Chapter Seven
Seven
I booked the appointment at a salon ten minutes from work.
It’s more upmarket than my usual place, and I can’t really afford it, but Mum’s bathroom—I take a deep breath just thinking about it—must be a breeding ground for at least fifty different species of mold.
Plus, I’ve seen the photos of the girls on Jack’s profile.
Those dye jobs must be worth hundreds, and if he’s accustomed to the best, who am I to deny him?
I scroll absently through Jack’s photos as the hairdresser—Tony—applies the dye in silence. Still no joy on the Sally front, but no one under the age of forty checks Facebook regularly, so I remain hopeful.
“New boyfriend, is it?” Tony peers hopefully over my shoulder and points to the screen in a painfully obvious attempt to claw back his tip. Truthfully, I couldn’t afford to pay it anyway, but at least now I have an excuse.
Tony had wrinkled his nose when he first saw my poor, damaged hair and picked at the brittle strands.
“When was the last time you had this done?”
I’d glared at him in the mirror. “My boyfriend died, so hair hasn’t been top of my priority list, funnily enough.”
That shut him up. He broke his silence only once, to ask about color, and I’d pulled out the picture of me and Marcie. Only a little creased from my pocket. “That color,” I’d said, pointing to her. “As close as you can get.”
Now I consider him in the mirror. I could maintain my dignified, sad silence, but his question has unlocked a delicious set of possibilities.
“Yes. We haven’t been seeing each other long,” I say.
Then, to remind him that I am still vulnerable, fresh off the back of tragedy: “I’m dipping my toe in the dating pool.
No one could ever replace Freddie, but I think there’s something special about this one. ”
“Must be new. He hasn’t even added you as a friend yet,” he says with a chuckle that makes me want to singe him with the straightening irons.
I need to get control of myself. My voice shakes with suppressed rage: “He’s respectful of my grief.
” And Tony finally appears to grasp—even if he doesn’t fully understand—the gravity of my situation.
He wouldn’t understand. Only those who have experienced true loss can know what it’s like to lose the one person who anchors you to this world.
Freddie understood that, perhaps even better than I did.
He changed toward me after I told him about Marcie.
What had started as harmless flirtation became something deeper, something more entrenched, as though our common loss bound us together.
He checked up on me constantly—first about my work, though it was obviously a smokescreen for what he really wanted to ask.
The questions about timelines and design choices were more and more frequently suffixed by inquiries into my well-being.
“How are you really?” he’d ask, and I’d touch a self-conscious hand to my hair—another tic I’d picked up from Marcie—and tell him I was fine, in a stoic sort of way.
It worked so well that, by the end of my second week there, he’d asked me on our very first date.
“Sorry. That you went through that,” Tony mumbles now.
He looks suitably chastened, so I resume my stately silence.
He opens his mouth only once more—half an hour later—as though he’s going to attempt another conversation, but seems to think better of it.
Luckily, the hair dryer puts paid to any further endeavors.
He may be an insensitive prick, but Tony’s very good at his job. I twist my head as he holds the mirror up behind me. This is the closest I’ve ever got to that gorgeous golden coloring, and there’s a lovely sheen to it that I can never seem to replicate myself.
I still don’t leave him a tip, though. He can think about what he’s done and hopefully be more gracious to his next customer.
—
“You look amazing,” Mick says when I enter the café.
My new look is wasted on someone like him, but he’s right, so I bestow on him a gracious smile. I’m so happy not even the prospect of an imminent five-hour shift in this ghastly place can dampen it. I don my apron with positive flair, then remember what I need to do today, and tone it down a bit.
It’s not busy, which is both a curse and a blessing.
A curse because there are fewer people to witness my transformation. My hair looks amazing, and Mick’s lovely, but he’s another one whose gaze doesn’t set the pulse aflutter.
A blessing because it will give me the chance to bring Mick round to my cause, which I’ve been carefully formulating in my head since last night.
It was the bathroom that clinched it. I cannot stay in that house for any longer than I absolutely must. But, in order to move out, I desperately need more shifts. That’s where Mick comes in.
