by Julia Bell
It doesn’t look like Mum. She’s got her hair down, falling in thick tresses over her shoulders. Her nails are long and sparkling and she’s looking straight at the camera, her face radiant. ‘Used to be the life and soul, your mother. But that bit of her packed off on holiday somewhere.’ She sighs and pins the photo up, next to Annmarie. ‘Maybe she’ll come back again, some day.’
When everything looks tidy and she’s made me carry all the empty boxes upstairs, she persuades Billy to let her do his nails for the football.
‘You’re always trying to make me look like a girl,’ he moans.
Lisa lowers her eyes and smiles. ‘You used to love wearing make-up.’
‘Only when I was young and pretty. No one wants to see fat, hairy bastards in slap.’
‘It’s not slap, it’s your nails.’ Lisa primes her airbrush, releasing a hiss of air. ‘Different thing. Come on.’
Billy puts his hands on the table, he has wide nails and long, thick fingers. He sits rigidly, not moving his neck, watching Lisa as she airbrushes his nails blue. When it’s dry, she carefully paints white stripes on each fingernail and stencils his thumbnails with BCFC. She finishes off with a coat of clear lacquer.
He asks after Mum, and when I tell him that she’s fine, he raises his eyebrows. ‘Is that what she says?’
‘You better win,’ Lisa says, touching his nails to check that they’re dry. ‘With those nails.’
‘Yeah, well, need all the luck we can get this season.’
‘Oh, come on, we’ll make the playoffs this year.’
‘Playoffs schmayoffs,’ he says. ‘Too early to tell.’
When he’s gone off to St Andrew’s, she talks about him, starting a long time ago, when she was young and my mother even younger. When Billy played guitar in a band, when everyone was having the time of their lives. ‘It’ll happen to you one day too,’ she says. ‘You won’t notice because you’ll be having so much fun, but you’ll look back and realize it was the best time of your life.’
Billy was hot property. He had celebrity friends, the boys from UB40, Dexy’s Midnight Runners, The Specials. Everyone wanted a bit of him. She shows me an old photo. Mum and Lisa looking at Billy as if he’s the most beautiful thing in the world. Mum’s thin, but grinning happily. Billy’s holding up a bottle to the camera, his face is red, shiny, his eyes soft, half closed. ‘Me and your mum, we loved him,’ she says simply. ‘I still do. He’s a star.’
Lisa’s had some display boards made specially to go in the window. I help her pin up all her designs. She wants them separated into airbrushed and hand-painted. The nails on the airbrushed board she does with stencils, whole sets of them – Festival Nails for Christmas, Halloween, Easter, Fireworks, Independence Day, Thanksgiving, St Patrick’s Day, St David’s Day, even a set of tiny dragons for St George’s Day. Party Nails with dangles, rhinestones, glittery polish, and Urban Girl Nails in animal print and camouflage patterns.
On the handpainted board, each design is unique. Handpainted by Lisa. She’s done tiny copies of all the Disney characters and a set of film stars: James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall. And a set of nails with Princess Diana on.
‘Did those the week before she died,’ she says. ‘Customer never came back to get them either. Spooky, isn’t it?’
My favourites are the abstract airbrush designs. Fiery swirls and glittery squiggles, blue stars and red hearts.
‘Can I have my nails like that?’
‘You learn to keep up with what you’ve got first,’ she says. ‘You don’t want to be doing with extensions at your age. Patience. That’s what nails are about. Learning to do things slowly. Step by step.’
She surveys the shop, hands on her hips, and asks me if I think it looks ready for a party. I tell her it looks like a cave full of treasure.
She smiles. ‘Magpie’s nest, more like.’
‘No.’ she says. ‘I said NO, you’re not going.’
She rubs her hands down the front of her new leather pencil skirt.
‘Can’t stop me,’ I say, trying to dodge past her.
‘I can call the police.’ She glares at me and stands in front of the door. ‘Don’t push me because I’ll do it. I’ll tell them I can’t handle you.’
Wish you would, I think. Then I’d be able to do what I liked.
‘I’m not having you hanging out with that crowd. You’re too young. Billy’s all right, but the rest of them are a waste of space. Going nowhere with their lives. Rock and roll is a look, Carmen, not a way of life.’
