“I’d like to keep a few blonde streaks in if that’s okay? I guess it makes me feel a bit younger.” Roni blushed and looked down, avoiding eye contact with Karl.
“That’s fine. You have to walk round with it, Roni, and you have to be happy and make choices which feel right at the time. If it’s wrong we can always fix it later – but it won’t be – I give you my word.”
He lifted the brittle ends of Roni’s hair which sat just above shoulder length when it was let loose. More often than not, Roni’s hair was tied back in a scruffy bobble or twisted messily and stuffed into a cheap plastic clamp. Hair was the one area where she had tried not to neglect herself but it hadn’t worked out that way and it was all down to her inability to sit in a chair with someone she didn’t know and probably wouldn’t like. The art of a two-way conversation seemed easy enough on paper, but for Veronica Smyth who spent much of her time alone roaming around her huge house, the skill of conversing was long gone. Roni had taken to buying off-the-shelf hair-dyes when she ventured out on the rare occasion, getting Peter or the kids to put them on when she could be bothered. She did as much behind closed doors as possible.
But she was getting better.
“The ends really do need to go, I’m afraid. They’re completely dead, Roni, they’re so brittle I’m suprised they haven’t broken off. What I’d really like to do is add some copper colour to your hair mixed in with a few chunky blonde streaks just around the front.” Karl took the colour chart and handed it to Roni, pointing out the two colours for her approval. She looked excited at the prospect of something new in her life.
“I’m thinking a short bob, arched into the back of your neck and longer at the front to retain the feminity of the style and of course the bounce.” Karl laughed as he threw his head to one side dramatically. His black hair shifted position with his long fringe flicking from left to right. He swept it back into place, pushing it from his forehead, the styling wax keeping it thick and heightened.
Roni smirked at Karl as he preened in the mirror, redoing what he had just undone with the flick of his head. She could tell he was trying to put her at ease and it was working. He was so normal, so down to earth and so incredibly handsome with his silvery eyes and Mediterranean colouring. She had heard so much about this young man, yet had never met him. He didn’t seem too camp to her – a little perhaps but not to the extreme Sophie had talked of.
“Okay,” she said.
Karl set about his mammoth task. He was excited about it. He couldn’t wait to spin her around when the job was done and show her just how good she looked. Karl could clearly see how well Roni was capable of looking. He had imagined her to be an oversized frump with a permament frown, but instead he saw a curvaceous middle-aged woman with perfect skin, decent dress sense – if not a little tacky – and a pleasant smile, contrived as it often seemed to be.
Roni’s high cheekbones took away from the thinness of her lips and her blue eyes were crystal clear with naturally dark lashes. Her eyebrows had been overplucked and pencilled back in neatly. She certainly wasn’t his type, she was way too old, but Sophie had given her an extremely poor reference as far as he was concerned. Then again, in fairness, compared to Sophie, she was plain and uninteresting. As were most women.
“Are you going away this summer, Roni?” Karl started the obligatory small talk as he mixed together two colours, squeezing the tubes into a small brown bowl until they were empty. He handed the tubes to his junior who needed no instructions to understand they were for the bin. He smiled at her gratefully.
“I think Peter wants to go away this year but I’m not sure where we’ll be going.” Roni set down the magazine she had been trying to read. “In fact, I’d also like to go away now that I’m . . .” Roni hesitated. Karl continued painting a layer of her hair from root to tip before wrapping it tightly in the aluminium foil which was being passed to him by his ever-so-attentive junior.
“You’re what?”
“I’m erm . . . learning to swim,” she whispered.
“Good for you, Roni, that’s brilliant! You know, I still can’t drive much, to the annoyance of Sophie, but I think you’ve just given me the kick up the bum I needed.” Karl smiled at her in the mirror. He wanted to keep her relaxed and at ease in his company.
Roni was elated. It was impossible to hide the massive boost Karl had just given her. See, she wasn’t the only one who still had much to learn. Perhaps she had been a little hard on herself?
“You’ve got your own pool, haven’t you?”
Roni wondered how much he knew about her and she tensed immediately. There was absolutely no chance that Sophie would have been complimentary – she knew that was a dead cert.
Karl sensed the change.
“Yes, but we don’t use it much,” Roni answered. “In fact, we hadn’t used it since the girls went off to university – until last week when I had my first swimming lesson. But apart from that, I can’t remember the last time I got in it, to tell you the truth.”
“What was it like then?”
Karl was like lightning. No sooner had he foil-wrapped one piece of hair, his comb was out grabbing another piece, thinning it out widthways with the thin handle of the multi-purpose comb.
Roni turned a shade of scarlet. She was sure her guilt was painted on her crimson face in bold lettering. She had enjoyed it so much.
“It was fine, thank you.” Her tone was clipped.
Roni grabbed the magazine. She shoved her face deep into it to remove the iniquity which warmed her from the outside in and Karl couldn’t help but notice how ever-changing her behaviour was. One minute she was nothing short of delightful, the next she was clipped, abrupt and defensive. There was definitely more to that woman than met the eye, more than he had realised early on in their encounter. She was the one to watch and all his money was placed on her.
