er –’ I picked up my glass of lemonade. It was still half full. ‘It’s OK, I’ve got loads left thanks.’
He shook his head and laughed. ‘Nah, I don’t mean to drink. I mean for your birthday. What do you want for your birthday?’
‘Oh!’ In all the drama I’d completely forgotten what day it was. I gave an embarrassed laugh and some lemonade sloshed over the top of my glass. Across the beer garden the girl with the nose-bolt leant back on her seat and ran her hand through her electric-blue hair.
‘A haircut.’ Oh, God! Where had that come from? Now he was going to think I was crazy for sure.
‘A haircut?’ Steve looked at my stupid stringy hair and frowned.
‘Yes, but not just any old haircut . . .’ I stopped mid-sentence, mortified. It was like some idiot game-show host had seized control of my mouth!
‘Oh yeah?’ Steve’s dimple sprang into life again as he grinned across the table at me.
I nodded, figuring I had nothing left to lose. ‘I want a cool haircut. Like hers.’ I pointed to the girl with the blue hair who just at that moment let out a loud belch.
Steve started to laugh and I wanted to crawl under the table and dig myself deep into the dry ground. Now he’d be thinking I was some stupid wannabe kid. He probably wished he’d never sent me the card, that he’d been right to leave it for thirteen years. I may as well just tell him I wasn’t Cherokee Brown at all – that my name was Claire Weeks-as-in-weak and I had no friends and actually people preferred to call me names and throw eggs at me and –
‘Come on then.’ Steve got to his feet and picked up his guitar.
‘Where are we going?’ I felt sick. He’d had enough of me and wanted me to go. He was probably going to march me to the station and put me on the first train back home.
‘Your wish is my command, madam.’ He held out his hand to me, then stuffed it into his jeans pocket. ‘If a haircut’s what you want, then a haircut’s what you’re gonna get.’
‘Really?’
‘Really. But don’t worry – I ain’t gonna do it. Not unless you want a skinhead? I’m a dab hand with a set of clippers.’
‘No!’
He threw his head back and let out a raucous laugh. ‘I’m joking, man. Come on, I know just the place. And don’t worry, it’s so cool you’ll come out of there with frostbite.’
Chapter Six
‘The gifted writer won’t need pages and pages of description. Often they will be able to sum up what they need to say in just one word.’
Agatha Dashwood,
So You Want to Write a Novel?
I followed Steve out of the beer garden and along the side of the market back to the busy main road. As we waited for the traffic lights to change I saw two women on the other side of the road staring at him. I recognised the look they were giving him immediately – it was the kind Helen and I used to give the hot skater boys at the Southbank when we were checking them out. I glanced at Steve out of the corner of my eye. He was standing chewing gum, his head gently rocking to some silent beat, a small smile playing on his lips. His guitar case was hitched over one shoulder and both of his hands were stuffed into his jeans pockets. I was so used to being seen in public with Alan and people shooting him mocking stares as he talked really loudly on his phone, it was totally weird to be with my real dad and have women checking him out. Weird, but kind of nice. I felt my must-text-Helen reflex start to twinge – she was not going to believe the birthday I was having.
‘Right then,’ Steve said as the lights changed and he guided me across the road and past the drooling women. ‘Let’s get that barnet sorted.’
As I walked along beside him, trying my hardest to disguise my limp, I felt all of the following in one go: excited, terrified, sick, giggly, angry, tearful and in a state of shock. Steve, on the other hand, seemed totally laid-back – as if being reunited with your long-lost daughter and taking her for a haircut within an hour of meeting her was the most normal thing in the world.
‘We’ll try the Truman Brewery,’ he said, leading me down a side street.
‘Brewery?’
He let out a laugh. ‘Don’t worry, it ain’t a brewery any more.’
I followed him into a large courtyard. To our left, clusters of people sat around wooden tables, drinking wine and eating pizza in the sun. To our right, a group of Japanese tourists were traipsing into some kind of art gallery, huge black cameras dangling from their necks. And straight ahead of us, grey-brick, factory-style buildings loomed high into the sky, dwarfing the row of food stalls beneath them. Across from the stalls a queue of people snaked out from an old graffiti-covered trailer. The graffiti spelled out the words dancing chopsticks and it shone like a metallic rainbow in the sun. It seemed to be some kind of crazy Chinese takeaway on wheels. The courtyard buzzed with the same kind of people I’d seen in Spitalfields. People with wedged, spiked and dyed hair and every clothing combination you could possibly imagine. Suits and Converse high-tops. Prom dresses and cowboy boots. Jeans and pork-pie hats. It was like an industrial estate had mated with an art college and we were standing slap bang in the middle of their freakish offspring. I instantly fell in love with it.
‘The hairdressers is round here, by the Chill Bar,’ Steve said. He stopped and looked at me. ‘You sure you still want to do this?’
I nodded. I felt as if I was sleepwalking my way through some crazy, psychedelic dream, and I definitely didn’t want to wake up yet.
‘And you’re OK hanging out with me for a bit longer?’ He suddenly looked really nervous.
I nodded again. ‘Yes. Definitely.’
His face broke into a grin. ‘Sweet! OK, follow me.’ He led me past one of those old-fashioned double-decker buses with the open back – only this one had been converted into an organic wine bar. I wondered how much randomness a human brain could take before it actually exploded! We turned right at the end of the courtyard and into a section of the brewery where the ground floor had been converted into shops. This time the clothes store mannequins were skeletons on skateboards, playing guitars, and the coffee shop was also a record label. The text to Helen I’d been composing in my head started filling with OMGs and WTFs.
‘Here we go.’ Steve came to a halt and I gazed up at the shop in front of us. It was called PUNKED and it took me a moment to realise it was actually a hairdressers, not a nightclub. If I had to choose just one word to describe it then that word would be black. From the sign above the door, to the door itself and the walls and the floor. Walking in was like entering a cool, dark cave.
‘Can I help you?’ A woman emerged from the darkness to greet us. She was wearing so much black she looked as if she’d been drawn in charcoal.
‘Yeah, man. We’d like a haircut please. She’d like a haircut,’ Steve said, gesturing to me.
As I felt my face start to burn I was kind of grateful for the surrounding gloom.
‘Cool,’ the woman replied. ‘Take a seat.’ She waved me over to one of the black leather chairs facing jagged-edged mirrors on the wall. Steve sat down on a black leather sofa by the door, propping his guitar case next to him.
‘Hello.’ A male hairdresser appeared from the back of the shop. Like the woman he was dressed from head to toe in skin-tight black leather. He was also wearing some kind of cowboy holster slung across his narrow hips – but instead of a gun it held a pair of scissors and lots of different combs. He held out his thin, pale hand to shake Steve’s. ‘I’m Wayne. Can I help you?’
Steve shook his head. ‘No thanks, man, I’m just here to watch,’