The Show Must Go On

Chapter Nineteen: Blonde

Chapter Nineteen Soundtrack: Blonde by Maisie Peters

My feet are throbbing when I wake up, and with them comes the flood of memories.

Nas gave me his shoes and walked across London in his socks. Already, I can hear the jokes that will come on Monday:

No one carrying you into work today?

When you said the gala swept you off your feet, I didn't think you meant literally.

Next time you want me to come home with you, you can just ask.

But still. Even if it was just to mock me, he did walk through London, cold and damp, with only socks, so that I wasn't in pain.

Even though it was just to mock me. It must have been just to mock me, though I haven't figured out why.

I don't know why I'm smiling.

My phone pings with a calendar reminder of my haircut. Ugh. Shoes. Clothes. Bag. Out, off, for another trim at the same salon that I always go to, with the same coffee in hand, walking there on the same route.

As I pass the neighbouring salons, perfume wafting through each open door, I glimpse my hair again in the windows' reflections. Blonde-ish. Long-ish. Not really wavy, not really straight. It frames my face in the same way a coffin frames a corpse.

Not everyone's faces should be framed, my mother's voice whispers in my ear.

Has she said that to me, or am I just imagining her? When I was a girl, tugging her brush through my tangles, muttering at how long it took to make me presentable? Or while encouraging me to fake tan before my prom, because it would hide the cellulite better? Asking me why I wore a headband when it showed off my huge forehead?

Without realising, I've stopped at the door of my salon. I look back at myself in the window. What does my hair say about me? Nothing. I have said nothing about myself.

What do I want to say?

There's my mother's voice again: Attention seeking. Harlot. Tacky.

But she says those things anyway.

So what do I want to say?

It's just hair, I know. But it's mine, and it's hurting no one, and she'll judge me either way. So maybe I could change it, just this once. Just to see what happens.

My hands are shaking as I walk to reception, but I ball them into fists and I ignore them.

Not everyone's faces should be framed.

My voice cracks as I give my name. It's just hair. It's just hair, I repeat to myself as Shari takes me through to the chair.

'Same as usual?' she asks, pinning the towel to my shoulders.

And I tell her, 'I think it's time for a change.'

*

Obviously I am not living in a 90s film. But, walking into work on Monday, it's so easy to pretend.

Because my haircut is really, really good.

In the hairdressers, I had an out-of-body experience: some alien voice rose within me and directed my cut, pulling an idea from the depths of my mind and speaking it before I could chicken out. Now, my hair is bobbed just below my chin, bleached like a rockstar's girlfriend, and, without the length dragging it down, floats in loose waves with only a quick shampoo. My eyes are brighter against the colour; my jawline is sharper. With only sunglasses and dungarees, I have become a cover girl - at least in my mind. And, it turns out, my mind is a powerful thing, because I have never felt this good.