Allison’s Headline (Part 3)

By the time Kevin and I had been together for just over a year, things between us had settled into something deep. I had not expected it to be as serious so soon . We knew each other’s moods by then. We knew when to talk, when to leave a silence alone, when to make tea instead of asking too many questions.

I was just really happy with him. Happier than I usually admitted out loud.

And I still liked my pixie. The colour suited me: copper in some lights, almost orange in others, too bright to be auburn and too sharp to settle into red. The cut had a short choppy fringe, cropped sides around my ears, and enough lift through the crown that it looked better when it was dried a little badly. At the nape, Marianne had left a small feathered edge, just enough to stop it becoming too tidy.

The difficulty was that cutting it had made me think about maybe cutting it again.

Before Marianne first took scissors to my long hair, I had thought a haircut was a simple thing. You chose one, had it done, and then lived with it until it grew. A before and an after. But after the first cut, and then the copper — after the short sides, the bright crown, and the shock of liking myself in a way I had not expected — I began to understand that hair could be less like an ending and more like a door.

Once I knew that, I kept wondering where the next door was.

——

One Friday morning, I was sitting at my desk at The Lancashire Clarion, trying to turn a dull council row into something readable, when Janey stopped beside me.

“You’ve gone quiet,” she said.

I looked up. “I’m working.”

“That has never stopped you talking before.”

“Perhaps I’ve become professional.”

“That would be a shame.”

She leaned against my desk with a biscuit in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Her honey-brown hair was feathered neatly around her face, soft at the sides and flicked at the ends. Janey always looked as if she had just stepped out of better lighting than the rest of us.

Her eyes moved briefly to my hair, then back to my face.

“Still liking it?” she asked.

“My hair?”

“Of course your hair.”

I smiled. “Yes. I still like it.”

“Good.”

“You sound surprised.”

“Not surprised. Interested.”

“In my hair?”

“In you pretending not to be interested in your hair.”

“I’m not pretending.”

“You are, but gently. I’m allowing it.”

She held out the biscuit.

“Have one of these before you become too different to talk to.”

“That is your biscuit.”

“It was.”

I took it.

“That was not me giving you the whole thing,” she said.

“You should have been clearer.”

The newsroom was loud as usual. Typewriters going, telephones ringing, people shouting across desks instead of standing up. Mr Ellison was in his office accusing someone of losing copy he had probably put under his own elbow. Brian from sport was coughing into a cloud of cigarette smoke while pretending to be essential.

It was an ordinary morning, which was possibly why I was restless.

At half past eleven, Mr Ellison came out and dropped a thin folder on my desk.

“I need you to visit an artist,” he said.

“Good morning.”

“She’s local, young, and getting a lot of attention.”

“That sounds like a difficult one.”

“You need to get down to Ancoats. Two o’clock tomorrow afternoon. There’s a music angle as well. Punk, apparently.”

“Apparently?”

“I don’t know what they’re calling things this week.”

“You say that like punk keeps changing its name to upset you.”

“Most things do.” He tapped the folder. “You can handle it.”

“Because I have short hair?”

His eyes moved quickly to my head, then away.

“Because you’re younger than me.”

“That could describe half the building.”

“You’re going.”

He turned to leave.

“What’s her name?” I asked.

“Sylvie Marr. Don’t make her sound too out-there, unless she is.”

“That’s very helpful.”

He ignored me.

The folder held an address, a typed sheet, and a bad photograph. The picture showed a woman standing beside a large canvas. I could make out dark clothes, a sharp face, and paint on her hands. Not much else.

Janey came back over and looked at it upside down.

“She looks cheerful.”

“She’s upside down.”

“She still looks cheerful.”

“She’s an artist. They’re not supposed to smile. It would stifle their creativity.”

“Are journalists?”

“That depends.”

I put the folder in my bag.

“Take two pens,” Janey said.

“I always take two pens.”

“Good. Artists steal things.”

“You know many artists?”

“No, but I know people.”

——

Sylvie Marr’s studio was in an old building in Ancoats, down a street where half the windows looked empty and the brickwork had gone dark with rain.

Inside, it smelled of damp wood, dust and old machinery. Music was playing upstairs, loud enough to hear from the entrance. Fast, rough music. Not something you could ignore.

I climbed two flights and found a door propped open with a paint tin.

“Hello?” I called.

“Come in if you’re not police,” someone shouted.

“I’m worse. Press.”

There was a laugh from inside. “Then hurry up before I change my mind.”

The studio was cold. Really cold. There was a small heater near one wall, but it was doing very little beyond making a faint electrical smell.

Canvases leaned everywhere. Some were huge. Some were half-finished. There were torn posters, newspaper clippings, streaks of red and black paint, faces with heavy eyes, mouths open, boots, wires, cheap jackets, old headlines.

The paintings were rough and loud.

I liked them straight away.

One canvas showed a girl standing in front of boarded-up shops. Her mouth was open, though I could not tell whether she was shouting or laughing. Around her were bits of newspaper: STRIKE, CRISIS, PAY ROW, SHAME. Most of the words had been painted over.

Then Sylvie Marr stepped out from behind a canvas, wiping her hands on a rag.

