Don’t You Forget About Me(66)
Jo loves a challenge, so tonight I’ve brought a diamante and pearl clip in the shape of trailing flowers and ivy that I found in Clem’s shop, and asked Jo to give me the ‘do to suit it.
‘You have some of my favourite hair in the whole world,’ Jo says, doing that stylist riffle with her fingers, pulling strands down straight at the front to check the length. ‘A starlet kind of shiny buttercup blonde you don’t see anymore.’
‘Yeah, you make me want to hit the peroxide again,’ Clem says, observing the magical effects of Jo’s rolling flicks of the wrist, with paddle brush and dryer.
Jo’s shop, between Crookes and Broomhill, is called, believe it or not, The Cut And Snark. I remember when she got the bank loan and the lease and I thought she was about to send it all up in flames with poor punning. I mean, chippies like Northern Soul and The Codfather love them, but …
‘That is a terrible idea and not just because of the Cutty Sark groan,’ I said at the time. ‘Snark makes it sound like you’ll be insulting the customers!’
‘It means you can get your hair done and moan about whatever you want. Chatty. Offload!’
‘Jo, really, no. It’s like a sausage shop calling itself Pork Swords or something.’
‘No it isn’t because that means penis, doesn’t it. This is clean.’
I face-palmed. She was resolute.
Seven years later, and The Cut And Snark is consistently booked to the rafters. Students stop to snap the signage, it gets posted online every time there’s a new wave of autumn term arrivals.
I won’t concede the name was a smart idea, per se, but the truth is Jo is so welcoming and talented at what she does, no one cares. She does a mix of shampoo and sets and lopping the long locks from undergraduates who’ve decided to reinvent themselves, shear it off and go unicorn blue and pink.
‘It’s like the Pet Shop Boys, or corn dogs,’ Rav said, when Jo had bought a house, and it was clear that predictions of commercial suicide had been exaggerated. ‘If the product is good you forget the name. It’s just a gateway. A portal to pleasure.’
‘Corn dogs aren’t a portal to pleasure,’ Clem said.
‘You have lived but half a life,’ Rav says.
I tell both Clem and Jo what Geoffrey said to me, doing the same sidestep of the detail about Dad I did with Esther.
‘You are kidding?’ Jo says, pausing with mouth full of Kirby grips. The way she’s winding the hair back in on itself and pinning it is masterful. ‘He said your life is a mess?’
‘Oh yeah. But if I “look lively” and take a job from him, I might just turn it around. I also “roar” around town like a “teenager” and lack a “pot to piss in”. Why do parents think they can attack you for hugely personal things? Imagine if you said to anyone else, who wasn’t your offspring: “You are single and poor and have no status. Oh and surely you’ve put on some timber there?” It’s savage.’
‘That is a fucking good point,’ Clem says, using her vape stick to prod the air for emphasis. ‘If you went round saying the stuff parents say to their adult kids, you’d be pegged as a sociopath. Like, just because they had unprotected sex thirty years ago, it doesn’t give them the right.’
‘And I’m not even Geoffrey’s kid! He loves step-parenthood in the most malign way imaginable – getting to order people around he didn’t have the bother of raising.’
Ranting when looking at yourself in a reflective surface isn’t entirely comfortable. I have the hair of Daisy Buchanan and the face of Ena Sharples.
‘I tell you something for free as well, if you took the job, then it’d be “why no partner”. If you got a boyfriend it’d be why not married, why haven’t you bought a house, then kid, then second kid. They’re never satisfied,’ Clem says. ‘My aunt’s like this, with her daughters versus me. She’s pitted us in an egg and spoon race ever since it was walking and reading ages, Mum says. Best thing to do is ignore them.’
‘What are you going to do?’ Jo says to me.
‘I don’t know. Unless he apologises, which I can’t see Geoffrey ever doing, I don’t know how I’m meant to stand being around him. Esther thinks I should play nice with him to support Mum.’
‘What does your mum see in him?’ Jo says.
‘One word, his money. OK, that’s two words. Ugh. I was about to say – never let me date anyone rich but lol, hardly likely.’
‘To be fair, Robin wasn’t exactly busking for coins,’ Clem says.
‘I’m not including Robin as we were never going to be in it for long haul and I’d have been better off putting my money in a Ponzi scheme as expecting any reliability from him.’
‘You need to avoid him at all costs. George,’ Jo says.
‘No, she should meet him for this drink and tell him to leave her alone. And take someone threatening with you,’ Clem says.
‘Like you?’
‘I was thinking someone who looks like they could break his arm off and feed it to him.’
‘Still you.’
‘Full-scale crisis, coven!’ Rav says, when we pile out of a taxi and through the doorway of our meeting place. Coven is his pet name for us. ‘I’ve seen some bell end dressed like a member of Kasabian buying a round of drinks with his fucking watch. We need to find another pub, and fast.’