Chapter 2
MADDIE MCSHAY
If someone had asked Maddie McShay to predict the first words out of the mouth of the owner of her hairdressing salon, the Copper Curls, this morning, she’d have pretty much got it spot on.
As Maddie walked through the Once Upon A Time Café at the front of the building, and into the salon that took up the back half, Jessie spotted her reflection in the mirror, over the top of a head stacked with foils, and managed to make her voice carry over Robbie Williams singing ‘Angels’ on the radio.
‘What are you doing here today, ma love? You should be home in bed. You’re still white as a sheet. ’
Maddie wanted to agree, but she knew that if she did, Jessie would have her dispatched home in five seconds flat and, well, she had a busy day of appointments in the book and she needed the money. Especially now that she was about to lose her flatmate and had to find somewhere new to live.
She crossed over behind Jessie and gave her a quick hug as she passed, trying not to inhale the fumes of the bleach from the bowl that was on the trolley in front of them.
At that, more words of wisdom came from under the foils, as Val Murray, Jessie’s partner in eighties fashion crime, oracle of all knowledge in their village of Weirbridge, and all-round legend of a woman, said, ‘Jessie’s right, pet.
That bug floored the lot of us. If we’d all bought shares in anti-nausea medication, we’d be on our way to Bermuda for a fortnight all-inclusive right now. ’
Maddie tried not to make it obvious that she was still breathing in through her mouth to quell her swirling stomach as she tried to deflect the attention. ‘You’re so right, Val. Are you feeling better now? And you, Jessie?’
Both Jessie and Val, the foil mountain, nodded in synchronisation.
‘Aye,’ Jessie answered first, ‘but, oh dear God, I haven’t felt like that since the year we all got food poisoning from the turkey sandwiches at the Boxing Day lunch in the church hall.
’ She shook her head, clearly reliving the trauma.
They’d narrowed down the source of whatever hellish bug they’d all contracted to the community centre Easter party last week.
The whole village had been there for the celebration and within twenty-four hours it had felled them like a toppling row of dominoes.
‘I’m just glad the party wasn’t here,’ said Alyssa, the owner of the café, who had wandered up, cuppa in hand, and plonked herself down on the seat next to Val and her foils.
Jessie owned this building and for many years it had only housed the Copper Curls, the salon that she’d ran with her daughter, Georgie.
However, a couple of years ago, Georgie had met the love of her life and moved to London, and at the same time, the lease on Alyssa’s café across the road had ended, when the owners had sold it to a developer who had turned it into flats.
Jessie had saved the day by offering to downsize the salon and share the space with Alyssa, who, just to add another layer of complexity, was her husband, Stan’s daughter, the result of a long forgiven affair thirty years ago.
Now, they were just a happy, extended family who ran this dual-purpose hub of the community, where the villagers congregated for food, chat and regular touch-ups for their roots.
Jessie only worked a couple of days a week now, and Maddie had been renting one of the other chairs in the salon for the last few months.
It had been an unexpected life detour, returning to live in Weirbridge, the village she’d grown up in, but she hadn’t regretted it for a moment.
The sickness conversation was making Maddie feel worse, so she changed the subject. ‘Anyway, Jessie, much as it’s lovely to see you, it’s Monday. Shouldn’t you be off today?’
‘Aye, but Val’s hair was becoming an embarrassment – it was so wide, it was starting to resemble a motorbike helmet, and the ozone couldn’t cope with the amount of hairspray she was using.’
‘The Green party would have had me locked up if they’d seen it,’ Val concurred.
Jessie jumped right back in. ‘So I came in to get her sorted, but I also planned to stay the rest of the day and take care of your clients for you.’
Maddie wasn’t prone to public outbursts of emotion, but she suddenly felt the need to blink back the water that appeared to be pooling on her bottom lids.
How would she have got through the last year if it weren’t for all these women: Jessie, Val, Alyssa and all the other ladies that had lined the pews at her mum’s funeral a few months ago?
Jessie and Val had been her mum’s friends since they were younger than Maddie and Alyssa.
That was the way it worked in this village.
Sure, people left, some came back, some didn’t, but relationships carried on down the generations.
