by Lindsey Kelk
‘That’s it,’ I told myself quietly. I might be drunk at four on a Saturday afternoon but I didn’t really want anyone to hear me talking to myself. ‘No more tears.’
Granted, that was a statement that carried a lot more credibility on a bottle of Johnson & Johnson’s Baby Shampoo, but I had to make myself believe it. I was not going to waste any more tears on someone who had left me a note. I was not going to make myself sick over someone that thought five years could be written off in fewer than four sentences. I was not going to break my heart over someone who could break my heart and still think it was OK to take my toothpaste at the same time. I was done. Heading back into the living room, I curled up on the armchair and shook my head at Drunk and Drunker. It had been a hard day for the both, clearly. Trying not to wake them, I pulled the to-do list out of my bag and read it over again. I would never do any of these things. Never in twenty-nine years would I have considered any of them. I wasn’t the kind of girl who would do any of these things but I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of girl would.
And I couldn’t help but be a little bit excited to find out.
CHAPTER SIX
‘Morning.’
I rolled over to feel something soft on the other side of my bed.
‘I thought you said no same-sex experience on the list?’ Emelie mumbled.
‘If I went gay, it wouldn’t be with you,’ I replied.
Why was Emelie in my bed? Where was Simon? Why did my brain feel as if it had been taken out, tumble dried without so much as a sheet of Bounce and shoved back up my nose?
Oh.
Right.
‘It’s too early,’ I rolled back over and mumbled into my pillowcase. Maybe if I lay face down long enough, I’d smother myself into a coma. That would be a nice long nap, wouldn’t it? A lovely, lovely coma. Alternatively, I realized, opening my eyes, I should get up and be with other human beings as there was every chance I wasn’t terribly mentally stable. Wishing yourself into a coma isn’t usually A Good Thing. ‘I want a lie-in.’
‘It’s almost ten, that is a lie-in,’ Em said, bouncing up and off the bed like an Andrex puppy. ‘Today is the first day of your single life. That’s exciting. Get. Up.’
I felt the sunshine on my face and made a mental note to pick up some blackout curtains as soon as humanly possible. Silver lining number one.
‘I feel like shit.’ I pushed my legs over the side of the bed, hoping they would somehow catapult the rest of my body over there. ‘Is this part of being single?’
Em stretched and nodded. ‘We need to work on your alcohol tolerance. I’ll put the kettle on, see if he’s up.’
After passing out on the sofa, the rest of last night was a bit of a blur. I remembered waking up around seven, throwing up again, drinking tea, ordering a pizza and playing ‘guess who’s going to die?’ when Matthew turned on Casualty. Afternoon hangovers were the worst. Once it had been established that I wasn’t going to cry myself to sleep, Matthew and Em had allowed me to slope off to bed. Still, it made a change from my regular Saturday rituals of doing the washing, watching DVDs and going down to Pizza Express early enough to be home for Match of the Day.
Yawning, I combed my hair out of my face and tethered it behind my head. Was it weird that yesterday had probably been more fun than any other Saturday in years? Maybe fun wasn’t the right word. It was definitely the most interesting.
The hardwood floor in my bedroom was never warm, not even when the sun was streaming in, like it was this morning, but only one foot was cold as I forced myself to stand up. Glancing down, I saw that was because one foot was standing on something white. Something soft. I dropped back onto the bed, releasing the fabric. It was Simon’s T-shirt. It must have got thrown under the bed during our Friday night sexcapades. Closing my eyes, I held onto the worn cotton tightly and tried to breathe slowly. The main reason I hadn’t cried myself to sleep the night before was that I was just exhausted. My body’s first line of self-defence was to shut down and go to sleep, but that wasn’t an option today. I was going to have to do something.
‘Do you want shower or tea first?’ Em stuck her head round the door. ‘Matthew’s in there now but you can go next if you want?’
I shoved the T-shirt into my pillowcase and stood a bit too quickly. The afternoon hangover had definitely become a morning hangover, bleurgh.
‘Shower.’ I was desperate to get out of the room, to put some distance between me and that T-shirt. ‘Definitely shower.’
