‘My life is over,’ I heaved.

‘You certainly shouldn’t do any going out for a while,’ said Helen.

With her words, I almost began hyperventilating. Going out! I was supposed to be going out with Chris tomorrow night! How could I, now that I was almost bald?

‘I hate her,’ I gasped. ‘Stupid, fat, overmade-up bitch. I hate all hairdressers.’

‘I hope you didn’t give her a tip,’ said Helen.

‘Don’t be so fucking stupid,’ I sobbed. ‘Of course I gave her a tip.’

I shouldn’t have given Jasmine anything, except maybe a black eye, but I couldn’t help myself. I even found myself murmuring ‘It’s lovely,’ when she did the thing with one mirror behind me and another in front.

I managed to wait until I got outside before the tears started flowing freely down my face. I stood at the bus-stop and cried helplessly and felt naked without my hair. I was sure everyone was looking at me and for once my paranoia was correct.

‘Who’s your one with the dodgy hair?’ I heard. And when I turned round there was a crowd of schoolboys studying me carefully, then sniggering. Fourteen-year-old boys at the height of their hormones and they were laughing at me!

‘And it was so beautiful,’ I sobbed at Helen.

‘What was?’ she asked.

‘My hair,’ I cried. ‘Until that bitch got her hands on it.’

‘Well, it was all right,’ said Helen. ‘I wouldn’t have said beautiful, but…’

‘And they didn’t even give me any Hellos to read,’ I wept.

‘Swizzers,’ Helen sympathized.

‘And the fucking cost of it!’ I screeched. ‘My hair wasn’t the only thing that got done.’

‘Do you know who you look like?’ Helen said thoughtfully.

‘Who?’ I asked tremulously, hoping for redemption.

‘Brenda Fricker.’

‘AAAAaaarrrrggghhhhh.’

‘You know, when she was the mammy in that film,’ she said.

I rushed to the mirror. ‘You’re right,’ I bawled, almost glad things were so apocalyptic. It gave a certain unimpeachability to my position.

Mum and Dad arrived back and were invited to tender their opinion of my annihilated hair.

Mum said doubtfully ‘It’ll grow.’

Dad said proudly and fondly ‘You look more like your mother every day.’ I burst into tears again.

‘Do you know who you look like?’ Mum mused.

‘If you say Brenda Fricker I’ll kill myself,’ I warned her, my eyes bright red.

‘No, not at all,’ Mum said kindly. ‘No, what’s that her name is? An actress. What’s her name?’

‘Audrey Hepburn?’ I asked hopefully.

‘Noooo.’ Mum flapped her hands in frustration. ‘Oh, what’s her name?’

I wondered if she knew who Linda Fiorentino was.

‘Linda Fiorentino?’ I dared to ask. (A man at a party had once told me I looked like Linda Fiorentino and I was so touched I slept with him.)

‘Who? Linda who? No!’ Mum danced a little jig in an attempt to jog her memory. ‘It’s on the tip of my tongue. Oh what was she in?’

‘The Last Seduction?’

‘That sounds like a terrible pile of filth. No, it wasn’t that. Oh, I have it! She was in that thing with Daniel Day Lewis…’

My heart began to sink.

‘… you know, poor divil of a painter… Christy Brown! My Left Foot, that was it, that was it!’ She beamed in triumph.

‘What was the name of the woman who played the mother?’

‘Brenda Fricker,’ I said dully.

62

I had a choice of knotting a rope and kicking the chair from under myself or preparing to meet Chris.

I’d have liked to put our big night out on hold until my hair had grown back, but I couldn’t be sure he’d wait the necessary twelve years.

Although I didn’t look so puke-making once I’d washed the matronly curls out, and smeared on three times my usual amount of make-up.

‘At least it’s lovely and healthy,’ I consoled myself, after I’d combed my hair as flat as possible in an attempt to lengthen it.

There was a raucous shriek of laughter from Helen. ‘Listen to her,’ she wheezed. ‘You’re so sad.

‘See my hair?’ she invited, lifting up some of her silky, waist-length strands. ‘Split to fuck. And does it bother me? Not at all!’

On Wednesday, I spent hours getting ready. Preparations began as soon as I got up (about two-thirty), and continued throughout the afternoon. Once again I washed what remained of my hair, then I shaved large parts of my body, while reflecting on the injustice of having far too much hair on my legs and not enough on my head. Of course, there was no need to shave anything, as Chris wouldn’t be getting a look at me. But what harm could it do? I demanded, my stomach pleasantly aflutter.

After that I spread myself generously with Helen’s Issey Miyake body lotion. Then felt guilty, I should have asked her. And, if she’d said no, I shouldn’t have called her a little bitch, I should have just accepted it as an adult. Next time I needed to steal something of hers would be my opportunity to practise, I reassured myself.

With that in mind, my hand wavered over Helen’s bottle of eau de parfum… then picked it up decisively. Sure, hadn’t the damage already been done, with the body lotion? Perfume was different, there was more of it. People might accuse you of being a selfish hoor for decimating their body lotion but they’d give a few squirts of their perfume to a total stranger, no questions asked.

Next on the agenda was, of course, the great Agonizing about What to Wear. My worry about giving Chris the right message with my clothes – sexy but casual, stylish but easy-going – was compounded by several factors. One: all my summer clothes were in New York. And two: what was considered the height of fabulous in New York might have people in Dublin crashing their cars with mirth. And, of course, the third factor, the one I couldn’t really acknowledge, was that I felt very uncertain how to behave in the outside world anyway.

Mum watched my preparations with concern. What worried her was not so much that her daughter who’d recently been released from a treatment centre was going out into the drug-infested world, but something far bigger.