Scissors Sisters & Manic Panics. Ellie Phillips

don’t we?

      ‘So now, specially because my Nan’s getting old, so she can’t help me,’ Aimée said, ‘every time I have a task to do I just say to myself, “You want it – you work out how to go get it, girl.”’

      And I’ll bet she’ll have that on a bumper sticker when she gets her first pink-with-matching-interior car, I thought.

      ‘You girls finished up there?’ interrupted Florence.

      ‘Sadie’s hair is really porous,’ said Aimée, snapping back from Aimée-Price-Self-Motivator into hairdresser mode.

      ‘Acid perm lotion for you then, Sadie, if you were ever thinking of getting your hair permed, which I wouldn’t advise by the way. Alkaline for you, Aimée.’

      ‘You want it – you work out how to go get it, girl,’ Aimée repeated in case I hadn’t heard.

       Oh, purlease . . .

      Usually I was 100 per cent absorbed in my college day – I mean, compared to school it was a dream come true. Nobody blanked me at college; there were no ex-best friends like Shonna Matthews, who’d made my life a living hell last year. I had no ‘history’. I didn’t have to hide out in the library or the music room, nobody called me ‘donor girl’ and nobody knew I had a nerdy cousin Billy who played guitar. At college the teachers talked to you like you were a grown up and so mostly you behaved like one. Mainly I liked the sense that I was moving onwards with my goal, that even though the steps were small they were all in the right direction.

      But that Monday just didn’t feel positive. That Monday all I could think about, all day and even on the bus home, was the wretched competition form on the lounge table that needed Aunt Lilah’s paw-print. And all I passed on that bus journey home, in between the skanky fried chicken shops, were hair salons and barbers. I had never really noticed just how many there were. Headlines, Concept Hair, Cissor’s Palace, Curl Up ’n’ Dye, Trimmers – I must have passed at least twelve along Roman Road alone. How was it that somehow I’d wound up without a job? I had no excuse – there were millions of salons out there. I just had to find another apprenticeship. But the memory of being fired still felt too hard and too raw, and for now all I could do was to look on with envy at these other salons and the people who worked in them. Were they better than me? Were they cleverer? It felt like they must be because they had jobs and I didn’t.

      And then just as I got off the bus I saw Mrs Nellist. I knew it was her because her neat little head looked slightly rosy in a certain light.

      ‘Hello, love,’ she said vaguely, and then she really recognised me and her face lit up. ‘You know I’m glad I run into you,’ she said, ‘I’ve had so many compliments about me hair. The family were over on Sunday and my granddaughter just couldn’t get over it, and my son. They love the shape and the colour. You are clever, y’know. I was going to pop into the salon and tell you, but I don’t have to now. Ta-ra!’

      And with that she was off, her little pink head bobbing away down the road, leaving me nodding and shaking my own head with the huge irony of it all.

4

       This Was Starting to Sound Good

      The trainee hairdresser (or barber) should be open to suggestion and input from professionals, clients and their peers.

       Guideline 4: Thames Gateway Junior Apprentice Hairdresser (or Barber) of the Year Award

      An hour after I got home, when I was just settling down on the couch with a cup of tea and the laptop to distract myself from the anxiety of not having an apprenticeship, the buzzer went. I’d been about to log on to this site I used to chat on all the time when I was really lonely last year. It’s www.girlswholikeboyswhoplayWoW.com and I found it when my cousin Billy was in Nerd Frenzy Mode and playing World of Warcraft the whole time. I used to chat to Groovechick2 on there – she always had something positive to say. Lately though she seemed to have disappeared. She never responded to my updates about how cool my boyf was or how great college was. Then again, I wasn’t online so much these days, so I guess she’d found someone else to talk to.

      But today I kind of felt like I needed her. It was definitely a Groovechick2 moment. I wanted to tell her about the whole firing thing. I wanted to say Feel like world is imploding. Lost my job, lost my purpose – something like that. Maybe some friends are just there for the hard times. Maybe they feel like you don’t really need them when things are great.

      The buzzer went again. I got up off the couch and picked up the handset. It was my cousin Billy. Even in my less than great mood I noticed he was using way too much wax on his tips at the moment. You could even see it on the itty bitty security screen we have on our intercom. I must tell him some time. It doesn’t really do anything for him.

      ‘D’you wanna come up?’ I said.

      ‘I’m with Tony and Enrico,’ he said. ‘Can you come down?’

      Enrico is Tony’s older brother. He’s twenty and so totally fit that you almost faint when he looks at you. He works in PC World in the workshop or something, so he’s always pretty cashed up. Recently he bought a nice car, which is where I found them when I made it down to the front entrance.

      Tony was in the back seat and when he saw me he opened the car door and got out. I liked how he did it. In fact I like the way Tony does pretty much everything. I read in a magazine that after six months you stop liking the way your boyfriend does everything and you start hating it instead, but that hasn’t happened to me. We’d just had our first anniversary and I still even liked the way he got out of a car.

      ‘All right?’ he said and kissed me. He has to bend down like three feet to reach because I’m such a squirt.

      Did I mention that Tony Cruz kissing me always makes me want to laugh? We’ve been together a whole twelve months, but I still can’t quite believe my luck – it’s so mental it makes me giggle. Tony is seriously a hot guy and I keep wanting to ask him, ‘What are you doing with me?’ In my most insecure moments – and I have tons of those, believe me – I think he’s picked me out for one of those horrible dares. Like, Do you dare to ask out the weird short girl with the shaky hands?

      Sometimes I do ask Tony what he’s doing with me, and he goes, ‘I’m waiting for a bus – what the hell kind of a question is that?’ And his voice goes up at the end and he nods the Tony Cruz nod because he is just soooo positive about life.

      I’m never so optimistic though and I have to ask, ‘But why are you waiting for it with me?’

      ‘Because I like you.’

      ‘Why?’

      ‘Because you have brown eyes and a cute little mouth and – I dunno, Sadie. You do good hair.’

      Tony always kisses properly. He generally greets me with a snogfest, and this time in the car park was no exception. And as usual a member of at least one of our families was present: Enrico was peering at me in the wing mirror of his car. I could see him out the corner of my eye while Tony and I were kissing. I should have been used to it of course. At first it was just Uncle Zé, but lately I’d noticed that it was never ever just me and Tony; it was me, Tony and Billy or Enrico. Maybe it’s just a coincidence because we are all mates, but anyhow Tony and I have got used to doing all of our making out in public, because if we ever walk into a private space someone else invariably walks into it two seconds later. It’s generally Uncle Zé holding an everyday household object, like a cast iron saucepan or an electric carving knife, in a threatening manner.

      ‘In my country you would have a chaperone, anak,’ says Uncle when I complain about it.

      ‘Yes, tito, but we’re not in your country,’ I say.

      ‘Yes, but I’m still your uncle!’

      You