by Shari Low
‘Fatty’ was actually a 6-foot, 130lb model who wore a size 8 and was one of my merry band of regular customers.
‘Don’t worry, Lou, I’m kind of getting used to her. And having her wash my hair saves me on tips because she gets nothing.’ Stacey’s giggle at the end of the sentence was cut short by the sound of a blast of running water and a short yelp. That would be Avril’s revenge then.
There were definitely pros and cons to employing a relative. Josie’s daughter, Avril, had come to work for me the day after she’d been asked to leave school, after pointing out to the headmaster that he was a tosser. I think the exact words she used were, ‘baldy, idiotic, sexist, misogynistic, narcissistic tosser’. Which, on the bright side, at least showed that she’d been paying attention in English and had a vocabulary that consisted of impressive words that could be thrown out while in the midst of an antagonistic confrontation.
In the three months that she’d been here the cons had been many. She was irreverent, moody, ungrateful, rude and dressed like the sixth member of that new band, the Spice Girls – Stroppy Spice.
But strangely, on the pros side, the regulars had come to think her dry bitchiness was hilarious and I hadn’t lost a client yet. And much as she moaned, she also worked harder than any other member of staff and was – to her horror – starting to show a talent for make-up at the weekly model nights we ran as part of the staff training schedule. Only the week before, she’d given Stacey a retro, Bowie-inspired glamour look, using metallics on her eyes, cheeks and lips. The result had been stunning.
Plus, Josie was really grateful that I’d given her daughter a break and I figured that it was the least I could do, especially when Avril announced that her back-up career plan was ‘missionary work in Amazon region or getting a boob job and becoming a stripper’.
I picked up a round brush and turned my attention back to Mrs. Marshall. I felt eternally lucky to have kept all my clients from the old days and, on top of that, our late-night and Sunday opening, student discounts, press adverts, and a leaflet campaign, which wore out my favourite trainers delivering flyers to every house and business in the town, had resulted in a full appointment book and an eclectic new clientele that crossed the demographics. So far today we’d had four senior citizens who were going off to Magaluf for a fortnight, a wedding party, a menagerie of other females aged from twelve to eighty, a local vicar and the entire under-nineteen town football team. For the purposes of staff morale, I chose to overlook the fact that I caught Avril snogging one of them in the fire escape just after they arrived, and another in the gents’ toilets just before they left. I was hardly in a position to judge. The debacle of the opening night had left indelible scars on my soul (and at least a dozen heel imprints on the reception desk from Ginger’s stilettos).
‘Right we’re off then. Are you sure you don’t want us to keep you a seat at the pub?’ Angie asked as she trooped towards the door with Wendy, Pam, Rosie and the juniors we’d taken on when Rosie and Angie got promoted to stylists.
‘No, I’m fine, honestly. I’ve got plans for tonight.’
‘She’s lying,’ Avril shouted from the basins. ‘She’s going to go home alone, eat a microwave meal and spend all night watching tapes of Bruce Willis movies. She needs help.’
‘Have you got a staple gun?’ Mrs. Marshall interrupted.
‘Erm, somewhere. Why?’
‘Because you should use it on that lassie’s mouth,’ she replied with an indignant purse of the lips. That was loyalty for you.
As the others left, I turned my attention back to my client. ‘Are you sure you want to stick with the Rachel, Mrs. Marshall?’
A year before, she had claimed that Mr. Marshall had visited from the afterlife, told her she should watch Friends, adopt Rachel’s hairstyle and visit New York to find his replacement. He’d been proven right when she came back with a 74-year-old retired sailor called Hank. They now had a poodle called Jennifer Aniston in tribute to the woman who helped bring them together.
By the time Stacey and Mrs. Marshall had been dispatched off with gleaming bouncy locks, it was after eight when Avril and I pulled the door closed behind us.
‘You coming over to our house?’ she asked without looking up from the notes that she was counting out of her pay packet.
‘Are you asking because you want my company for the night or because you want a lift home?’
‘Lift home.’
