Chapter 20
Lila
It was getting harder and harder to act normal in front of Cammy.
And why should she? Yes, she’d figured that it made life a bit more enjoyable to keep him around until she could be with Ken, but perhaps it just wasn’t worth it.
She no longer wanted to be held by him, didn’t want to kiss him, and definitely didn’t want to have sex with him, when every part of her just cried out to be with Ken.
The pretence with Cammy in the shop had firmed her resolve that she had to bring things to a head today. Right now. The sooner the better.
And if this was going to be one of the most important nights – cancel that, the most important night of her life, then she wanted to look her best.
Detouring slightly from her original plan, she crossed the road and popped into the dry-cleaners she used to launder all her clothes.
Lila didn’t do washing. She didn’t do ironing.
Cammy had been surprised at first, but he soon adopted her ways, and while he washed his gym clothes and casual stuff at home, he’d got into the habit of dropping all their stuff off here a couple of times a week, and then bringing it all back a few days later, freshly laundered.
The woman behind the counter – Lila could never remember her name – looked up and smiled. ‘Hi there,’ she said, with familiarity, but not friendly enough to use her name. Just as well. Overfamiliarity really got on her nerves. ‘Can I help you?’
‘Yes, my boyfriend dropped off some items a couple of days ago and I want to pick one of them up. A Cavalli dress. Pink.’ It was small and it was strappy, and in this weather there was every possibility that she’d lose body parts to frostbite, but she didn’t care.
‘I’ll need the ticket.’
Lila sighed, glad she’d remembered to pick it up off the hall table, but come on, how many pink Cavalli dresses was this place actually going to have?
She tried to stop the irritation pursing her lips. No point in getting wrinkles round the mouth just because some shop assistant was on a power trip. She rummaged through her bag, found the little pink ticket and grudgingly handed it over.
While she was waiting, she pulled her phone out of her bag and called Ken’s house. No answer. Where the bloody hell was the wife? Shouldn’t she be there?
Lila waited until she’d listened to his voice on the answering machine before she hung up. God, she loved him. Even hearing him on a machine turned her on.
The assistant returned with the dress, and Lila paid and left, walking back across the road on her tiptoes so that the spike of her heels didn’t get stuck in the cracks on the tarmac.
She hung the dress up on the hook above the back window of the car, then took a quick snap of it.
#tonightsoutfit #beautiful #designer #lilalovescavalli.
Post. Immediately the pings started and the number of likes increased by the nanosecond.
People loved to see what she was wearing.
The designers should really give her stuff for free.
She headed back into the salon, where Suze sat, like a stunning, slightly scary sentry at the door.
‘Ah, you’ve returned. Did you track down your friend?’ Suze asked.
Lila shrugged. ‘Nope, no idea who it was. We had a look at Cammy’s CCTV, but I didn’t recognise her. Probably just someone that follows my fashion and lifestyle advice on social media.’
Suze immediately looked down at something on the desk in front of her – almost as if she was covering up some snide reaction. Another one that was jealous of her, Lila decided. Small talk dispensed with, she cut straight to the point.
‘Cammy and I are going out tonight,’ she chirped, ‘So I’d like something done with my hair and I’m way too tired to do my own make-up. Do you have anyone free?’
Suze checked the screen. ‘Okay, so Rod can do a blow-dry or styling, but I’ve only got Kylie free on make-up.’
‘The young girl who’s still training?’ Lila sneered, as if she was saying ‘the young girl who has fleas, nits, and a suspected case of the plague?’
‘That’s the one,’ Suze confirmed, with the widest fake smile.
Lila could spot it a mile away. Took one fake bitch to know another.
Suze was still talking. ‘She’s actually great.
She did the girl who was in here asking for you and she looked beautiful when she left.
Don’t think I’ve seen a more stunning face today. ’
Ouch, insult with a sting. Lila would have fired back with an equally subtle but venomous barb if she wasn’t quite aware that she held the worse hand here.
