Page 27 of Lessons in Love at the Seaside Salon

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

‘Josie, pet, what’s going on?’

Trudy frowns in the direction of her apprentice, who is dancing around as if the floor is on fire and sighing and huffing and doing all sorts. It’s been going on for about five minutes.

‘Oh, nothing.’

‘Clearly that’s a lie.’ Trudy stubs out her cigarette in the ashtray then picks up both and walks toward the back room, nodding at Josie to follow her.

‘Cough it up,’ she says after pushing the door half closed. Evie and Sam aren’t likely to eavesdrop but she thinks Josie deserves some privacy.

‘My mum made an appointment,’ Josie blurts.

From the look on the younger woman’s face Trudy guesses this appointment is not something she wants.

‘At two o’clock,’ Josie goes on.

Trudy glances up at the clock on the wall above the sink and sees that it’s five to two. Which would explain the fire-dancing.

‘With you,’ Josie adds.

‘Ah, so she’s the Erin in the book.’ The name has a big N next to it, which means new client.

‘I didn’t know until this morning,’ Josie rushes on. ‘I think Sam or Evie took the call.’

‘You’re saying all this like it’s a bad thing.’

‘It is!’

Josie’s face crumples and Trudy wants to pull her into a hug, but as her boss that’s probably not a great idea. She needs to retain some authority and hugging won’t do that.

‘You don’t get along with your mum?’

‘I do. Mostly.’ Josie does some more sighing.

Trudy hasn’t known the girl to be this emotional but maybe her mother brings it out in her. ‘So what’s the problem?’

‘She doesn’t like me having this job!’

‘Then why would she come here for an appointment?’

‘Probably to gather information she can use to tell me to stop working here!’ Josie’s voice has gone up a register.

Trudy wants to help calm her employee but not negate what she’s said because she doesn’t know the facts.

‘Why don’t you give her the benefit of the doubt, pet?

Maybe she just wants to see what you’re up to.

A mother likes to know what her child’s doing, especially when she’s just starting out in the world. ’

She thinks of her mother, who used to drop round to the salon in the early days, bringing Trudy lunch. Trudy liked it; she never thought it was an intrusion. But her relationship with her mother was usually calm and respectful, and she doesn’t know anything about Josie’s mum.

‘Trudy!’ Sam calls and Trudy reckons it’s because the lady herself has arrived.

‘Could be her now,’ she says to Josie, who bites her lip and nods. ‘You’d better come and say hello.’

More nodding.

‘Believe the best, pet. Especially in your mum.’

Josie sniffs but at least she stops biting her lip.

Heading out of the back room, Trudy sees an older version of Josie standing just inside the doorway with a neatly done plait wound around the top of her head, Heidi style.

Interesting choice for a middle-aged woman, but also a practical one for the lady who wants long hair yet doesn’t want to deal with it too much.

Those women tend to want to have the hair for show – a night out, or a school event, or a wedding – and think it’s worth dealing with it the rest of the time just for that.

On those occasions they’ll come to the salon to have it done properly and Trudy can play then.

She loves doing those hairdos. But given what Josie told her, she has a feeling Erin has not come here for one of them.

‘Hello,’ Trudy says, smiling. ‘Erin?’

‘Yes.’ Erin’s smile is tentative. ‘Hello.’ She glances over Trudy’s shoulder; presumably Josie is there. ‘Hello, darling.’

‘Hi, Mum.’

Josie pulls level with Trudy, who can sense Sam and Evie’s heads swivelling in their direction.

‘Your mum?’ Sam asks.

‘Come and take this seat,’ Trudy says. ‘Josie, cape and towel, please.’

Josie flits away and Trudy meets Erin’s eyes in the mirror.

‘So, Erin, what can I do for you today? Cut? Colour? Wash? Blow-dry?’

There’s probably a note about this in the book but due to the chat with Josie she didn’t have time to check.

‘I think …’

The eyes that look back at Trudy are Josie’s, just with lines at the corners and a little a sag on the eyelids.

Time is cruel, Trudy thinks, but also inevitable, and part of what they do in this salon is help people manage it.

Cuts and colours should change as a woman ages, and Trudy will advise if a client has been hanging on to a cut for too long, so that it ages her rather than making her look the way she did when she first had it done in her youth.

Or she’ll suggest a softer colour for an ageing face, as that means less heavy make-up.

She remembers Elizabeth Taylor going from dark-brown hair to a silvery blonde and how it took years off her, partly because she no longer needed to have heavy brows and lips in order not to look washed out beneath the dark hair.

There are tricks to the show and she knows most of them.

‘A cut,’ Erin says at last and Trudy hears Josie gasp.

‘All right,’ Trudy says. ‘A cut of length or a new look?’

‘A new look.’

‘Mum!’

Erin’s eyes flash. ‘What, darling?’

‘You said you’d never cut your hair!’

