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I lay out Mrs Norman’s tray (white china cup and saucer, stainless steel pot and tiny milk jug) and pop on a few of those individually wrapped caramel biscuits that she likes so much. Kelly says the clients are only to have one each – portion control – but to me, customer service isn’t always about balancing the books. I remember a time when Mrs Norman had very little joy in her life and those few biscuits managed to bring a smile to her face every week. You can’t put a price on that, can you?
‘We need to do something about it, Janie Johnson,’ Nina says decisively and I turn my attention away from caramel biscuits and back to my friend. ‘Get you out a bit more. Find you a hot lover with pots of cash and a Ferrari.’
‘Yes,’ I say without enthusiasm.
‘Gerry must be able to lay his hands on a spare bloke somewhere.’
The last person on earth I’d want meddling in my affairs of the heart is Nina’s husband, Gerry. Mrs Norman, bless her, is bad enough.
I wish everyone would realise that I’m OK like this. I don’t want excitement. I don’t want change. I certainly, absolutely, most definitely don’t want another man in my life.
Chapter Two
Mrs Silverton is next on my list. She is the Barbara Windsor of Cutting Edge. A glamorous woman of a certain age who adds a bit of colour to our lives by wearing fake fur coats, copious costume jewellery that jingles as she walks and a mahogany-hued perma-tan. This is a lady who’s independently wealthy as she owns a chain of racy lingerie shops in the area. Her husband is ten years younger than her. Mrs Silverton is a ‘cup full’ sort of person and not just in the underwear department. Today she’s in for a full head of highlights and a blow-dry. I’ve already mixed her colours.
‘You’re looking well,’ I say as she shrugs off her coat and sits down.
‘Just got back from safari, love,’ she tells me. ‘The Maasai Mara in Kenya. Bloody marvellous.’
I don’t know what hairdressers would do without holidays to talk about half of the time. It’s the standard opener with new clients, a fail-safe for those awkward quiet moments when the conversation dries up. Christmas is a godsend on that front too. People love to talk about their plans. With Mrs Silverton, well, she’s always just been on holiday, whether it’s Marbella, Mexico or the Maldives, or she’s just about to go on one. She and toy boy spouse have travelled the world in luxury.
Cristal, the youngest and trendiest of our juniors, comes and lounges next to me, handing me the foils in a state of trendy tedium.
‘Africa should definitely be on the list of the one hundred places you have to go before you die,’ Mrs Silverton expounds.
‘Hmm,’ I say and take another foil from Cristal. ‘It sounds wonderful. I’d love to go there.’
‘You should do it.’
‘I’ve got two weeks holiday left and I have to take it by January or I lose it.’ Frankly, I’d rather forgo the holiday and take the money but Kelly doesn’t work like that. Use it or lose it is the company policy here so I haven’t even bothered to ask. I’ll probably just take a few days off here and there, do some bits on the house that desperately need attention and get on top of my Christmas shopping.
‘It’s lovely and warm at this time of year. The perfect time to go.’
Just as Mrs Norman tries to sort out my love life, Mrs Silverton tries to encourage me to travel the world. Travel expands the mind, she says. I should open myself up to different cultures. It’s very liberating, she says.
The trouble is wherever I’ve been has turned out to be exactly like England with sunshine. To be fair, I haven’t been abroad all that much. Paul only liked to travel spontaneously when football matches were involved. Like everyone else, we went for our obligatory two weeks to the Costa del Sol, Ibiza, Majorca, Lanzarote – where everyone speaks English and eats egg and chips and drinks British beer. I never went abroad because I particularly liked it, just because it’s what people do.
Paul and I were together for seven years. The seven-year itch we used to laugh, until, of course, he left me for someone else just as we were about to slide comfortably into eight years. A divorcée, older than me with two small children to boot. I think that’s what hurts the most. If he’d gone off with some taut and high-octane youngster like Cristal, I could have understood it more. Perhaps. As it was, I thought we were in it for the long-term. Marriage had been mentioned. More than once. Though we’d never quite got around to it. We’d even talked about having a family together but Paul had never been keen and it didn’t seem all that important to me either.