I noticed her hair first.

She had a buzzcut.

A proper one. Not a pixie. Not a crop with a bit of shape left in it. Her hair was dark and clipped evenly all over, close to her head but not shaved. No fringe. No soft bit near the ears. No longer bit at the back.

I had seen men with hair like that.

I had not seen many women with it.

Not standing in front of me in a freezing studio with paint on her sleeves, looking entirely comfortable.

“You’re Allison?” she said.

“Yes. From The Lancashire Clarion.”

“Sylvie.”

“I guessed from the paint.”

She looked down at her shirt. “I do try to help.”

She had strong brows, clear eyes, and a composed face that made it difficult to tell whether she was amused, bored, or both. The buzzcut suited that. It was plain and direct, and she moved as if there was nothing to explain.

“You’re freezing,” I said.

“So are you.”

“I’ve got a coat.”

“Not a good enough one.”

I took out my notebook.

We talked about the work first. Sylvie said she painted Manchester as she saw it, not the version people liked putting in official brochures. She liked back rooms, cheap gigs, girls cutting up their own clothes, boys who played badly but loudly, women who looked tired of being told how to behave.

“Punk?” I asked.

“If you like.”

“Do you not?”

“I like some of it. Hate some of it. Same as anything.”

“Mr Ellison said there was a punk angle.”

“That sounds like something a man in an office would say.”

“It was.”

She lit a cigarette, took one drag, then let it sit between her fingers while she talked.

“What do you think punk is?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Noise. Nerve. Bad hair. Good boots.”

“That’s not bad.”

“It’s better than most things people write about it.”

“Should I quote you?”

“If you want complaints.”

“I don’t mind complaints.”

“Then yes.”

I wrote it down.

Some of the paintings had women’s magazine pages pasted into them. Lipstick adverts. Hair lacquer. Smiling brides. Clean kitchens. One painting showed a woman with clipped hair laughing straight out of the canvas. Across the bottom, Sylvie had painted three words in black:

FINISHED BEING PRETTY.

I stood in front of it for a while.

“That one gets a reaction,” Sylvie said.

“I can imagine.”

“Some people like it. Some get offended. Either’s fine.”

“Is that the title?”

“Yes.”

I wrote that down too.

It was a good title. Sharp. Easy to remember. I understood why people reacted to it.

But I did not think it belonged to me.

I liked pretty things: lipstick, earrings, a blouse that sat just right, shoes that did more for my legs than honesty required. I did not mind being looked at, sometimes. There were advantages to polish, good lighting, and leaving the house with your face carefully arranged.

I was not finished being pretty.

I was finished thinking pretty had to mean staying the same.

That was what caught at me. Not the rejection in the title, but the certainty. Finished. Done. Chosen. Changed.

Sylvie looked at me over the top of her cigarette.

“You’re trying not to look at my head,” she said.

“I am.”

“Why?”

“It seems rude.”

“It’s all right. Everyone looks.”

“That doesn’t make it less rude.”

“No,” she said. “But it does make it ordinary.”

She took one last drag and put the cigarette out in a chipped saucer already full of old ash. Then she rubbed her palm over her buzzcut, slowly, from front to back. The movement was casual, but not careless. She looked as if she had done it a hundred times and still noticed the feel of it.

“Go on,” she said.

“Go on what?”

“Ask.”

I glanced down at my notebook. “Why did you do it?”

“My hair?”

“Yes.”

Sylvie leaned back against the table behind her. For a moment she did not answer. She looked across the studio instead, at the half-finished canvas of a woman with her mouth open, laughing or shouting, it was hard to tell.

“I could give you a good answer,” she said.

“Please do. I’m supposed to be collecting them.”

“That’s the trouble.”

As I waited for her answer, I removed my coat.

She smiled slightly. “If I give you a good answer, you’ll write it down, and then I’ll have to read it back later and sound like someone with a manifesto.”

“Do you not have one?”

“No. I’ve got paint under my nails and no heating.”

“That can be a manifesto if you phrase it properly.”

“Then don’t phrase it properly.”

She looked at my notebook again.

“Off the record?”

I lowered my pen. “Off the record.”

“Good.”

She crossed her arms, then uncrossed them, restless in a way she had not been while talking about the paintings.

“It was long first,” she said. “Years ago. Not beautiful long. Just long because no one had done anything else with it. Then I bleached it myself, badly. Then I had to cut it shorter because I’d ruined it. Then I dyed it black, because apparently I like solving one mistake with another.”

“That sounds familiar.”

“Does it?”

“Not the bleach. The believing the next thing will fix the last thing.”

Sylvie looked at me properly then, with more interest.

“Yes,” she said. “That.”

She touched the side of her head again, this time more briefly.

“After the black, I got tired. That was the main thing. Tired of thinking about it. Tired of pretending I wasn’t thinking about it. Tired of getting up and having the first argument of the day be with my own head.”

I almost laughed, but the line landed too close to something true.

“So you cut it all off.”

“Eventually.”

“Not straight away?”

“No. I talked about cutting it all off for weeks. Months, possibly. I bored everyone I knew.”

