Homecoming. Cathy Kelly

we live off the potato. Your father never thinks it’s a proper dinner unless there are potatoes in it. Agnes is the same, for all the fine meals she’s had at the big house.

       My mam’s Cally is the best dish you’ll ever have with potatoes. There’s many names for it, Colcannon is one, but in this part of the West of Ireland, we call it Cally. Take some nice floury potatoes and boil them in their skins. When they’re falling apart, tear the skins off, mash them, make a round shape on the plate and then pour the sauce into the middle – melted butter, with a little hot milk and some chopped spring onions. Then eat. When life is falling apart all around you, this is as good a comfort as any, I promise you.

      Every morning since she’d arrived in Golden Square a week ago, Megan had woken to the noise of building work coming from across the street. The sounds of drills, diggers and builders laughing were comforting, familiar. There was always somebody building or extending something on her street in London: she was used to it as the background of birdsong and bleating horns from the street below.

      So every morning, waking to the building hum, she enjoyed a sliver of time thinking that life was still glorious. She’d stretch, revelling in the feel of her body between the sheets, the body that Rob loved. For one misguided second it seemed that the day lay ahead of her with dazzling brightness: Rob’s smile as he saw her, the director’s smile as he told her that her performance was breathtaking…

      Then she’d wake up properly and real life shoved out her fantasy dreamworld. Everyone hated her, her career was over and her heart was broken.

      The next step in the morning routine would be awareness of something furry shifting on top of the duvet and then a rough tongue would lick whatever part of Megan was out of the covers.

      ‘Cici?’ she said the first morning and the shape had wriggled with delight.

      Leonardo liked to lie on the floor on the other side of the bed and Megan’s sleepy voice was all he needed to start his welcoming proceedings.

      Both dogs would clamber on top of her, licking and wagging their tails eagerly.

      After a week, they had the routine down to a fine art. With enough licking and snuffling, they could force Megan out of bed and into the kitchen to give them dog biscuits, and then, once she’d had her morning coffee and cigarette, she might take them for a walk. Nora, of course, would have gone to work.

      It was her own fault, she knew, for setting a precedent that first day. But today she had a mission to accomplish on the walk. She’d decided she needed a disguise.

      It took ages to clip the leads on because the dogs were dancing about so much, but she wanted to take them with her because she figured she’d looked less strange wearing glasses she didn’t need and a dark bandana to cover her hair if she was hauling two dogs along. Mad people often had dogs. Once out of the door, the dogs pulled towards the garden in the square but Megan dragged them in the other direction.

      There was a highly glamorous hairdresser’s about half a mile away, all smoky glass and exquisite hairstylists. She wouldn’t go there. They’d take one look at her and know exactly who she was, and in the fashionable clubs of the city – which they would frequent – the news of both her arrival and her new hair colour would be that night’s gossip. On the west side of the square, however, tucked in front of the Delaney council flats, was Patsy’s Salon, a place that had probably looked old and faded twenty years ago but which she’d noticed the night she’d arrived. She’d found the number in the phone book yesterday but it just rang out. So today she took a chance and went to make an appointment. If Patsy’s was closed, she’d just buy a home dye kit.

      Patsy’s was remarkably busy for a place that clearly hadn’t been redecorated for many years. There were three baby-blue basins, all being used, and two women under dryers, talking loudly to each other over the noise.

      One girl was delicately putting Velcro rollers into a very elderly lady’s silvery purple hair.

      Megan stood for a moment watching.

      ‘Can I help you?’ said a woman with curled hair an unnatural red, who emerged from the back of the shop.

      She had to be fifty, and boasted an hourglass figure all poured into very tight Capri jeans and a red gingham blouse fastened by buttons which looked to be under considerable strain. Megan would not have been surprised if the woman had launched into the chorus of ‘D.I.V.O.R.C.E.’ right there and then.

      ‘I’m Patsy,’ the woman added. ‘What can we do for you?’

      ‘I need a haircut and a change of colour.’ The words came rushing out. ‘I want to look different,’ Megan said. ‘Totally different.’

      Patsy didn’t blink. Women had come into her shop before looking forlorn and needing a new look. You never knew what life would throw at you. Patsy’s response was to help any woman when she could and not ask questions.

      ‘Take a pew. I’ll be with you in five minutes.’

      ‘N-now?’

      ‘No appointment necessary,’ said Patsy, pointing to a sign that said just that on the salon’s pink brocade-papered wall.

      ‘That’s unusual,’ said Megan, still a little startled by the speed of it all.

      ‘I never know what’s coming up next,’ Patsy replied, in a voice that said she’d seen quite enough, thank you very much, and would it all stop coming, please. ‘Sit down right here.’

      ‘Oh no, I can’t stay,’ Megan said, recovering herself. ‘I brought my aunt’s dogs. I was simply trying to make an appointment.’

      Patsy looked outside where Cici and Leonardo were tied to a lamp post and looking in with abject misery. ‘They’re not used to being left, are they?’

      ‘No. I’d better go.’ Megan felt inexplicably as if she might cry. Nothing worked; she was a stupid screw-up. She couldn’t even think properly.

      Patsy surprised her with a soft hand on Megan’s elbow.

      Which was when Megan really started to cry.

      ‘A man! It has to be about a man,’ nodded the little old lady with the silver blue hair. ‘They’re all bollixes, except when they’re small.’

      ‘Stick to cats,’ said one of the ladies under the dryer.

      ‘No – dogs,’ interrupted the other one. ‘Cats are like men: stay when they feel like it and off out the door when they don’t.’

      Patsy ignored the philosophical chatter, went outside, untied the dogs and brought them inside the salon.

      ‘Sit,’ she commanded. And they sat.

      She then calmly fed the two dogs a couple of plain biscuits, put a cup of unasked-for sweet tea in front of Megan and gently began unwinding her bandana.

      ‘Right,’ she said, looking at the platinum curls that brought movie-star glamour into the salon. ‘I see what you mean.’

      She grabbed a towel, looped it expertly around Megan’s head, and busied herself mixing up colour. In ten minutes, Megan was unrecognisable in that her head was covered in gunk and she was perched under a dryer with a very wellthumbed copy of a craft magazine. The dogs, somehow soothed by the hum of Patsy’s salon and stuffed full of biscuits, lay at her feet and slept. There were other magazines around. Gossipy ones with glamorous pictures, but Patsy knew precisely who Megan was. Which was why she’d given her a magazine with knitting patterns and advice on how to turn a tea towel into a cushion.

      ‘Will I take much off?’ she asked when Megan was back at the mirror with wet, dark hair.

      ‘What would make me look different?’ Megan asked.

      ‘I’d go short, if I were you,’ said Patsy. ‘Very short. You’ve got the face for it. And believe me, you’ll look different.’ She began to cut.

      Megan thought of Freemont