Unsuitable Men (12 page)

I suppressed the tears while I waited for my bus in the rain, convinced I could actually hear my hair kinking around my ears in the moist atmosphere. By the time I got back to Auntie Lyd’s
my hair was a frizzy mess. I didn’t even need to look in the mirror to see how disastrous it was; the sheer volume of fluffy hair around my head felt like I was wearing a comedy wig. I went
straight to my bedroom, pulled the duvet up over my head and stayed there until morning.

The house was quiet when I woke up at eight, having slept through my alarm. For once I hadn’t even heard Percy having his morning shower. The night had not done my new hairstyle any
favours at all – it stretched out beyond my shoulders in a ginger afro that made me look as if I was wearing a Hallowe’en wig. Once I’d washed it, I hoped it would return to some
semblance of normal.

I put on my dressing gown over my pyjamas and scowled at my reflection. ‘Just be grateful Martin can’t see you now,’ I muttered. If he’d thought I’d let myself go
before, it was nothing to how terrible I looked now.

I hoped, given my late start, that I’d avoid seeing any of the residents until I’d managed to wash my hair. I shared the upstairs bathroom only with Percy – the others used the
one on the next floor down – and even though I hadn’t heard his pre-dawn shower I knew he’d already be downstairs by now, arguing with Eleanor. But when I put my hand on the
doorknob, it seemed like there was noise coming from inside – singing? I hadn’t realized this in time to stop turning the handle and, before I knew it, I was staring straight at a
man’s upended arse.

I should clarify that it was fully encased in denim, but you will appreciate that it was still quite a shock to encounter a strange man crouching under the toilet with his bum in the air, and I
don’t think I can really be blamed for letting out an enormous scream. Which of course made the man hit his head against the toilet bowl with a resounding crack.

‘For fuck’s sake!’ the strange man swore, pulling his head out from under the loo.

‘I know karate!’ I said wildly, hoping this would scare off the bathroom intruder, but he just sat back on his heels and rubbed at his dirty-blond hair with a wince. As he turned
around I saw he was wearing a skin-tight T-shirt that read,

Charming.

‘Karate?’ he laughed and straightened up to sit on the edge of the bath, checking the palm of his hand as if he expected to see blood. ‘Really? Are those your black-belt
pyjamas?’

‘I mean it,’ I blustered, my hand flying to the collar of my pyjamas as I realized how I must look, half dressed and crazy-haired. ‘I’m dangerous. Who are you? What do
you think you’re doing in my bathroom?’

‘Your bathroom, is it?’ he said. He didn’t seem to be taking my threats seriously. I couldn’t blame him: no one was likely to mistake a history-of-art expert for a
martial-arts one. He grinned at me, perfectly confident that I would not be breaking into a high kick. ‘Because I thought this house belonged to Lydia Bell. And I’ve already met her
downstairs. Which means this isn’t your bathroom at all.’

Slightly reassured that he wasn’t a burglar – although who knew? Perhaps he was just one who liked to thoroughly research his victims – I allowed myself to relax a little. But
not too much.

‘Well, it’s certainly not
your
bathroom,’ I snapped. ‘So perhaps you’d like to tell me what you’re doing here?’

The man looked at me as if I was insane and gestured to an array of tools on the floor.

‘I don’t know if you can see anything through all that hair, but I’d have thought it was pretty obvious who I am.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘You’re the plumber.’

‘Yep. I’m the plumber; Jim. And you are?’

‘Rory,’ I said. ‘Lydia’s niece.’

‘Rory?’ he asked, wrinkling his nose and frowning. ‘What kind of a name’s that for a girl? Bit weird.’

‘It’s short for Aurora,’ I said. I hated having to explain my name. It was a grimly ironic fact that while in my daily life at
Country House
I was regarded as deeply
common and only one step away from a council-estate hoodie, the average person encountering my name instantly assumed I was some sort of over-privileged toff.

‘Aurora? Like the aurora borealis? Like the dawn?’ said Jim, flashing me a cocky grin. He had one of those American sorts of faces: square-jawed, tanned, white-teethed. As if he
should have an American football tucked under his armpit and a cheerleader by his side. The obvious kind of good-looking face that said,
You fancy me, don’t you? Everyone does.