And the Oscar for the best act of brutal honesty goes to Avril Cairney.
‘What were you doing when God gave out tact and diplomacy?’ I asked, trying my hardest not to grin as I fiddled with the lock on my silver Mazda 626. It was my one indulgence. I may live in a flat with paper-thin walls in a building that smelled of dental fluids, but at least I had a snazzy car.
‘I was in the queue for good looks and superior wit,’ she said with a flash of perfect white teeth. I was still grinning when I hugged her ten minutes later and watched as she clamoured out of the passenger seat and levitated up the garden path on those platforms.
Josie appeared at the window and waved and I blew her a kiss. As I slipped into first gear and pulled away, I realised that all I wanted to do was go home, pull the TV into the bathroom, and lie in the bath watching educational documentaries. Oh OK, watching Bruce Willis movies. So the truth in Avril’s comment had stung a little but there was no denying that Die Hard 2 was a classic.
And anyway, what did I care? I was a grown woman, I’d built up a successful business, and sure, the work/life balance might be a little off at the moment but that wasn’t a priority.
What did it matter if the most important things in my life were a shop and an action hero with a receding hairline? There would be plenty of time for a social life and other stuff later.
Maybe I’d phone Ginger. Yes, I’d prove I wasn’t completely antisocial by phoning a friend. On a Friday night. While I was in the bath. With a movie on in the background. Not that I thought for a moment that she’d be home. Since she’d married Ike her schedule had been busier than ever, especially since she was now living in London, had semi-retired from the music industry and diversified into band management. She claimed that she didn’t mind that she’d never achieved super-stardom but I wasn’t sure that was true. Bluff and bravado had always been the mainstays of Ginger’s personality.
I missed her.
However, I’d be forever grateful that her last official act as a rock star had been to approach Gary Collins at the televised BRIT Awards just as his name was called out as a nominee in the category of band of the year and proceed to pour a Jack Daniel’s and Coke over his head. As far as I was concerned that was an act of heroism and solidarity that warranted the government declaring a National Ginger Day.
I parked the car outside the flat, ignoring the posse of teenagers sitting on the wall at the corner of the street belting out a drunken chorus of ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’. The cider bottles they used as percussion instruments to accompany the chorus was a nice touch.
Lugging my weary body up the stairs, I had only three things on my mind. Bath. Bruce. Bed. Bath. Bruce. Bed. Bath. Bruce . . .
As quietly as possible, I slid my key in the lock, turned it, pushed the door. Almost there. Almost. But not quite.
The door to the flat next door swung open and there stood Lizzy, balancing a sleeping two-year-old on the large bump that once again protruded from her shocking-pink jumper and lime-green jeans. If we had our time again I’d have made her pay attention back in social sciences class when the teacher explained the concept of contraception. And colour co-ordination.
‘When was the last time you had sex?’ she blurted.
Out of all the things I could possibly have expected her to say at that moment, I must confess that wasn’t one of them.
‘Can I have a multiple choice?’ I asked hopefully.
‘I’m serious, Lou. When was the last time you had an earth-shattering experience with a male?’
I knew the
answer. I did. ‘Erm, it was . . .’
‘A male that wasn’t Bruce Willis.’
I slumped as the wind was removed from my sails. ‘Oh. Dunno.’
‘Then we’re going out tonight. Me and you. Adam will babysit and you and I are going to hit the town!’
I was torn between horror at the prospect of my cosy night in being ruined, and horror that a six-month pregnant mother of a toddler had more energy than me.
‘Lizzy, I’m knackered and I just want to . . .’
‘I don’t care. This is for your own good. It’s Friday night, Lou, and we haven’t been out in months. What happened to Girl’s Night? Much as I love the idea that since you are likely to stay single for the rest of your life, you’ll probably die rich and leave your entire fortune to your god-daughter –’ she motioned to the sleeping bundle in her arms, ‘– I refuse to let you neglect your social needs any longer. So we’re going out and arguments are futile. Be ready in half an hour or I’m breaking the door down.’
