have you done?” Anna gasped.
Sarah remembered her hair again. “I know, I know.” Her cheeks reddened. “I know I should have waited until I went to a proper hairdresser’s. But it’s done now and I can’t stick it back on. Anyway,” she said in a manner braver than she felt, “I prefer it short.”
“It’s definitely different,” Elizabeth said, pausing to find a better description.
“And even if it’s short,” Anna said, “it’s still a lovely colour.”
Small praise. She would have to brave this out for the next few days with every single person that knew her. An atonement for being stupid and for drinking too much. She had paid dearly for the lesson.
“Vivienne never came home,” Jane said. “I’m beginning to get a bit worried about her.”
“She’ll be fine,” Elizabeth said, going over to check the teapot. “She probably went back to one of the rooms in the hospital for another drink.”
“She wasn’t in any state to drink any more,” Jane argued. “She was hardly in a state to walk.”
They discussed the situation for a while and then Anna said she would go out to the phone box and ring around some of their friends.
A short while later she came back into the house, shaking her head. “No one has heard anything about her.”
Elizabeth shrugged. “I think we should give it a few more hours before we start getting really worried. It was a New Year’s party and she’s just had too much to drink and gone off with some of her friends to sleep it off.”
Sarah was upstairs lying on her bed when she heard the black Hackney cab pull up outside the house. She went over to the window and saw Vivienne getting out of the taxi. She was wearing a man’s jumper with jeans that had the hems rolled up, and carrying a Marks and Spencer bag.
Sarah ran across the bedroom floor and into the hallway to call out to the others. “Vivienne’s okay. She’s just coming into the house now.” Then she went back into her room and lifted a white angora, cloche-style hat she had knitted and pulled it over her hair.
Vivienne looked at all the concerned faces seated around the kitchen table. “What did you think had happened to me?” Her voice was high and incredulous.
“Well, anything could have . . .” Jane said.
Vivienne pulled a face as though they were all mad for worrying, then she grinned and shook her head. “I went back to the hospital for a drink with some of the doctors and decided it was easier to bunk down there in one of the rooms.”
“Who gave you the clothes?” Elizabeth asked.
“One of the guys I work with.”
Sarah looked at her, remembering all Vivienne had drunk. Remembering what they all had drunk. “How do you feel? I’ve got a terrible headache after all the wine.”
Vivienne shrugged. “I’ve a bit of a hangover but no worse than any other New Year. Last year I was drunk much earlier and had no memory of getting home at all. I remember everything about last night.” Then she laughed. “At least I think I do . . .” She threw a fleeting glance at Sarah. “Although anything I said is probably best forgotten. I tend to talk a lot of rubbish when I’m drunk.”
Sarah lowered her gaze. Vivienne’s message was quite clear. She wanted to forget all that she had said about her family and the Irishwoman the previous night. Sarah could understand it. She wouldn’t like anyone to start talking about her aborted wedding plans this morning.
Jane’s eyes narrowed. “As long as you’re okay,” she said. “Then what you do is entirely up to yourself.”
“Yes,” Vivienne said. “It is.” She looked over at Sarah again. “Why on earth are you wearing a hat with your dressing-gown?”
Sarah’s face reddened. She would just have to brave it out. She pulled the hat off.
“My God!” Vivienne said. “What have you done? You look like a completely different girl.”
“Good,” Sarah said. “That’s exactly what I intended. A new year and a new me. I’m fed up being called Alice in Wonderland or any of the stupid names people think they can call me because of my hair.” She raised her eyebrows. “And before you say any more, I’ll be going to a hairdresser’s to have it properly shaped as soon as they’re open.”
“It’s actually okay,” Vivienne said. “When we get used to it, I think it will suit you very well shorter.”
Sarah felt better. If it was anyone else she would have called it being damned by faint praise, but she knew Vivienne would speak her mind. Her hair would be a nine-day wonder. She had survived the cancelled wedding and telling everyone about it. She had survived the shaky start she had in the house with the girls. She had survived the row with Harriet and would cope whether the nurse dropped their friendship or not.
She would easily survive something as trivial as a haircut.
Chapter 29
1965
On the Friday after New Year’s Day Sarah stood outside the door of Harrison’s in the biting cold, trying to get the key in the frozen lock. When she eventually got inside, the shop was so cold her breath came out in clouds. She rushed around putting the heater on in the main shop and the small fan heater in the kitchen.