Clive tapped his pen repeatedly on the desk. His heavy touch drowned out the sound of the rain lashing down outside the window of his new, grand office. The wet weather was typical Bank Holiday weather and Clive wished wholeheartedly that the liquid precipitation would clear the air so that it would be bright and sunny for May Day itself so that The Trophy could be filled with family and friends as they took a recreational trip around the estuary. The leisurely sail had become an annual Bank Holiday event since they had bought the yacht and every year they went through disturbing amounts of champagne, each year beating the previous, hands down. Also, every year it had been gloriously sunny, adding to the comfort and ease of the day. Clive was keeping his fingers crossed that what was going on outside was freeing the clouds of oblate drops in prepration for a rerun of their unusual luck with the May Day weather. Clive looked forward to this day even more than race days. He got to spend time with Jude, Tom and Anna and all of their friends, giving him enough of a fill to last the remainder of the year. Not a word was mentioned about work on those days and what Clive loved about Jude’s set of friends was that they didn’t care what he did. None of them, bar Roni, was affected in any way when it came to what they had materially. If anything, he was the brash one. But on that singular day of the year, the Westburys entertained their friends for the love of it and to give them a day they could remember.
Clive had never said to Jude, but sometimes he felt like he missed out on so much because of the hours he put in. He felt like Jude was the lucky one with the power to do as she wished without any restrictions like the tight noose he felt wrapped around his neck. She got to take the kids to their hobbies and to collect them when they had finished, hearing all about their escapades on the homeward journey. Jude also got money in her bank account for doing very little as far as he was concerned. They had a cleaner, a gardener and a young girl who mucked out Polly, Anna’s pony, in exchange for keeping her own horse in the purpose-built stables. There were times when Clive swore he would come back as a woman.
He stopped his habitual tapping and leaned forward over the paper-covered desk, pressing the black butt
on on the intercom, which shrilled loudly.
“Yes, Clive?”
“Shirley-Ann, can you order four cases of Laurent-Perrier Rosé, please, and have it delivered to The Firs.”
“Certainly.”
“Thanks,” Clive muttered, tapping his pen again with renewed vigour.
There was something bugging him today but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.
Last night Jude had been different – only marginally – but there was a definite change in her and he couldn’t manage to pinpoint what it was, but it had consumed his thoughts all day. It couldn’t be women’s problems, could it? He tried to narrow it down in his mind but Jude had never suffered from PMS, PMT or any sort of hormonal mood-swings so he could write that off for starters. She had never suffered from anything which affected her mood and he knew how lucky he was not to have it in the neck from a nagging wife – ‘her indoors’ – he had heard all the stories from the poor sods at work, some of whose wives had flown at them with knives during certain parts of the month. He shuddered at the prospect of living with a Mrs Bobbet.
It certainly couldn’t be money problems, so generous was the monthly housekeeping he paid into her bank account. But something had been so different about his wife last night that it agitated him to the point of frustration. It had been the bane of his day so far and had set him back as he vexed about her levelled attitude and carelessly relaxed approach. Jude had been a paradox in terms of how she’d behaved.
When he had come in from work the house was in darkness with an unlit fire, and the whereabouts of her usual home cooking was anybody’s guess. When Jude had suggested a take-out, Clive was astounded, but his tiredness repressed his disconcerted emotions.
It wasn’t that he minded. He really didn’t, it was that this was the first time in their entire married life that Jude did not have his dinner ready and waiting and it was this he couldn’t get his head round. She was as consistent and as reliable as Big Ben.
He recalled mentioning his yachting magazine and Jude had sprung from her seat, delivering it straight to him. She was exuberant and full of energy in doing so yet she had little to say to him about her day when he had asked her what she had done.
Jude had never minded playing the domestic role, but even to her there was a clear difference between carrying out the day-to-day tasks of running a home and being subservient to someone. That was why when she had dived from her seat with the expectation that he couldn’t even fetch his own reading material, Clive had become suspicious that Jude was hiding something.
She had waited on him hand and foot. Also, she had been different over the past number of weeks, distracted it almost seemed but with little to show for it. There were no major functions and no upcoming events in her diary. Not that he knew of anyway.
He had to talk to her.
Clive dialled and redialled Jude’s number. No answer. Again.
He never left messages. They weren’t allowed to at Staines & Greer for confidentiality reasons and the habit was a hard one to kick, even though she was his wife.
Instead Clive sent her a text: Want to meet for bite of lunch?
Clive knew she wouldn’t say no. They had little enough time together as it was. His fault, not hers. She was a beautiful woman, anyone could see that, and for the first time in his life, Clive was nervous. His thickly coated arrogance had thinned out, leaving him feeling weak and questioning about the sudden change he had been witnessings.
Jude had still been Jude, but with a twist. She had bounced around the house with a spring in her step and she had a sparkle in her eye which he had not observed for a long time and Clive’s gut wrenched as his mind raced to a conclusion which only nightmares were made of.
Surely not?
