Page 16 of Lessons in Love at the Seaside Salon

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

‘You’re sure you don’t mind?’ Evie says as she creates a nest of pillows on the couch in the back room, Billy standing by the door, wan and listless.

‘When have I ever minded?’ Trudy replies and Evie smiles gratefully.

Trudy has, in fact, never minded when Billy has had to spend time at the salon when he can’t be at school, whether it’s because he’s sick or there’s an outbreak of nits.

Telling parents to keep their children at home is fine when the dad goes off to work and the mum is around and flexible with her arrangements; it doesn’t work too well when Mum is also Dad when it comes to the day-to-day.

Stevo can’t take Billy on sick days, even if he wants to – there’s nowhere for Billy to rest at his shop. Whereas Trudy has always made it clear that Billy is welcome. ‘Never a bother,’ she says.

Probably because he’s a quiet kid. Thoughtful, or at least Evie likes to think so.

Maybe he’s sullen instead. Hard to tell the difference with boys sometimes.

He could be sulking or he could be contemplating the meaning of life and the expression on his face wouldn’t change. Whereas if he were a girl …

Girls are tricky, with their scheming, but their emotions tend to be written on their faces.

Until they hit their teenage years and they learn to hide them, mainly out of self-protection.

Look upset when your high-school nemesis calls you a fat slag and you’re doomed until the end of Year 12.

Far better to practise controlling your expressions so that no matter what someone says to you, it’s pushed down.

Back. Away. It means that when some sleazy bloke hits on you in a pub and you realise – in a flash, the way women are trained to – that rejecting him in a particular way could make your life a whole lot worse, you draw on those school years of never revealing what you really think and instead say to him, ‘Aren’t you sweet?

Sorry, I have a boyfriend.’ The sleaze will guess that you don’t have a boyfriend but he’s saved face, and you’ve possibly saved your life because he won’t follow you to your car later.

Of course, he may call you a stuck-up bitch but that’s the better option.

It amazes Evie, the things girls and women have to navigate every day just to stay alive.

Which is why she knows it’s easier to have a son.

She doesn’t have to worry about him being cracked onto by a sleaze in a pub.

Mostly she has to worry about nits. Or a stomach bug, which is what he has now.

Poor kid can’t have anything left to vomit up; he’ll probably sleep for the rest of the day.

‘Bit poorly, are you, Billy-o?’ Trudy says as he snuggles into the nest.

She’s answered by a weak nod.

‘There’s lemonade here, sweetie,’ Evie says, gesturing to the full glass on the table. ‘If you feel like it.’

Another weak nod and he closes his eyes.

‘Our very own Tiny Tim,’ Trudy mutters, then winks at Evie.

The morning is a flurry of returning clients and a couple of new cuts, then Sam turns up for his late start, as he’ll be closing today.

Evie tries not to smile at him too cutely before he heads for the back room, and a couple of minutes pass before she remembers that Billy is in there and she really should have told Sam so he wasn’t surprised.

As it is, she feels the need to get back there, because Sam meeting her son feels momentous somehow.

‘Sam!’ she calls softly as she pushes open the door and finds him standing next to the couch, hands on hips, laughing. Billy is sitting up, also laughing.

‘You’ve met,’ she says redundantly, but she’s taken aback that they already seem to like each other and she had nothing to do with it.

‘Evie, your son is a card.’ Sam grins at her and her stomach flip-flops, as it always does when he does so much as look in her direction.

‘Is he?’ She can’t remember Billy being that funny for her.

‘He’s telling me a story about tadpoles.’

Sam keeps grinning and so does Billy, right until he looks at her, then adopts his Tiny Tim face again. He didn’t fake the vomiting earlier but now Evie wonders if he isn’t feeling much better than he made out when they arrived. Or perhaps the sleep did him good.

‘Oh, the tadpoles,’ she says. ‘If it’s not those it’s silkworms.’

‘Silkworms? Do you have any at the moment?’

Sam addresses this question to Billy and Evie feels a little jealous, which is ridiculous and also, probably, makes her a bad mother.

Billy shakes his head.

‘My brother Oliver and I used to keep silkworms.’ Sam grins. ‘Never made any silk out them, though! But I have a mulberry tree in my back garden. So if you get any more worms, let me know and I’ll bring you some leaves.’

Billy looks so delighted that Evie feels like running out and getting silkworms right now. But then she remembers how upset he was when the last lot died. There’s only so much heartbreak she can inflict on her kid at any given time.

‘He told me he’s feeling better,’ Sam says.

There’s her pang of jealousy again, but this time Evie can’t figure out if it’s because Billy told Sam something she didn’t know or because Sam is more interested in chatting to Billy than to her. Again, bad mother.

‘That’s great, but it’s too late to take him to school, so he gets to stay.’ She glances at the glass on the table. ‘You had the lemonade,’ she states.

Billy nods while his eyes remain locked on Sam.

Clearly Sam has that effect on a range of people, and she loves him for it a little bit more.

It’s quite a skill, to make other people relaxed, if not happy.

Not one she has, nor does she know how to cultivate it – she doesn’t even know where she’d start.

Maybe one day she’ll ask him. Except that would probably mean revealing how he makes her feel, and she’s not brave enough for that.

How he makes her feel is special. Even though he is charming to everyone, his eyes hold hers for longer, his smiles for her are a little brighter.

‘Ooh, a bit sweet on you, is he?’ one of the regulars said the other day after she’d watched Sam and Evie interact while Evie brushed out her hair.

Evie didn’t know the answer so she just smiled and said nothing. But she wants to think the answer is yes .

‘Such a pin-up, isn’t he?’ another regular said, and again Evie smiled and said nothing, although that time she knew the answer was yes .

Sam has created quite the sensation in the salon, simply by existing – although he is a great hairdresser too – and that is a gift more than a skill.

It’s no wonder, then, that she can’t stop thinking about him, this man who creates light and happiness and weaves both of them around her.

While she knows it’s partly his nature, she’s also allowing herself to think that some of it is just for her.

It’s her he chats to the most; her he hovers around when there are rare quiet times.

She may be flattering herself by thinking he sees some kind of light and happiness in her too, but why shouldn’t she?

‘Even if you don’t have silkworms, maybe you should come round and see my mulberry tree,’ Sam says to Billy, who looks delighted, although Evie feels odd about it: she wants to visit Sam’s home on her own first. As an adult.

While she loves that Sam is interested in her son, she really wants him to be interested in her . Although he is. Isn’t he?

‘Can we, Mum?’ Billy asks.

‘Of course, sweetie.’ What else would she say? Ultimately she wants her son to be happy more than anything else in the world. ‘I’ll talk about it with Sam. Now he and I need to get back to work. Would you like to read for a while?’

Billy nods and she fishes his book out of her handbag, giving it to him, then closing the door after she and Sam leave.

‘What a great kid,’ Sam says, his voice soft, his smile wide.

‘I like to think so.’

‘That means you’re a great mother.’ He squeezes her arm and then turns away from her and toward the next client who’s walked through the door.

Evie almost feels like crying, because no one ever tells her she’s a great mother. ‘Thank you,’ she whispers.