‘Much easier for the juniors when they shampoo, and better for the clients, who won’t get their makeup smudged as well,’ Vidal had insisted, and Rose had been inclined to agree. ‘And don’t forget to make sure that you get a decent sound system installed and some cool music playing,’ Vidal had added.
Josh had already found ‘a friend’ who was looking around for four of these basins–at the right price, of course.
‘Here she is, Ollie,’ she heard Josh announcing as she walked into the salon. ‘Come and meet my interior designer. Rose, this is Ollie.’
The photographer was protectively nursing a Rolleiflex camera in one large hand, a bag slung over his shoulder, no doubt containing his tripod and other equipment. He was good-looking, if you liked the unkempt bad-boy type, Rose acknowledged as he reached out to shake her hand. He was also oddly familiar.
‘Haven’t we met somewhere before?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ she agreed, ‘but I can’t remember where.’
‘I’ve got it.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘I hitched a ride in your taxi a few weeks back. You were with two other girls.’
‘Oh, yes, of course,’ Rose smiled. ‘Ella and Janey. We were on our way to the party where I met you, Josh.’
‘London’s a small world,’ Josh agreed. ‘Come and have a look at these photographs Ollie’s brought.’
Half an hour later, kneeling back on her heels as she crouched on the floor surrounded by the excellent photographs Oliver had produced for their inspection, Rose watched as Josh threw up his hands in despair.
‘No. They won’t do. No offence, Ollie, the photos are great, but the hair…’
They all looked at the assortment of stiff regulated hairstyles–beehives and backcombed, flicked ends all heavily lacquered.
‘What I want to do here in my salon is to follow Vidal’s example and work with hair in a new way, one that allows the hair to move and breathe and to look natural.’
When they both looked dubiously at him he told them, ‘Look, I’ll show you what I mean.’ He took hold of Rose’s hand, hauling her to her feet. ‘It’s time for me to cut that hair of yours, Rose. It’s been driving me mad with temptation to get to work on it.’
‘No, I don’t want it cut,’ Rose protested, her free hand going protectively to her neat French pleat.
‘Why not? What’s the point in keeping it long when it’s always screwed up in that pleat? I’m going to cut it, and that’s that. Come and sit here.’
He meant it, Rose realised weakly. He had been threatening to cut her hair ever since they’d met.
As Josh sat her down and swiftly removed the pins from her hair, letting it fall in a silky black sheet down her back, Rose was vaguely conscious of Ollie setting up his camera, but she was more concerned about her hair. She had never worn it loose, not since Amber’s great-grandmother had compared it to Emerald’s luxurious head of dark curls and had said how ugly it was, and now automatically she tensed as though half expecting a verbal blow, wanting to cover her hair from sight and yet unable to do so because Josh was brushing it and giving both her and Ollie a running commentary on what he was planning to do.
‘Just look at it, it’s like finding gold,’ he crooned.
‘Then why cut it off?’ Ollie asked as the shutter clicked and he moved round on the periphery of Rose’s vision.
‘Because gold is nothing in its raw state. It needs the eye and the hand of an expert to make it into something of beauty, which is exactly what I intend to do with Rose’s hair. The length of it makes it so heavy that it takes away all its natural movement and rhythm. It’s like trying to play jazz with a traditional orchestra: too much weight and tradition weighing down the magic of the music.’
Rose saw the light from the window flashing on the scissors Josh always carried with him.
‘No,’ she protested, but it was too late. Long black snakes of hair were covering the floor as she sat at Josh’s command with her head bent forward, her panic soothed in some odd way by the almost rhythmic sounds of the scissors and the camera, punctuated by the staccato bursts of questions and explanations exchanged by the two men.
‘Look at this,’ Josh was saying. ‘Look at how I’m freeing up the hair to move and swing. See how it comes to life.’
‘Are you sure you aren’t cutting it too short?’ was Ollie’s response as he moved the tripod round the back of her.
Rose wished she was in a traditional salon with a mirror in front of her so that she could see what was going on, instead of sitting here in this empty room, terrified about the end result of Josh’s endeavours.
‘Vogue are sending my boss to Venice to cover the high-society nightlife there, and she’s told me that she’s taking me with her.’
Ella didn’t try to keep the pride out of her voice as she relayed this information to her stepmother, who had arrived unexpectedly at the Chelsea house. As one of such a large family, Ella rarely got opportunity to have her stepmother to herself, and as the eldest child she always felt it her duty to step back and let the others claim Amber’s attention, especially the younger ones.
Now, though, with both Rose and Janey out, she didn’t attempt to hide her pleasure at having Amber’s undivided attention.
‘So you’re happy, then, at Vogue?’ Amber asked her proudly.
‘Yes, but I do wish now that I’d taken a course in proper journalism. I’d love to progress to writing articles about important things, not just new lipstick colours,’ she told Amber with a rueful look. ‘There’s so much happening now, and things are changing so much. Women aren’t just daughters or wives or mothers any more, they are real people doing real things.’
She looked and sounded so earnest that Amber was determined not to smile. She could imagine, though, what her grandmother, who had single-handedly run her own business and managed her own fortune for years, would have had to say to Ella’s naïve declaration.
What Ella had said was true in one sense, though. Modern young women were certainly taking for themselves far greater personal freedoms than her generation had ever had. Most observers put that down to the war and the fact that during those terrible years women had had to become far more independent, for the sake of the country.
‘Well, you certainly seem happy,’ Amber told Ella. ‘I’ve never known you be such a chatterbox. Working at Vogue suits you, Ella. It’s bringing you out of yourself.’
Ella smiled, but the real truth was that it was her diet pills that were making her more vivacious, as well as curbing her appetite. She had noticed how, within a short time of taking one, she was more inclined to start chattering. When she’d said as much to Libby, the other girl had told her that it was yet another benefit of Dr Williamson’s marvellous little pills that they gave a person so much extra energy. No one had noticed her weight loss yet, but then Ella didn’t particularly want them to. She was losing weight to prove that she could to herself. The last thing she wanted was Oliver Charters noticing and thinking totally the wrong thing, like she was doing it because she wanted to impress
