Page 24 of Crazy in Love at the Lonely Hearts Bookshop
It wasn’t just the hours of daily housekeeping. There was Zumba on Mondays, Pilates on Tuesday and Friday mornings and Aquacise on Thursdays.
And yet, somehow Alison O’Kelly had decided to take up the position of receptionist at her older sister Mandy’s salon, Hair (and Nails) By Mandy on the High Street.
‘This is why I didn’t want you to know. I knew you’d make a big fuss about it,’ Alison said in a strained voice.
‘I’m just a bit surprised,’ Nina said, which was the understatement of the year. ‘Why?’
‘Because things have been a bit tight recently so I’m doing my bit.’
‘Trade isn’t what it was, not with that bloody Uber,’ Patrick grumbled. ‘And that bloody Lyft mob too. I was going to work longer hours but we hardly got to see each other as it was, so when Mandy needed a new receptionist for a couple of days a week, your mum said she’d do it.’
Alison tilted her chin defiantly as if she expected Nina to make some disparaging remark, much as she would have done if their positions had been reversed. Still, Nina was struggling to think of something neutral to say about this staggering turn of events.
‘Are you enjoying it?’ she managed to ask at last.
‘I’ve only been doing it for a couple of weeks. There’s a lot of new things to take on board: the computer, the bookings software, but it’s all right.’
‘That’s good. I always think the idea of computers is scarier than actually using one,’ Nina said encouragingly because really she was a saint; the saint of unappreciated daughters. ‘They’re just like ginormous smartphones, right?’
‘Right! Yes, exactly,’ Alison agreed then she smiled shyly. ‘Mandy’s getting all sorts of ideas. Says she wants to train me up to do nails. Can you even imagine it?’
‘That would be great,’ Chloe chimed in. ‘You always do a good job on mine.’
Nina had a crystal-clear memory of Sunday evenings long ago: Spa Sundays, they’d called them. Nina and her mother would put on face masks and intensive conditioning treatments on their hair and do each other’s nails. To this day, Nina always used toothpaste and a toothbrush to clean her nails and get rid of any yellowing when she was doing her own manicure, just as Alison had taught her.
‘You should do it, Mum,’ she said enthusiastically. ‘It could be the start of a whole new career.’
‘Well, Mandy says she’s fed up with taking on these young girls who only last a few months before they decide they’d rather work in a posh salon in Earlsfield. She just can’t keep the staff.’ Now that Nina had got over the initial shock, she was genuinely pleased that Alison was expanding her horizons, even if it was only as far as Aunt Mandy’s salon five minutes’ walk away. But Alison’s face suddenly assumed a mournful expression. ‘Oh, Nina,’ she said sorrowfully. ‘Mandy still says that you were the best colourist she ever had.’
‘Don’t start!’ Nina groaned. ‘I love Auntie Mandy but I wasstifledin there. The most exciting thing that ever happened was when someone wanted a full head of highlights.’
Posy and Verity thought that Nina had always worked in retail and Nina had never disabused them of this fact. But actually ever since she’d left school at sixteen, Nina had worked in hair. Namely, the dressing, cutting and mostly colouring of it. She’d started at her aunt’s salon while she studied for her NVQ and when Nina had finally left Hair (and Nails) By Mandy for a job in a fancy West End hairdressing salon, neither Mandy nor Alison had taken it very well. Short of Nina taking a job with Mandy’s arch rival, Derek of Hair to Eternity at the other end of the High Street, they couldn’t have acted more betrayed.
Now Nina’s mother straightened her shoulders. ‘We’ve moved with the times you know,’ she said as stiffly as her spine. ‘We even do balayage now.’ She folded her arms. ‘But you think you’re too good to do people’s hair.’
‘I don’t think I’m too good to work as a hairdresser.’ Nina could only spit the words out. ‘It just wasn’t what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.’
Her mother snorted in derision even as Patrick said, ‘Come on, you two. Do we have to have the same row every time Nina comes over?’
‘It gives me the most dreadful heartburn,’ Hilda added, reaching for her handbag and her Rennies.
Alison wasn’t done. ‘Well, when you finally figure out what you want to do with your life, then please let us know because you’re thirty …’
‘I’m not thirty. I’mnearlythirty …’
‘… and you’re working as a cashier in a shop and you’re not even married.’
‘I’m not a cashier! I’m a bookseller and getting married isn’t the be all and end all of everything. I’d rather fall madly in love with someone and even if it only lasted a week, at least I’d have known passion and excitement,’ Nina proclaimed so loudly that she was practically shouting. ‘There’s nothing passionate or exciting about getting married before you’ve had a chance to figure out who you are, then a few years down the line you realise that you have nothing to talk about but endowment plans and whether the washing machine will last another month.’
‘There is a bit more to being married than that,’ Paul said with a hurt look at his sister because by the time Nina left the house, she would have managed to offend every single member of her family present. It was like a very useless superpower.
‘Yeah, we go on date nights,’ Chloe insisted. ‘And anyway, we’ve never once talked about taking out an endowment plan.’
‘I just want something different out of life,’ Nina said, in the same way she’d been saying for years, in the same way her family always took as a personal attack. What had been right for Hilda, then Marilyn and finally Alison – to be married with a baby on the way before they’d blown out twenty candles on their birthday cake – wasn’t right for Nina.
Though she wasnearlythirty and still didn’t know what exact form the something different she wanted out of life would take.
‘There’s nothing wrong with being married,’ Alison said forcefully.