Lucy had dropped the shop key off to her the night before, saying she had to go to the doctor’s first thing if Sarah wouldn’t mind opening up for her. She had been taken aback when she saw Sarah’s hair.
“I just fancied a change and was too impatient to wait until the hairdresser’s opened,” Sarah told her.
“I’m sure it will look very nice when it’s evened off properly . . .”
“I hope you’re okay?” Sarah had asked when she walked her out to the door.
“Yes,” Lucy had said. “It’s nothing of any importance.”
Sarah had watched her walking back down the path and into her car, thinking back to what Harriet had said about her having a nervous breakdown.
By the time Lucy arrived at the shop at ten o’clock it had warmed up and there was a queue of customers waiting to be served. Sarah moved around the serving area quickly packing wool and needles into bags, measuring lengths of material and opening pattern books at the end of the counter for those who needed advice.
At eleven o’clock Lucy looked at her watch. “Why don’t you go and have your hair done now, Sarah? We’re not busy and it will be quiet at the hairdresser’s at this time.”
Sarah looked up at her. “That would be great. I’ll work through my lunch hour to make up for it.”
“I don’t think we need to worry too much about an hour extra off. You give more than enough of your own time.”
“You’re very good,” Sarah said. “And I meant to thank you for the tailor’s dummy. I made a lovely dress for a New Year’s Eve Ball and having it to fit the material on really made a difference.”
“And I meant to ask you if you enjoyed the dance.”
Sarah felt herself flush at the mention of the night. “Yes,” she said. “The hotel was beautiful and we had a lovely meal.”
“Did your friends all enjoy it?”
Sarah nodded. “I think everyone did.” She thought for a moment, wondering if she should confide in her employer. “The only thing . . . everyone, me included, drank a lot. In fact I feel a bit stupid, because I felt the effects of it the next day.”
“Well, it was New Year. I suppose everyone lets their hair down a bit.”
“I got into a slightly awkward situation . . .” She saw Lucy’s concerned face. “Nothing that bad. It was just that one of the doctors Vivienne knows took a bit of a shine to me. He asked me out for a meal, but I told him I wasn’t ready to go on a date with anyone yet.”
There was a small silence.
“I told the girls about my cancelled wedding,” Sarah explained, “and I felt it was just as easy to tell the doctor about it as make up an excuse.” She paused. “I’m going to do the same with David McGuire. After seeing how upset Harriet was when we went out to visit his family, I’ve got to do something to put him off me.” She touched t
he back of her hair. “Although having this all cut off might help.”
“You didn’t really do it because of that?”
Sarah shook her head. “No, I was fed up with it. It got in the way, and it was heavy. And, I felt it made me look too young. I think I look more serious – more businesslike – with my hair shorter.” She looked expectantly at Lucy.
“You suit it very well.”
“Thanks, I’ll get my coat and head off to the hairdresser’s now.”
The hairdresser had no idea how long her hair had previously been, so Sarah made a vague excuse about having asked a friend to trim it. The hairdresser laughed and said she’d seen worse jobs.
“I think you could take another couple of inches off,” Sarah said, as she looked at herself in the mirror. Since she’d had a few days to get used to the new length, she thought she might as well go the whole way now and have it cut as short as the style she had admired.
“Okay,” the hairdresser said. “If you don’t like it, you can easily grow it out.”
Back at the shop Lucy took a few moments to get used to it. “Yes,” she said, smiling. “It looks even better now. It really frames your face. Your long hair was striking and beautiful, but you look equally nice now.”
“Thanks,” Sarah said, knowing most people would be kind enough to say that now, even if they thought it was awful. She would live with it. “Has Harriet called in yet?”
“No.”
She felt a knot forming in her stomach. Harriet was obviously still annoyed with her.
“But David McGuire has been in. He said his grandmother asked him to give something to you and he’ll call back later.”
Sarah sighed. “He could just have left it.”
Lucy smiled and said nothing.
After a reasonably busy morning, there was only a dribble of customers in the afternoon. Sarah kept busy dusting and washing shelves and sorting out the stockroom.
“It’s always quiet at this time of the year,” Lucy said. “People don’t have much money after Christmas. It picks up again when the days get longer and then the customers start to think about decorating and getting new curtains.”
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