by Sue Watson
She sipped her tea, the light from her phone shining on her face – still my little girl. And just like when she was small, I searched her eyes, looking to see if she was happy or sad, and if it was the latter, what I could do to change that? But as they grow older, it gets harder – it’s not just about kissing a grazed knee better, it’s often more complicated. She’d met someone recently through work, and I know he made her happy, but he lived in Scotland and it wasn’t easy for them. Still, I had to leave her be. It was hard enough having her mother live with her, let alone trying to impinge on her love life.
Emma was starting a new job tomorrow, a really great promotion to executive in the PR company she worked for. This meant I’d need to be around more for Rosie, which I was happy to do, but Emma never took me for granted. ‘Mum, I don’t want you to give up your independence for my childcare,’ she’d said, but I assured her I wasn’t giving anything up, it was my choice to be there for her. I wouldn’t have it any other way and we had enrolled Rosie at the university crèche so Emma could throw herself into her career, I could continue with my degree and Rosie would be with me. Emma would work the long hours necessary in the week and spend weekends with Rosie, while I caught up on essays and worked at my old hairdresser’s, Curl Up and Dye.
The salon had always been the craziest place to spend one’s days. From staff to customers, all of human life was there, and it wanted its hair done. My old boss Sue had left the salon a couple of years before to live in Spain with the toy boy she’d met on Tinder, who’d rinsed her harder than any shampoo and blow-dry, leaving her in Ibiza in nothing but the clothes she stood up in. Having sold the salon to the beauty therapist Mandy (who’d come into a little money on the death of her granddad), there was nothing left for Sue in the Midlands after the Ibiza debacle, so she’d headed to Devon, where she found work at an ice cream café. She kept in touch mainly by text and postcards, keen to describe her lovely new life, from the amazing ice cream to ‘the pink concubines’, which apparently grew up her trellis. She still hadn’t found love, and if those ‘concubines’ were anything to go by, it seemed she still hadn’t found a cure for those malapropisms either.
I sipped my tea as Emma scrolled on her phone, both happy together in our own little worlds.
‘You okay, about tomorrow, first day?’ I asked gently.
‘Bit nervous,’ she smiled, putting down the phone. ‘I just hope everyone’s nice.’
‘I’m sure they are. And they’ll love you – how could they not?’
She chuckled. ‘You would say that, Mum, you’re slightly biased.’
I blew her a kiss across the table and she caught it.
‘I’d better go to bed – need to be fresh for the morning,’ she sighed.
We caught hands as she left the kitchen, and not for the first time I felt that maternal pang, wishing she didn’t have to go through life’s tricky bits. It felt like her first day at school and I wished I could be there holding her hand at every turn. I knew I could be a bit of a helicopter mother, but Emma was my only child and I just wanted her to be happy and if I could help that happen, then I was happy too. But all I was feeling now was guilty because I couldn’t make Emma confident about starting a new job, I couldn’t help Dan feel fulfilled and I couldn’t afford to take Rosie to Disney World. Even remembering Sue’s advice about putting myself first for a change wasn’t helping. She was my best friend who always looked out for me and I missed her now. She’d been the one to encourage me to leave my marriage and it had transformed me, turning me into who I was now: more confident, more happy, more fulfilled and loved. Oh yes, I was to mis-quote Bridget Jones, one of the ‘smug unmarrieds’.
I just wished I could shake the niggle in the back of my head that had been there since Dan had talked about how he felt like he should be doing something more. I hoped it was just a passing feeling, but it was his free spirit that had drawn me to him in the first place and I couldn’t blame him for wanting a change from the daily routine in the deli.
He needed to be stimulated, inspired and the little deli on the little high street wasn’t doing it for him – I just hoped I still was. Dan needed something special to take him out of himself, and I thought about us both running away for a few weeks over the summer. I had a long summer off uni but reminded myself that with Emma’s new job, Rosie would be totally dependent on me.