Sitting down and drinking tea would inevitably lead to conversation. Conversation would inevitably lead to talking about Simon. Talking about Simon would inevitably lead to my brain exploding. I needed a distraction. A six foot four gay man in a towel wasn’t quite what I was thinking about, but that was what I found in the living room. And I supposed it was technically a distraction. Just not as good a distraction as the other thing I found in the living room. My single girl’s to-do list.
‘Jesus, how much did we drink last night?’ Matthew pinched the bridge of his nose and leaned his wet hair back against the sofa. ‘Or, actually, all day? I haven’t felt this shit in ages.’
‘Apparently we need to build up our alcohol tolerance,’ I said, trying not to catch sight of myself in the mirror. The glimpse of the scarecrow-cum-crypt-keeper I’d got before I could avert my eyes was bad enough. ‘I don’t know how she does this.’
I picked up the knackered napkin and took a pit stop on the sofa beside Matthew. His skin was still hot from the shower and he smelled clean. I smelled like evil.
‘Planning your bungee jump?’ he asked, eyeing the list.
‘Maybe not today,’ I replied, considering each point. Hmm.
‘We really do have some bright ideas when we’ve had a drink, don’t we?’
Makeover. Exercise. Bungee jump. Tattoo. Date for the wedding.
‘Still, kept you from slitting your wrists – and, you know, avoiding that in the first twenty-four hours is pretty important.’
Buy something. Write a letter to your ex. Travel. Find your first crush. Break the law.
‘Are you safe in the shower this morning or do you need a buddy?’ Matthew was still talking. ‘I can see from here your legs need shaving and I don’t know if you’re safe with a blade.’
‘I’m safe,’ I promised, placing the list on the coffee table and heading purposefully into the shower. ‘Trust me.’
The mirror was still misty from Matthew’s shower – that boy was always in there for a lifetime, but one quick swipe with my hand revealed just how bad my situation was. Straw-like ponytail, dull skin, yesterday’s T-shirt. As a make-up artist, I was used to scrutinizing faces, looking at every different angle, settling for nothing less than perfection, but I never turned that same gaze on myself.
If I was being entirely objective, what did I see? My skin was grey and dull, my eyes red and swollen and the angles of my face were lost in the shadows of my hair. My hair … I would never let a model go on set looking this way. It was horrible. Awful. And Simon loved it. Suddenly I couldn’t bear the weight of it dragging me down for another second. Without one more look at the girl with the long blonde hair, I opened the bathroom cabinet, grabbed the scissors out of the first-aid kit and hacked away at the ponytail, right underneath the hair tie. When I looked back in the mirror, I had a pair of scissors in one hand and a two-foot-long ponytail in the other.
‘MATTHEW.’
‘What?’ He peeked through the door cautiously. ‘Are you naked? Is there a spider? Are you naked?’
I held up both hands as the ponytail holder slipped out of my newly bobbed hair and hit the floor. My new do fluttered defiantly above my shoulders. And not in a good way.
‘Oh sweet baby Jesus.’ Matthew slapped his hand over his mouth, eyes a mirror of mine. Wide, confused and slightly insane. ‘What have you done? EMELIE.’
I could feel my bottom lip starting to tremble but I couldn’t let go of the scissors or the hair. And now I’d turned aw
ay from the mirror, I didn’t dare look back.
‘I don’t know,’ I whispered. ‘Have I gone mad?’
‘It’s a bit Girl, Interrupted but it’s fine,’ he said, reaching out for the scissors. ‘Why don’t you give those to me, Angelina?’
‘Does it look awful?’ I already knew the answer to that.
‘Rachel,’ Emelie appeared behind Matthew. ‘Your hair.’
‘Looks great,’ Putting the scissors on the shelf, high out of my reach, Matthew took the poor ponytail out of my hand. ‘I’ll just, um, I’ll take this.’
‘I can’t go outside,’ I said in a tiny voice. I was too afraid to touch it, in case it fell out. ‘I look like a boy. Oh god, I look like Justin Bieber.’
‘He looks like a girl anyway,’ Em said, putting her arm around my shoulders in a gesture that was both supportive and, ingeniously, kept me away from the mirror. ‘It’s cute. Really. And you needed a change.’