Karl removed the black gown from around Roni’s neck, ripping at the velcro.
Mandy handed him a black plastic brush with long hairs and a knob for its handle and Karl dusted Roni’s shoulders, shooing the debris of hair which had a proven ability to reach the strangest of places.
“Keep your eyes shut,” he ordered her as he swung the chair around to face the mirror.
He got to work, finishing off his masterpiece.
As Karl sprayed the last of the hairspray, he set down the can and stood back to admire his work of art. He and Mandy exchanged satisfied grins of artistic appreciation.
“On the count of three you can open your eyes, Roni . . . one – two – three!”
Karl was unusually nervous. He so wanted her to be happy because for some reason he had felt that this visit was about more than just a hairstyle. It was about the rediscovery of a person who was clearly dying to get out of there and show the world who she was. Only Karl felt that Roni was still learning who she was.
She was, it appeared, a late developer.
“I said one, two, three, Roni! You can open your eyes now!”
Roni kept her eyes shut. She was too scared to open them for fear that she looked like herself. True, she came in as herself, but she wanted to leave as someone entirely different to match the difference she had been feeling inside of late. She felt someone nudge her as her world remained in darkness.
“Come on, Roni, take a look at yourself!”
Roni opened her eyes, staring at the floor. She could do it. She only had to raise her head slightly to meet herself but she had always found looking herself in the eye hard to do. This was why she was so keen on her array of jewellery – it caused a distraction not just to her but to everyone who looked at her.
Roni gasped, her mouth flopped open, eyes widened in disbelief. She reacted exactly like those women she saw being made over on the television and now she knew that their responses were not fabricated in any way. She had reacted exactly the same as they did.
“Oohh!” She sucked in the air followed by a “Wow!”. That was all she could manage.
Karl and Mandy beamed at her. She looked incredible and Mandy, young as she was, welled up upon seeing how flabbergasted their client was at her new image. Compared to how she looked when she walked in, the transformation was extraordinary.
Roni’s hair had been styled into a razor-sharp bob, cut into her jawline and taken higher at the back, sitting arched just above the nape of her neck. Just as Karl had promised, the length at the front was a contrast of womanly chic compared with the sharpness of the back and sides, with copper-coloured shiny locks curled under her chin and pillar blocks of blonde thickly coloured around her fringe. The perfectly symmetrical shape framed Roni’s heart-shaped face, thinning it out cleverly. The midlife jowl which was just beginning to show was disguised, hidden from view as the silk, plumped-up tresses curled in to it bluntly. Roni saw the slightly loose skin below her jawline. It wasn’t a permanent feature, a little weight loss would soon bring her back into shape. Already she could see how the restyle had distracted from it and she only knew it was there because she looked for it. She looked for her flaws before she looked at anything else.
Her face lit up as she smiled at herself in the mirror and right in the eyes too. They smiled back at her with matching levels of intensity. But strangely enough she didn’t feel a bit emotional or weepy as she watched Mandy dab her heavily made-up eyes with a tissue. She felt at home, like she was back from wherever it was she’d been – or not been as was the case. She felt like her new look fitted her like a glove. It was as though someone had waved a magic wand and snapped her from the permanent state of hypnosis she had lived under for so long now. As she stared at the reflection of the striking woman in front of her Roni felt invincible.
Where the hell had she been? She was a millionaire’s wife for Christ’s sake, she could be out there doing the world of good for people who needed it – herself and her family firstly, of course. Instead she had been the centre of her own universe, inhabitants One, shutting herself away and shoving her purse deep into her bag like a metaphor for her life.
Roni’s restyle had also restyled her life. It was there for the taking and she was
damn well going to live it.
Jude saw the missed calls from Clive. She had had her phone on silence as she chatted over a relaxing coffee with John. The time had flown in while they covered all that was on their agenda, and more.
Jude found him easy to deal with and extremely professional and he had welcomed her ideas over the architectural structure which both pleased and flattered her immensely. She was off to a great start and she couldn’t wait to show Sophie the proposed colour scheme and the professional ceramics she had discovered for the interior and fitting-out. It was a long way off and Jude knew she needed to be patient.
The latter she was finding difficult.
She excused herself politely, lifting her phone to return Clive’s call, choosing the privacy of the outdoors. The café was too small, too intimate to speak with her husband.
She stayed back from the rain, leaning against the exterior window, protected by the brown-and-beige striped canopy above her head. She watched the rain fall from the end of the canvas splatting down onto the steel smokers’ tables which were redundant and uninvitingly wet. It was ridiculous weather for the beginning of May and Jude knew how much her friends were looking forward to a leisurely float on the more shallow waters of the estuary as they immersed themselves in champagne and hand-made canapés. It was always a beautiful day and she hoped that the weekend would brighten up for them. It was, besides Christmas, her favourite day of the year.
Clive answered his mobile with clear agitation.
“Where have you been? I’ve been calling you all morning, Jude.”
Jude was taken aback at his abruptness. “I’m at the Coffee Bean with Sophie. Why, is something wrong?”
Some Like it Hot Page 16
