by Donna Alam
Eurgh. I hate my name. Hate it when anyone uses it like that. It’s Fin. How many times have I got to say it? Fin! I’d even answer to o , or even la , if I have to, but never all together.
Fin + o + la = Finola ≥ a stupid name.
‘Do you not think that might upset the barber on the high street?’ Her worried gaze slips to Ivy.
‘Fin won’t be booking any waxing course.’ Ivy scoffs, like the whole idea’s a huge joke. But it isn’t. Wasn’t. Oh, I don’t know! ‘She’ll be jetting off to the corporate world again soon enough. Besides,’ she says, turning a softer gaze to June, ‘I’ve no intention of stealing the barbers’ trade. Natasha was just telling us about her latest gentleman . . . erm, caller.’
‘Well, he came all right,’ Nat says under her breath. ‘All over my back. I couldn’t resist!’ The burr of her accent grows more gleeful with each delivered word. ‘A beard! A beard I love to f—’
‘Nat!’
‘What? I was gonna say fondle. ’
‘What was that, dear?’ asks June, grasping the book balanced on the arm of her chair. Opening the cover, she begins to absently flick through the pages. ‘A beard did you say? I imagine it was like having a hamster to pet. I do recall you nearly killed the one I bought you when you were seven.’
‘I nearly killed the beard last night.’
‘Pardon, hen?’ June asks again. I adore being referred to as hen, especially by June. It’s sort of like hun or sweetheart, but more Scottish.
‘I loved it too much, Nan,’ Natasha answers, overly loud.
‘You did, you did,’ she agrees with several nods of her snow-white head. ‘Now, what chapter were we discussing? I must’ve nodded off for a wee while.’
It’s hard to believe this has become the highlight of my week since finding myself back home—and when I say home I mean it in the loosest sense—in a tiny little seaside enclave in the Scottish borders called Auchkeld—living it large with book club night. Or as Natasha calls it, chillin’, wine swillin’ and poncy literature nillin’.
We meet once a week in Ivy’s tiny flat above her new business venture, Emporium, a beauty salon, due to open next week. Our book club chapter totals four members. Ivy, my best friend forever. Well, almost forever; my best friend since I moved hered aged twelve. Much like myself, she’s also recently returned to the village, though I don’t buy her reasons as purely coincidence. Sure, a hair and beauty salon is just what this village needs, but she’s leaving behind a pretty impressive career. Not to mention, she’s here by choice. Unlike myself.
My other book club buddies include Natasha, a twenty-one-year-old beauty therapist and part-time nymphomaniac. And, lastly, June, Natasha’s octogenarian grannie, who Ivy seems to have somehow inherited along with Nat.
‘The page, hen?’ June prompts.
‘What? Oh, we haven’t started yet.’ As usual, Natasha’s Friday night tales of strumpet in the city beat that of any steamy book, because yes, it’s that kind of book club. ‘We were just chatting about . . . men.’
Folding her arms across her chest, Ivy snorts.
‘What?’ Natasha protests. ‘It’s not like I went out specifically to get fondled . . .’
She smiles slyly and I try not to shake my head like an old prude. Sometimes I feel like we’re from different planets. There are only five years between us, but those years are as vast as the ocean sitting between Scotland and the States, which I suppose is where I’m originally from, given that I was born and partially raised there. Fake tan, hair extensions and shady decisions after one too many drinks; why is it everyone under twenty-five thinks they invented a good time?
Maybe because a good night for me includes fluffy socks, a steamy book and the company of someone more than fifty years older. At least, recently.
‘Anyway,’ continues Nat. ‘He had a man bun, which you know I love, and that full-on facial fuzz. I just wanted to stroke it,’ she adds dreamily. ‘And ride it,’ she adds a lot more forcefully.
‘I know beards are fashionable, but isn’t it a bit, I don’t know . . . unhygienic?’
‘Psht! It’s manly! There’s just something primal about a man with a beard. Something that says I’m here now, the boys can go home .’
‘I’m here now,’ repeats Ivy in a bass tone. ‘Get the flea comb out.’
‘You know what you are? You’re facialist.’ With a smile full of self-satisfaction, Nat folds her arms. ‘A fascist facialist.’
‘That sounds like very niche market porn,’ I respond. ‘Neo-Nazis skinheads and a face full of ejaculate.’