If she pissed Suze off, she could quite easily end up going to dinner with hair that looked like she’d been caught in a wind tunnel and disastrous make-up.
Although, that might happen anyway if she was getting palmed off to a junior, but at least Rod knew what he was doing.
She needed these appointments so it was time to suck it up and play nice.
‘Wow, I wish I’d met her. Anyway, Rod and Kylie would be great thanks.’
There was a hesitation, as if Suze was deliberating whether or not to mess up her day, but she clearly decided to take the business. ‘No problem.’ She turned to the shop floor. ‘Kylie, we have another victim for you. Rod, you’re up too. Make this woman beautiful.’
Ouch, another sting. Make her beautiful? She was already fricking beautiful. This time Lila couldn’t resist the urge to purse her lips. Don’t bite back. Do not rise.
Rod, the punkish weirdo who was, despite his awful taste in style and fashion, a genius with hair, appeared at her side and ushered her to a free seat at the centre console. Kylie pulled a tray of cosmetics over.
‘Okay, so what are we doing today, gorgeous?’ That was more like it. A man that recognised something special when he saw it.
‘I’m thinking maybe big waves, side parting, Cindy Crawford eighties look. Something breathtaking that will make me impossible to resist.’
Rod thought the second part of that request was a little joke. If only he knew.
‘And your make-up?’ Kylie asked.
Lila swallowed her hesitation over letting someone who had only ever washed her hair loose on her face. If it was that bad she could fix it herself in the car.
Lila thought about it. She would be wearing pink, so red, vampish drama would clash. ‘Dark, smoky eyes, nude lip,’ she answered. She’d worn that look at a convention last year and Ken had loved it. He’d had her naked before dessert. Said she reminded him of Kim Basinger. Whoever that was.
The two of them got to work, Rod parting her hair and wrapping it, section by section, in huge rollers.
Kylie got her cleaning pads out and started removing the make-up that Lila had been touching up all day.
Lila held up her phone and snapped a selfie, careful not to get Rod or Kylie in the frame.
There was no way she was giving this place free publicity. #glamsquad #rockingthe80svibe.
She scrolled back up to the last post – over two hundred ‘likes’ already, and tons of comments.
‘Gorgeous!’
‘Sexy’.
‘You’ll be stunning, babe!’
The last one from someone she didn’t know at all. There was that overfamiliarity right there. That thought jolted her back to the stranger that was looking for her.
‘Suze said someone was in here asking for me earlier. A blonde woman. Maybe similar age to me. A north of Scotland accent.’
‘Caro!’ Kylie blurted. ‘Oh, she was lovely. Is she a friend?’
Rod’s firm grip on a large roller he was currently inserting prevented her from shaking her head. ‘No, I’ve no idea who she is. She went next door to Cammy’s shop to ask for me there too. Did she mention me?’
Kylie threw a quizzical look at Rod. ‘I don’t think so, did she?’
‘Nope, not that I heard,’ he said, while holding several grips between his teeth.
‘Did she say anything at all?’ Lila asked. The truth was, she didn’t much care, but she was mildly curious and it passed the time to chat to these two. It wasn’t like she was doing anything else or had anyone else to speak to.
Kylie thought about it for a moment. ‘She said she was a teacher. Down for the day from Aberdeen. Don’t think she’s been to Glasgow much before. Fairly sure when she left here she was going for a train home. She was really nice. Lovely, in fact. My favourite customer today.’
That made Lila bristle again. So this stranger was, so far, one of the most beautiful faces Suze had seen, and Kylie’s favourite customer of the day. Lila hated her already.
Her phone rang, interrupting her irritation, and the office number flashed up once again on her screen.
She flicked it to voicemail. Technically, it was after five p.m., so she wasn’t strictly at work, but she still didn’t want to speak to someone at head office with the rumble of hairdryers and the cackle of chat in the background.
