Page 40 of Meet me at the Seaside Cottages

‘There’s nothing wrong with you,’ says Lish. ‘You look lovely.’

‘I look okayfor my age,’ says Janey, spooning her fat-free yoghurt disconsolately – they’d all started it. ‘That’s not actually the same as being a comfortably-off fifty-something guy with hair. If he started dating a super-hot thirty-five-year-old everyone would be like,oh, obviously. Whereas if I did . . . ’

‘Timothée is twenty-nine,’ says Amsan.

‘Could you shut up about Timothée?’ says Janey.

‘Don’t talk about him like that, please,’ say Amsan.

‘Okay. Well. Anyway. You get my point. I’m just the middle-aged woman walking past. I’m completely invisible to him.’

‘Maybe he just has to get to know you,’ says Lish.

‘And please,’ says Milton. ‘Find someone who can tell you about whether he has killed his family. If that makes a difference.’

*

As it happens, Janey has to get her hair cut anyway. Well, she doesn’treally, she does her roots herself – who has three hours to sit down in the middle of the day? But maybe she will just go. Self-care. To her surprise, Essie has been out that day and the house is basically the way she left it. Well, thinks Janey, a bit of puppy-cuddling won’t exactly go amiss.

Jean, hairdresser, knitter supreme and local gold standard busybody, beams as she enters the salon, her thickly lashed Liza Minnelli eyes a look she decided to like in 1973 and has seen no need to update since.

‘I never see you!’ she says.

‘I know,’ says Janey. ‘I never seem to have the time. Plus I hate sitting looking at myself in the mirror for an hour.’

‘Don’t be daft,’ says Jean.

Janey picks up a magazine. ‘And I hate the magazines. “How to Make Your Menopause the Best Time Ever”!’

Jean laughs darkly. ‘Ooh, they lie, they lie. But they lie to young women worse. At least we know the truth.’

‘Indeed we do,’ says Janey, putting on the unflattering hairdressing shirt, the wrong way round as always. Ugh, her neck looks awful. She doesn’t know why; it’s not as though she’s creased it up by noddingyes yes yesto all the amazing things life has offered her. ‘It doesn’t stop us dreaming, though.’

They both look at a picture of Jennifer Lopez looking incredible on a yacht.

‘She’s probably miserable, right?’ says Jean.

‘Probably,’ says Janey, sighing.

‘Want a Jammy Dodger with your cappuccino?’

‘Yes,’ says Janey resoundingly. ‘Then I would like you to make me look like Jennifer Lopez. Or if that is no use I will settle for Jennifer Aniston.’

‘How about you look like a lovely version of yourself?’

‘What, you’re going to make me twenty-two?’

‘Did you think you were lovely at twenty-two?’

‘No,’ says Janey reflectively. ‘I thought my thighs were too big for me to ever be loved. That is the one thing young people have right now: liking big thighs.’

‘Yes, and all they had to lose was the housing ladder, job security and cheap nursery places,’ says Jean, expertly pulling over the dye. ‘I’m going to mix you up something honey-like in strands and cut shorter for body.’

‘Okay,’ says Janey. ‘Jennifer Aniston, right? Nothing that screams “Minor Stand-in Royal”.’

‘Wouldn’t dream of it,’ says Jean, whose own hair is a jet black not found in nature and backcombed towards the sky. She alsoknits all her own clothes, favouring a batwing design last seen in about 1986, so, you know, you really have to make triple sure she understands.

‘So,’ says Janey, asfaux-casual as she can make it. ‘I was just wondering . . . you know the guy who was at the quiz . . . ’

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