Simultaneously, the three of us burst into dirty, sniggering giggles.
‘But, hey, what about when he, you know . . .’ Ivy’s words trail off, her eyes comically wide. For a minute, I think she’s trying to convey meaning by telepathy before her head begins to move like she’s developed a sudden tic.
‘When he what?’ Natasha asks, frowning.
‘You know, when he goes downstairs?’ Her tiny button nose scrunches, the last word spoken so quietly, it’s more breath than actual word.
‘What, down to the salon?’
‘Nooo. Downstairs. ’ Ivy puts her thumbs to pointing use once again. ‘Wouldn’t he need to shampoo his face afterwards? Get out the detangling spray?’
‘Nah. A beard says I can handle the fall out. ’
‘The only hair he’d be plucking out of his teeth would be his own,’ I add, sniggering.
‘Honestly!’
‘A beard says I’m adventurous, ’ says Nat.
‘My George was a wee bit adventurous.’ June’s sleepy voice floats up from the fireside chair. ‘He was even known to drop anchor in poo bay from time to time.’
The room is suddenly pin droppingly silent, all eyes turning to June, though her own remain closed, her head resting back against the old wing-back chair.
‘Your grandad?’ Ivy silently mouths the question to Natasha, who shakes her head in response.
‘George was my first husband and I was little more than a child bride, but we married young back then. A soldier he was. He died just after the war, the poor love. He was such a bonny man.’ Her tone is almost wistful, her eyes blinking open, her gaze touching each of us in turn. ‘Tall, dark and handsome. He was like something out of one of yon Mills and Boon novels, only my Georgie was very well endowed, you know in the . . . aye, down there.’ Closing the book on her lap, she taps the cover lightly. ‘They didn’t write about those bits in my day. But, my goodness, was the man ever adventurous!’
‘Nan!’ What sounds like admonishment from Natasha morphs quickly into wicked glee. ‘You dark horse!’
‘What? Oh, not me, dear,’ she replies, with an air of a large blue-eyed owl. Sitting straighter, she begins to pull the sides of her pink Fair Isle twin set closer. ‘I think he was one of them, what do they call them these days? Bi-scotti?’
Maybe less owl and more cuckoo.
‘Italian biscuits?’ questions Ivy.
‘I think she means bi-curious,’ I say, uncurling myself from the chair to reach for June’s empty sherry glass.
‘Aye, that’s it,’ she agrees. ‘Just plain greedy, if you ask me. It was probably for the best that he passed,’ she adds with a sigh. ‘I was heartbroken at the time, but I had a hard time sharing him, you see.’ Her guileless gaze stares up at me and for a minute, it’s like she can see through me, right into my very head.
‘How did it happen? Did he die overseas?’ My words are little more than a whisper and I find the fingers of both hands curled into my chest. Heart pangs; it’s a word most are familiar with, but not many truly understand. I’d always thought it to be brain-based, a sort of an emotional thing. But it isn’t. It’s an actual feeling, both shocking and physically painful, like catching your shin on the corner of a low table, or being pinched.
Only the injury is to your heart.
Overseas. In some strange field.
Or a lonely stretch of water with the sun beating down.
‘Ocht, no! ’ June’s voice brings me out of my nightmarish reverie with a snap. ‘He was hit by the number twenty-three bus coming out of one of them Turkish bath places in London. Like I said, he was a greedy man.’
The others try to smother laughter as, like an automaton, my fingers reach again for June’s glass when her small hand catches my wrist. My eyes don’t meet hers, or more accurately, I can’t look. Not without crying and I’m trying to do less of that. Instead, I stare at the back of her hand; the blue veins beneath skin like a covering of delicate parchment, the unexpected elegance in her fingers, and how the light from the wood fire plays on the pale gold of her wedding band.
‘You survive,’ she says softly. ‘You get out of bed and put your knickers on, just like any other day. Because giving up isn’t an option, and it’s not, what they would want.’
I do look at her then as she grasps my hand, holding it between her own. ‘I won’t tell you it goes away, but one day, you’ll look back and realise it hurts a wee bit less, and then a wee bit less again.’ Her tone is earnest as she begins to pat my clasped hand. ‘Then someday you’ll meet someone else, just like I met my Harold. There’s a Harold out there for you somewhere. I just know it, hen.’