“That seems fair. People should earn their friendships.”

“She did.”

“The friend with the clippers?”

Sylvie nodded.

“She wasn’t a hairdresser?”

“No.”

“Had she used clippers before?”

“On her brother once. Poorly, I was told afterwards.”

I smiled. “Afterwards?”

“Afterwards. Which was kind of her.”

She went to a small table by the wall, moved a jar of brushes aside, and sat on the edge of it.

“She started at the back,” she said. “I think she thought that would make it easier for me.”

“Did it?”

“No. It made it impossible to be sensible.”

“What do you mean?”

“If she’d started at the front, I could have seen it happen. I could have panicked properly. But she started at the back, and by the time I understood what the sound meant, there was already a strip gone. I put my hand back and felt it.”

She paused there.

The room seemed colder suddenly, or perhaps I had only just noticed my hands again.

“What was it like?”

“Short.”

“That is not a helpful answer.”

“It’s the first answer.” She smiled. “Then it was soft. Then it was frightening. Then it was funny.”

“Funny?”

“Yes. I’d spent years thinking my hair mattered, and there it was on the floor looking stupid.”

“That sounds like relief.”

“Some of it was. Some of it wasn’t. I wouldn’t make it too noble.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

“You might. Journalists are sentimental when they’re trying not to be.”

“I’ll try to control myself.”

“See that you do.”

She looked at me again, and this time her gaze settled on my hair. Not rudely. Not the way men looked when they wanted to make a point of looking. More like she was reading evidence.

“What about yours?” she asked.

“My hair?”

“That wasn’t always like that.”

“No.”

“What was it?”

I hesitated, though I did not know why. It was only a question about hair, and I had asked her worse.

“Long,” I said. “Dark. Past my shoulders. Heavy.”

“Did you like it?”

“Yes.”

The answer came too quickly.

Sylvie noticed.

“Try again.”

I laughed. “All right. I guess I liked what it did.”

“What did it do?”

“It made sense on me. Men liked it. Women said it was lovely. It gave me something to arrange. Something to hide behind if I wanted. Something to throw over my shoulder when I wanted to be seen throwing it over my shoulder.”

“That’s quite a lot of work for hair.”

“It managed.”

“And then?”

“Then I had it cut.”

“All at once?”

“Not as much as this.” I looked at her buzzcut. “But it felt like a lot at the time. It was shorter, darker still. More of a crop. I remember my neck feeling cold.”

Sylvie smiled at that. “Yes.”

“I remember thinking everyone would be able to tell I’d done something before I knew what I thought of it.”

“That’s the worst bit.”

“It is.”

“And did you like it?”

“Not immediately.”

“Good.”

“Good?”

“Immediate liking is suspicious.”

I looked down, smiling despite myself.

“I liked having done it,” I said. “That came first. I kept passing windows and not quite recognising myself, but I liked the fact that I had to look twice.”

Sylvie’s expression changed then. Only slightly, but enough that I knew she understood.

“Yes,” she said. “That’s the part no one asks about.”

“What part?”

“The second look.”

The words stayed between us for a moment.

Then I said, “After that, I went copper.”

“This?”

“This.”

I touched the side of it, more deliberately this time.

“Short sides, this fringe, some length left at the nape. The colour was brighter than I expected.”

“It suits you.”

“I know.”

Sylvie laughed.

“That wasn’t vanity,” I said.

“No. Worse. Accuracy.”

“I do like it.”

“I can tell.”

“That’s the awkward part.”

“Why?”

“Because liking it hasn’t made me stop.”

Sylvie said nothing. She waited properly, which was worse than being interrupted.

I looked across the studio, at the canvas with the woman laughing and the painted words beneath her. Finished Being Pretty. I liked the title, but it did not feel like mine. I had not finished wanting polish or earrings or a good blouse. I had not finished liking the advantage of looking well put together.

That was not the itch.

The itch was change.

“I thought getting it cut would settle something,” I said. “The first time, I mean. Then the copper. I thought I’d arrive at the version I was trying to reach.”

“And did you?”

“For a while.”

“For a while is not nothing.”

“No.”

I looked at her buzzcut again.

“But once I knew I could change it and still be myself, I started wondering what else I could get away with.”

Sylvie’s eyes sharpened with interest, though she stayed still.

“That,” she said, “is a better answer than most people give.”

“It was not meant to be an answer.”

“They usually aren’t.”

I looked at my notebook, then at my pen lying across it.

“This isn’t for the article,” I said.

“No,” she said. “It isn’t.”

The music outside the room shifted into another song, faster than the last one. Somewhere below us, someone shouted and someone else laughed.

Sylvie rubbed her hand over her buzzcut again.

“What are you thinking for the next one?” she asked.

I should have said I did not know.

I had said it to myself enough times. I had said it while washing my face, while getting dressed, while walking past barber shops. It was the safe answer, and not completely false.

Instead I looked at her hair.

Dark. Close. Even. Nothing falling forward. Nothing tucked back. Nothing at the nape to soften it.

No arrangement. No negotiation.

“Maybe something like yours,” I said.

