“Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow”

by Liz Tait

She's seen me. She's smiling. It costs nothing.

“Hi Jo, long time no see! Have you just had your hair done in there, naughty girl?!”

Her Pashmina’s whipping me in the wind. I had no idea they were still a thing. I’m babbling, she’s circling.

“Er, yes, just, I just..... spur of the moment, you know how it is".

Any minute now she's going to lift my chin up like a Crufts judge.

"You’ve had the colour done as well, haven't you? Bloody lucky to get an appointment there on the ‘spur of the moment’. For all that!"

I could leg it but she's all over my exit routes.

“You know I’d have given you a call first, obviously, because you…, I mean, you’ve always been my, you always do my hair, don’t you, but you don’t work Wednesdays, so….?”

My pants are well and truly on fire. Her indignation warms the back of my neck.

“I do! I’ve always worked Wednesdays. Hey, it doesn’t matter, does it? You can get your hair done where you like, can't you?! Don’t be silly".

She’s going to say it.

“It’s a free country!”

It’s not though. Not when it comes to hair. It’s very far from free. It’s a tangled, whole-months'-salary-gone-in-a-hair-toss minefield. One snip by a rival blade and you’ll never get a complimentary fringe trim anywhere in this town again.

Now she’s touching my freshly-razored neck. I wonder if she knows.

She snatches my Keira Knightley picture out of my hand.

“Keira Knightley? Oh my God, is this a break-up cut?”

Don’t snatch.

“New hair, new me’ sort of thing?”

Break-down cut, if you must know.

She doesn’t know.

“You wanted to look like this?!”

I wanted Keira back.

“Does make me laugh when my clients bring photos in. I always say ‘you know I’m just a hair stylist, not a plastic surgeon, don’t you? Can’t work miracles!”.

It's starting to rain on my new hair. I wish for the millionth time I was the umbrella-carrying type.

“Not long now then?”

Oh God, did I just say that? Must have done, my finger’s pointing at the bump in her protective hands.

“The nineteenth. Two weeks. CANNOT WAIT! Gotta go, busting for the loo, as usual. Lovely to see you!

She’s rounding up the pashmina. I’ve got away with it.

"Hey, wait, yours must be.... how is…..you had a girl, right?

Shit.

“Is she in nursery already!? Bloody lucky to get her in somewhere! Which one's she at?”

Almost.

"She's not anywhere. She died. One hour 36 minutes after she was born."

Hands abandon brewing belly to fly stricken to her gaping mouth.

Saying it feels a tiny bit easier every time. The dance of confused, embarrassed horror – not easier. Never easier.

Rain hammers the pavement between us.

I watch her waddle away then she kind of does this last-minute swerve into Greggs. Pretty sure they don’t have toilets in there.

My hair feels flat and sticky. I should go home.

I jump, Norman Wisdom style, to a tap on the back. I turn and Melanie’s showing me a piece of heart-shaped shortbread with a bloodshed-red jammy heart in a Greggs bag.

She pulls me into a wet hug then she’s gone, trusty pashmina trailing behind.

And I'm eating it, now, in the rain. I'm hungry. So damn hungry.

“Five currant buns in a Baker's Shop,

Fat and round with a cherry on the top”

Forgot how much I love shortbread.

“Along came a boy with a penny one day

Bought a currant bun and took it away!”

Stupid song rattles around my derelict head. I’ve asked nicely for it to stop. Please, for pity’s sake, stop now.

Forgot how much I love Ed, who has silently, under the cover of darkness, undone our house of baby things.

I want to go home.