Homecoming

‘I’m Patsy,’ the woman added. ‘What can we do for you?’

‘I need a haircut and a change of colour.’ The words came rushing out. ‘I want to look different,’ Megan said. ‘Totally different.’

Patsy didn’t blink. Women had come into her shop before looking forlorn and needing a new look. You never knew what life would throw at you. Patsy’s response was to help any woman when she could and not ask questions.

‘Take a pew. I’ll be with you in five minutes.’

‘N-now?’

‘No appointment necessary,’ said Patsy, pointing to a sign that said just that on the salon’s pink brocade-papered wall.

‘That’s unusual,’ said Megan, still a little startled by the speed of it all.

‘I never know what’s coming up next,’ Patsy replied, in a voice that said she’d seen quite enough, thank you very much, and would it all stop coming, please. ‘Sit down right here.’

‘Oh no, I can’t stay,’ Megan said, recovering herself. ‘I brought my aunt’s dogs. I was simply trying to make an appointment.’

Patsy looked outside where Cici and Leonardo were tied to a lamp post and looking in with abject misery. ‘They’re not used to being left, are they?’

‘No. I’d better go.’ Megan felt inexplicably as if she might cry. Nothing worked; she was a stupid screw-up. She couldn’t even think properly.

Patsy surprised her with a soft hand on Megan’s elbow.

Which was when Megan really started to cry.

‘A man! It has to be about a man,’ nodded the little old lady with the silver blue hair. ‘They’re all bollixes, except when they’re small.’

‘Stick to cats,’ said one of the ladies under the dryer.

‘No – dogs,’ interrupted the other one. ‘Cats are like men: stay when they feel like it and off out the door when they don’t.’

Patsy ignored the philosophical chatter, went outside, untied the dogs and brought them inside the salon.

‘Sit,’ she commanded. And they sat.

She then calmly fed the two dogs a couple of plain biscuits, put a cup of unasked-for sweet tea in front of Megan and gently began unwinding her bandana.

‘Right,’ she said, looking at the platinum curls that brought movie-star glamour into the salon. ‘I see what you mean.’

She grabbed a towel, looped it expertly around Megan’s head, and busied herself mixing up colour. In ten minutes, Megan was unrecognisable in that her head was covered in gunk and she was perched under a dryer with a very wellthumbed copy of a craft magazine. The dogs, somehow soothed by the hum of Patsy’s salon and stuffed full of biscuits, lay at her feet and slept. There were other magazines around. Gossipy ones with glamorous pictures, but Patsy knew precisely who Megan was. Which was why she’d given her a magazine with knitting patterns and advice on how to turn a tea towel into a cushion.

‘Will I take much off?’ she asked when Megan was back at the mirror with wet, dark hair.

‘What would make me look different?’ Megan asked.

‘I’d go short, if I were you,’ said Patsy. ‘Very short. You’ve got the face for it. And believe me, you’ll look different.’ She began to cut.

Megan thought of Freemont Jackson, the Covent Garden artiste who’d been doing her hair for four years now, and how removing so much as a centimetre was a matter for an hour-long consultation. When she’d gone from being longhaired to having shoulder-length hair, he’d nearly had to be medicated. Well, more medicated.

‘Those luscious curls, they’re so you!’ he’d said wistfully.

And now here was Patsy, cutting away calmly, taking large chunks from Megan’s wet hair, and there wasn’t a dramatic hairdressing flounce in sight.

Megan felt unmoved as her shorn hair fell on to the salon’s black nylon gown. It was cathartic having this done, almost like wearing a hair shirt. She was punishing herself, doing away with the sexy, girlish creature who’d got into so much trouble.

As Patsy cut, Megan closed her eyes and tried not to think about Rob Hartnell’s hands as he ran them through her hair.

‘You’re so beautiful,’ he’d said. ‘My fairy princess.’

In the luxury of their hotel in Prague, he’d held her constantly, his hands on her face, around her waist, stroking her hair. She’d felt like a fairy princess in this magical city, with the sugared almond cupolas outside their windows, and the dark, romantic beauty of the Hotel Sebastien inside.

‘Let’s run away together,’ he’d said. But he was the one who’d run, alone.

Two hours after she’d entered Patsy’s, Megan looked at her new self in the mirror. For a woman whose own hair owed little to subtlety, Patsy was very good at hair colour. Megan had never had dark hair in her life. Even in films, the closest she’d come to dark was a mousy blonde. But now, with the inky black crop that clung to her small head, she looked like another person. She’d relied on her hair, she realised: relied on sexily flicking back blonde tendrils. It had defined her in some way. Blonde, pretty, child-woman.

With her skin a little tanned, she looked as if she could be from a different race. An exotic Arab woman with strange olive green eyes, dark eyelashes and a wary expression, no longer the kittenish golden girl but a watchful, grown-up woman who had seen something of life. Now, her straight nose made her look exotic instead of ethereal. The fairy princess was gone for good. It was very odd to see this stranger in the mirror. Odd, and a huge relief. Nobody would recognise her now. Megan wasn’t sure she recognised herself. ‘Thank you.’

‘It suits you,’ Patsy said.

Megan wasn’t a hugger, but she felt like hugging Patsy now.

‘Come back when the roots grow out,’ Patsy said. ‘If you’re around, that is.’

As Megan paid about a tenth of what she’d have paid Freemont for the same work, she replied: ‘I’ll be around.’

A part of Megan’s new routine was dropping into the chiropody practice downstairs at lunchtime to say hello to Nora. She’d gone in impromptu on the first day and encountered the receptionist, a bird-like woman with wildly fluffed-up grey curls and lots of purple mascara, who cheerfully told her that Nora was with a client.

‘You must be Nora’s niece,’ the bird-like lady had said with delight. ‘I’m Angeline, well, people call me Birdie.’ She held out a tiny hand and Megan shook it.

‘Yes, I’m Megan,’ Megan said, waiting for the inevitable moment of ‘– oh’ as recognition hit.

It never came.

‘Nora says you’re here on a break,’ Angeline had gone on happily. ‘I must say, a holiday sounds gorgeous right now. I could do with one myself. I normally go to the Canaries in the winter, but you know how it is: money’s tight!’

She even sounded like a bird, Megan decided, with that chirruping voice. No wonder she got called Birdie.

‘Have you ever been to the Canaries?’ Angeline went on. ‘Well.’ She didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Gorgeous, that’s what they are, gorgeous. Even if I say so myself. Spain is great, altogether. I have a friend, and she goes to Alicante for the whole of the winter with her husband, and it’s cheaper than being here. Miles cheaper, she says.’

Megan nodded. Nothing else was required.

‘You were walking the dogs, I saw you,’ Angeline continued. ‘I like dogs, but cats are very good company. Sir Rollo, he’s my cat, a Persian blue. Picky eater, I can tell you, but he’s so gentle. Never killed a mouse in his life!’

‘Do you prefer being called Angeline or Birdie?’ asked Megan.

‘Birdie!’

Megan sat down in one of the waiting-room chairs. There was something peaceful in listening to Birdie’s chatter.