Owen. Turn Owen into a dad. Even Kari would admit: this was a real crisis.
Lucio was starting to get desperate to keep his salon Fri-Yay happy. I know I’ve got one of those voices that carry (I can’t whisper, it’s not possible) which is okay when I’m all good but is deathly when I am in Debby Downer mode. Lucio knew. Desperate, he bust some moves and started belting out the Tori Kelly version of Stevie Wonder’s song ‘Don’t You Worry ’bout a Thing’. Eventually, about twenty choruses later when I couldn’t help but laugh, he bowed at me to the hysterics of the shampoo girls. I had no choice. He was ridiculous but determined to sprinkle happy dust over the place, like a fairy-hair-mother. The appearance of a tray of champagne helped the magic along, perking up all the other salon ladies immediately.
“Don’t you worry, Lily. I, Lucio, will make sure you are beautiful, and when they see you tonight those skinny girls will wish they ate more sandwiches,” Lucio said sombrely in his Italian-ised Durbanville accent after the last verse of his performance. He fled while the colour set on my hair.
In the break, I WhatsApp-ed the girls in our group. At first it was just called Bitches, but Di didn’t want her girls to see us chatting under a name like that, so we got ABS. Angels and Bitches with a gratuitous ‘S’ so that for once I could feel what it was like to have stomach muscles. We haven’t archived our old LSDoK group (me, Shelley, Di, Owen, and Kari) but after Owen put a ring on it and got upgraded from little ‘o’ to big ‘O’ it was hard to chat about the wedding and his family with him right there. I sort of miss his little ‘o’ voice sometimes, when we were all just friends and he’d helped me understand how guys think. Now I’ve only got Dirk, and Dirk doesn’t phone or send decent WhatsApps and I’m none the wiser as to what happens in the mind of the big ‘O’. When I started the girls-only chat, Owen actually thanked me, he was that glad to be free of the wedding talk. “Dankie fok,” was Dirk’s response when I stopped asking him about the wedding.
I love having ABS.
05:20 PM Lily@ABS: Hell girls, I have news. Owen’s ex and her daughter are moving in. They look like mermaids
05:21 PM Shelley@ABS: No!!
05:22 PM Lily@ABS: Yep. The ball ache? The daughter might be Owen’s. I fucking crashed my car when he told me
05:23 PM Shelley@ABS: What?! You OK? This was NOT on The Complete Wedding Count Down
05:24 PM Lily@ABS: Car is fine. I’m trying not to have a panic attack
05:25 PM Di@ABS: Oh my gosh! I knew that woman was trouble the minute she walked into the office. How old is the daughter? She looks quite grown up, could be the make-up
05:26 PM Lily@ABS: I know hey Shelley!! I’m supposed to be kid-free, what will I do with a red-headed stepchild. Think she is 15, Di
05:27 PM Kari@ABS: Shit, I can’t talk now. Facetime me after 8, Adam should be down by then
Kari put five poop and twenty screaming face emojis in her WhatsApp. Shelley was still typing away but it was time for my rinse and the manicurist Lucio had ordered wanted my fingers.
05:28 PM Lily@ABS: Got to go. Lucio is fixing me, I need to get my game face on for when I go home to THEM. And yes, Di, the kid is blonde. I was just saying.
Lucio talked me into imagining that great hair, perfect nails, a contact for fat freezing (he says it’ll give me a thigh gap) and one Camilla de Angelo-sized G&T (a triple shot that will strip your nail varnish if you accidently dip a finger in) would make it all fine. Fake it until I make it and Lucio was determined not to disappoint in his part of the fakery-makery. They would be afraid of me, dammit!
