Scissors Sisters & Manic Panics. Ellie Phillips

about that either.’

      ‘Sadie, you have started a Level 1 Hairdressing course. That’s one day out of school a week! We need to sort the apprenticeship or this year is a complete waste of time, not to mention you can’t enter that competition unless –’

      ‘I don’t want to talk about it, Mum!’

      ‘Well we have to think about it, even if we’re not talking about it,’ said Mum.

      She cannot just let things lie, my Mum. She has to poke them and prod them.

      ‘OK.’

      ‘And we have to talk about it before Monday because Monday you have college.’

      ‘I know.’

      Of course I knew that Monday I had college. And by Monday, everyone would be getting their entry forms for the Thames Gateway Junior Apprentice Hairdresser (or Barber) of the Year Award filled out and signed. Everyone except me, because as of an hour ago I was no longer eligible to enter.

3

       Acid Perm Lotion

      The hairdresser (or barber) must complete the entry form before or on the required date stated.

       Guideline 3: Thames Gateway Junior Apprentice Hairdresser (or Barber) of the Year Award

      Monday morning and when I arrived at college I saw that Aimée Price was wearing green earrings that matched her green bag that matched her green-and-white spotty shoes that matched her green-tipped nails. No wonder people called her Claire’s Accessories behind her back.

      She was sitting on one of the barber chairs we have in the student salon and her feet were up on another, matching shoes and all. These chairs are from Taylor Belshaw’s Nirvana range – expensive kit with funky patterned seats like I plan to have in my own salon eventually. You can bet that Aimée Price wouldn’t have a clue about quality salon chairs, judging by the way she put her feet all over them. She was also boring the pants off Florence, our lecturer.

      ‘Misty really reckons I’m in with a chance,’ she was saying. ‘She’s getting the senior stylist to do extra work with me to like coach me up and everything for the competition.’

      Yeah. Well, Aimée was going to need all the help she could get. I knew the salon she worked in. Cissor’s Palace – Unisex Hairdresser was at the south end of Roman Road, and it was as cheesy as it sounded. All the fittings looked like they were from the 1980s or something, and not in a good, retro way, and 1985 was when the owner, the famous Misty, last changed her hairstyle, by the looks of things. The woman wears it up in a scrunchie, and I’m pretty sure she still demi-waves in there. If you ask me, for an apprenticeship, Cissor’s Palace – Unisex Hairdresser really sucks the big one.

      Florence wasn’t quite so convinced either. ‘Aimée, I think if you work on your timing you could be in with a shot for the competition,’ she said. ‘But you do need to speed things up a little bit.’

      Aimée Price needed to speed things up more than a little bit – I mean snails took a dump faster than Claire’s Accessories cut hair. I was waiting to hear what else Florence had to say about Aimée’s chances when she caught sight of me.

      ‘Oh, Sadie, have you filled out your form yet?’

      ‘Er . . . not yet,’ I said.

      I lied. Of course I had filled it in. Of course it was sitting on the table in the lounge, ready to be signed off at the bottom by Aunt Lilah, who was the owner of the registered salon where I was doing my apprenticeship. Where I had been doing my apprenticeship. Until she fired me.

      ‘Well don’t forget, will you?’ Florence winked at me. ‘They have to be in soon.’

      I don’t mind saying that our lecturer thinks I can cut hair. She may say that Aimée’s in with a chance if she speeds up a little, but Florence reckons I’ve got ‘real talent’. The previous week I’d come top for my colouring. Florence said she thought it was professional standard.

      ‘You’re a performer, Sadie, even under pressure – which makes you ideal for any sort of competition situation. I don’t want you to miss out on a chance like this.’

      That’s why I wanted to enter. That’s why I’d had my heart set on it, right up until Aunt Lilah struck on Saturday. But I didn’t feel like I could tell Florence about what had happened in the salon. She might have said it was my fault – which sounded about right. And I didn’t want her to guess for one minute that maybe I’d tripped myself up and tried something out that the customer didn’t necessarily want.

      ‘You need to be objective about your performance,’ Florence was always telling us. ‘It’ll help you improve. You need to be able to stand back and say, “I did that well” or “I didn’t do that as well – I need to work on that.” That way you’ll keep getting better. If you make the same mistakes over and over and clients complain, then the chances are you’re just being arrogant.’

      I thought back to Saturday. Mrs Nellist hadn’t complained about her new style. I was convinced that she liked her hair how I did it. But maybe I shouldn’t have done it at all. I should have gone and got Aunt Lilah away from those Kit Kats and handed her the customer. I should’ve carried on sweeping up and washing heads. If I had, then I’d still have my job and I’d be handing in my form for the competition, and I wouldn’t have been worrying about what was going to happen next instead of concentrating on my class.

      We spent the morning learning about contraindications for perming and did porosity and elasticity tests on each other’s hair. Aimée was my partner and she took this as a licence to yank strands out of my scalp. This was not only painful, it was also annoying, being that I’d spent about half an hour before college twisting my hair up into a perfect French pleat. All through last year I’d had this customised ‘Hairstyle a Day’ calendar that Aunt Lilah and Uncle Zé had given me for my fifteenth birthday. It was the most perfect present and I was gutted when it had finally run out on my sixteenth birthday. I secretly hoped they’d get me another one, but they got me vouchers instead because Aunt Lilah said I was ‘too difficult to buy for these days’. Vouchers didn’t tell you what hairstyle to wear every single day of the year and how to do it. Without that calendar I was on my own. I mean, I had to decide for myself. That morning I’d decided on a French pleat, and now Aimée Price was busy dismantling it.

      ‘Wow, Sadie, you hair is so porous –’ (yank) ‘– must be all the chemicals you use. You really shouldn’t perm it, you know.’

      ‘But I’m not going to perm it, Aimée – we’re just doing this for class, right? This is an E-X-E-R-C-I-S-E.’

      I swear, sometimes I wondered why I was doing this class, instead of training to be a rocket scientist or a neurosurgeon. I’d got some decent exam results last year and my predicted grades for this year’s batch were pretty good. But some of the girls who wound up doing hairdressing were dumber than a box of hair. Were they really dumb though? I mean who’d just lost their job? Them or me?

      ‘D’you think I’m thick or something, Sadie?’ said Aimée, like she’d read my mind.

      ‘No?’ I said, not even attempting to sound convincing.

      ‘Because you act like you’re all superior and I am actually an incredibly intelligent, motivated and sensitive person.’

      ‘OK,’ I said, although I felt the words ‘frighteningly stupid, lazy and dumb’ summed her up better.

      ‘My nan brought me up, you know,’ continued Aimée, like I was interested or something, ‘and she would never do a thing for me. She always says, “you want something, Aimée? Well, go get it. You can have anything you want in this world, but the catch is you have to work out how to get it yourself.”’