‘I did need a change,’ I repeated. My head felt so light, as though it might float up off my shoulders and fly away. ‘It was on the list anyway.’
‘List?’ Em ran her fingers through the ends of my hair. ‘You did this because of the list?’
I nodded.
‘Riiiight,’ she tugged manically on Matthew’s sleeve.
‘Before you start bungee jumping off the roof, just shower, wash your hair and get dressed,’ Matthew commanded, patting Emelie’s arm. ‘It’s going to be OK.’
‘Yes, it’s going to be OK,’ Emelie agreed, poking the ends of my hair. ‘Actually, this will save us a lot of time on blow drying.’
Silver lining number two.
Once I’d showered, shampooed and stopped staring at myself in the mirror, I slipped into my fluffy towelling dressing gown and prepared myself for whatever intervention would be waiting for me in the living room. Matthew and Emelie were sitting silently on opposite ends of the sofa, the napkin from the night before in between them.
‘So,’ Matthew pointed towards the empty armchair. I sat obediently. ‘You’re taking this list thing seriously, then?’
‘Yes?’ I shrugged. ‘I didn’t realize it wasn’t serious.’
‘You’re really going to do a bungee jump? Even though you’re so scared of heights I have to come over and change your light bulbs when Simon’s out?’ Em asked. ‘And you’re actually going to break the law?’
‘Bungee jump or similar,’ I reminded them. ‘And I suppose so, yes. Somehow. I mean, I’m not going to plan an armed robbery but there must be something faintly criminal that I can get away with. If it’s on the list, I’m going to do it. And since you’re responsible for most of these, you’re going to help me.’
‘Rachel, I have to tell you something.’ Emelie leaned forward and took my hand in hers. ‘I have never in my entire life been so incredibly proud to know you.’
Matthew held his head in his hands. ‘As much as I of course second Ms Stevens’ support, are you sure this is a good idea? I mean, it’s not like I don’t know how hard break-ups can be, but throwing yourself into something dramatic might be a bit much.’
‘I think I need to throw myself into something a bit dramatic,’ I replied. ‘I haven’t thrown myself into anything even slightly dramatic in a very long time.’
‘As long as you don’t take such a drastic approach to breaking the law.’ He didn’t look convinced. ‘I don’t want to see the two of you on the news after a failed bank heist.’
‘We could totally pull off a bank heist,’ Em pouted.
I switched from chair to sofa and wrapped my arms around my best friends. ‘Which is why I need your help with this,’ I explained. ‘I want to do this. You’re both right, I’ve never been single, I don’t know how to be single. I don’t want to walk into my dad’s wedding looking like some feeble tramp who spent a fortnight listening to Power Ballads ’89 and watching Bridget Jones’s Diary over and over, crying “that will never happen for me” and eating ice cream until I lapse into a diabetic coma.’
‘That would be quite dramatic given that you’re not even diabetic,’ Matthew replied. ‘You could just not go to your dad’s wedding. It’s not like there won’t be another one.’
‘It’s just too tragic that it’s his fourth and I’m not even engaged.’ I ran my fingers through my short, wet hair. ‘I’m twenty-eight. Everyone’s going to ask if I turned up alone. And you know my brother is going to appear with some random slag he’s picked up the night before and everyone’s going to think it’s charming.’
‘Um,’ Em coughed awkwardly. ‘About your brother.’
‘Not now, Stevens,’ Matthew gave me a sturdy side hug. ‘Right. In that case, we’ve got a lot of work to do, haven’t we?’
‘We really have.’ I heaved myself off the sofa, catching sight of my hair in the mirror. ‘We really, really have.’
One of the benefits of being a make-up artist was a wealth of helpful connections in the beauty world, connections I’d never really taken advantage of before. But with just a few texts, I’d called in enough favours to get an appointment at a great salon with a great stylist inside the hour. Given that Matthew had less than no interest in hair, make-up, clothes or anything else that happened on or to girls, he’d been left in charge of clearing Simon’s influence out of the flat: getting the locks changed, clearing out his stuff and preparing for redecoration. I was on a mission. By the end of the day, I wanted to feel like a new woman. If he didn’t want me in his life, I didn’t want him in mine. There was some debate over whether or not changing the locks was overkill, but the idea of Simon just being able to let himself in whenever he wanted actually made me feel sick to my stomach.