I sighed and didn’t answer him. It was almost worse when people knew what Aurora meant. Although at least he hadn’t guessed the
Sleeping Beauty
connection – that was
definitely more shaming.

‘Bit of a mouthful, isn’t it? I think I’ll just call you Dawn.’ I think he thought I’d simper agreement or blush or something. He was probably used to charming his
female clients with his cheesy grin and his ridiculously tight T-shirts. I could practically see the muscles on his stomach through the thin fabric. He caught me looking and grinned again,
distinctly smug. He might as well have said, ‘Fancy a bit, do you?’

‘Call me— Do you mind?’ I said crossly, folding my arms across my chest. ‘I don’t want you to call me anything. If you’ll excuse me, I just want to have my
shower and get to work.’

‘Oh you can’t have a shower, Dawn,’ said Jim, still smiling.

‘Why not?’

‘Because I’ve turned all the water off. Your aunt said everyone would be finished in the bathrooms by eight.’

‘But – I’ve overslept! And I have to wash my hair!’ I shrieked.

He shrugged, nodding his head towards the toilet, half of which, I saw only now, was in pieces on the floor. ‘Not my problem, Dawn. I can’t turn it back on now, I’ve already
disconnected the cistern from the wall.’

‘But my
hair
!’ I wailed, grasping at the giant afro to make him realize the seriousness of the situation.

‘I don’t know much about hair,’ said Jim, carefully scrutinizing me, ‘but I think it might take a bit more than a shower to sort out your barnet.’

‘How dare you!’ I said, trembling with rage and frustration.

‘No offence, Dawn, you’re not a bad-looking girl, but have you ever heard of John Frieda Frizz-Ease serum?’

That was it. I was not about to be lectured on hair care by a plumber whose blond streaks were, I suspected, not entirely natural. What sort of man actually gets highlights? The vanity! And for
him to stand there, all sweaty in his filthy jeans and a tight white T-shirt with a frankly offensive slogan on it, and actually lecture me on appearance! I stomped back up the stairs to my attic
room and slammed the door so hard that the frame shook. I shook, too. I couldn’t even, like Percy, rinse my hair in the sink, because there was no water in the entire sodding house. My whole
day was ruined. My whole
life
was ruined.

I had already cried more in the last few weeks than in the last ten years of my life; and with my horrendous haircut I couldn’t afford to look any worse. So I gulped back the sobs that
were welling up in my chest, and attempted to wrestle my hair into submission. I had to resort to a version of the tight plaits that had blighted my early adolescence – anything else just
allowed the frizz to escape and, if anything, it looked worse springing out in irregular patches than when in one huge bouffy triangle. I left the house with two sensible French pleats winding down
my head as if it was my first day at Wareham Manor School, aged fourteen, friendless and ginger and the new girl yet again.

‘Oh Goouurd, Roars, what happened?’ demanded Ticky as soon as she saw my hair. ‘What is this freaky hairstyle you’ve got going on? You look like some spoddy cellist in
the National Youth Orchestra, for God’s sake. Tell me Marlon didn’t do this?’

‘No, Marlon didn’t do the plaits,’ I said through gritted teeth. ‘Marlon styled my hair so ridiculously that this is the only way I can wear it today.’

‘Oh, like, nightmare,’ grimaced Ticky. ‘Turn around – let me see. Well, Roars, I can’t really see how much he’s taken off.’

‘Trust me, this is better than it was when I left the salon,’ I grumbled.

‘Goouurd, Roars, I am, like, so sorry.’ She wheeled herself over on her swivelling office chair and propped her elbows on my desk. ‘Did you, like, cry and shit? Was it
awful?’

‘Yes, Ticky, I did cry and shit,’ I said as she nodded encouragingly. ‘For about an hour. But I should have realized that I was expecting too much. It was only a haircut. I was
never going to have some ugly-duckling-to-swan transformation. This isn’t a movie.’

‘No, Roars, not unless, like, it’s a disaster movie. Like,
Shampoo: The Reckoning
. How did you feel when you looked in the mirror?’ She cocked her head to one side in an
I-am-listening-attentively gesture.

