Page 3 of The Suite Life
‘Wait, it wasn’t him who I was talking to at the bar,’ I insist. ‘You guys have got the wrong end of the stick. That guy is good, he hasn’t done anything wrong, don’t go talk to him.’
‘Then who were you talking to?’ Lucy asks.
All eyes shift from me to scan the quiet bar, searching for the mystery man who sent me his number. Luckily there is another lone man sitting at the bar. Unluckily this man is a dishevelled-looking bloke in his sixties. He’s propping up the bar – actually, technically the bar is propping up him. He’s necking shot after shot as he scowls blankly into space. He’s clearly having a bad day – perhaps even worse than mine, although with each second that ticks by, I only seem to make the competition stiffer.
‘Oh,’ Lucy says simply.
Nathan sits back down again.
‘Okay, well, as I was saying about the food…’
It’s hilarious, isn’t it? Just when I thought things couldn’t get any more tragically comical, my life finds a way to outdo itself. This wedding is shaping up to be an absolute nightmare, and it’s only just begun.
2
‘Okay, Gwen, what are we doing today?’ I ask, raking my fingers through her long black hair as I make eye contact with her in the mirror.
‘You know, I think it might be time,’ she announces with an optimistic smile. ‘I think I’m ready to go back to blonde.’
Gwen is a regular client of mine and, while we may well be one of the best hair salons in London, we cannot work miracles. I remember, the very first time she sat down in my chair, I explained to her that her box-dyed black hair wasn’t going to be transformed into Barbie-blonde locks after a few hours in the chair. The thought of it being a process, with multiple steps, wasn’t something she was into. Well, people want to leave the hairdressers looking amazing, right, otherwise was it even worth staring at your potato-like face for hours? I don’t know why it is but, for some reason, everyone looks awful when they’re staring into the mirror at the hairdressers, questioning if they have always been so ugly – I know I look like a potato, especially when I’m all wrapped up in foil, but then as soon as the stylist is done, boom, it’s a miracle transformation. The most attractive you will ever feel is standing there, getting your ‘after’ photos taken forthe stylist’s portfolio. It’s just a fact. I mean, I’m a hairdresser, totally capable of styling my own hair, but sometimes I get one of the others to give me a blow-dry, just so I can get that salon-fresh confidence boost.
‘It’s not going to be that easy, unfortunately,’ I say, trying to keep my tone patient, even though we’ve had this conversation several times before. ‘You’ve got layers of black dye to contend with. We’ll have to strip it out, bleach it, tone it, and it’s going to take multiple sessions. Your hair might not even survive it all.’
‘But you know what you’re doing,’ she insists.
‘But, even so, with hair you just never know,’ I reply. ‘Slow, steady and cautiously is the only way to go, if you don’t want orange hair or breakage.’
‘Okay, fine, fine,’ she says with a sigh. ‘Just, okay, see how blonde you can make it today.’
‘I can see how light we can make it,’ I reply. ‘It might not be what you want, but it will be a step towards it.’
‘Yeah, fine, fine,’ she says, batting her hand like she’s waving me away to get on with it.
I always thought being a hairdresser would be such a glamorous job. I loved the idea of styling the rich and famous, seeing my work on TV and in magazines, and I was probably about thirteen when I started having my own hair highlighted (hello, chunky blonde and red highlights of the nineties), but I loved visiting the salon, soaking up the atmosphere. I knew I wanted to work in one and, boy, have I found a great one. It makes where I used to go when I was a teen (Angelz, with a Z) look like someone’s living room with a sink in it.
Honestly, when you walk through the doors here at Tom Olsen Hair, you are entering a safe space. People don’t just come here for a new hairstyle, it’s like a contemporary café (we’re all trained up on the espresso machine – only the best for our wealthy and often famous clients, of course) and a therapist’soffice rolled into one. You can ask advice, bitch about people you don’t like – and you never know who will be in the chair next to you. But while it is glamorous to be a client here, working here doesn’t exactly come with the same level of sparkle. I seem to spend my life buying black clothes because the ones I wear don’t last all that long before I stain them with little flecks of lightener, and despite this being one of the few industries where the customer definitely isn’t always right, I often find myself having to talk people down from requests that will quite literally have them tearing their hair out whenever they touch it.
Sometimes I’m not surprised Nathan left me – the girl behind the chair – and wound up with Sunshine Greene – the kind of girl who sits in one. Ever since Sunshine was onWelcome to Singledom, her star has just kept rising and rising. Young people worship her – not that I’m not young, I’m well aware that being in my early thirties is very much still young, but Sunshine is an icon to young girls in their teens and their twenties. They all want to be like her, to be popular on Instagram, to collaborate with brands.
If I were to compare us for a moment… pretty much every single thing that Sunshine posts online goes viral, with the likes and adoring comments flooding in. I went viral once, when I was caught on the big screen at a football match, seemingly picking my nose (in my defence, it was summer and a tiny fly flew up there).
Sunshine is an investor and designer at fast-fashion retailer ABO. I suppose I too am an investor at ABO, in a way, because I am almost always waiting on refunds for items I have returned from orders that I couldn’t really afford.
And then there is just how effortlessly stylish she is. My style has been described as effortless too, just, you know, when effortless means without effort. Sunshine is like caviar. I genuinely am a potato in comparison – and I thought Nathanwas a potato kind of guy. He has expensive taste, sure, don’t we all (at least try to), but he also tends to prefer the simple things in life. He always acted like he was actively turned off by clout-chasing influencers – people online who would say and do all sorts to get attention – and he’s always looked down his nose at reality TV. That’s what makes it hurt all the more, than he must really love Sunshine, to pull such a 180 on everything I thought he believed in.
‘I’ll go get your colour mixed up,’ I tell Gwen, who is already engrossed in something on her phone.
I walk across the busy salon towards the back room where we mix the colours.
The salon itself is a sleek, modern place, filled with high-end decor and chatter from the well-heeled clientele. Owned by Tom Olsen, one of the top stylists here, it’s no wonder so many people come here again and again. Tom is the only person I trust to do my blonde balayage, and I can only afford him because I get staff discount. Honestly, the clientele here have more money than sense – sometimes literally, in the case of Gwen, who would happily see me make her bald at her own direction (but then completely hit the roof after, obviously).
Inside the back room I find Tom himself and Zoe, another stylist, having a chat as Zoe cuts lengths of foil.
‘So, come on, how were drinks with your ex last night?’ he asks me, cutting to the chase, always one to lap up the gossip. I suppose, being a hairdresser, you get a real appetite for it.
‘Oh, only about as awkward as you can imagine it being,’ I reply. ‘I somehow managed to make it look like I was flirting with a man old enough to be my dad. They must think I’m so desperate for a plus-one for this wedding. I couldn’t have made myself seem more generally undesirable.’
‘Gigi, you are not undesirable,’ Zoe corrects me firmly. ‘Don’t be so hard on yourself. You just need to find a decent date for the wedding. A really decent one.’