Which was more or less the reaction Tina Morgan, hair stylist to the stars (if you counted the cast of Hollyoaks as stars) had to my hair.
‘Fuckin’ hell, Summers,’ she barked with cigarette-scented laughter as I dropped down in the styling chair. ‘Who did this?’
‘I did,’ I replied, trying not to regret my decision. I’d known Tina since college and she was amazing with hair. Her make-up work erred more towards drunk Pussycat Doll, but when it came to hair? First class.
‘Right, you never did do well in the hair modules, did you?’ She pulled the strands through her fingers, measuring out the lengths. ‘I’ve been dying to get my hands on your hair for years. Well, you’ve fucked this up good and proper, haven’t you?’
It was a shame that her talent was matched with an almost complete absence of social skills, which I supposed was why she was still curling WAGs’ extensions in a salon off Regent Street on Sundays, instead of tending to the A-list in LA. Happily, that was working in my favour today. White-blonde hair, hot pink lipstick, skintight blue jeans and a mouth the size of Guernsey. And I was putting myself in her hands.
‘Yes I have, but here’s your chance.’ I took a deep breath and forced the words out of my mouth. ‘I want a complete change. Do whatever you want.’
Tina stepped back from the mirror. ‘Anything?’
‘Anything,’ I said, closing my eyes. ‘Just – I want to look good.’
‘One guess,’ she stepped up to the plate. ‘Break-up?’
I bit my lip. ‘Not to be a dick, but I don’t really want to talk. I just want to look amazing.’
‘As if I’d let you leave here looking any other way.’ She slapped me round the back of the head. ‘So colour, cut, long, short?’
‘I want to look completely different,’ I said, catching Emelie’s eye in the mirror behind me. She was totally chatting up one of the other stylists. She gave me a surreptitious thumbs-up and carried on. Shameless. ‘Just make me look different.’
‘Oh, this is going to be fun.’ Tina could hardly control the joy in her voice.
One last look at what was left of my long, blonde hair and I closed my eyes. ‘Yeah. Everyone keeps telling me that.’
It was another three hours and forty-five minutes of sheer torture before Tina managed to say something that made me smile.
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‘And you’re done.’
Never one to miss an opportunity for drama, she’d had the mirror at my station covered until she’d decided she was finished. Given how much hair I’d lost already that day, I had been a little alarmed to see chunks falling all around me, but not nearly as concerned as I’d been by the variety of colour processes that had been burning my scalp. My hair had never been exposed to anything more aggressive than Sun-In before today. I’d always been a blonde. Not a sexy Brigitte Bardot blonde or anything but definitely blonde. I wasn’t mysterious enough to carry off brunette and highlights needed too much attention. What had she done?
‘Can I see?’ I asked, not sure I actually wanted to. If she pulled the towel off the mirror and my hair was purple, I was going to have to go the full Britney. Shaved head, trashing her car with an umbrella, barefoot eating Cheetos in the loo, everything.
‘Ta-da,’ she pulled away the towel with a flourish.
Woah.
My almost waist-length blonde hair had been replaced by a short, red bob that bounced around my chin. I hadn’t had a fringe since I was a little girl but now there were long, sweeping strands framing a pair of bright blue eyes. Were my eyes always this colour? My hair was red. Really, really red. I looked like someone else. And she looked amazing.
‘No way!’ Em leapt out of the seat she’d been occupying for the last hour or so while every straight stylist in the place pawed at her in between appointments. ‘You’re a redhead! Like me!’
‘I’d say you’re more auburn,’ Tina sniffed, still picking up pieces of my hair and dropping them down by my ears. ‘Sort of drab your hair, isn’t it?’
‘Pouffiasse,’ Emelie remarked with a tight smile.
‘Can I touch it?’ I asked, raising a tentative hand to my new fringe. ‘Is it permanent?’