I had a creeping suspicion that Ticky, for all that she seemed to be trying to help me at the moment, might have somehow engineered my disastrous hairstyle to create more drama for her vicarious
enjoyment. Not that I am suggesting she told her hairdresser to make me look stupid, but that arranging a visit to the salon was probably done more in her interests than in mine, even if she
wasn’t aware of it. Subconsciously it suited her to keep me in a state of victimhood so that she could continue to be the supportive confidante. After all, as long as I was lurching from one
emotional disaster to another, her entertainment was guaranteed.

‘I hope you didn’t pay him,’ she said, rubbing my arm reassuringly.

‘Of course I bloody paid him!’ I said. ‘I even tipped him! I didn’t want to make a scene.’

Ticky stared at me in amazement. I knew she wouldn’t understand. She and her friends were the kind of people who could remain entirely oblivious to the dark looks and resentful mutterings
of a pub full of locals as they loudly brayed their way through a Sunday lunch in a tiny village. They believed the world enjoyed listening to their loudly expressed opinions; they had been fed
giant helpings of self-confidence along with their boarding-school suppers (never dinners, only common people ate dinners). They had a sense of entitlement so strong that it never occurred to them
that not everyone was as delighted with them as they were with themselves.

‘Roars,’ she said gently. ‘It’s, like, not making a scene to say you hate what someone’s done to your hair. It’s just an exchange of money for service, and if
that service is crappy you’re totally allowed to say so?’

‘Yes, I suppose so,’ I agreed, to get her off my back. I knew she would have preferred me to have had a screaming row with her hairdresser just so that she had something outrageous
to discuss with him the next time she visited for her highlights. My silent seething was not nearly dramatic enough for her purposes. But this was my life, and I was not living it for her
enjoyment, I thought bitterly. Although, to be honest, nor did I seem to be especially living it for my own enjoyment these days; more struggling through each day in turn.

I visited the ladies’ far too often that day. I wasn’t sure what I expected to have happened to my hair each time; it’s not as if it would have magically grown back while I sat
at my desk answering emails, but I kept returning to the mirror as if it might have improved since the last time I checked. I was turning my head from side to side in yet another despairing
analysis when I heard Amanda’s strident tones mixed with Martha’s equally loud ones in the harsh blend of voices to which everyone in the office was horribly accustomed. And it was
heading towards the ladies’. Panicked, I threw myself into a cubicle, locked the door and tucked my feet up on to the loo seat, hoping they would think it was out of order rather than
occupied.

I heard the door swing open and two pairs of heels click on to the tiled floor. You could tell which ones were Amanda’s – they had the tight plink of spiky, expensive, spindly heels,
the impractical kind that suggested (accurately) that their wearer spent more time in taxis than on foot. Martha’s were stouter, more clompy, but louder. I had long suspected that she
received them as a kickback from the advertisers at the back of the magazine; they looked suspiciously like the truly hideous ‘Comfort? Yes! And style, too!’ numbers offered by
Weldon’s of Ludlow. And it would be just like Martha to aim so tragically low in her appropriation of magazine perks.

‘First a dating column, and now an agony aunt?’ Martha hissed. I don’t know why she thought lowering her voice would make any difference now the whole office knew she and
Amanda had retreated to the ladies’.

‘Martha, I appreciate you are, even after three long years, uncomfortable with the new direction the magazine is taking,’ said Amanda wearily, ‘but fighting me over every
change is simply wasting your time as well as mine.’

‘I’m not fighting against
you
, Amanda, I’m fighting
for
our loyal readers,’ Martha snapped. ‘Forty thousand readers can’t be wrong.’

‘Forty thousand readers six years ago, Martha,’ said Amanda, with a voice of steely politeness. ‘Only twenty-two thousand by the time I took over.’

‘Twenty-two thousand
very
happy and satisfied readers,’ Martha said. ‘And you are betraying them all with your silly women’s magazine ideas.’

Martha, although she did not have the shell of posh that shielded one from all doubt, had a blind spot all of her own. How did she not see that losing nearly twenty thousand readers in the space
of three years was a bit of a problem? Of course there was always the possibility that the ageing readership had simply gone to the big country house in the sky instead of abandoning the magazine
for more racy reading, but even so, no other company would have allowed Martha to stay on in any capacity whatsoever. The Bettertons, being a family firm, had only kept her on out of guilt and the
knowledge that, after so long at
Country House
, she was effectively unemployable anywhere else.

‘Thirty-five thousand readers according to last month’s fgures,’ said Amanda. ‘So I must be doing something right.’