But I don’t deserve a Harold. People like me don’t deserve a second chance.
Two
Fin
The following cold and very rainy Tuesday, Ivy’s salon opens, and I don’t mind saying we’re all on hot bricks. Ivy has sunk her life savings into the place and Natasha gave up a spot in a busy city centre beauty bar to be here. But me? My terror lies elsewhere. Yes, if the business fails I’ll be homeless, but I’ll be in good company in my cardboard box. Not that it’s going to come to that as this place is awesome—the talk of the village, so June says. And why wouldn’t it be? All sumptuous gilt fixtures, exposed stone walls and raw, natural wood. The place is a million miles away from its previous incarnation as “Agnes Riley’s Hair Emporium,” which hadn’t been updated since 1965, at least.
Ivy’s version of Emporium oozes an old world glamour with a side order of cutting edge, while somehow retaining a welcome that is friendly and very Ivy. I’m sure the village hasn’t seen anything as sophisticated in years. And that aside, Ivy is a hair genius. True story . God only knows why she’s cutting hair in bum-puck Scotland when she could be plying her trade anywhere in the world.
According to Nat, while we’ve both been away, this crummy little no-place has become a desirable commuter community. House prices have sky-rocketed and the yummy mummy tribe and their something in I.T . husbands have moved in. Ivy’s business plan is banking on the upwardly mobile to not be quite so itinerant; for them to shop local for their expensive caramel and honey highlight needs.
But I’m not ruining the cuffs of my Givenchy sweater at the thought of meeting those living in pseudo farmhouses on desirous half-acre blocks. Nope. It’s the locals I’m terrified of meeting again. Since moving back, I’ve barely ventured beyond this building. In fact, it took me weeks to get myself beyond the refuge of Ivy’s spare room. I’ve avoided seeing familiar faces; the bitches I went to school with, the ones who wrote nasty things about me on the bathroom stalls. The boys who may or may not have felt me up behind the gym, but said they did anyway.
Mom and I moved around a whole lot when I was young, but as I turned twelve, she decided we needed to put down some roots and moved us to her home town. I remember being so excited; I’d get to grow up Scottish—be like mom! Get the cool accent and everything.
Yeah, maybe not. But at least I found Ivy. On the not so great side, I also found I’d never fit in.
She’ll turn out just like her ma, that one.
I can still hear the hushed conversations at the corner store and school bus stop. My mother is free spirited. Free with her loving. Or, as they called her at school, a slut.
While Ivy and I were both desperate to get out of this place as teenagers, my reasons were less about spreading my wings. I just needed to be out from under the weight of mom’s reputation. Not that I don’t love her—and I try not to judge—but it was hard growing up here.
So I’m nervous. Very nervous, but I haven’t confided in Ivy. She’s done enough for me already. What kind of friend would I be to say I can’t face a few hours working the front desk? She’s always been sweet and kind to most everyone. She’s one of those rare individuals people never fail to like, while I’m prickly and slightly awkward, though I hide it mostly behind a veneer of I don’t give a fuck. Like most veneers, it’s only surface deep. Sticks and stones hurt more than words? Tell that to the girl living in a community of curtain twitchers, watching a revolving line of men from her mother’s bedroom door.
‘Well, you know what, bitches? She found her Prince Charming. She just happened to have fucked a whole lot of frogs.’
‘Who fucked frogs?’ Natasha joins me as I stare out at the rain soaked street. ‘Are there Frenchies about? I think I could get off just listening to them recite the alphabet.’
‘No Frenchmen,’ I reply with a sigh as Nat collects the morning’s mail from the doormat.
‘What about him?’ she asks, pausing from flicking through a pile of circulars. ‘Reckon he could be one of them French Canadian lumberjack blokes. I’d let him climb me.’
Huge drops of rain pound against the glass and bounce from the grey sidewalks outside. As I raise my gaze from the miniature river gathering in the gutter, taking in the lone figure crossing the street, clothing soaked to his skin. The weather is hardly an auspicious start for the salon, if you believe in that sort of thing, and it’s an awful day to be caught outside without a jacket or umbrella. As the rain-hazy figure draws nearer, I wonder whether the label Nat has given him is a nod to his clothing or the man himself. It could be either given his build and his dark, wet plaid shirt.
‘You cold?’
I shake my head in answer even as I rub my upper arms, the fine hairs there standing like pins.