It would be fine, wouldn’t it? Everything would work out, and Dan had said it was all good, so I had to believe him and stop worrying. Then I suddenly remembered I hadn’t finished my essay, ‘A Feminist Critique of The Great Gatsby’, and it was due in the next day. I jumped up, my previous niggles and worries and guilt instantly wiped out by this more immediate concern, and silently chastising myself, I gathered all my notes, my laptop and my copy of the novel (a gift from Dan before I’d started studying) and went upstairs to spend a few hours with F. Scott Fitzgerald.
*
The following morning I was woken very early by Rosie, who jumped on me from a great height, causing me to scream loudly.
‘Nanny… where’s Dam?’ she said, from her position sitting on my chest.
‘He’s at his flat, he’ll come over later,’ I said, rubbing my eyes.
‘I want to see Dam.’ Her bottom lip was torn between a quiver and a pout.
‘Yes, you will see Dan, sweetie,’ I said, reaching for my handbag near the bed with one hand and holding my granddaughter upright with the other so she didn’t fall. She was watching me like a hawk; I always brought her a little something back from my travels and this time it was a Parisian doll, wrapped in paper covered in outlines of the map of Paris. I could see the excitement in her eyes as she tried, in her three-year-old way, to do as Mummy and Nanny had always taught her and not ask for gifts, but wait to receive them. I had to smile, she was almost sitting on her hands as I gave her the present.
‘Look, this is what Paris looks like from the sky,’ I said. I should have known better, trying to explain a map to a three-year-old who only wanted what was inside, as all restraint was lost as she tore at the paper I’d lovingly chosen and wrapped, while squealing with excitement.
‘LOOK,’ she shouted, thrusting the doll at me, once she was released from her paper prison. ‘A nice lady,’ she waved the doll in her long, green frills and hat in the air, and pronounced her to be ‘a dancing Pawis lady…’ Eager to tell anyone and everyone of this new acquisition, she leapt off the bed and into Emma’s room, shouting, ‘MUM, Dam gave me a present, a dancing lady…’ She always assumed the gifts I’d brought back from our travels were chosen by Dan, which often they were. She couldn’t articulate this, but it was obviously important for her to be ever-present to him, and as she danced and twirled between mine and Emma’s bedrooms, I smiled at this.
Rosie had now transformed the elegant doll into an aeroplane. She was making loud, wet, blasting noises as the flying doll crashed into ‘the mountains’, which were apparently formed by my knees under the bedcovers.
Emma was standing in the doorway of my bedroom, already dressed in her suit and looking every inch the career woman I’d always wanted her to be. It was her first day in the new job and I was so proud. Yes, it would mean longer hours and a huge commitment, but I was delighted to be there so she could take this next step.
‘Do you think she’s a tomboy?’ my daughter smiled, ruffling her little girl’s hair as Rosie contorted the doll into an unnatural position I was sure no human could achieve.
‘Probably – you were, I bought you all kinds of girly toys when you were little, but they usually ended up in a war zone,’ I said. I was a little distracted about the role my knees were playing in this plane crashing scenario, as the doll ‘crashed’ face down on the ‘mountain’.
‘Do my knees look big in this?’ Emma giggled, nodding at the scene around my legs.
I laughed, and Rosie laughed along, always happy to join in, even if she didn’t understand a word of what we were saying. It was these moments I loved, just th
e three of us laughing together over nothing. I knew from experience that these moments were fleeting and precious – and I was glad to be there for my family. I wasn’t worrying about what the future held for any of us, just enjoying the here and now, because it isn’t here for long.
4
Nicole Scherzinger’s Bag of Cheese Balls
The following Saturday I was in the salon wrestling with Mrs Johnson’s flaky scalp and thinning locks in a vain attempt to grant her wish to ‘make me look like that girl from The Pussycat Dolls’. I scrolled down my phone for pictures and we established that Nicole Scherzinger was the ‘doll’ Mrs Johnson wanted to be. This wasn’t an easy ask – she was the wrong side of fifty with a bad case of halitosis and a penchant for cheese balls, which she crunched throughout the process. I doubted this would be the snack of choice for any of The Pussycat Dolls, least of all the glamorous Nicole.