The words just came out before I had had a chance to choose them. I don’t know why I said it, or what I was thinking. And to a complete stranger. 

Sylvie’s eyebrows lifted.

I felt mine do the same.

For a second neither of us spoke.

Then she smiled. Not broadly. Not mockingly. Just enough to let me know she had heard the thing under the thing.

“Really?”

“I don’t know.”

“You said it very clearly for someone who doesn’t know.”

“I surprised myself.”

“I noticed.”

I laughed then, because there was nothing else to do. My face had gone warm, which annoyed me. Sylvie looked pleased, but not triumphant.

“It’s different from a crop,” she said.

“I’d imagine.”

“No. I mean it. A crop still behaves like a style. People can admire the shape, ask who cut it, tell you it flatters your cheekbones. They can make it normal if they try hard enough.”

“And this?”

“This gives them less to hold on to.”

I looked at her hair again.

It was not severe in the way I had first thought. It was plain, but not dull. It made her eyes clearer, her face more direct. There was no part of it asking to be arranged into softness.

“Did you like how it looked?” I asked.

“Not straight away.”

“No?”

“No. I liked that I’d done it. That came first.”

I stopped pretending not to listen too hard.

“The liking came after,” she said. “In pieces. First I liked touching it. Then I liked not having to do anything to it. Then I liked the way people had to decide what they thought before I helped them.”

“That sounds useful.”

“It is.”

“What does it feel like?”

“The hair?”

“Yes.”

She considered that seriously.

“Odd at first. Cold. Too honest. You keep reaching for hair that isn’t there. You notice your collar. Pillows. Rain. Someone’s hand if they touch the back of your head. Everything gets there sooner.”

I looked down at my notebook again, although I was not writing.

Sylvie smiled.

“That one’s off the record too.”

“I know.”

“Good.”

She stood and crossed to another canvas, not to show it to me, I thought, but because standing still had become too much. I understood that. I was very still myself.

“People will make it about them,” she said.

“What?”

“If you do it. People will think your hair is something you’ve done to them.”

I laughed. “That sounds accurate.”

“They’ll ask if you’re all right. They’ll ask if it means something. They’ll ask who let you.”

“Who let me?”

“Oh, someone will.”

“Charming.”

“Very.”

“And what do you say?”

“I say I wanted it.”

“That works?”

“No. But it ends the conversation if you say it like you mean it.”

I thought about that. I wanted it. Plain. Almost rude in its simplicity.

Sylvie looked back at me.

“Why do you want it?”

The question was softer than I expected.

I did not answer at once.

I thought of my long hair, dark and heavy down my back. I thought of the first cut, my neck suddenly cold. I thought of the copper in the salon chair, brighter than anything I had meant to choose. I thought of how each change had frightened me before it pleased me, and how the fear had never been enough to stop me once the idea had taken hold.

“I don’t think I want to stop looking like myself,” I said.

“No?”

“No. I think I want to find out what else counts as me.”

Sylvie did not laugh.

The silence after that was not awkward, exactly. It had weight, but not embarrassment.

“That’s not a bad reason,” she said.

“It sounds ridiculous.”

“Most honest reasons do.”

I picked up my pen, then put it down again.

“You know,” I said, “you’re making this interview much harder to write.”

“Good.”

“That was not a compliment.”

“I know.”

I looked at her buzzcut properly then, without pretending otherwise.

“It suits you,” I said.

“I know,” she said.

“That wasn’t vanity?”

“No,” she said. “Accuracy.”

She had caught me saying it before I had quite caught myself. The conversation had moved beyond anything I could put in The Lancashire Clarion, and we both knew it.

So we laughed.

We finished the actual interview after that, though it took us both a few minutes to find our way back to it.

I asked about buyers in London, a small exhibition she had coming up, and the posters she had started painting over. She gave good answers. Short ones, mostly. She did not dress things up.

When I closed my notebook, my fingers were stiff from the cold.

Sylvie walked me back down to the entrance.

“Make me sound clever,” she said.

“You helped.”

“But not respectable.”

“I’ll do my best.”

She leaned against the doorframe.

“And don’t write that bit.”

“What bit?”

She looked at me.

I smiled. “I know.”

——

Outside, the sky was grey and low. It had not started raining yet, but it looked close.

I walked back through Ancoats with my collar up and my notebook under my arm. Buses hissed at the kerb. Men shouted across the road. A woman in a rust-coloured coat dragged a child away from a shop window. Two girls in dark coats passed me, one with safety pins in her collar and lipstick almost blue.

I did not decide anything on the walk back.

That would have made a neater story, but it would not have been true.

I thought about Sylvie saying that liking having done it came first. Then about the interview, the paintings, what Mr Ellison would cut if I gave him too many adjectives, lunch, and whether Janey still had my lighter.

When I got back to the office, Janey looked up before I had even taken off my coat.

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“Was she odd?”

“Yes.”

“Good odd or bad odd?”

“Good.”

I sat down and looked at some of the information I had gathered in preparation for the article.

Janey waited.

“What?” I said.

“You look like there’s more.”

“There isn’t.”

“There is.”

“She had a buzzcut,” I said.

Janey blinked.

