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‘Are you all right?’ I ask as I lower the hood towards her.
She nods.
‘Cup of tea?’
‘I’d love one.’ Then, as I turn to go to the staffroom to find a junior to make it, my client unexpectedly takes my hand and squeezes it. ‘You’ll find someone,’ she says. ‘A lovely lass like you.’
Yeah, right.
‘You should come ballroom dancing with me. It’s not all old fogeys, you know. They’d be like bees around a honey pot with a young thing like you.’
‘Are there any spare men then?’
‘Mostly spare women,’ she concedes sadly.
The story of my life. ‘I’ll get you that tea.’
In the staffroom, I can’t find any of the juniors. They’re probably all out at the back of the salon having a sly smoke, as Nina and I once would have been, so I make the tea myself. Our staffroom is not glamorous. There are row upon row of hair dyes and supplies, stacks and stacks of towels, piles of coats mouldering damply now that the weather has turned cold and wet, and the usual amount of tat and paraphernalia associated with teenage girls. Our owner, Kelly, keeps threatening to make us clean it all up but, thankfully, she never follows through.
Kelly only bought the shop a couple of years ago or, more accurately, her rich boyfriend did. I think Phil Fuller thought it would give her something to play with while he was busy being an ‘entrepreneur’. For that, I read ‘small-time crook’ or something else similarly dodgy. Our boss is only twenty-seven while her boyfriend is thirty years older than her. I wonder if she would still be with him if he wasn’t a millionaire with cash to flash. She’s tiny, pretty and blonde. He’s a portly, red-faced bloke with a beer belly like a bowling ball and a penchant for gold chains and bracelets. Would I content myself with a man like that, I wonder? How is that perfect match a marriage made in heaven? Yet they seem to get along well enough.
Nina follows me in, plonks herself down next to a pile of towels waiting to be folded and picks up a magazine to flick through. ‘Mrs Norman trying to sort out your love life again?’
I laugh. ‘Of course.’
Nina Dalton is my best friend. She and I go back a long way. We were friends all through senior school from the age of eleven and it was no coincidence that we both went into hairdressing. All those hours we spent doing each other’s hair in my bedroom didn’t entirely go to waste as my parents had feared. We’ve worked here together since we were both starting out as juniors many years ago. I had a Saturday job to start with and when I went full-time, I persuaded the then owner to take Nina on too. Now I’m sure she’s one of the main reasons I’ve stayed here so long. My friend is the polar opposite to me and has gone down the high-maintenance, white-blonde road and has to have her roots done every couple of weeks, usually by me. She’s a blue-eyed beauty with an enviably curvy figure whereas I’m boyish, straight up and down.
Nina reaches into her bag and pulls out an apple. Since she gave up smoking, my friend chain-eats fruit in an attempt to keep her curves in control. But then she also embraces chardonnay wholeheartedly as a fruit-based drink and immediately undoes a lot of the good work.
Despite its optimistic moniker, our salon certainly isn’t the most cutting-edge one you’ll ever come across. We’re based in a lovely little courtyard of shops just off the High Street in Buckingham, a middle-of-the-road place that is the county town of this area. Very charming in its own way but, admittedly, not Beverly Hills. We do our fair share of hair extensions and celebrity lookalike cuts for the younger crowd, but our main clientele are the Mrs Normans of the world with their wash-and-sets and their regular perms.
It’s nice enough in here. We had a much needed makeover not long ago and now we’re all matt, mocha walls with chocolate chairs and silver gilt framed mirrors at each station. Instead of the scruffy lino, a new marble-effect floor was put down and all our towels are coordinated in shades of brown and cream. The clients seem to like it.
Perhaps it shows a lack of ambition that I’m still here after all this time and haven’t thought to go chasing fame and fortune in one of the London salons. But it wouldn’t do if we were all like that, would it? I might not be setting the world alight, but I’m happy. Ish.
‘She does have a point, Janie,’ Nina says, munching her apple as I clatter about with cups. ‘You’ve been on your own for a while now.’
‘I like being on my own.’ I don’t really. I hate it. But my long-term partner, Paul, and I split up nearly a year ago and, I don’t know, I just can’t face that whole dating scene again. I’m thirty-five and I’d just feel bloody silly starting all over with someone new. You sort of get past it, don’t you? I’d hoped that once I was into my twenties that ‘dating’ would be a word that wouldn’t trouble my vocabulary again. It’s not as though anyone has asked me either. There are no hordes of attractive, available men beating a track to my door so the problem has never arisen.
