washed her hair quite so many times . . . And then Aunt Lilah sent Tiffany home and made my Uncle Zé come downstairs for backup.
And then she fired me.
At first I thought she was joking.
‘You’re joking, right?’ I said and laughed, although I didn’t think she was being particularly funny.
But Aunt Lilah was not laughing.
‘No really, I don’t like to have to do this, Sadie, you being family and all, but it’s the only way you’ll learn to stay in line. You’re a loose cannon and I can’t afford to have you running riot in here with my customers once a week.’
Stay in line.
Running riot.
Loose cannon.
I tell you, my Aunt Lilah is power mad. She even sounds like some crazed military dictator rather than the owner of a crap salon in E9. She was standing there firing me in a pair of red spiked heels, with her eyebrows drawn on at an evil tilt. No wonder Uncle Zé says she reminds him of Imelda Marcos, who’s this power-mad shoe-mad politician from the Philippines, which is where Uncle’s from. The thing is, Uncle Zé has been married to Aunt Lilah for twenty-five years, so it’s kind of a weird thing to say about the woman you love.
‘You don’t want me to come back next Saturday?’ I said, swallowing hard, because a wave of panic was sweeping over me. Maybe it wasn’t just panic. Actual tears were stinging my eyes. My hands shook like they always do when I am nervous or shocked. I felt as if I had never mucked up quite so badly. I felt ashamed of myself. Like I’d been too confident, conceited, arrogant – and I’d tripped myself up. Like when you’re walking along the street in your best heels thinking you look so fine and then you twist your ankle for no reason. I had bombed myself out.
You’d think I’d be a teensy bit relieved wouldn’t you? After all, there would be no more Saturdays dragging by in Aunt Lilah’s salon, no more moan-ins with Tiffany, no more instructions about which way to sweep the floor. But being fired screwed my master plan, which was to win the Thames Gateway Junior Apprentice Hairdresser (or Barber) of the Year Award. I’d set my heart on it, and the main requirement was a part-time apprenticeship in a local salon. And I’d just lost mine.
‘But I need the job, Aunty . . .’ I said. A tear started to spill. I trapped it with my knuckle.
‘Well you should have thought of that, Sadie Nathanson, before you dyed Mrs Nellist’s hair pink. No, I think it’s best if we draw a line under this,’ said Aunty, and she started sweeping up from left to right facing the back door so that the hair went downhill and when the wind blew it didn’t go all over the shop.
2
The hairdresser (or barber) should remain calm and professional at all times, ensuring that best practice in customer relations is observed.
Guideline 2: Thames Gateway Junior Apprentice Hairdresser (or Barber) of the Year Award
Uncle Zé said he thought being fired would be the making of me. He took me next door to his café and gave me pancit with pork, which is one of his best ‘cheering up’ dishes.
‘Your aunt doesn’t mean to be fierce, anak, but you know what she’s like. We all have to do what we’re told. You know what? Everyone gets fired once in their lives. See it as an opportunity. You can have a fresh start – maybe somewhere you have a bit more freedom to try stuff out. Somewhere with younger customers maybe?’
He was right. Working at Delilah’s wasn’t like my dream job or anything. It’s not a particularly good salon, but I’m kind of fond of it. I have spent countless hours there. I know every inch, every chair and its quirks, every tap, every dryer. I probably took my first steps on that floor and I’ve played a million games on it too. When we were shorties, my cousin Billy and I would line up the mixing pots and the brushes and pretend that the Pot People were going into battle with the Brush People. I was on first-name terms with the curlers – I swear I knew every hairpin in the box. That salon had been my world for the longest time. It was my anchor. OMG – not to be too dramatic, but that salon was my life . . .
Two fat tears fell into my pancit.
‘Anak, that dish has plenty salt as it is,’ said Uncle. ‘It needs something, but it’s not salt.’ Then he winked at me, which of course made me cry even more.
‘Stop being so nice to me, tito – you’re making it worse!’ I pleaded.
‘I’m your tito, my job is to make it worse,’ said Uncle Zé.
Anyone who knows me knows that Uncle Zé is basically my dad. In fact there was a moment – last year, before I found Abe – when I thought that Uncle Zé actually was my dad. No, really! I began to think my mum had been lying to me all these years and that my ‘dad’ wasn’t an anonymous sperm donor that she carefully chose off the Internet at all. I started to suspect that Uncle Zé was maybe more than just my uncle. At the time when I was having these suspicions my boyfriend Tony Cruz said my life was like something from the Mid West of America, where people find out that their cat is really their brother or whatever. My cousin Billy and I went on a crazy trail, hacking into Mum’s PC looking for clues about my ‘donor’, and of course, the truth was far less twisted than I feared. My dad turned out to be a Mr Abraham Smith, Municipal Gardener from Bough Beeches, Kent.
So Abe is half of my genes – I like to think of him as the generous half. After all, it takes proper generosity to help someone to have a baby and not shout about it. If Aunt Lilah did something like that she’d expect a double page spread in Heat or The Hackney Gazette or something. But Abe is not like that. He’s pretty chilled and his hands shake like mine do when he’s nervous. This was practically the first thing I noticed when me and Mum went to meet up with him last October – a whole year ago now.
That meeting was a pretty special moment in my life, because even though Abe didn’t exactly seem like my dad he did seem like a nice guy, and now that we’ve got to know each other better I can honestly say that he is a nice guy. When I see him he asks me loads of questions and then he listens to my answers! These are two things I am not used to. In my actual family, people ask you questions like, ‘Do you think I deserve to be spoken to like that?’ or ‘Who died and made you Queen?’ or, if it’s Great Aunty Rita (my oldest known living relative), ‘Do you have a nice Jewish boyfriend yet, bubelah?’
Abe asks me about my ambitions, about what I’m good at, my likes, my dislikes. Even his girlfriend Sarah talks to me like I’m an adult – like we’re on a level. Sarah is pretty cool, but fussy about her hair, which is straight and thin and which she likes to hide behind. She’s one of those people who’s really really sensitive – like I bet she notices if you take a millimetre too much off her fringe. I was kind of honoured on my third visit to Bough Beeches when Sarah said I could do her hair. I think it was a big deal for her, and I made sure that I didn’t screw up.
I shared my philosophy on hair with her and also my top tips on hairdresser-spotting, which are as follows:
1. Hairdressers often have things stuck to their clothing – like section clips or Kirby grips. That’s because hairdressers need (but don’t have) three hands; two to do the hair and an extra one with an elongated arm to take out the clips and put them in a box on the other side of the salon. Because we only have two hands we end up sticking the clips to ourselves and then forgetting we put them there until we’re at a restaurant or a barmitzvah and a kind stranger points out that we’ve had a section grip stuck to the bottom of our jumper for the last hour, which members of our own family neglected to mention.
2. Hairdressers are often to be found asleep on the tube at about 8.30 p.m. on a Saturday night. Sometimes they’re the people that