Her mum used to tell her how the women of the village had stepped in when Maddie was just a toddler and her dad had died in a climbing accident.
They’d rallied around the widow and her tiny girl, provided childcare, friendship and moral support for all of Maddie’s formative years.
And now Maddie had discovered that the support didn’t come with an expiry date.
Four months ago, when she’d followed her mum’s coffin into Weirbridge church, she’d been out of a job and faced with returning her childhood home to the council.
Before nightfall, Jessie had offered her a chair in the salon, Val had assembled an army of pals to help her empty her mum’s house, and her old school friend, Dylan, had cleared his spare room for her.
Maddie wondered if it was an act of divine intervention from her mum, to repay her for taking care of her for the last six months of her life.
Not that Maddie was looking for a reward, but it just seemed like an unexpected karmic kindness, and she would always be grateful.
Although, she didn’t feel entirely thankful that she’d accepted the invitation to the Easter party that had left her and her germs housebound for the last week.
‘Is Dylan all packed and ready to go then?’ Alyssa asked her, and Maddie could hear the sympathy in the voice of her old school friend.
She and Alyssa had gone right through primary school and high school at the same time and had both been in the same group of friends.
Since Maddie had returned, they’d got so much closer, so she knew Alyssa would be tuned in to her feelings.
Maddie was already swimming in an emotion whirlpool, so she went for overblown breeziness because anything less than that risked a complete wobble of tears and snot in the middle of the salon.
‘He is. His flight is at nine o’clock tomorrow morning.’ Just saying that caused another swirl of her stomach, and this time she was pretty sure it didn’t have anything to do with the last traces of the bug in her system.
Dylan had been another mate at Weirbridge High School, and out of it too, until Maddie had gone to work as an apprentice in one of the top hairdressing salons in Edinburgh, straight after school.
She’d moved into a tiny room in a tiny flat in the capital, but as the years had passed and she’d moved through the hairdressing ranks to senior stylist, she’d built a nice life there.
Meanwhile, Dylan’s family had relocated to Spain when he was in his late teens, but he hadn’t gone with them because he’d started a joinery apprenticeship by that time.
Instead, he’d lived with his late granny in Glasgow, until he’d got married at twenty and only divorced and moved back to the village last year when he got a job with a local company.
Over the years, their friendship had drifted to coffees and quick catch-ups when she was back in the area visiting her mum.
That had changed, though, when her mum got her cancer diagnosis.
A brain tumour. Glioblastoma. Grade 4. It came with an average prognosis of twelve to eighteen months, but in the end, she hadn’t even got that.
That’s why Maddie would never regret quitting her job and moving back in to take care of her.
Although, if she’d known that the council would demand her mum’s home back within a month of her dying, she might have taken time to make other plans.
In the end, it was Dylan who’d broached the solution to at least one of her problems. After the wake, he’d been one of the last to leave the community centre, and he’d met her at the door, where she was saying goodbye to her mum’s neighbours.
‘What will you do now? Back to Edinburgh?’ he’d asked her.
‘No, I don’t think so. The salon couldn’t keep my job open because it’s been bought over and the new owners don’t know me.
And I let my flat go, so other than friends, there’s nothing there for me now.
I think I need to take a minute to decide.
Actually, four weeks – that’s how long the council give you to hand back a house after the tenant dies. I had no idea.’
‘You know, my spare room is free. You’re welcome to it, until you decide.’
‘Really?’ It was such a generous offer, that the word had stuck in her throat.
‘Sure. You’ll have to put up with a keyboard, three guitars, a rowing machine and a wardrobe full of old wetsuits though. Or I can clear them out if that’s a problem. The wetsuits do have a bit of an odour.’
‘I’ll hold my breath,’ she’d said, appreciating the fact that he was trying to lift her spirits.
Yep, Dylan and Jessie had been her divine intervention.
She’d moved in the following week, they’d binned the old wetsuits and she had come to love the keyboard, the three guitars and the rowing machine.
Now, four months later, Dylan was taking off to America indefinitely, so she was on the property search yet again.
However, that was a problem for another day.
Right now, she just had to get through the next eight hours without relapsing back into Stomach Cramp Central.