“A what?”

“A buzzcut.”

Janey took that in.

“Really. Like on purpose?”

“No, Janey. A tragic hat accident.”

“How short?”

“Very. Not bald. Just clipped all over.”

She was quiet for a moment, but not in a shocked way. More as if she was making room for the idea.

“Did it suit her?”

“Yes, it did.”

“I suppose some people make you believe in things you’d have dismissed on anyone else.”

I looked at her.

“That was almost thoughtful.”

She smiled and went back to her desk.

I opened my notebook again, but for a while I did not write anything.

——

I wrote the piece that afternoon, or most of it. The first version mentioned Sylvie’s hair too early. The second barely mentioned it at all. In the end, I gave it one paragraph and left it there.

Mr Ellison read it with his usual frown.

“She seems an odd woman,” he said.

“She was a talented painter.”

“The odd ones tend to be in that regard.”

He tapped the page.

“‘Finished Being Pretty.’ Is that hers?”

“Yes.”

“Pity.”

“Thank you.”

“I didn’t mean that kindly.”

“I know, I had gathered that.”

The article ran on Saturday.

——

On Monday, a note arrived at the office. It was written on the back of a flyer for a gig.

You made me sound clever and not respectable. Acceptable journalism.

Sylvie Marr.

I pinned it above my desk.

For a few days, I got on with things.

I wrote about a council meeting that lasted too long. I interviewed a man who bred racing pigeons and spoke about them like disappointing sons. I bought stockings, laddered them, and decided I was finished with stockings for at least a week.

I also kept thinking about Sylvie’s hair.

Not constantly. Not dramatically. Just now and then.

When I washed my own hair and felt the short sides under my fingers.

When I dried it in three minutes and thought how little of it there already was.

When I passed a barber’s and heard clippers inside.

When I sat on the bus behind a boy with his hair cropped short and watched the light catch the little change of direction at his crown.

It was not that I wanted to look like Sylvie.

I did not.

I wanted to know what it felt like to make that kind of change.

That was the part I did not say out loud, not even to myself at first. It was easier to pretend the question was whether it would suit me, whether people would stare, whether Kevin would mind. Those were ordinary questions. Sensible questions. Questions a person could ask over a drink and laugh about.

The real question was simpler.

What would it feel like?

One evening, after tea, I stood in my room in my slip and pushed my pixie flat against my head.

It looked wrong.

Then it looked almost right.

I turned sideways, holding the top down with one hand. My ears seemed more noticeable. My cheekbones looked sharper. My eyes looked larger. The little length at the nape suddenly felt like a compromise I had not realised I was making.

I let go, and the copper hair sprang back up.

“No,” I said.

Then, after a moment, “Maybe.”

I did not tell Janey first. Janey would have questions, and I did not have answers.

Instead, I told Kevin.

That Saturday, I went to watch him play. I did not always go. It was easier not to become a regular figure in the stands, standing there in a good coat while people decided whether I was girlfriend, journalist, or both.

But that day I wanted noise.

The ground gave me plenty. It smelled of damp wool, smoke, tea, beer, mud and fried onions. Men shouted at the referee as if he could hear each individual insult and take it under advisement. Women shouted too, wrapped in scarves and stamping their feet. Children climbed railings and were pulled down again.

Kevin played well enough, though I could tell he was annoyed with himself. He was quick, but not sharp. He ran with his jaw set, dark hair damp at the ends, his moustache making him look a little more serious than he usually deserved to look.

Afterward, we went to the pub with two of his teammates and their wives. The place was hot and busy, with the windows steamed white and ashtrays filling too fast.

The conversation turned to hair because it usually did sooner or later.

Someone’s wife had had a bad perm. Someone else knew a woman whose fringe had been ruined before a wedding. Then Terry, one of Kevin’s teammates, pointed his pint at me.

“Still can’t believe you went that short.”

I touched my copper pixie. “I survived.”

“Kev likes them daring, does he?”

His wife elbowed him. “Leave her.”

“I’m only joking.”

“They always are,” I said.

Kevin looked at Terry. “Careful.”

Terry laughed and lifted both hands. “All right.”

It passed.

Later, at Kevin’s home, I was still thinking about it.

His bedroom was cold even with the heater on. My boots were by the bed. His shirt was over the back of a chair. A bus went past outside and rattled the window.

I sat beside him and ran my fingers through the top of my hair.

“You’ve done that all night,” he said.

“What?”

“Touched it.”

“I’m allowed to touch my own head.”

“I didn’t say you weren’t.”

I looked down at him. “Would something put you off?”

He turned his head on the pillow. “What sort of something?”

“My hair.”

“Your hair?”

“If I cut it.”

“You have cut it.”

“I mean more.”

He sat up a little. “How much more?”

I hesitated.

“Buzzed.”

He did not answer straight away.

“All over,” I added.

Kevin looked at my hair, then at me.

“With clippers?”

“Yes.”

“How short?”

“I don’t know. Not bald. Just short. Properly short.”

He rubbed a hand over his jaw, thumb brushing the edge of his moustache.

“Is this because of that artist?”

“No.”

“But she put the idea there.”