I was thinking how much easier it would be to write my essay, ‘A postmodern critique of Frankenstein and the nature of the seventeenth-century scientific revolution’, than it would be to transform this chunky mother of five into a Pussycat Doll, when my phone pinged. I slipped my hand discreetly into my pocket and saw it was a message from Dan. Seeing his name on my phone never failed to give me a warm glow in my tummy, like someone had just put a string of fairy lights in there. I hadn’t seen him much since we’d returned from Paris and usually we didn’t get to see each other much in the week. This made our time together all the more special and I couldn’t wait to see him, but before I could read his text I had to try and turn Mrs Jackson into a Pussycat Doll. This was quite an ask, and the more I backcombed and curled, all I could see before me in the mirror was John Travolta in Hairspray.
I continued with the ‘makeover’ and twinkled for a while as I put Mrs Johnson under the colour warmer. Sending a prayer that Sarcastic Scarlet would do something miraculous to her elephant grey, I disappeared to take a much-needed break. I sat in the dark little staffroom littered with the detritus of everyone’s lunch and opened the text message. When do you finish tonight?
I texted back that I finished at seven and he asked if we could meet. We hadn’t arranged to see each other that evening, so this was an unusual surprise.
Do you have something special planned? I texted.
Sadly not : ( I need to talk to you, babe was his response, which was slightly ominous and didn’t sound like he had a fun evening in mind. I suggested he come over to ours, but he said he wanted to speak to me privately, which was a little odd. He was usually happy to spend Saturday nights at Emma’s with us all. I couldn’t think what he might need to talk to me about – the fact he wanted this to be a private conversation suggested something huge. But I didn’t have time to call and ask him, so I just texted why the cloak and dagger? I waited a few seconds and his response came back: Don’t want to text. Let’s talk later xxx
I felt vaguely nauseous and agreed to meet him in the nearby pub later. A little tinge of worry marred my day now, but the show must go on and I headed back into the salon, putting a big, bright smile on my face.
Greeting my ten o’clock like she was Beyoncé, I chatted about the weather, Britain’s Got Talent and Donald Trump’s hair, but my mind kept wandering to Dan: what did he want to talk to me about that had to be kept private?
I spent the rest of the day trying to smile, cut, colour, and blow-dry – attempting to work miracles with the strange hair dyes and often even stranger clients. Women of every age, colour and sexual persuasion came through those doors. Today I would welcome Frida – seventy-two, blue rinse, side parting, husband with Alzheimer’s and a long-felt desire for Latin men (Frida, not her husband). Later, Thomas would arrive in his work suit and after only a couple of hours would leave with sequinned lashes and his hair teased to within an inch of his life. Mandy’s extreme make-up, lashes and tango tanning had made her into a goddess for local drag queens and ballroom dancers. The sights that walked up and down those stairs to the Heavenly Spa were scary and spectacular. I sometimes felt like I was working backstage at the Moulin Rouge, with all the hair and nails and tits and teeth – and that was just the men!
Throughout this madness I trimmed, teased and cajoled hair into all kinds of shapes and styles, while trying not to think too hard about what Dan’s text could mean – but I couldn’t work it out. I even shared my concerns with salon-owner Mandy, the twenty-five-year-old slutdropping champion (she had the satin sash) whose proudest boast was that she could drink ten Porn Star Martinis and ‘still drop it like it’s hot!’ Apparently.
‘Why didn’t he just pop into the salon and talk to me “privately” outside, or in the staffroom?’ I said over her usual lunch of choice, a Big Mac with fries and a Diet Coke – which she said ‘killed’ the calories in the food. I wish! ‘And the text was so short and to the point – no heart emoji, no “I love you,” just that we need to talk,’ I added, absently dipping a chip into a pot of tomato sauce.
‘Uh-oh,’ she said, through a mouthful of burger.
‘What?’ I stopped dipping and looked at her.
‘Bitch, please?’ she said, like I knew what she was talking about.
‘What?’
‘It’s obvious, isn’t it?’
‘Not to me.’
‘Bruce has found someone else to play with his bush oysters… Do you think?’
‘No, of course not,’ I said.
‘He could be shagging someone else?’ she suggested. ‘Just putting it out there,’ she added as she chowed down.
I looked at her, ‘Mandy, I… you can’t just say that.’