‘But you’ve got a key,’ I replied for reasons that seemed important in that moment.
‘I was going for drama,’ she said with a grin. ‘Too much?’
I nodded. Lizzy on the rampage and dragging me out against my will on a Friday night was definitely too much. There had to be a way out of this. I needed a decoy. Or an excuse. Or someone to rescue me.
Where was Bruce bloody Willis when I needed him?
Seventeen
‘Is there anyone in here over twenty-one?’ I shouted into Lizzy’s ear as we crossed the crowded floor at the Spotlight. I could see where the name came from. The dark walls were carved and painted to give the impression of chiselled granite, which glinted as the massive lighting rigs bounced different colours off the surface. It was a fairly new nightclub in the neighbouring town of Paisley and appeared to be populated solely by boys who looked like that Australian singer Peter Andre, and girls who looked like Avril. In my black jeans and shirt I felt decidedly over-aged and under-Lycra’d.
‘S’cuse me, are you a bouncer?’ an obviously inebriated young lady with a broad Glaswegian accent slurred in my direction. ‘Because that guy over there is acting like a fanny and I want him put oot.’
Right then. ‘Bad to worse’ was the moment’s cliché of choice.
‘I’ll get to him in a minute,’ I told her. ‘I just have to go talk to two fannies over there first.’
‘Aye, right then,’ she slurred and tottered off on her white high heels in the direction of the toilets.
Great. Smashing. Couldn’t be having a better time.
The Spotlight had been open for about six months and this was the first time we’d actually made it there. How things change. There was a time when there wasn’t a nightclub within a thirty-mile radius that we weren’t intimately familiar with. Lizzy and I made it to the bar and I ordered a Bloody Mary and a Virgin Mary and wondered how long I’d have to stay there before Lizzy would concede that I’d now been out socialising, so was therefore no longer in danger of ending my life as a decrepit old lady whose only friend was the bloke behind the counter in the Blockbuster video store.
I knocked back a healthy measure of my deep red cocktail and felt the icy buzz send tingles to my brain. Maybe I needed this. Maybe it wouldn’t be too bad after all. Just at that – in what had to be the most radical music mix in documented history – the DJ slid from ‘Firestarter’ by the Prodigy to Gina G’s ‘Ooh Aah, Just a Little Bit’. Something inside me died.
‘Oh, I love this song,’ Lizzy screeched. ‘Come on, let’s dance.’
She pulled me by the hand and whipped me over to the dance floor, where I edged into the darkest corner. There are just some things that no one needs to see and a female bouncer and a woman in a neon-green dress, dancing wildly to the most irritating song of 1996 is one of them.
It was a giddy relief when there was no more and we could slink back to where we’d left our drinks. I was just grateful that she hadn’t felt her usual non-pregnancy urge to dance on a raised surface. Sensible, mature Lizzy may be less outrageous than young, crazy, accident-prone Lizzy, but at least we were less likely to end the night in A&E.
I downed my Bloody Mary and ordered another, just as Lizzy was possessed by the spirit of some demented God of match-making.
‘What about him over there?’ she asked, pointing at a tall, grey-haired guy standing at the other end of the bar.
‘Too old. And I think he’s the toilet attendant so he’ll work nights and we’d never get to see each other. Stop trying to fix me up.’
I honestly meant it. There was not one iota of me that had any desire for a relationship. Not one. I truly couldn’t see the point. I’d learned my lesson. When I was a teenager, I’d accepted the fact that I was the most inflexible gymnast of modern times, so I gave up gymnastics. A few years later, I realised that my paintings looked like a cat had vomited on my canvas, so I gave up art. Several wrecked relationships and a national hit record that paid testimony to my general crapness in romantic gymnastics with the opposite sex had taught me a lesson that I couldn’t ignore.
Unfortunately Lizzy hadn’t got the memo.
Like a submarine periscope surveying the horizon, her head swivelled in the other direction.
‘He’s cute. What about that guy there? The one in the black shirt?’