I lean against the counter just suggestively enough to make him look twice. When he does, I employ a look of utter desolation: I bite my lip, pull my eyebrows together and stare anxiously into the distance, as though all my worries are jostling for space in my prefrontal cortex.
It works just as well as I remember. Men are tediously predictable, and most can never seem to resist a damsel in distress. Mick, it turns out, is no exception. “Are you OK, Iris? You look like you’re miles away.”
I blink a few times, as though his voice has brought me back from the brink of some deeply distressing thought, then force a pained smile.
“I’m OK, Mick. Thanks.” God, I’m good. I’m wasted in this café. I sound distraught.
“Can I do anything to help?”
I’m about to land it. Better yet, I’m about to make Mick feel like it’s his idea. He gets to feel like my knight in shining armor, I get what I want, and everyone’s a winner. Or they would be.
Because, at the critical moment—the moment when I am about to summon my most distressing memory (which never fails to produce tears) and break down—the bell above the door tinkles.
I experience a wave of fury so intense I am momentarily lightheaded with it.
Appalling timing, all so some old biddy can buy a cup of weak instant coffee that she could have made just as well—probably better—at home.
Whereas I might need to wait hours—even days—before this opportunity comes up again.
Maybe I’ll spit in her drink. Add salt instead of sugar.
But I look up and these thoughts are chased instantly from my mind.
Because, as I wrestle with my rage and step up to the counter, I see it’s not some old woman at all, but Jack.
All the air is driven from my lungs. The rage evaporates instantly.
It’s like I’ve manifested it: the hair, the casual internet stalking, the friend request. Like I’ve summoned him to me by directing all my waking thoughts his way. The chances of bumping into someone you like when you’re looking this good are exceedingly slim, and I intend to make the most of it.
So I do. I shift to the right, out from behind the counter, so I’m standing directly in the sunbeam currently shafting through the café window.
Hoping it touches my hair to capture that celestial quality I always coveted.
When Jack looks up and catches sight of me and my new golden tresses, there’s a delightful spark of recognition in his eye.
In one long, delicious sweep, his eyes travel the length of me.
Slowly, almost lazily, and with just a hint of appreciation.
This is what I’ve been missing. Every cell in my body is on fire.
He takes a step toward me. “Iris, isn’t it?
” There is something about the way he rolls my name around his mouth.
Like it’s not the first time he’s used it.
Like he’s familiar with me. I’d been certain that I’d failed at the group somehow, that my performance was not quite up to my usual exemplary standards, but now I’m not so sure.
I have a brief, glorious mental image of Jack typing my name into a search bar.
Hovering over the “Add Friend” button on my own profile. Just as I’ve done to his.
I don’t allow any of this to show on my face, of course. Instead, I cock my head to one side and pull my eyebrows together as though I’m trying to place him.
“Jack?” I say, like I’m testing it out. He smiles in response.
He has a very nice smile. Straight white teeth, offset against the remains of a summer tan.
An unusual quality in the grief-stricken.
Most of us avoid sunshine, as though the warmth on our skin might bring us slightly too close to something resembling happiness.
But I need to keep my head screwed on, can’t let the excitement of this chance encounter derail me.
This is a big moment, and I may be off to a strong start, but I need to lodge myself right at the center of his psyche.
So he goes away and I and my sparkling conversational skills are all he can think of.
I need something punchy. Something that aligns our common interests.
Commonalities are what bind humans together, after all, the foundation for any strong relationship.
That’s what Marcie’s magazines used to say, anyway.
“The other dead partner,” I say, as though the connection is only just dawning on me. “What are the chances?” It’s a risk—I don’t want him to think I’m taking his wife’s name in vain—but you only live once, and it’s enough to trigger a reaction.
He takes a half step backward, narrows his eyes, then blurts a laugh. Bingo.
“Slim, I fear. Or at least I hope so. Dead partners are difficult to come by at our age.”
Good. This is very good. He’s past the stage of crying every time he thinks of her, which bodes well for our future together. God, that bit was tedious.