She shrugged. ‘If he has… shagged anyone else… even if he’s only grinded on some slapper – then he’s a gonner.’ She took another huge bite of burger and wiped her whole face with her napkin.
‘Mand… I really don’t think—’
‘Seriously, babes,’ she said, emerging from a ketchup-soaked napkin, ‘if he has, and you want me to get someone to have a word with him, Jase knows a few blokes in Spain who’d rough him up a bit for you?’
‘NO… no… thanks, Mandy,’ I said, panicked. I didn’t doubt that Jason, the love of Mandy’s life, knew men who could ‘rough up’ other men. But I didn’t want Mandy taking this into her own hands and turning a misconstrued text into attempted murder on the Spanish Costas. So I put on a fake smile and feigned hopefulness. ‘He might just be meeting up to announce that he’s whisking me off to Barbados?’ I offered.
‘Barbados? Ha, dream on, bitch,’ she smiled. She called everyone ‘bitch’ these days, it was a term of endearment where Mandy was concerned and she patted my arm affectionately. She finished her Big Mac, and when she saw I’d put mine down, offered to finish mine too. I handed her the lot – the talk of bush oysters had suddenly made me lose my appetite.
I went back to the wannabe Pussycat Doll, whose look was more ‘Bride of Chucky’ after the salon’s latest batch of cheap Lithuanian hair dye. As none of us spoke Lithuanian, the names on the tubes had always been a mystery to us, so the former owner, Sue had christened them all in her own tongue and the names had stuck. We still worked with ‘Wicked Cinnamon’, ‘Malevolent Blonde’, ‘Strident Peach’ and my particular favourite, ‘Sarcastic Scarlet’, which today had done its worst on Mrs Jackson. Being the professional I am, I bravely brushed through and pretended everything was ‘fabulous’. While attempting to pile up the vivid monstrosity on the top of Mrs Johnson’s head, I told myself I could cope with whatever Dan had to tell me – and it was probably nothing… but I still worried for the rest of the afternoon.
*
I arrived at the pub just after eight and immediately spotted Dan in the corner, away from the hubbub. He had a half-drunk pint in front of him and a perspiring glass of white next to it on the table, and I softened at the sight of him – and my white wine.
‘Hey,’ he said, in that lovely lilting way of his, standing up to greet me as I reached the table. We hugged and he made room for me next to him, and as I sat
down, I kissed him on the cheek, pushed my arm through his and grabbed my drink.
‘So, what’s all the drama and intrigue?’ I asked, desperate to find out. ‘Have you won the lottery or something?’
‘I wish! Sorry, babe, I didn’t want to worry you, but I didn’t want to put it in a text either…’ He wasn’t smiling, the dimples weren’t there and he looked worried.
‘What?’ My mouth was suddenly dry. ‘Put what in a text?’
‘I should have phoned you… but you know what I’m like about… difficult conversations. I had to see you.’
‘What? What’s the matter?’ I was going to throw up there and then on the shabby-chic wooden table in front of a pub full of strangers.
‘It’s my brother, John – his wife Kimmie, she called me this morning, says I need to go home.’
‘Oh Dan, I’m so sorry,’ I said, shocked at this news even though it wasn’t entirely unexpected. His brother had been ill for so long I think it was easier for everyone to just imagine he’d remain in this state forever. ‘But hopefully he’ll be okay?’ I offered, unsure of what to say.
‘No… he’s really crook,’ he said, which I knew was an Australian phrase meaning really sick.
‘But it happened before… the deterioration?’ I said. ‘You went to him then, but he pulled through.’ I couldn’t begin to imagine how John and his family coped with this terrible spectre over their lives. It had been with them for years and ever since his diagnosis John knew there were no guarantees of a long-term future. I often wondered how he must feel to know he’d probably never see his boys married, never meet his grandchildren; I couldn’t begin to imagine how awful that would be. I lived for my daughter and granddaughter.
‘Kimmie says this is different,’ Dan was saying. ‘It’s worse than before… Says it feels like time’s running out.’ He looked sad; he was finding this hard to talk about, he’d never really faced his brother’s illness head-on, but it looked like he was now having to.
‘But there’s still hope, right?’ I said, trying hard not to be clichéd, but unable to dampen down my natural optimism.