“She made it look possible.”

He looked at me for a moment.

“And now you want to know what it feels like.”

I hated how close that was.

“Maybe.”

He nodded slowly.

“You hate the idea,” I said.

“I didn’t say that.”

“You went quiet.”

“I was trying not to say something stupid.”

“That’s rarely stopped you before.”

He smiled a little. “Fair.”

I waited.

He reached for my hand. “It would surprise me.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“No,” he said. “It wouldn’t put me off.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“You can say if it would.”

“I know.” He squeezed my hand. “I like your hair now.”

“I do too.”

“Then why cut it?”

I shrugged. “Because I keep thinking about it.”

He accepted that better than I expected.

“You’d get comments,” he said.

“I already get comments.”

“More.”

“I know.”

“From the lads too.”

“I assumed.”

He looked embarrassed by that, which helped more than if he had pretended it would be easy.

“I don’t want you getting it done because of anyone else,” he said. “Not the artist. Not me. Not Terry being an idiot.”

“Terry being an idiot would make me do the opposite of whatever Terry wanted.”

“That’s sensible.”

“I haven’t decided.”

Kevin looked at me.

“All right,” he said.

Which meant he knew I probably had.

——

I did not get it done the next day.

Or the next.

For another week, I thought about it while doing ordinary things. Typing. Buying stamps. Waiting for buses. Washing my face at night. I had not expected the idea to stay, but it did.

It was the doing I kept returning to.

The chair.

The cape.

The first pass.

The sound before anything changed.

Eventually, in the pub after work, I told Janey.

She was complaining about a man from features who had borrowed her lighter and returned it empty.

“I’m thinking of getting my hair cut,” I said.

Janey looked at my head. “It already is.”

“More.”

She put the lighter down.

“How much more?”

“Buzzed.”

Janey stared at me.

Then she looked at my hair properly.

“Buzzed as in Sylvie Marr?”

“Not exactly.”

“But that short?”

“Yes.”

She sat back.

For once, she did not immediately have a joke.

That made me more nervous.

“Well?” I said.

“I’m catching up.”

“That bad?”

“No. Just short.”

“Yes.”

“Very short.”

“Yes.”

She picked up her glass, realised it was empty, and put it down again.

“You liked the pixie,” she said.

“I still like it.”

“That’s the worrying part.”

“Why?”

“Because you only start looking like that when liking something has given you another idea.”

I looked at her.

She looked pleased with herself. “I know you.”

“Unfortunately.”

“Do you want me to talk you out of it?”

“No.”

“Good. I don’t think I’ve got the energy.”

I laughed.

Janey rested her chin on her hand. “Do you want me to come?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’ll come.”

“That easy?”

“I’m not the one getting my head buzzed.”

“Thank you for noticing.”

“I do notice things.”

“Not always.”

“I notice important things. Like empty lighters and poor service.”

She paused.

“Eat first,” she said.

“What?”

“Before we go. You get odd when you’re hungry.”

“That’s your advice?”

“It’s good advice.”

So on Saturday, Janey came with me to Marianne’s.

——

The day was bright but cold. The pavements looked washed. Shop windows were full of dresses, radios, boots, wedding china and televisions showing silent people moving their mouths. Men stood outside pubs before opening. A boy in a torn jacket spat into the gutter, then looked ashamed when an old woman saw him.

Janey walked beside me with her hands in her coat pockets.

“You’ve eaten?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“What?”

“Toast.”

“How much?”

“One and a half pieces.”

“What happened to the other half?”

“Burned.”

“That counts.”

“You’re fussing.”

“I’m allowed. I’ve come all this way.”

“It’s ten minutes.”

“Still.”

Marianne looked up when we came in.

She looked first at Janey.

Then at me.

“Oh,” she said. “This looks serious.”

“She’s eaten toast,” Janey said.

Marianne nodded. “Good start.”

“I’m surrounded by fools,” I said.

“And yet here you are,” Marianne said.

The salon was warm. A woman sat under the dryer with a magazine. A junior was sweeping near the basins. The radio was playing something cheerful and thin.

Marianne looked immaculate, as usual, though she had done something new with her own hair. The blonde bob was softly permed now, rounded and airy around her face, with a neat little swing at the sides that made her look brighter somehow. It was still polished, still Marianne, but less severe than before.

“Oh,” I said, before I could stop myself. “Your hair.”

Marianne touched the side of it, just once. “Too much?”

“No. It suits you.”

Janey leaned in slightly. “It does. Very expensive.”

“That is the nicest thing anyone has said to me all week,” Marianne said.

“It makes you look softer,” I said. “But not less frightening.”

Marianne smiled properly at that. “Good. I’d hate to lose authority.”

“You haven’t.”

“No,” Janey said. “If anything, it’s worse. Now you look like you know exactly what you’re doing and might enjoy it.”

Marianne laughed, then smoothed the front of her blouse as if deciding the compliment had been accepted and could now be put away.

She wore an ivory blouse tucked into caramel trousers, with a tan belt and small gold earrings. She looked like the sort of woman who could cut off all your hair and still make you feel she had done you a favour.

She rested both hands on the back of the chair.

