I’ll just call you Bogdan, if that’s OK with you.’
‘Is fine. And is no need to be thanking. Is good practice. Besides this,’ he adds, scissors starting to fly, ‘am thinking you are having decent bone structure, if am able to find it.’
*
He found it.
Look, I’m not going to claim Audrey cheekbones. But Bogdan (Son of, etc) was right: I do have decent bone structure, and his super-short pixie crop has brought it out.
His genius scissors have done something feathery and choppy with all those dreadful wonky ends, and he’s shaped the disastro-fringe so that it makes my face look heart-shaped instead of hobbit-shaped.
It’s no mean achievement.
Honestly, if I were Bogdan Senior, I wouldn’t be banning a career in hairdressing and casting all kinds of aspersions (including some frankly unpleasant homophobic ones; Son Of told me quite a lot about his dad while he was snipping away), I’d be using my property empire to set Son Of up in a swanky salon all of his own as soon as possible, sit back and watch the satisfied customers roll out and the money roll in.
But disapproving parents are hard to deal with. And mine may not be a minor Moldovan crime lord, but I’m heartily glad that I’m able to arrive at Mum’s flat, now looking a lot less like brush from toilet than I did an hour ago.
Well, I say I’m arriving at her flat; actually I’m arriving at the sprawling new property development, taking up almost an entire block behind Baker Street, where Mum’s flat is located. It’s all very swanky and all very ‘Mum’: not just residential buildings but also several chichi shops, a couple of Hot New bars and restaurants, plus an über-hip day spa and gym – FitLondon – that’s already attracting an eager celebrity clientele to its acro-yoga classes and chakra-balancing massage treatments.
It takes me several minutes to wend my way past all of this, and the most expensive townhouses and apartments, to reach the small studio flats right at the back of the development, but I find number 710 without too much difficulty, having helped Mum move in here a few nights ago, and ring the bell.
Mum opens the door a moment later.
At least, I think it’s Mum.
Unless I’m seeing Hollywood legends again. Because the creature standing in front of me looks, thanks to the bizarre amount of hair covering it from head to waistline, an awful lot like Chewbacca.
‘What do you think?’
It’s Mum’s voice coming out from under all the hair, not Chewbacca’s plaintive roar, thank goodness.
‘I got Stella to do some extensions for me too, while she’s here!’ she adds. ‘Freshen myself up before summer school starts!’
(I should explain: Mum is using the proceeds from the sale of the house in Kensal Rise – the part she didn’t spend on a titchy studio apartment just off Baker Street – to buy a ‘Gonna Make U a Star’ franchise. They’re stage schools with after-school, Saturday morning and holiday-time acting, singing and dancing classes for children, exactly the sort of thing Cass (and I, somewhat less enthusiastically) used to attend. Mum’s new branch will be up and running, in a primary school back in Kensal Rise, a couple of weeks from now.
‘It looks … er …’
‘Cass says it makes me look ten years younger.’
This means that Cass has simply nodded, without bothering to listen, and whilst simultaneously texting, flipping through OK! and watching back episodes of Keeping Up with the Kardashians on her iPad.
But still, I’ll fib and agree, because life’s just easier that way.
‘They’re great, Mum. Really very—’
‘Oh, my God, Libby.’ She’s swept back a hank of extension and is now able to see out. ‘What have you done to your hair?
So much for my freshly discovered cheekbones. So much, in fact, for the fact that after Bogdan trimmed my hair, I felt so good that I even braved a slight change from my usual jeans and grey hoodie, rooted around in my wardrobe boxes and dug out the black Burberry trench-coat I bought in a designer discount sale when I was feeling unusually flush with money having done a radio voiceover ad a few years ago. And which has remained unworn ever since, because I never felt chic enough to pull it off until now. I mean, I’ve still got my jeans and a grey hoodie on underneath, to be fair. Which is probably stupid of me because, I’ve only just realized, the hood will be bulging at the back and making me look less like Audrey Hepburn and more like the Hunchback of Notre-Dame.
‘Don’t you like it?’ I ask Mum.
‘That’s not the point.’ She stands back as I go through the door into the flat, folds her arms and gives me a long, disapproving once-over. ‘Long hair is so much more versatile! What if you want to audition for a period drama? RTE have just started casting one on the lives and loves of the Brontë sisters, as it happens.’
‘Oh, Mum, I’m not sure if I’m really cut out to play a Brontë, no matter what my hair—’
‘No, darling, I was going to suggest you try out for a part as one of the servants. I was talking to the casting director yesterday – I mean, don’t you think Cass would just be perfect as Emily Brontë? – and my radar went on for you when she mentioned that they’re going to need loads of non-speaking actors to play the housemaids and the village yokels. Stuff like that.’
I’m not sure what I’m more depressed by: Mum’s certainty that the very highest I can possibly rise in my career is playing a non-speaking housemaid-slash-village yokel, or the (frankly horrifying) image of Cass murdering the role of Emily Brontë.
‘But they won’t look twice at you if you turn up looking like that!’ Mum complains. ‘Wigs are way too expensive to bother wasting them on the extras!’
‘Well, it’s done now. And, in all honesty, Mum, I’m not sure I really want to go up for another non-speaking role in anything. In fact, I’ve been thinking that it might be time to look for another job. A non-acting job, I mean. I’m not sure exactly what, right now, but …’
‘I suppose they might be able to put you in a mob cap, or something,’ she muses. ‘Perhaps if you wore one when you went to the audition … or a straw bonnet, maybe, like a yokel might wear …’
‘Muuuuuum! Is that Libby? Is she finally here?’
I’m actually grateful for Cass bellowing for me, for once, before Mum can suggest any more Ye Olde Country Bumpkin regalia for me to wear to an audition I don’t want to go to.
‘Yep, Cass, I’m right here.’
I slip past Mum and up the stairs to the bedroom, where Cass is currently sitting on the bed like Lady Muck, while her usual hairdresser, make-up artist, and maid of all work, Stella, is hanging plastic sheeting all over the en-suite shower room.
I’d be a bit concerned that something right out of an episode of Dexter is going to happen if it weren’t for the fact that Stella is surrounded by spray-tan equipment, and that Cass is lazily scooping her freshly extended hair up into the huge polka-dot shower cap she