By six-thirty my hair was fantastic. Sleek and shiny and black – natural-look black, not blue-black – the side-swept fringe skimming the magical space between eyebrows and eyelashes, the ends blunt-cut and curved under, just resting on my shoulders. Lucio is worth every cent of his four-figure eight-weekly bill (great value considering what I’ve spent on the therapists who haven’t made me feel half as good). Chanel Rouge lipstick, Mac Gel Super black eyeliner, Morgan Taylor Light My Fire Engine nails. I didn’t have time to shop but I was wearing my favourite Witchery shirt (soft-washed denim cold-shoulder style, appropriate enough) and white three-quarter Zara skinny pants. Lucio clapped his hands. I was covered in nearly every brand the Waterfront had – that had to be worth something? When I was depressed, it had helped to think of my clothes and make-up as armour. War paint. The more expensive the better.
“Showtime! Remember … no fear, my girl!” He jazzed his hands, flick-flacking his fingers as I left, the whole world his salon. How different it looked when Daddy said the same thing.
At my car, I stared at the crunch in the bumper before I got in. It was much worse than I remembered but I was so pumped I decided I didn’t need Mum’s monster G&T. Great hair, don’t care! I messaged her, told her I would catch up with her some other time. Straight home.
6
“Charge!” was the battle cry in my head as I pulled into the garage at just a little past seven o’clock. Too fucking eager, I crunched the bumper right into one of Dirk’s bikes standing across the front wall of the garage. That was twice I’d smashed my car in one day – I had never done that before, not even when I was a learner driver. I’d revved myself up too much during the drive home, and by the time the car struck the bike, I was visualising my home-coming scene. I was going to slay. My swishy hair and my practised niceness was going to do it. Show them that Owen could only ever want me. Reality was, as it nearly always is, a let-down. The February heat made my hair – so light and airy and perfect in the aircon of the car – stick onto my neck just from the walk through the garage and into the house. They didn’t even hear me coming. Owen was laughing. Chiara was in the pool facing me and them, her hair wet and dark, a blue bikini wavy under the water. Seeing me seemed to make her shrink into the water, even though I hadn’t even greeted them yet. It was then that Owen turned around.
“Hey, Lily, you’re home,” he said, the last of the laugh in his voice. “I thought you’d be later.” Owen stood up and came over to kiss me as I waited, hovering on the edge of the house, the soles of my sandals thin and curving on the tracks of the sliding door that opened onto the patio. Half in, half out.
“I told Mum I would see her tomorrow.” I waited for Courtney to turn towards me but she seemed suddenly caught up in something her daughter wanted in the pool. She reminded me of someone. I realised that Violet does the same thing. She pretends I am not there until she has no choice and my dad forces her to notice me.
“Sorry, man, I didn’t introduce you properly this morning,” Owen said, seeing my eyes fix past him. He led me to the pool, to my brand-new all-weather loungers, where Courtney sat. Legs stretched out, her back to me, leaning in towards her daughter. Chiara looked up at me and Owen standing next to her mother until Courtney had no choice but to turn to look too. She didn’t get up.
“Courtney, you didn’t properly meet Lily this morning. Lily, this is Courtney,” he said as we stepped awkwardly close to Courtney’s perfect black bikini’d body that would never need muffin freezing. “And that slinky fish over there,” he pointed at the pool with a grin, “is Chiara.” Chiara grinned back. Teeth that needed braces jarred a little in a face that carried the teenage blueprint of a stunning woman. She would be more beautiful than her mother.
Courtney had eyes only for Owen. That’s my Owen! I wanted to shout. Instead, I sucked in my stomach.
“Hi,” I said, sticking my hand out to her. “Welcome to our home.” Lucio’s jazz hands going Fake it till you make it flickered in my head.
“Nice to meet you, Lily. Thanks for letting us crash here, it’s very nice of you. I don’t know what we would’ve done otherwise,” Courtney said, her eyes filling with tears as she scrambled to stand up. I didn’t expect that she would out-nice me. I took the slim tanned hand she offered, long fingers and short pink nails swirling with silvery white curls of nail art. Tiny diamanté accents flashed on her pinkie fingers. No rings, just an armful of silver bangles. Her handshake