“What are we doing?”

I took off my coat and sat down.

“Buzzed.”

Marianne stayed calm.

“All over?”

“Yes.”

The junior stopped sweeping for half a second, then carried on.

Marianne looked at me for a moment longer than usual.

“I’ve clipped women’s napes,” she said. “Tidied short backs. Taken sides in close. But I don’t often take a woman down all over with clippers.”

“I know.”

“That doesn’t mean I won’t do it.”

“I didn’t think it did.”

“No.” She looked at my hair, then at my face. The salon felt unusually quiet around us, the faint scent of shampoo and hairspray hanging in the warm air. “But I can tell you how it will cut. I can tell you what length will suit your head and your colour. I can’t honestly tell you how people will look at it afterwards.”

Janey had gone very still behind me.

Marianne opened the drawer and took out the clippers, setting them on the counter rather than switching them on yet. The black casing landed with a soft, solid tap. Even silent, they seemed to occupy their own space on the workstation, purposeful and unmistakable.

“It’s new,” she said. “For me too, in this chair. Not the clippers. The idea of doing this properly on you.”

That made me look at her.

She gave a small, practical smile.

“I’m not frightened of it,” she said. “But I’m not going to pretend it’s just a trim.”

“It isn’t.”

“No.”

She picked up a guard and turned it between her fingers. The plastic clicked lightly against the metal teeth.

“A grade four would do it,” she said. “Short enough to be a real buzzcut. Long enough to keep some softness. With your colour, it should look good.”

“Should?”

Marianne’s smile widened slightly.

“Allison, I can promise you I’ll cut it well. I can’t promise you the world will have caught up by Monday.”

That was honest enough to settle me more than certainty would have done.

I looked back at Janey.

She lifted her eyebrows, as if to say, well?

I looked back at Marianne.

“Do it,” I said.

Marianne nodded once.

“Then we’ll do it properly.”

She rested her hand briefly on the clippers, and I found myself looking at them again — the weight of them, the clean metallic edge waiting beneath the guard. In my mind I could already hear the low electric hum before Marianne had even switched them on.

She put the cape around me and fastened it at the neck.

My copper hair looked good. That was almost funny. The choppy fringe, the bright crown, the little feathered nape — all of it was behaving beautifully, as if making a late argument for itself.

I liked it.

I still wanted to hear the clippers.

Marianne attached the guard and switched them on.

The sound filled the salon. Low and steady. I had heard it before from barber shops. I had never sat with it beside my own ear.

Janey stepped closer and put one hand on the back of my chair.

“Last chance,” Marianne said.

I looked ahead.

“Go on.”

She started at my right temple.

The clippers touched my hair with a warm buzz. It was not painful. It was not even rough. Just pressure, then a strip of copper falling away in small pieces. Hair slid down the cape and gathered in my lap.

I stopped breathing, then remembered to start again.

Marianne made one clean pass above my ear, then switched the clippers off.

“Look.”

I looked.

There was a narrow strip where the pixie had been. Under it was short, soft, dark-copper hair. My ear looked suddenly exposed. My head already looked different.

Janey whispered, “Bloody hell.”

Marianne looked at me. “Still going?”

There was still time to stop.

Not really, but enough to pretend.

I heard the radio. I heard someone outside laugh. I heard my own breathing.

“Yes,” I said. “Keep going.”

The second pass was easier because the first one had already happened.

Marianne moved slowly and evenly. The clippers went up from my temple, over the curve of my head, through the bright copper top. Hair fell in little dry showers. Some pieces stuck to my cheek. Some slid onto the cape. Some landed on the floor at Marianne’s feet.

The pixie disappeared section by section.

My ears came out fully, and the side of my head felt light.

Cold.

Oddly nice.

Janey had gone quiet.

“Are you crying?” I asked.

“No.”

“You sound like you might.”

“I’m not crying. I’m concentrating.”

“On what?”

“Not saying the wrong thing.”

“That’s new.”

“It’s taking effort.”

Marianne smiled and kept working.

She moved around the back. The clippers climbed from my nape to my crown, and the last little feathered length disappeared. That was the part that caught me. The nape had always made the pixie feel short. Now there was no separate shape there at all. Just the same length continuing upward.

When Marianne came around to the right side, I watched properly.

The longer pieces on top went. The copper top I had liked for months fell away. My head looked smaller. My face looked bigger. My eyes looked almost startled, though I was not unhappy.

That surprised me.

I had expected fear to be the main thing.

It was not.

There was fear, yes. But underneath it was something sharper, something I could not have explained without sounding ridiculous. A decision was becoming visible faster than I could take it back.

Marianne checked the crown twice, then the sides, then around my ears. She worked carefully at the hairline. The buzz was the same everywhere.

At last she switched the clippers off.

The salon felt very quiet.

She brushed my neck, undid the cape, and shook the hair away from my shoulders.

“Well,” she said.

I looked.

At first, I looked strange.

Then I looked again.

The grade-four buzz was soft and even all over. With the bright ends gone, the colour looked warmer and darker, more auburn-copper than orange. It was not bald. It was not as severe as I had imagined. But it was unmistakably buzzed.