‘Right, I’d better go switch on my wax pot. My first appointment’s due soon.’ Clutching the mail to her chest, Nat does a sort of excited jig on the spot. ‘You ready?’ she asks eagerly. Even though the answer is no, I nod. ‘Well, open the door then, numpty.’
‘Oh, right.’ With a frown and a sense of trepidation, I do. ‘Where’s Ivy?’ I ask Nat’s retreating form.
‘Still upstairs, burning sage and brewing success and harmony potions, probably,’ she answers without turning around.
The knot in my stomach lingers as I slide the locks on the door.
Flipping my long blonde braid over my shoulder, I begin fine-tuning the foliage in an expensive bowl of cabbage roses on the reception counter, when the bell above the door chimes.
I begin to turn. ‘Good—’ I begin in my best perkiest receptionist’s tone ‘—ass.’ That is a good ass. A borderline great ass. A wet flannel shirt clings to his broad shoulders, a firm back tapering to a narrow waist, the wet denim below moulded to that ass .
‘Sorry?’ he says, the bell ringing again as he turns from closing the door.
Nat’s first appointment is her lumberjack friend. My first thought isn’t too ridiculous. I’d climb that. It’s a pity my second isn’t so sane; my mind just filled with the ridiculous—I wonder what bits he’s having waxed and if she’ll need someone to hold her spatula.
And now he’s just looking at me. Smiling, sort of.
Speak the words, Fin. Sensible ones, if you please.
‘N-nothing,’ I reply belatedly, followed by an even perkier, ‘Hi! Good morning!’ Like this will somehow cancel out my previous words.
‘I’m no’ so sure about the good bit. It’s dreich out there.’
He steps further into the reception, sliding one hand through his wet, dark hair. It’s a move smooth enough for a shampoo commercial. Longer on top, but cropped close underneath, his is a hair style rather than a haircut. Not that I’m looking too hard. Or imagining running my hands through it or anything.
A singular droplet of rain falls from his fingers, gliding down one chiselled cheekbone to lie glistening against the scruff shadowing his jaw. His lips are slightly pale against cold-flushed skin, the suggestion of straight, white teeth peeking from behind. But as his lips hitch in one corner, my heart jolts—one solid movement that pushes the organ up into my throat—as I realise this isn’t our first meeting. I know this face, and once upon a time, I was more than familiar with other parts of him.
Rory.
I’ve never forgotten his name, but I think that could be pretty standard considering he’s the man I lost my virginity to. One stunningly brief encounter that pretty much altered my path in life. Not his fault, of course. He was young, as well as my wake-up call.
And he’s still ridiculously hot, though rugged has been exchanged for what was once a youthful prettiness, like he’s grown into his bone structure, almost. Angled cheekbones and knife-sharp jaw. And it’s safe to assume he knows he’s all that and a six pack, judging by his brand of almost taunting, relaxed confidence. And by the way his gaze unashamedly holds my own.
Hell. My cheeks heat as I realise I should be listening to the sounds his mouth makes, rather than just staring at the shape of it. The shape of him.
‘Dreich, you know? Dreary?’ His voice is low with a hint of teasing, like he thinks I’ve just checked out while checking him out. There’s no clue in his demeanour to suggest he recognises me and, while on some level, that’s kind of disappointing, it’s also understandable. These days I’m a different person. Both inside and out.
‘Yeah, I know dreich.’ I lift one shoulder, self-consciously pulling on the ends of my braid. ‘It means miserable. The weather, I mean.’
‘Ah, I thought with that accent . . .’ His smile widens a touch. ‘Although my day got a whole lot brighter just now.’
He makes no bones about letting his gaze roam over mine . . . bones, that is, his eyes moving over me in that almost imperceptible way. Something tells me my gaze is less inconspicuous, especially as he slides his hands into the pockets of his dark jeans, the motion pushing his open plaid shirt wider across a very broad chest. He’s built like a swimmer and larger than in my memories and I can’t help but notice how the pale t-shirt beneath is moulded to his hard body and paper thin. Sort of wet paper thin; like it’d take nothing but a few more drops for it to dissolve. I have the sudden and insane longing to reach out and touch the stiff points of his rain-cold nipples, to slide my hands over the hard ripples of his chest and abs. The notion is so tempting I find myself balling my hands into fists.
