The Things We Do to Our Friends(23)

“Today!” I spluttered.

She spun back to face me, and her smile was huge. “I know, right, the stars align.” She sat back down. “Look, just let me do this for you as a treat.” Her voice had become a high whine. She settled, waiting for me to give in.

“I guess. If you think it would be a good idea…” I said.

“It’s the best idea ever.” She was up, gathering her things. “We’ll go now.”

Her enthusiasm was infectious, and I’d warmed up to the idea without even quite realizing. I was wondering what I’d go for. A rich russet color perhaps, or a dark wavy bob that would swing around my neck.

When I recall what happened with the haircut, it seems odd how easily I went along with it, but you must understand, finding Tabitha and the rest of them hadn’t changed things entirely for me. I still woke up some mornings wanting to claw the skin off my face when I looked in the mirror. I would sit there and practice a natural-looking grin, or I’d frown and see the furrows in my brow. But being with them made me feel like I was part of something. I craved them when I wasn’t there with them. When I saw them look toward each other and share secret glances, I was desperate to be involved. When I heard someone talking about them, I felt almost drunk on the sense of superiority that came with being who we were.

We were so special. And there she was, offering to turn me into the best version of myself. It wasn’t something I could turn down.





17


We were whisked in a cab down into the guts of Leith, right at the shore and then along the seafront. Tabitha had chatted away on the journey, so I hadn’t noticed the streets change, as smart Georgian townhouses made way for tower blocks. All so gray, she said, and she was right. But it was funny how gray could speak of a tasteful refinement in some places, and in other parts, like here, the color was resolutely bleak. Not a color so much as a washout, like everything had been watered down. We saw a warehouse, then a car park, then flats, then nothing, then repeated: warehouse, car park, flats. Finally, we arrived in a suburb I didn’t recognize, where the air had an aftertaste of fish. The place didn’t look like much from the outside. Semi-derelict on first inspection, with graffiti lining the walls. It was so rare to be somewhere with Tabitha that wasn’t lovely. She looked out of place, her nose wrinkled in distaste, and it made me think it had to be something good that had dragged us here.

I hadn’t been to the hairdresser’s much in the past, but even in my limited experience, this was like no hairdresser I’d ever visited. We went in and a man I assumed was Rand appeared from nowhere and took us down a long set of stairs. We ended up in a basement with no windows, and there were no other customers there, just a few chairs with large circular mirrors facing them. He offered me a glass of champagne, which I declined, and soon I was the center of a frenzy of tinfoil and dye as four or more people assembled around me until I was light-headed with the flurry of attention.

Later, Tabitha sat next to me, fussing away.

“You look peaky—are you okay?” she asked, putting her hand to my forehead.

“I don’t feel great,” I said.

The next thing just popped out. “Talk to me? Tell me a story?” I said. At that moment, I just wanted to let my head fall back on the chair and hear something soothing that would take my mind off my headache.

It was the bleach, I think—bleach reminded me too much of my granny, reminded me of being a child.

“Poor you. But I’ll take your mind off things, of course I will,” she said.

“Tell me about your family?” I asked.

Tabitha didn’t talk about her family much, just as I’d hardly mentioned mine, but they were contained in the objects she surrounded herself with. The armoire that belonged to her great-grandmother. The fountain pen with the missing lid gifted to her for her eighteenth. Links certainly, links to royalty (ancestors everywhere and anywhere; she wasn’t a snob about lineage—Sweden, Latvia, Chile, and Ireland), but few real stories of a closer family.

“My family?” she said in a singsong voice, but she didn’t sound surprised. “Okay, Claaaaaaaare.”

I lay back into the soft leather of the chair. It felt oddly similar to being in Samuel’s car, deceptively safe.

Her story began. “When I was sixteen, I came home from school, just for the weekend. That was unusual. I didn’t come home much in those first years. I didn’t tell anyone because I wanted it to be a surprise, and I thought it would be nice to see them all. In my head I imagined this full weekend, bursting with wholesome activities like long country walks and roast dinners that take all day to cook, but I was being silly, it wasn’t like that with my family—we didn’t do those kind of things.”

I nodded away as she spoke. I understood.

“I’m an only child, but that particular weekend I thought things would be different. While I was away at school, I imagined all these things happened at home, so if I showed up without telling anyone, I could just join in this family life going on without me.” She laughed. “I know, I know, it sounds crazy now that I tell the story.”

This was textbook Tabitha. I didn’t need to say anything, and she just imagined my response and slotted it in.

She continued. “Anyway, I get the train then a taxi from the station and I walk into the house in Hampstead, and it’s quiet in that middle-of-the-day kind of way, which I wasn’t too surprised at. Ma could have been out walking the dogs, so I went upstairs to drop my bag, and I saw him at the window of his study—Pa.