‘Lizzy, will you stop! I’ve already told you that the last thing I need right now is a boyfriend. And even if I did, there’s far more chance of me meeting a guy in the salon than there is of me picking up anyone decent in a nightclub. Meeting anything more than a one-night stand in a club never happens. Never. So stop . . . Actually he is quite cute.’
My body automatically detached from my brain as I involuntarily straightened up, shook out my hair and yes, I’m ashamed to say, the breasts did swell slightly in his direction. Traitors.
So much for learning lessons.
‘Go chat or wait till he spots us?’ Lizzy asked in the voice of a secret agent.
‘Wait,’ I answered. I may be out of practice but I wasn’t about to risk serial humiliation by charging on over there and striking up a conversation until I’d observed him for a little longer. First impressions were impressive though.
Beautifully cut black shirt. Dark jeans. Brown hair, short at the back, spiked up on top. No wedding ring. Broad shoulders. A little on the short side, maybe five foot ten, but I could live without high heels. It worked for Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise.
Definitely a possibility.
Just as I concluded my in-depth analysis of the subject, he laughed at something his friend said and, as he turned his head, caught my eye and made no move to look away.
‘Shit, he can see me looking!’ I hissed, to a yelp of hilarity from my alleged friend.
‘Oh no! Now he might realise that you actually like the look of him and he might even come over here and ask you to dance and that would be the worst possible outcome!’ Amused sarcasm dripped from every word.
‘You’re not helping me here,’ I replied tersely, feeling my toes curl with the discomfort. Stick me behind any seated guy and put a comb and scissors in my hand and I feel absolutely at ease. Stick me in a Wonderbra in a nightclub and put a Bloody Mary in my hand and I ding the bell at the very top of the self-conscious scale.
This was excruciating.
The guy leaned over and whispered something to his friend, who followed his gaze over to Lizzy and me, then started towards us.
‘Lizzy, don’t turn around but they’re on their way over.’
‘Why can’t I turn around?’
‘Because they’ll see that bump and head for the hills.’
‘Good point. I’ll keep it out of the way until it’s too late for him to change course.’
‘Excuse me, haven’t we met?’
I was momentarily confused by the situation. Mr. Cute Dark Shirt was still at least twenty feet away and yet I was hearing the oldest chat-up line in the book.
‘Behind you.’ Li
zzy gesticulated over my shoulder and I turned to see a tall guy in a sharp black suit and white shirt, left open at the neck. His blond hair fell just past his collar at the back, shorter and swept back at the sides, framing a square jaw with a hint of stubble that took the edge off his smoothness.
‘Pardon?’ I said, trying and failing not to show irritation at the interruption.
‘Haven’t we . . .’
‘Actually I got that bit. No, I don’t think so.’
Dear God, was that the best he could do? Any minute now he’d follow it up with ‘Do you come here often?’ and we’d have to report him for crimes against chat-up originality.
‘We have,’ he continued. I felt my irritation rise as, out of the corner of my eye I saw the bloke from the other side of the bar spot me speaking to another guy and halt in his tracks. Nooooo. Don’t stop. Come over. Please don’t stop.
‘You’re the girl from the hairdresser’s.’
I vaguely registered that perhaps this wasn’t just an empty chat-up speech, but I was too busy focusing on the lost opportunity to respond. Right on cue, the other guy shrugged, turned and headed back off in the other direction.
Great. The first time in many months that my ovaries have shown the smallest sign of a flutter and the operation was hijacked before it could even get off the ground.
‘The hair salon in Weirbank.’
Was he still talking? Really?
There was no other option but to engage.
‘Sorry? I mean, yes, I work there but I don’t think we’ve ever met.’
Even in the dim lights of the club I could see that his eyes had a cute glint. Blue. No, wait, green. No, blue. Green. Could someone not switch off those bloody disco lights so that I could get a decent look at him? He was leaning in closer now. Not in a creepy invasion of the personal space way but friendly. Casual.
‘I was at the opening night of CUT. It was...er... eventful.’ At that his face broke into what might just have been the most irresistibly contagious grin I’d ever encountered.