She’d phone them on the first day back after Christmas. Whatever it was could wait.
Kylie was focussing on her eyes now, so Lila closed her eyelids, enjoying the excuse to drift off.
This would be her life soon. Staying beautiful for her man, just as her mum had done for her whole life.
Her dad had taken it for granted, but she’d seen how much effort her mother went to every time he was coming home.
And every time, he’d walk into the house, throw a passing smile at his daughter, and then kiss his wife like she was the only woman in the world.
That’s what Lila wanted – to feel like she was the only woman in the world.
Cammy tried, but he didn’t have the presence, the maturity, to make her feel that way.
She wanted a man she could look up to, somebody who really was a man to respect and admire.
Her dad had been a management consultant, someone important.
Ken was a surgeon. Neither of them ran a shop selling the latest in gents’ thongs.
It was a different circle altogether and it was the one that she wanted to live in. The one she belonged in.
She kept her eyes closed, enjoying the solitude of her thoughts, when another realisation dawned.
If all went to plan and she left Cammy for Ken, she’d no longer be welcome here.
Unfortunate. Suze’s underhand and barely concealed dislike aside, the staff were great and the thirty per cent discount didn’t hurt.
On the bright side though, she’d never have to see any of Cammy’s other friends again.
No Josie. No Val. No Jen from the shop along the road.
No hipster Digby. She wouldn’t miss anything about them at all, especially the look on Cammy’s face when anyone mentioned the girl he used to work with.
Mel. Lila didn’t know much about her – wasn’t interested – and Cammy didn’t like to talk about her.
All she knew was that they had a brief thing, it didn’t work out, and Cammy went off to Los Angeles.
Mel lived in Italy now, or maybe France.
And she was married to… something clicked.
‘Rod how long have you worked here?’ she asked.
‘About eight years.’
‘Did you know Mel who owned the shop next door?’
‘Of course. Yeah. She lives in Italy now. Got married to Josie’s son. The guy who used to be a partner in this place.’
Ah, that was it. Things hadn’t worked out with Cammy and Mel, and she’d married Josie’s son.
If that wasn’t weird and incestuous, Lila didn’t know what was.
Besides, worse than that, in the only photo Lila had ever seen of the famous ‘Mel’ she looked completely…
plain. Unremarkable. She didn’t even have any make-up on.
Honestly, some people should learn to make an effort.
Anyway, soon she’d be able to put this whole crowd behind her and she’d never have to think about them again. She couldn’t wait.
The noise and heat of the standing dryer that Rod had put over her head must have made her drift off, because the next thing she heard was Rod’s voice saying, ‘Okay, how does that look?’
Lila opened her eyes and immediately scrutinised the image looking back at her.
The hair was huge and fabulous. A side parting instead of her usual middle one, then tumbles of gigantic waves falling down over her shoulders, but backcombed at the sides so that they swept out to emphasise her cheekbones.
Grudgingly, she had to admit that Kylie had done a good job on the make-up too.
The eyes were a medley of blacks and greys, with just a hint of silver on the upper and lower lids to bring out the blue of her eyes.
She’d applied false eyelashes that looked like mascara brushes, thick and sweeping upwards, making her eyes appear even bigger than they were.
The cheeks were beautifully contoured and the lips were a pale shade of pink gloss, but subtly outlined into the perfect pout. Not bad. Not bad at all.
In fact, she was ravishing. Ken wouldn’t be able to resist her.
Absolutely not. And his wife would see that she couldn’t compete the moment she set eyes on her.
She checked her watch. Just after six p.m. She didn’t need to be at the restaurant until eight – that’s if she even went.
It would depend on what happened in the next hour.
She’d warned Cammy she had one more appointment, but of course she hadn’t told him the whole truth.
She wasn’t going to a hospital for a meeting with a cardiac surgeon.
She was on her way to deliver some bad news to the wife of the love of her life.