PB's HAIR SALON

(No news, so here's another Port Brokeferry piece - and it is set in the hair salon called 'Christine Cuts Hair' and Morag and Evelyn work there and Christine manages the shop now.)

MAYBE IT IS AND MAYBE IT ISN’T

‘Do you think it’s love?’ says Morag.

‘What? Lachlan and Christine? Love, you say?’ Evelyn shakes her head. ‘Never see them together from one Sunday night to the next. It’s the drink and sex is what it is. That’s all it is, too. She might fool herself that it’s love, but I know Lachlan Davie. He’s never loved anyone but Lachlan. If he was made of chocolate, he’d eat himself.’

They both laugh at this. At the other end of the shop Christine looks up from the appointments book and they try to appear busy. Evelyn turns up the radio a little and Morag polishes the back of the chairs with a yellow duster. The phone rings and Christine turns back to answer it, her pen poised to record a name and a time in the diary.

‘But the writing on her neck? It’s still there. A little fainter, but there,’ hisses Morag. ‘That has got to mean something.’

‘Means Lachlan Davie was drunker than usual. That’s all. ‘Lachlan lies with Christine’ is not the same as ‘Lachlan loves Christine’. He was never so drunk as to make that mistake.’

‘And the writing on Lachlan?’

‘Nobody’s been able to tell what it says. Could be a shopping list, for all we know, or the phone number of a girl at the bar. Lachlan has more than Christine in his sights. Especially when there’s a drink in him. Ends up with Christine only if she is as drunk as he is.’

Morag is a little surprised at Evelyn’s take on things. It is not the usual way of her, she thinks. Morag wonders if there is something up with the boy at the fair. Kelso’s his name, if she remembers right. A year ago now, but Morag saw the way Evelyn was looking at the trucks arriving yesterday. And then later in the day, Evelyn had asked Christine to cut her hair. ‘Make it look nice,’ she’d said. ‘Special.’ Kelso is someone they haven’t talked about. Not back last summer and not since. Maybe it is love, Morag thinks. Maybe she’s just been looking in the wrong place.

But then Christine gets flowers. Delivered to the shop at the end of the morning. Yellow roses and green sprays of gypsophila, sometimes called ‘baby’s breath’. Delivered by a boy in black leather on a motorbike, a whole armful of them wrapped in purple and pink cellophane. Christine has to sign for them. There’s a card too, in a small envelope with her name written on the front.

Morag is cutting Mrs Downs’ hair. A last minute appointment, though Mrs Downs didn’t say why she was having it done. Morag looks across at Evelyn and raises her eyebrows.

Evelyn is not convinced. ‘Yellow roses, not red,’ she says, loud enough only Morag can hear.

After she reads the card, Christine slips it down the front of her dress and into the cup of her bra. She asks Evelyn, if she has a moment, to fetch a vase from the back of the shop and to put some water in it.