come in.’
Then he hid the present in such an utterly crap place that it took me approximately five seconds to find it. Why are men so hopeless at hiding things? Perhaps it’s because to them everything is hidden to start with. ‘I can’t find my socks.’ ‘Anyone seen my shoes?’ ‘My grey trousers aren’t here.’ They always are, of course. Usually right in front of his eyes.
‘Deeeaan,’ I whisper gently, nudging him again. Maybe if I push him harder. ‘Dean. Wake up.’
I’m really shaking him now, and there’s no sign of life. How can anyone sleep this deeply? Perhaps he’s dead. Could I still be a Wag if I were a widow? Hmmm…
I give him one almighty push and he rolls off the bed, smashing into the leopard-print bedside lamp on the way and landing with an almighty crash on the floor.
‘Ow,’ he says, rising to his feet, his hands clutching his head. ‘Ow, ow, ow. What happened then?’
‘You fell,’ I say, in mock concern. ‘Are you okay? Here, let me see.’ But even as I rub his head gently, all I can think is, Where’s my bangle? Where’s my bangle? Go get my bangle!
It’s strange that I should be tending to an injury to Dean on our anniversary because that’s how we first met. He was a twenty-year-old Arsenal player, knocking on a first-team place, when our paths crossed. I was an eighteen-year-old trainee hairdresser, living in a small flat above the salon, just down the road from where Dean’s nan lived, hoping to become a model, and he was a local celebrity. He walked with a strut and wore oversized trousers with huge trainers that were always undone. When he shuffled into the hairdresser’s where I was washing hair, I don’t think I’d ever seen a more beautiful human being. I made to leave elderly Mrs Cooper at the sink, with shampoo dripping into her rheumy bloodshot eyes, and then I dropped the shower attachment, letting it bounce onto its back and hurl a heavy spray of water up into the air and all over the clients.
‘Hi,’ I said eagerly, ignoring the shrieks from the women at the basins, the agonised cries from Mrs Cooper and the angry shouts from Romeo, the salon owner. ‘How can I help you?’
‘I’d like my ears pierced, babe,’ he said, winking at me.
‘Certainly. Come in.’
While Mrs Cooper was being comforted in the corner with eye drops and a small glass of sweet sherry, I led Dean over to Sally, the only one of us qualified to pierce ears. Actually, when I say qualified, I mean brave. She was the only one brave enough to pierce ears. She was no more qualified than the rest of us, but she’d practised extensively with a hole punch and wasn’t afraid of blood, so the task fell to her.
‘Just sit down,’ she said to Dean. ‘I’ll fetch some ice.’
Unfortunately, all the ice had gone into the gin and tonics that Romeo had been forced to provide for the soaking-wet clients at the basins, so Sally came back and told Dean it would be fine without ice. He just had to keep still.
There was a slight panic when she couldn’t find the antiseptic wipes and we discovered the piercing gun hadn’t been cleaned from the last time it was used, but in the end we carried on regardless. Sally pulled the trigger (making like she was John Wayne in the process, which further alarmed Dean). ‘Click’ went the machine. ‘Bang’ shouted Sally, as we both collapsed into fits of giggles. Then…‘Oh shit,’ she said. The gun had clamped shut on Dean’s ear and couldn’t be removed.
Sally pushed, pulled, struggled and swore. She looked at me. I smiled at Dean, who was now exactly the same colour as the chipped magnolia paint on the walls. I pulled the gun too. No good.
‘Oops,’ Sally said, doing her best to dampen down the fear emanating from one of Arsenal’s most promising footballers. ‘Little problem, I’m afraid.’
Sally and I jiggled around with the gun, pulling and pushing it, trying to work it free from Dean’s ear. Our every effort was accompanied by loud groans, cries and a considerable number of swear words from Dean. Then, he sighed loudly, made a grab for the arm of the chair and collapsed in a heap.
‘Shit!’ I said, jumping back. ‘We’ve killed him!’
‘No we haven’t,’ said Sally, showing herself to be infinitely more capable in a crisis. ‘We just need to get the gun off his ear.’
Around us stood all the clients in the salon, sipping their complimentary beverages and watching closely. Even Mrs Cooper had joined them, but she stood watching with one eye—the other covered by a makeshift patch, constructed from a wad of cotton wool and a vast amount of masking tape.
Eventually, the gun came off and Sally and I both collapsed in a heap from the effort. Dean was still slumped exactly as he was before, but with a large hole in his earlobe where the gun had, until recently, resided.
I lost my job that day, but I gained a boyfriend and then, two years later, a husband. It was the happiest day of my life when Dean proposed to me, just eight months after we met. I’ll never forget calling Mum and telling her:
‘I’ve met someone and he wants to marry me.’
‘Oh,’ she said, with very little interest, more than a little resentment, and some comment about how old this was all going to make her look.
‘His name’s Dean Martin,’ I said, and there was a silence on the end of the phone. Then:
‘Dean…Martin? The Dean Martin?’
I was thrilled that Mum had heard about Arsenal’s new sensation from all the way over there in Los Angeles.
‘Yep, the Dean Martin,’ I said, feeling very proud. ‘The Dean Martin is now my Dean Martin.’
‘Where did you meet the great legend?’
‘He came into the salon to get a piercing.’
‘What? Was he with the other members of the Rat Pack?’
‘No—he was on his own. The others had gone to get chips.’
‘Chips? Two of the greatest swing singers in the history of Big Band music—gone to get chips?’
‘No, Dean’s mates…from Arsenal.’
‘Hang on. So, who is this Dean Martin you’re going to marry?’
‘He plays for Arsenal.’
The line went dead. I asked a few people afterwards and they said that there was another Dean Martin in America who was seventy-odd at the time, and sang rubbish songs, so he must be the guy that Mum thought I was talking about. It turned out that the American Dean Martin died later that year…probably from a broken heart at being the wrong Dean Martin.
Meanwhile, back in London, the hole in my Dean’s ear never properly healed (he wears three earrings in it now), but he says he forgives me. Sally left the salon at the same time as me. Last I heard, she’d retrained as a butcher, which seemed strangely appropriate.
Mum ended up coming round to the idea of the wedding when she realised how much money footballers earn. In fact, she came straight back over to live in England, giving up her sun-soaked LA life and throwing herself into the coordination of
