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Were we happy together? I don’t know. We rubbed along well enough. Paul worked hard as a self-employed plumber and liked to play hard too. Most nights he went to the pub and at the weekends he played rugby for the local team. I did aerobic classes if I couldn’t think of any way to avoid them, saw Nina sometimes for a drink or a pizza and watched a lot of soaps on television. There was no floating on clouds, but no major fireworks either. We didn’t argue, we didn’t make love all that much. When he left, life continued pretty much as it had.
‘We took a balloon flight across the African plains,’ Mrs Silverton continues. ‘I’m telling you, if you want romance, that is the thing to do.’
Do most people live in a state of heightened romance? I don’t think I ever did with Paul. He wasn’t that sort of bloke. Who is? Other than Mrs Silverton’s husband who is always surprising her with something marvellous. There was never any impromptu whisking me away to Paris or Rome. It would have had to coincide with some football match or other to make it worthwhile in his book. But did I miss that? Not really. To be honest, I never did anything romantic or spontaneous for him either. We weren’t that sort of couple.
My experience of loving and living with someone was pleasant, but not overly so. My experience of living without him is pretty much the same. I wonder sometimes if I’ve ever really been in love. Did I move in with Paul because I truly loved him or simply because he was the only person who had asked me and I thought ‘why not?’. I read in these slushy novels about passions that have never touched me. I watch romantic films and can’t relate to them at all. My heart has never fluttered, my knees have never gone weak, my appetite has never deserted me in the face of love. Perhaps they’re all just selling us a myth that keeps us borderline discontent with the men in our lives.
Before I settled down with Paul, I’d dated some nice guys – not that many, I suppose – but no one really set my heart on fire. I could have quite happily lived without any of them. And did. When I think of my friends, of the girls and boys in the salon, none of them seem particularly overjoyed with their partners either. Nina and her husband Gerry are hanging by a thread most of the time and she’s getting to the point where she can hardly move without Gerry’s say so. Kelly and Phil rarely socialise with anyone else as he seems to like to keep her all to himself. The boys, Tyrone and Clinton, are always having a major blow up at the drop of a hat and while Cristal and Steph are single, their lives are far more complicated than I could ever cope with.
Also, I see all of life beneath my scissors in here. The wannabe marrieds, the happily marrieds, the unhappily marrieds, the adulterers, those hoping to be adulterers, the resolutely single, the reluctantly single, the still looking for Mr Rights, the just divorced, the many times divorced, the ones who vow to never marry again and then do. Is there really such a thing as perfect love?
I realise that Mrs Silverton is still talking about the wonders of her holiday and that I’ve drifted away. Snapping my attention back to her, I smooth bleach along the final strand of hair and wrap it neatly in foil.
‘All done.’
‘Things we go through to look beautiful.’
It’s worth it, I think. It’s worth it for Mrs Silverton as she seems to be greatly loved.
‘Here.’ She hands me her iPod touch. ‘Have a look at these. There are just a few photographs on it. My husband took over a thousand pictures! A thousand! Everywhere you looked there was something spectacular to snap. The light is perfect for photographers.’
So, not wishing to offend her, I take the gadget and slip it into my pocket. I set the timer for half an hour and retreat into the staffroom for a well-earned break during a gap between clients. It’s mad busy today but I shouldn’t complain as business has been slow over the last six months, recession and everything, and Kelly thought, at one point, that she might have to lay one or two of us off or get rid of a couple of the juniors. Now that the amount of clients through the doors has once again picked up, we’re all hanging on in there.
In the staffroom, all I want is peace and quiet for a few minutes. Instead I find that Cristal is crying loudly. Nina has her arms around her and is shushing her softly.
‘What’s wrong?’ I whisper.
‘He hasn’t phoned yet?’
‘Who?’
‘The man she slept with at the weekend.’
‘Oh. How long has she been going out with him?’
Nina gives me an old-fashioned look and says over Cristal’s head, ‘She only met him on Saturday. They spent the night together. She thought he was The One.’
