Page 29 of Lessons in Love at the Seaside Salon

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

In come some of their retirement-home ladies, a little slower each week, Evie reckons, although that could be just her perception because she’s impatient each week for Sam to show up.

This is the one morning he starts around the same time she does and she loves knowing they’ll have the whole day together.

That’s at least seven hours of her being able to surreptitiously glance at him and talk to him and maybe, if the timing works out, have lunch together.

Given that they haven’t spent any more time together outside of the salon since they went to the movies, Evie suspects he has no idea she has a crush on him.

Which is good on the one hand – the at-least-it’s-not-awkward hand – but bad on the other, which is the hand that desperately wants him to sweep her into his arms.

So she needs to do something in order to make him realise it.

She’s just not sure what. Seduction has never been in her repertoire and she can hardly turn herself into Kathleen Turner overnight.

The sort of confidence of a woman like that probably involves some kind of training class, or an older female relative who knows what’s what.

No, she just needs to be even nicer to him at work, and try to spend as much time with him as possible. Which is why she beams when he strolls in, smiling, not at her directly but close enough.

‘Good morning, lovely ladies!’ he announces as he heads for the back room, where he will leave the battered brown satchel he brings every day.

‘Good morning, Sam!’ some of the clients coo back, and Evie feels that pang of jealousy she always gets when another woman says his name, even if she knows that woman is not a legitimate rival for his affections.

Which is the case for all of the retirement-home ladies, who are several decades older than him, for one thing.

‘Ev-e-lyyynnn,’ he singsongs as he brushes past her on the way to his chair.

He started using her full name after their night at the movies.

She doesn’t know why, and she doesn’t know how he knows she’s an Evelyn and not an Eve who added a syllable.

Trudy had to have been the one who told him.

Otherwise it’s a lucky guess, and as she hasn’t corrected him he’d presume, as he should, that he has the name right.

‘Such a character,’ says Mrs Behar, an irregular client.

Some of the ladies come weekly, some fortnightly, some when they feel like it.

The irregulars know the drill if they wander in without an appointment: regulars have first dibs on chairs so they may have to wait a while, but given most of them are well into their seventies or eighties they don’t have jobs or children to attend to, so they never object to waiting.

It just happens that Mrs Behar is in luck today as a couple of the regulars haven’t turned up, or maybe they’re running late.

‘He is.’ Evie smiles as she feels Mrs Behar’s hair.

She hasn’t done her hair before, which means she wants to get to know its texture before they start.

Unusually for a woman of her age, the hair is not entirely grey – she still has quite a few dark strands.

It’s long and straight, and Mrs Behar wears it in a bun, so Evie guesses she’s just having a trim.

‘So … a centimetre or two off?’ she asks.

‘No.’ Mrs Behar shakes her head.

‘No?’

‘All off.’

Evie’s mouth drops open. ‘All?’ She hadn’t planned on a complete makeover this morning.

‘I want it short.’

‘But …’ Evie picks up lengths that are healthy and in no need of chopping. ‘Haven’t you always had it long?’

Mrs Behar holds up a hand. ‘I’m sick of it. It takes me all night to wash.’

‘Oh … okay. So …’ Evie narrows her eyes as she looks at Mrs Behar’s face and tries to think of a cut that would suit her. She has a round face and a short hairstyle could make her look a little like mutton-dressed-as-lamb. Or, as Trudy would call it, having ‘a case of the mutts’.

‘You really want it all off?’ Evie checks.

‘I want it short and easy to care for.’

‘How about a bob?’

Another shake of the head. ‘No.’

Evie feels as if she’s dealing with a toddler: every answer is no .

‘All right. Well, I’m not sure having it really short will suit you. How about I chop it shoulder length to start and we take it from there?’

Mrs Behar purses her lips. ‘All right.’

Evie relaxes a little. Now she needs to get a tougher pair of scissors – cutting off that much hair requires something closer to shears.

When she returns with Trudy’s tough scissors, she notices that Mrs Behar is observing Sam, who is laughing as he chats to his client and Josie, who is no doubt about to wash the client’s hair, as that’s her usual job.

Mrs Behar sighs. ‘Bit of a waste, isn’t it?’

‘Hm?’ Evie starts brushing. She wants to see how much hair she’s dealing with.

‘That young man – Sam, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Bit of a waste that he doesn’t like the ladies. Such a good-looking fellow.’ Another sigh. ‘Oh well. I’m too old for him anyway so it’s just as well!’ She titters.

Evie’s hand stops brushing and she feels her throat tighten. It’s funny how quickly someone’s words can have an impact but perhaps that’s because she registers them as true in a way they could never be true if she said them to herself.

‘What do you mean?’ she forces herself to say because she wants to hear it – it , it , it , the truth of the matter, the end of her dreams – out loud.

Mrs Behar’s eyes meet hers in the mirror. ‘You don’t know?’

‘Um …’ Doesn’t she, though? Doesn’t she, in the core of herself, know this?

How she could not know is because she didn’t want to.

She’s in love with him. He can’t be gay.

There is nothing about her that would indicate she’d fall for a gay guy and, yes, she knows, you can’t help who you fall in love with, but how stupid could she be to not really know this from the start?

To fall for his attentions thinking they were romantic when they were just friendly?

Or maybe they have been romantic, but in a Victorian way – all looking, no touching.

It’s the no touching, though, that has thrown her.

Except it makes sense now, if Mrs Behar is to be believed.

‘Oh, I apologise,’ Mrs Behar says. ‘Perhaps he hasn’t said anything. But it seems obvious to me.’

Evie resumes brushing. ‘We, um … We haven’t discussed it.’ She can feel Mrs Behar watching her reflection closely.

‘Ah, I see,’ Mrs Behar says.

Evie bites her lip to stop herself crying. Are her feelings that obvious, in all their pathetic, desperate glory?

They’re both silent for a while as Evie continues to brush.

‘You wouldn’t be the first,’ Mrs Behar says softly, her eyes flitting over to Sam then back. ‘You won’t be the last. It is part of life, isn’t it, to want what we can’t have.’

Evie sucks in a breath and keeps biting that lip until it feels as if she’ll draw blood, because if she lets it go she may howl.

‘Perhaps,’ she squeaks out, and she meets Mrs Behar’s eyes because to do otherwise would be to give in to the shame entirely, and she sees understanding there, and sympathy, not pity, and for a second she feels better, then she doesn’t.

‘Let’s get you sorted,’ she almost whispers, still brushing, wishing she could be like the Wicked Witch of the West and melt into the floor, leaving only a hat behind, but instead she’ll focus on doing her job and giving Mrs Behar the best haircut on the Central Coast.

‘Indeed,’ Mrs Behar says.

For the remainder of the appointment they talk about nothing much, and Evie remembers none of it as she spends the rest of the day trying to avoid Sam, who would no doubt be confused but she can’t worry about him.

She needs to get out of here and spend a goodly amount of time going over every interaction she’s ever had to see if she’s missed signs that are so obvious that even Mrs Behar could see them.

But once she is home, with Billy tucked in bed, she turns the television on, turns it up loud and sobs into her couch.