She won’t go to bed. She stays up listening to a Paul Oakenfold mix CD dead loud. I look at my face in my compact mirror, use a kohl stick that I nicked from her make-up bag to draw dark lines under my eyes. I use so much that it smudges, but I don’t care. I hate my face. I wish I could slice it off.
Annmarie is Lisa’s first official customer. She’s having her extensions wrapped with gold silk, ribbons, jewels. The full Five Star at a fiver a nail. Fifty quid for all ten nails.
‘Hiya, Carmen.’ Annmarie kisses the air around my face. ‘Bit of an emergency really, Lees, I popped one,’ she says, holding up a clear plastic bag with one pink nail in it. ‘Feels like I’ve got a broken tooth.’ Lisa smiles and mutters to herself while she holds Annmarie’s finger and tries to fit a new nail over the top. ‘Looks great in here, Lees, honestly it does. Amazing.’ She looks at me. ‘How was your party then? You knock ‘em dead?’
I shrug. ‘’S all right.’
‘Your party was a right laugh, Lees. Mind if I smoke?’
She fidgets, smoothing her skirt down, twisting round, trying to look out of the window behind her. If Lisa wasn’t holding her still by her finger I expect she’d just float straight out of the door.
‘Carmen love, make us some tea, there’s a darling.’
I climb the stairs to the kitchenette and stare out of the window for ages at the dusty windows of the warehouse opposite. There are binbags of rubbish and empty bottles left over from the party. Even the remains of a Good Luck cake on the side, half eaten. Lisa and Annmarie are laughing downstairs, cackling and coughing, interrupted by big spluttering hoots. I’m sick of being fourteen.
‘You know what?’ Annmarie says later when I have negotiated two trips down the spiral stairs without spilling any tea. ‘You’d look good with short hair you would.’
‘Annmarie’s a hairdresser,’ Lisa says.
I look doubtfully at her nails.
‘No, honest,’ Annmarie says. ‘With nails like mine you just have to learn to use your fingers. A neat little pageboy cut would look a treat on you, you know.’
Then the salon is quiet apart from the radio, reggae classics on PCM. I practise a flower design on a pink base with a violet tip. I paint the flowers in red and leaf green. I try to remember to wipe the brush on the neck of the bottle like Lisa showed me so the paint doesn’t blob.
Lisa covers all of Annmarie’s nails with a square of gold silk, cutting round the rough edges with a little art blade. ‘Don’t sneeze, Annmarie, else I’ll stab you.’ Annmarie purses her lips and watches Lisa. When, finally, each nail is wrapped, Annmarie has to sit still and wait for the glue to dry. ‘Light a fag for us, Lees,’ she says, pointing to her silver handbag. ‘There’s a holder in the bottom there somewhere.’ Lisa pulls out a long black cigarette holder and fixes a cigarette in the end. Annmarie holds it between her first two fingers, wedged right at the bottom almost between her knuckles.
Annmarie looks at her hands proudly. ‘Expensive hobby,’ she says, ‘but I don’t know where I’d be without them. I think I was probably a princess in a former life, but all my riches and jewels got squandered away over time and so I have to have my nails done to remind me of what I once was. What I could have been. When I die, Lisa, I want you to do my nails.’
‘What, in your coffin?’ Lisa turns up her nose. ‘Eugh, don’t know if I could.’
‘So when archaeologists dig me up, they’ll find my nails and t
hey’ll put them in a museum. Your work should be in a gallery I tell ya, Lees, it’s amazing.’
Lisa blushes. ‘Oh, shush.’
When Lisa’s finished, Annmarie’s nails are curling gold talons, wrapped with red ribbons and decorated with tiny clusters of red and blue rhinestones. They’re beautiful. On one nail there’s a little Chinese dragon transfer, on another a scorpion.
‘My lucky signs,’ she says. ‘Scorpio and Year of the Dragon, that’s me. Breathing fire with a sting in her tail.’
‘Can I have some pocket money?’
She looks at me. ‘What for?’
‘I want a haircut.’
She narrows her eyes. ‘Nothing wrong with your hair. If you plaited it more often it wouldn’t get so tangled. Anyway, you’re costing me enough already, young lady.’
