Page 13 of Lessons in Love at the Seaside Salon
‘No. You must have.’
‘Not likely.’ Trudy nods at the newcomer. ‘Won’t be long, take a seat.’ She smiles at Ingrid in the mirror. ‘We’re flat chat since Jane left. If you know of a hairdresser looking for a job, let me know!’
Meanwhile Anna bites her bottom lip to stop it trembling because what Evie said has left her feeling exposed. Years ago, before she married, she was always doing her hair and her makeup, and she had fun with it. Is it her fault that she doesn’t have time for those fripperies any more? No. And who are they all to tell her how things should be now? She can run her life, and her looks, her way.
Writing the first answer in the crossword, she keeps going without looking up until Trudy says her mother’s hair is done.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Sunday afternoon. The one time she can simply sit and … be. Or smoke. Maybe have a little brandy and dry.
The other day Trudy mentioned to a new client, Janice, that she loves her Sunday afternoons because by then she’s done all the housework and the weekly accounts for the salon, and she can relax.
‘You could meditate!’ Janice said brightly. She’s a pixie-looking gal with spiky, layered and tinted hair. The sort that takes a fair bit of maintenance and which can signify that the human beneath the hair can be … tricky.
‘Meditate?’ Trudy made a sound that was on its way to being a snort. ‘That’s for vegetarians, isn’t it?’ She’d heard that people who meditate like to eat lentils. Or something like that. The Beatles went to India to meditate and came back vegetarian. Didn’t they? Or was that just Linda McCartney? She read in a magazine that Linda doesn’t eat meat.
‘It’s for everyone!’ Janice swivelled around to look at Trudy for real, not in the mirror. ‘I went to an ashram and did it! It’ssocalming.’ She gave Trudy a pointed look, which Trudy thought was presumptuous, first because they’d known each other all of five minutes, so Janice couldn’t know whether or not Trudy needed calming, and second because Janice’s hairstyle signified that she was not, herself, a person given to calm.
‘How interesting,’ Trudy replied.
Janice turned back to face the mirror. ‘Your aura could use some calming!’
Trudy dug her fingernails into her palm to stop her snapping. Sometimes the clients really pushed her buttons. ‘Could it?’
‘Oh yes.’ Janice waved a hand up and down as if she was wafting incense. ‘I have ESP. I can tell.’
Trudy smiled with her mouth closed and flicked out the cape. ‘So – crew cut, you said?’
Janice’s eyes widened. ‘What! No. Why would you –’
‘Sorry,’ Trudy said. ‘Got you confused with the bloke who has the next appointment.’
There was no such bloke, but at least Trudy could move the conversation along from meditation, which seemed to her a preposterous activity.
Except, as she sits here on her couch, ciggie in one hand, book in the other, Diogenes prowling around the house, the afternoon sun coming through the window as she looks out on her modest back garden beyond, it seems a little like meditating. She’s still. She’s calm. Heraurais calm. She laughs at that idea. She’s pretty sure she doesn’t have an aura and nor does anyone she knows.
So maybe there’s something to the idea of meditation but she’ll take it in her own fashion, with her Agatha Christies and her Dick Francises and their way of taking her mind off things. Like how Sunday afternoons never used to be spent on her couch – usually she and Laurie would go for a drive, or he’d play golf and she’d sit in the clubhouse with his friends’ wives while the men played nine holes then came in complaining about how their handicaps were slipping. Friends she doesn’t see too often any more.
Then the phone rings and the reminiscing is over.
Resting her cigarette in the ashtray next to her elbow, she picks up the handset. ‘Trudy speaking.’
‘Hi, Mum.’
‘Darling!’ He probably cringes when she calls him that but her Dylan will always be her darling.
‘How are you?’
‘Fine, darl, I’m fine.’ It’s a lie, but it’s the sort of lie everyone tells when the truth is either going to take so long it will derail the conversation or you think the person you’re lying to isn’t that interested in the reply to begin with.
‘That’s good.’ There’s silence for a few seconds. ‘So how’s business?’
Trudy hesitates before she answers, considering whether another lie should be deployed. She hasn’t spoken to Dylan for a while – she’s called and left messages with his wife, Annemarie, but he hasn’t called back until now – so he doesn’t know about Jane setting up her own salon. It’s a big thing for her. But maybe it won’t seem that big to him, and she doesn’t know if she wants to find that out. Still, it’s something to talk about. Her son is a good, decent man but conversation is not his forte, so she usually has to come up with subjects if she wants their phone calls to last longer than two minutes.
‘It’s tricky,’ she admits.
‘Oh yeah?’
