never been single, I don’t know how to be single. I don’t want to walk into my dad’s wedding looking like some feeble tramp who spent a fortnight listening to Power Ballads ’89 and watching Bridget Jones’s Diary over and over, crying “that will never happen for me” and eating ice cream until I lapse into a diabetic coma.’
‘That would be quite dramatic given that you’re not even diabetic,’ Matthew replied. ‘You could just not go to your dad’s wedding. It’s not like there won’t be another one.’
‘It’s just too tragic that it’s his fourth and I’m not even engaged.’ I ran my fingers through my short, wet hair. ‘I’m twenty-eight. Everyone’s going to ask if I turned up alone. And you know my brother is going to appear with some random slag he’s picked up the night before and everyone’s going to think it’s charming.’
‘Um,’ Em coughed awkwardly. ‘About your brother.’
‘Not now, Stevens,’ Matthew gave me a sturdy side hug. ‘Right. In that case, we’ve got a lot of work to do, haven’t we?’
‘We really have.’ I heaved myself off the sofa, catching sight of my hair in the mirror. ‘We really, really have.’
One of the benefits of being a make-up artist was a wealth of helpful connections in the beauty world, connections I’d never really taken advantage of before. But with just a few texts, I’d called in enough favours to get an appointment at a great salon with a great stylist inside the hour. Given that Matthew had less than no interest in hair, make-up, clothes or anything else that happened on or to girls, he’d been left in charge of clearing Simon’s influence out of the flat: getting the locks changed, clearing out his stuff and preparing for redecoration. I was on a mission. By the end of the day, I wanted to feel like a new woman. If he didn’t want me in his life, I didn’t want him in mine. There was some debate over whether or not changing the locks was overkill, but the idea of Simon just being able to let himself in whenever he wanted actually made me feel sick to my stomach.
Which was more or less the reaction Tina Morgan, hair stylist to the stars (if you counted the cast of Hollyoaks as stars) had to my hair.
‘Fuckin’ hell, Summers,’ she barked with cigarette-scented laughter as I dropped down in the styling chair. ‘Who did this?’
‘I did,’ I replied, trying not to regret my decision. I’d known Tina since college and she was amazing with hair. Her make-up work erred more towards drunk Pussycat Doll, but when it came to hair? First class.
‘Right, you never did do well in the hair modules, did you?’ She pulled the strands through her fingers, measuring out the lengths. ‘I’ve been dying to get my hands on your hair for years. Well, you’ve fucked this up good and proper, haven’t you?’
It was a shame that her talent was matched with an almost complete absence of social skills, which I supposed was why she was still curling WAGs’ extensions in a salon off Regent Street on Sundays, instead of tending to the A-list in LA. Happily, that was working in my favour today. White-blonde hair, hot pink lipstick, skintight blue jeans and a mouth the size of Guernsey. And I was putting myself in her hands.
‘Yes I have, but here’s your chance.’ I took a deep breath and forced the words out of my mouth. ‘I want a complete change. Do whatever you want.’
Tina stepped back from the mirror. ‘Anything?’
‘Anything,’ I said, closing my eyes. ‘Just – I want to look good.’
‘One guess,’ she stepped up to the plate. ‘Break-up?’
I bit my lip. ‘Not to be a dick, but I don’t really want to talk. I just want to look amazing.’
‘As if I’d let you leave here looking any other way.’ She slapped me round the back of the head. ‘So colour, cut, long, short?’
‘I want to look completely different,’ I said, catching Emelie’s eye in the mirror behind me. She was totally chatting up one of the other stylists. She gave me a surreptitious thumbs-up and carried on. Shameless. ‘Just make me look different.’
‘Oh, this is going to be fun.’ Tina could hardly control the joy in her voice.
One last look at what was left of my long, blonde hair and I closed my eyes. ‘Yeah. Everyone keeps telling me that.’
It was another three hours and forty-five minutes of sheer torture before Tina managed to say something that made me smile.
‘And you’re done.’
Never one to miss an opportunity for drama, she’d had the mirror at my station covered until she’d decided she was finished. Given how much hair I’d lost already that day, I had been a little alarmed to see chunks falling all around me, but not nearly as concerned as I’d been by the variety of colour processes that had been burning my scalp. My hair had never been exposed to anything more aggressive than Sun-In before today. I’d always been a blonde. Not a sexy Brigitte Bardot blonde or anything but definitely blonde. I wasn’t mysterious enough to carry off brunette and highlights needed too much attention. What had she done?
‘Can I see?’ I asked, not sure I actually wanted to. If she pulled the towel off the mirror and my hair was purple, I was going to have to go the full Britney. Shaved head, trashing her car with an umbrella, barefoot eating Cheetos in the loo, everything.
‘Ta-da,’ she pulled away the towel with a flourish.
Woah.
My almost waist-length blonde hair had been replaced by a short, red bob that bounced around my chin. I hadn’t had a fringe since I was a little girl but now there were long, sweeping strands framing a pair of bright blue eyes. Were my eyes always this colour? My hair was red. Really, really red. I looked like someone else. And she looked amazing.
‘No way!’ Em leapt out of the seat she’d been occupying for the last hour or so while every straight stylist in the place pawed at her in between appointments. ‘You’re a redhead! Like me!’
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