The phone rings while she’s out. In the middle of East-Enders. I ignore it but it goes on for ages.
‘Hello? Can I speak to Maria Wiley please?’
I recognize the voice. It’s Miss Burton from school.
‘Wrong number,’ I say, slamming the phone down. It rings back again but I unplug the phone from the wall.
In the bathroom mirror my hair looks bushy, frizzy, full of split ends. When I was younger Mum used to wash it for me at weekends: rubbing conditioner into my scalp, brushing out all the tangles. There would always be a big bird’s nest of hairs left in the hairbrush at the end. ‘You’ve got beautiful hair,’ she’d say when she was done, and my hair fell flat against my head, the hairs straightened and smoothed.
I get the kitchen scissors, the ones with orange handles and cut off a wedge of hair just under my ear. Once I’ve started I have to carry on, but it’s hard to cut at the back so I have to guess and when I look in the mirror it’s just horrible. All different lengths, some long bits still straggling over my shoulders. I cut even more. Just chopping now, randomly hacking off clumps until it’s really short all over. It looks mad.
I use handfuls of the Brylcreem that appeared in the bathroom the morning after one of her nights out and rub big jelly blobs of it in, making clumps of hair stick up at funny angles.
It would look good if it was blue.
24
‘What the hell have you done?’ She puts her hand in front of her face. ‘You can’t go to school like that.’
She stalks around the living room. I sip my cup of black tea. She can’t touch me. She can’t.
‘Look at you. You look ridiculous. Ridiculous.’ She’s shaking with anger. ‘You’re too fat in the face to carry that off. You look . . .’ her face twists, ‘. . . like a baby.’
‘So?’ I say.
She slaps me across the face, once, twice, until I spill my tea trying to avoid her. I push her away from me so she staggers and falls back into the armchair. I grab my bag, put my coat on and pull the hood up.
‘Where are you going?’
‘To school,’ I mumble, remembering to slam the door behind me.
I run and run down the corridor, my shoes squeaking against the tiles. When I get to the lifts I can hear her shouting my name down the corridor. ‘Carmen! Come back here!’ But I ignore her and start running down the stairs before she can get me.
Outside, it’s raining again, drizzling and grey. I pull my hood round my face, tying the toggles under my chin and run towards the road that will take me to Lisa’s shop. The air in the soles of my Nike Air Max make it feel like I’m running on springs, like I could run for ever, my feet pounding the tarmac. I run right through town and out again, ducking down alleyways through underpasses, right across Centenary Square and over the bridge to Hockley, through the crowds of suits scurrying to work. When I get to the Soho Road I have to stop. The wind is up, sending soggy leaves flying in little eddies of air. I am damp, steaming, desperate for breath. My legs are trembling, my chest hurts. When I wipe my sleeve across my face to dry it, I realize I am crying.
‘Oh, my God, Carmen. What happened to you?’ The shop is muggy. Lisa’s got her electric heater on. There’s an older woman in, having a manicure and a French polish. ‘What happened to your hair?’
‘I cut it,’ I say.
‘Looks like you had a fight with some hedgeclippers,’ the old woman says. ‘Why aren’t you at school?’
‘It’s all right, Mrs Denby. It’s my niece. She’s got the day off today. Why don’t you go upstairs for a bit, Carmen? Dry yourself off. I’ll be up in a minute when I’ve done this. Put the kettle on, pet.’
When she comes upstairs she won’t look me in the eye. She asks me if Mum cut my hair. ‘You can tell me the truth, you know.’
I tell her it was me. All by myself. ‘I hate my hair,’ I say.
She touches it, lifting tufts of it up and letting them drop. ‘I’ve got some clippers downstairs. Why don’t you let me tidy it up for you?’
It tickles as she runs the buzzing clippers over my scalp. She tells me that when she was my age she shaved her eyebrows off, just to see what it looked like. ‘It was a mess,’ she says. ‘I looked the same as before, I just had no eyebrows.’
When she’s finished it’s really, really short. I can see my white skin through the bristles of hair. Almost a number one. She’s left me a fringe at the front that flops down over my forehead. ‘Proper little feather cut,’ she says, and starts plaiting my fringe into tiny plaits.
It looks quite cool. She fixes little painted beads on the end of each plait.
