Page 40 of Lessons in Love at the Seaside Salon
Does it matter?
No, it doesn’t. Not right now. Because she doesn’t care. Does she?
‘My mother will look after the children if we go there for dinner this Saturday night,’ he continues.
So clearly his mother knows what’s going on. Anna hasn’t spoken to Sylvia for a while. They’ve never really been chums and her mother-in-law has been a disengaged grandparent at best.
‘That’s good of her,’ she gets out, not wanting to give Sylvia too many credits.
‘So … would you like to go with me?’
He looks so hopeful, like he did when they were first seeing each other, as if he couldn’t believe she’d spend time with him. That’s the version of both of them she liked the best.
‘Yes. All right,’ she says, and watches as he visibly relaxes.
‘I’ll pick up the kids at six,’ he says, ‘and take them to Mum’s. Then I’ll come back to pick you up.’
She opens her mouth, about to suggest that they just take the children on their way to dinner – but that’s the arrangement of a couple who are still close and familiar, and she also doesn’t want to try to organise things when he’s taken the initiative.
‘Sounds good,’ she says.
He smiles, and it’s brighter than anything she’s seen for months.
‘Thank you,’ he says. ‘I’ll, uh … I’ll let you get back to it.’
He gives her a peck on the cheek before she has a chance to work out what he’s doing, then he’s gone, and she wanders slowly back to her workroom and decides not to try to figure out what it all might mean right now.
Renee is curled up on the floor, asleep. Best to leave her there until Anna goes to bed herself. Which won’t be for a while, because she feels a little agitated.
Sewing is a good distraction – she can focus and just be in the moment with her task. So, with thumb guard on, she picks up the piece she’s mending and gets to work.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Josie has faced unruly hair, patchy hair, badly cared-for hair, hair that had been set on fire – possibly on purpose, although she never found out for sure – as well as hair that had been bleached for too many years, and quite a few heads of child hair that had been cut by mothers who then decided they didn’t really know what they were doing and brought their unfortunate offspring to the salon for a proper cut. However, this is the first time she’s done a layer cut on her own and even with Trudy hovering over her shoulder she’s nervous.
‘It’s all right, sweetheart,’ croons the client, who is Trudy’s regular, Babs.
Babs volunteered for this, apparently. ‘She likes you,’ Trudy told Josie. ‘And she especially likes the idea of a free haircut.’
The cut has to be free because it may turn out badly. That’s the other reason why Babs was happy to do it: she doesn’t mind if she ends up with short hair.
‘Just start,’ Babs says with a wink. ‘What’s the worst that can happen?’
That I’m chucked out of tech, Josie thinks, but instead of saying it she tries to smile at Babs at the mirror.
Babs’s eyes are bright as they look into hers – well, as they bounce back at hers from the mirror. That’s one of the funny things about being a hairdresser: you don’t often look your clients properly in the face. Which means you’re always seeing them reversed. Just like they’re seeing you. Almost Josie’s whole working day is spent as a mirror image of herself, literally. Ifshe’d done better at school maybe she’d know a name for that. Is it a metaphor? No. A simile? No. A … wait … no, she can’t think of it. Or maybe it’s nothing fancy, she just thinks it should be, so if she had indeed been better at school she’d be able to write a poem about it or something. ‘My Life as a Mirror’. ‘My Life in the Mirror’ – no, she prefers the first one.
Stop.She needs to focus on Babs. Partly because this haircut is a distraction from the thing that has been distracting her all day: Brett is taking her out to dinner tonight. She has lied to her parents about where she’ll be, saying she’s catching a movie with a friend, and of course they’ll ask about the movie so she’s going to say she sawCrocodile Dundeeagain. It’s still running at the cinema in Gosford – she checked – and when they ask why she wanted to see it again, she’s going to say it’s because her friend hadn’t seen it. Which will sound weird – because the whole of Australia has seen that film – but she does have a friend who grew up in a very religious family and she hardly knows anything about anything. So that’s the friend she’s going to draw into the lie, and she just has to make sure that friend never visits her house since her parents will probably quiz them both about the movie.
All this fuss just to go out to dinner with a boy. But Josie knows it will be worth it, because she really likes him. Now she just has to keep her mind on the job until he comes to collect her at the end of the day. Which – she notices by glancing at the clock – is only forty-five minutes away.
‘So, um …’ She swallows. ‘You don’t want a fringe?’
‘God, no!’ Babs looks amused and points to her face. ‘With this moon? I’d look like Bert Newton. No, love, just some layers on top and the side.’
Trudy squeezes Josie’s arm. ‘It’ll be fine. Just start.’
Swallowing again, Josie picks up her scissors. Each hairdresser has their own scissors – she learnt that early on.She and her friend from tech, Sue, bought theirs together, even though neither one of them knew anything about good scissors.
