36. Sarah
36. Sarah
‘Is everything okay?’ the hairdresser asks. ‘I’m not hurting you?’
Her face radiates concern. It’s the same look I’ve seen on everyone’s face since the moment I woke up in hospital.
In a second, Jenni is at my side. ‘You okay, pet? Has she hurt you? We don’t have to do this.’
‘We are definitely doing this,’ I tell her. ‘Have you seen the state of my hair?’
Jenni forces a smile. ‘Go easy on her,’ she says to the hairdresser for the third time.
The poor girl looks terrified as she picks up the hairdryer and points it towards my head. You’d think she was handling a loaded gun.
I reach out and pat her arm. ‘Honestly, I’m fine,’ I tell her. ‘Do whatever it takes to make me look presentable.’
She moves behind me, gently wrapping different sections of my hair around a giant curling brush and holding the dryer above it. As she lifts the hair back from my face, I stare at myself in the mirror.
The pale, shrunken image that stares back doesn’t look like me. I find myself assessing the reflection in the same way I would a patient.
The fluid retention beneath the left eye has almost gone. The contusion has progressed from the vivid purple indicative of an angry, fresh bruise to blue – a sign that it’s healing. Beneath my right eye, the contusion is already yellow and green. In a few days, it will be gone.
Criss-crossed lines, pink and raised above the rest of my skin, sit squarely in the middle of my forehead. Fibrous structures formed by my body to mend the wound.
The scars are so fresh, they look as if they’ve been drawn on with a marker pen. Jenni, who carefully took the stitches out yesterday, reassured me that these scars will fade in no time.
If I were treating a patient, I would have said the same thing. I would have told them to moisturize and massage the area for ten minutes a day.
But I know that even if I do this, even if I use the most expensive of skincare oils, I will still carry these scars for life.
My mum cried when she saw me. She thought she was being kind, a couple of hours later, when she said she’d been looking online and there were all sorts of treatments for facial scars now.
She told me about chemical peeling and dermabrasion and laser treatments. ‘Micro-needling is meant to be very effective as well,’ she said.
My poor mum. She’s desperate to help, to put things back to how they were before. To make my scars disappear, so she doesn’t have to be reminded of me being hurt – and what she sees as her failure to protect me.
She doesn’t understand, none of them do. Not even Carl, who is staying in the same hotel and popped his head around our door a few minutes ago to ask if there was anything we needed.
I watched as he registered my face, then flinched and looked away. It was just a moment. By the time he looked back, he had composed himself. But he couldn’t hide the pain in his eyes. Like Jenni and Mum, he blames himself.
What none of them realize is that to me the scars aren’t ugly. To me they are heroic. They bear witness to love and loss. The love I once held for Danny, and the loss – because although what he did to me was terrible, it has made it easy for me to walk away. For the first time in a really long while, I feel free.
Suddenly, the room falls silent as the hairdresser turns the hairdryer off and lays it on the dressing table in front of me. She stares at the scars on my forehead, then tactfully arranges my hair to cover them.
I smile and thank her. ‘See,’ I call out to Jenni, ‘I won’t ruin the wedding pictures after all.’
Jenni looks up and smiles. She is currently sitting on a chaise longue, soaking her feet in a small tub of soapy water while sipping a glass of champagne, and staring at a chart of nail varnish colours.
‘The most beautiful bridesmaid in the world.’
I pad over to the chaise longue in my hotel slippers and sit next to her.
‘What do you think?’ she asks, holding out the chart. ‘Classic nude, soft blue, or lavender?’
‘Classic nude,’ I say at the exact same time as the manicurist tells her the soft blue.
‘It’ll make your wedding ring and engagement ring pop,’ she adds as she lifts Jenni’s foot out of the tub and dries it with a towel before laying it on her lap.
‘And it’ll be your something blue,’ I add.
The manicurist smiles. ‘Exactly!’
‘Soft blue it is, then,’ says Jenni, reaching out and putting an arm around me. ‘Now, is there any way you can stop my feet from looking like a pair of old potatoes?’ she asks the manicurist.
The woman begins to aggressively file the dry skin on Jenni’s heels with what looks like a giant cheese grater, while Jenni pours me a glass of champagne.
‘To you and Cherub,’ I say, as an excuse to knock back the whole glass. I need something to take the edge off the ordeal of having my make-up done.
I needn’t have worried. Like the hairdresser, the make-up artist is considerate, tactful, gentle. And miraculous. When, after forty minutes, she spins me around on the stool to see my reflection in the mirror, for the second time that day I don’t recognize the face that stares back at me.
Glossy lips, long, fluffy lashes and smooth, glowing skin. The bruises are hidden beneath concealer and foundation, the scars invisible beneath a carefully arranged sweep of hair.
Jenni comes to stand behind me. ‘You look beautiful,’ she says. ‘Are you absolutely sure you’re up to this?’
I nod. ‘Absolutely sure.’
She grins. ‘In that case, please will you do me up?’
The make-up artist holds out the dress, and Jenni gently pulls it over her head. The hairdresser immediately fusses around, touching up her hair, as Jenni pulls down the sleeves.
It is the most beautiful vintage forties, ivory cream, long satin dress. I found it for her in a specialist shop in London, and it arrived while I was recovering at their house last week. Jenni cried when she opened the parcel and unwrapped the dress, and she has tears in her eyes again now.
‘I can’t believe you found this for me,’ she says, doing up the tiny buttons on the front.
‘It’s perfect,’ I tell her.
It really is. I step back to admire her.
It is everything I could wish for her. Magical and romantic and full of promise, as if somehow its previous owners are whispering to her, willing her to be as happy as they were on their Big Day. Other girls, other times, but filled with the same love and hopes as Jenni.
I reach forward to do up the last satin-covered buttons at the top of her back, then Jenni turns and holds up her hands so I can do up the matching buttons at her wrists.
‘What do you think?’ she asks, uncharacteristically nervous.
‘I think,’ I say, ‘that you look absolutely stunning.’
The make-up artist is holding Jenni’s fur stole. I take it from her, gently drape it across her shoulders and tie the ribbon at the front myself. I think of her brushing my teeth for me while I was in hospital, when I couldn’t make it to the bathroom on my own, and am suddenly overcome with emotion.
‘I’m so lucky you’re my friend,’ I tell her. ‘I love you.’
‘I love you too,’ she says, and we both smile.
We have been through so much together – war, death, heartbreak, sadness. So much sadness. But standing here, looking at Jenni in her beautiful wedding dress, I realize I feel hope.
I don’t have to worry about Danny being here and being drunk and getting violent.
Or Danny not being here.
Right now, for the first time in so many months, I don’t have to worry about Danny at all.