‘There,’ she says. ‘Warrior princess. Let me just do your eyebrows to match. Sit still.’
She uses narrow wax strips to make my eyebrows a nice neat shape. It hurts when she rips them off.
‘Aww.’
‘Sorry, sweetheart. Stings a bit, doesn’t it?’ When she’s finished she gives me a mirror. ‘You look lovely,’ she says.
My face is different, sharper. When I frown, my eyebrows come closer together, making me look spiky, mean.
She’s not in but there’s a brand-new exercise bike in the lounge, still in its plastic wrapping.
‘Oooh, I always loved the view from here,’ Lisa says, rushing to the window. ‘Used to love coming here to visit Billy.’
She insisted on coming back with me. ‘I want to have a word with your mother,’ she said. She shut up the shop early and everything. All the way back on the bus I’ve been dreading it. Mum is going to go mental, I know she is.
Lisa noses around the flat. ‘Doesn’t she keep any food in?’ she asks, opening the fridge. ‘There isn’t even any milk.’
‘We’re moving next week,’ I say, suddenly embarrassed. ‘No point in shopping before we move.’
‘Who says? You or your mother?’ She looks at me. ‘Look, Carmen. This can’t carry on, sweetheart,’ she says. ‘We’re worried about you. You’ve got to tell us if there’s something wrong. Me and Billy we care about you. If—’ she clears her throat, ‘if your mother—’ but she doesn’t finish her sentence. A man in blue overalls comes crashing through the door followed by Mum. He’s carrying a bench press.
‘Just put it there,’ Mum says, pointing to the space next to the exercise bike. She looks at me and Lisa and gives me one of her I’ll-deal-with-you-later looks.
‘What are you doing here? Ganging up on me? Might have known her strange haircuts had something to do with you. It’s really quite inconvenient. I’m got a delivery to take care of.’
‘It’s all right,’ Lisa says, sitting down, ‘I can wait.’
My mother reminds Lisa that I am her daughter and she will bring me up how she sees fit. ‘She has to learn about the world, Lisa. It’s cruel out there when you’ve not got looks. She’s got to learn to make the best of what she’s got.’
Mum has sent me to my room but I can hear what they’re saying because I’ve pulled the door open a crack. Outside it’s really windy, air howling through the gaps around the windows, blowing in great gusts against the side of the tower, making it shudder.
‘She’s not going to school, Maria, she’s been hanging aroun
d my shop.’
That’s not fair. She told me I could come round the shop. I want to shout something, but I bite my lip so hard I can taste blood.
‘You should have phoned me if she’s been making a nuisance of herself.’
‘She’s not. I’m just worried about her. She looks too thin.’ There’s a pause, the sound of Mum’s lighter flicking. ‘So do you.’
‘Lisa’s got no right interfering,’ she says. Standing in the doorway, in silhouette she looks like a bird, all claws and bone. She goes on about how humiliated she is. How I’ve betrayed her. ‘I won’t have you sneaking around behind my back. Telling tales. There will no more sneaking, Carmen. And now we’ve got a home gym you can get into more of a routine.’
She uses the exercise bike later. I can hear the buzz of the wheels spinning uselessly as she pedals against air. She puts on her Ibiza Anthems CD. She doesn’t get off until she’s listened to it twice.
She comes on the bus with me to school the next day. Walks me right up to the gates. ‘God knows what they’ll say about your hair,’ she says, rolling her eyes.
Miss Burton makes me stay behind after class. ‘Is everything all right at home, Carmen? I tried your number the other day but somebody told me I’d got the wrong number. Have you moved?’
‘Yes, Miss,’ I say.
‘And your hair. I must say it’s quite a surprising look. You know it’s against school regulations, don’t you?’
‘Yes, Miss.’
‘You know I’m going to have to contact your parents about this?’
‘Yes, Miss.’
‘Perhaps you’d like to give me your new number?’
I give her Dad’s mobile number.
I see them after break outside the canteen. Kelly is standing with them. At least, I think it’s Kelly. She looks different. She’s got no glasses on and she’s had her braces taken off. Her hair is shorter and clipped back with pink slides.
‘Look who’s back,’ Maxine says.
‘What happened to your hair?’ Paisley says. ‘Are you trying to be cool or something? Because you look weird.’