‘Well, you said Trudy is very good and I’ve never really had a hairdresser I could trust, so I thought I’d find out if I can trust her.’

Trudy has been around enough to appreciate that she’s been given a compliment as a way of balancing an implicit threat. Erin wants her to prove her trustworthiness, it seems. Fine. She can handle it.

‘Do you have an idea of what you want?’ she says to her new client.

‘No.’ Erin’s eyes move to Josie’s and Trudy can almost feel something crackle between them.

‘Josie – what do you think?’ she asks her apprentice because this is as good a learning experience as any, and Josie is unlikely to encounter a more fraught situation than this one, at least not for a while.

‘I, um …’

She sticks her chin out a little and Trudy thinks, Good girl .

‘I think Mum should have a long bob. With a Lady Di fringe.’

Currently Erin has a bare forehead so clearly a fringe has not appealed to her recently, if ever, but as Trudy studies her face she can see that Josie is right: it would suit a fringe, and the long bob would frame her face in an attractive way.

‘Good girl.’ This time she says it aloud, partly so Erin can hear. ‘You’re right.’

Now Erin looks a little nervous.

‘What do you reckon, Erin? Long bob and a sweeping fringe? Like Di after she had Harry.’

The princess had grown her hair long for a little while then cut it short again after the media made a fuss.

But Trudy probably wouldn’t be the only hairdresser who kept photos of that brief period where they got to see how that famous cut looked when it grew out.

It was hair history, so she had felt moved to document it.

‘Can we take a little bit off first and see what it looks like?’ Erin says, and as her eyes meet Trudy’s once more, there is fear in them and Trudy feels for this woman who is trying to do something here – support her daughter, perhaps, and move beyond what’s comfortable for her in order to do so – yet doesn’t appear to be ready for it.

‘Sure. Josie will brush out your hair, then we’ll see what we’re dealing with.’

She has time for a quick ciggie before she settles in for what she thinks may be an afternoon of negotiation, and when she returns Josie is looking tense but Erin is smiling, so Trudy picks up her scissors and makes a start.

While she’s trimming the ends Erin makes a face as if she’s in pain.

Trudy stops and looks at her in the mirror. ‘Everything all right, pet?’

‘Oh. Yes. I’m just worried you’re going to take too much.’

‘Gently, gently.’ Trudy puts on the smile she uses when a client is overreacting and she would like them to stop. It’s almost beatific, that smile. She learnt it from the nuns at her primary school. ‘You do want a new style, though?’ she goes on.

‘Mm-hm.’ Erin nods then smiles herself.

‘So can I start to shape it?’

‘All – all right.’ Erin glances toward Josie, who has been floating around them for the past minute or so.

‘Honestly, Mum, she’s the best,’ Josie says.

Erin presses her lips together. ‘Go ahead,’ she says to Trudy, who starts to snip with more purpose.

‘Thank you,’ Erin says quietly after a couple of minutes have passed.

‘For what, pet?’

‘For looking after my girl.’

Their eyes meet in the mirror.

Trudy smiles knowingly. ‘I think she’s pretty good at looking after herself.’ She wonders just who Erin thinks her daughter is, because the Josie at the salon is capable and responsible. So she decides to say it.

‘She is great with clients. And I wouldn’t trust just anyone with my clients, because I’ve been here a long time.’

Erin seems quietly pleased, her smile small but persistent. ‘That’s good,’ she murmurs. ‘We did raise her to have manners.’

‘It’s more than manners.’ Trudy winks at Josie, whose eyes are wide. ‘She has a talent for putting people at ease. Believe me, I’m rapt she’s here.’

Erin nods but only looks at her daughter in the mirror for a second. Almost as if she doesn’t want Josie to see that she’s proud. She is, though – Trudy can tell.

When Trudy has finished giving Erin the long bob, she calls Josie over. ‘What do you think, pet?’

Josie breaks out in a grin. ‘I love it! Mum?’

Erin pats the underside of her hair. ‘Yes, it’s good.’ She nods. ‘Very good.’

Trudy waves off payment but Erin insists, then she watches as Josie walks her mother outside. There’s no hug or kiss; just a pat on the shoulder from mother to daughter. It’s an odd formality given that Josie lives at home, but it’s not for Trudy to judge someone else’s family.

Josie is smiling as she comes back inside, and Trudy is somewhat startled when she’s given a quick hug.

‘Thanks so much,’ Josie says. ‘She’s really happy.’

‘Excellent news. Now.’ Trudy peers into the book. ‘I have time for a ten-minute break. If anyone’s looking for me, I’ll be out the back.’ Out the back with a coffee, of course, but she doesn’t need to say that.

For the next ten minutes – actually, fifteen, because her client is running late – Trudy thinks about mothers and daughters, about whether she would have been like Erin if she’d had a daughter, and indulges in a few more what-ifs before she emerges again.