Page 51 of Lessons in Love at the Seaside Salon
‘Could be her now,’ she says to Josie, who bites her lip and nods. ‘You’d better come and say hello.’
More nodding.
‘Believe the best, pet. Especially in your mum.’
Josie sniffs but at least she stops biting her lip.
Heading out of the back room, Trudy sees an older version of Josie standing just inside the doorway with a neatly done plait wound around the top of her head, Heidi style. Interesting choice for a middle-aged woman, but also a practical one for the lady who wants long hair yet doesn’t want to deal with ittoo much. Those women tend to want to have the hair for show – a night out, or a school event, or a wedding – and think it’s worth dealing with it the rest of the time just for that. On those occasions they’ll come to the salon to have it done properly and Trudy can play then. She loves doing those hairdos. But given what Josie told her, she has a feeling Erin has not come here for one of them.
‘Hello,’ Trudy says, smiling. ‘Erin?’
‘Yes.’ Erin’s smile is tentative. ‘Hello.’ She glances over Trudy’s shoulder; presumably Josie is there. ‘Hello, darling.’
‘Hi, Mum.’
Josie pulls level with Trudy, who can sense Sam and Evie’s heads swivelling in their direction.
‘Your mum?’ Sam asks.
‘Come and take this seat,’ Trudy says. ‘Josie, cape and towel, please.’
Josie flits away and Trudy meets Erin’s eyes in the mirror.
‘So, Erin, what can I do for you today? Cut? Colour? Wash? Blow-dry?’
There’s probably a note about this in the book but due to the chat with Josie she didn’t have time to check.
‘I think …’
The eyes that look back at Trudy are Josie’s, just with lines at the corners and a little a sag on the eyelids. Time is cruel, Trudy thinks, but also inevitable, and part of what they do in this salon is help people manage it. Cuts and colours should change as a woman ages, and Trudy will advise if a client has been hanging on to a cut for too long, so that it ages her rather than making her look the way she did when she first had it done in her youth. Or she’ll suggest a softer colour for an ageing face, as that means less heavy make-up. She remembers Elizabeth Taylor going from dark-brown hair to a silvery blonde and how it took years off her, partly because she no longer needed to have heavy browsand lips in order not to look washed out beneath the dark hair. There are tricks to the show and she knows most of them.
‘A cut,’ Erin says at last and Trudy hears Josie gasp.
‘All right,’ Trudy says. ‘A cut of length or a new look?’
‘A new look.’
‘Mum!’
Erin’s eyes flash. ‘What, darling?’
‘You said you’d never cut your hair!’
‘Well, you said Trudy is very good and I’ve never really had a hairdresser I could trust, so I thought I’d find out if I can trust her.’
Trudy has been around enough to appreciate that she’s been given a compliment as a way of balancing an implicit threat. Erin wants her to prove her trustworthiness, it seems. Fine. She can handle it.
‘Do you have an idea of what you want?’ she says to her new client.
‘No.’ Erin’s eyes move to Josie’s and Trudy can almost feel something crackle between them.
‘Josie – what do you think?’ she asks her apprentice because this is as good a learning experience as any, and Josie is unlikely to encounter a more fraught situation than this one, at least not for a while.
‘I, um …’
She sticks her chin out a little and Trudy thinks,Good girl.
‘I think Mum should have a long bob. With a Lady Di fringe.’