No fringe.

No loose bits.

No nape.

My ears were bare. My jaw looked sharper. My earrings looked huge.

I raised my hand.

“Slowly,” Marianne said, amused.

I touched the top of my head.

“Oh.”

Janey laughed softly.

It felt soft one way and rougher the other. Warm. Close. Very neat. I rubbed the side, then the back, then the top again. Everywhere was the same.

“Oh,” I said again.

“You do have other words,” Janey said.

“Not currently.”

Marianne turned me slightly so I could see the side.

The side view was the strangest. My neck went straight up into the clipped hair. Nothing to tuck behind my ear because there was nothing left to tuck.

I touched it again.

Janey came to stand beside me.

“Allison,” she said.

“What?”

“You look brilliant.”

I searched her face. Janey could joke about anything, but she was not a good liar.

“Do I?”

“Yes. Annoyingly.”

“That sounds more honest.”

“You look like you’d win an argument before it started.”

“I already could.”

“Yes, but now people will believe it sooner.”

The woman under the dryer lowered her magazine.

“My husband would have a fit,” she said.

I looked at her.

“Mine hasn’t been given voting rights.”

There was a pause.

Then Marianne laughed. Janey laughed. The junior laughed too and quickly looked down at the floor.

Even the woman under the dryer smiled.

I was sat, taking in what I had just done, when I heard Janey say, “Actually, Marianne.”

I turned.

Janey was looking at her own hair, lifting the flicked ends between her fingers.

Marianne raised an eyebrow. “Yes?”

“Have you got time to do mine?”

I stared at her. “What?”

Janey kept looking ahead. “Not like hers.”

“Obviously,” I said.

She ignored me.

Marianne smiled. “What did you have in mind?”

“Shorter,” Janey said. “Cleaner. And I think I want a fringe.”

I blinked. “You?”

“Yes, me.”

“You love your hair.”

“I like my hair. There’s a difference.”

I got out of the seat, and Janey took my place.

Marianne combed through Janey’s hair, studying the shape. It was longer than mine had been for months, honey-brown and feathered, with perfect flicks she pretended required no effort.

“A jaw-length bob would work,” Marianne said. “Soft feathering at the sides, keep some movement. And a proper fringe.”

Janey looked up quickly. “Proper?”

“Thick. Long. Blunt. Sitting near your brows.”

“That sounds dangerous.”

“It would change the whole shape.”

I stood there with my newly buzzed head, still touching the side of it.

Janey looked at me. “Say something encouraging.”

I thought for a moment.

“You should relax and just let Marianne work her magic on you.”

She laughed. “That’ll do.”

Marianne caped her.

Janey looked less casual once the cape was fastened. She swallowed once and tried to pretend she had not.

I noticed.

“What?” she said.

“Nothing.”

“You’re smiling.”

“I’m enjoying this.”

“I came to support you.”

“And now I’m supporting you.”

“That sounds suspicious.”

“It is.”

Marianne lifted Janey’s hair and began.

One of the salon ladies brought me a cup of tea, and I slowly drank it as I watched the cut unfold.

The first pieces that fell were long honey-brown feathers, sliding onto the cape in soft strips. It was not like mine. No buzzing. No exposed scalp. No woman under the dryer pretending not to watch. But it changed her quickly.

The length came up from her shoulders to her jaw. Marianne shaped it around her face, cut into the sides, and took away the soft, airy ends Janey had worn for years.

Then Marianne combed the front down.

Janey went very still.

“Sure?” Marianne asked.

Janey looked at me.

I raised my eyebrows.

She looked back at Marianne. “Yes.”

Marianne cut the fringe in one steady line first, then refined it. The change was immediate. The long front pieces were gone. A thick blunt fringe sat low, just above Janey’s eyes, making her look sharper and less easy to dismiss.

Janey watched the whole thing seriously.

“You all right?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“You’ve gone quiet.”

“I’m allowed.”

“That sounds like something I’d say.”

“Don’t ruin my moment.”

So I shut up.

When Marianne finished, Janey had a neat honey-brown bob cut to her jaw, with soft feathering at the sides and a thick long fringe sitting low near her brows. The flicked movement was still there, but cleaner now. Stronger. She looked more deliberate.

Marianne brushed her shoulders.

Janey turned her head one way, then the other, taking it in by touch more than anything else. She lifted her fingers to the fringe, then stopped just before disturbing it.

“Well?” I said.

She touched it lightly.

“Oh.”

I grinned. “You do have other words.”

“Shut up.”

“It suits you.”

She looked again.

“Yes,” she said. “It does.”

Then she looked at both of us and laughed.

“What?” I said.

“Look at us.”

I did.

We looked nothing alike. Janey with her glossy honey-brown bob and heavy fringe. Me with my auburn-copper buzzcut. Both of us with hair all over the floor.

Marianne stood behind us, looking very pleased with herself.

“I should charge more on Saturdays,” she said.

——

Outside, the cold hit my head immediately.

I gasped.

Janey turned. “What?”

“The air.”

“What about it?”

“All of it.”

She touched the back of her own neck. “I’ve got some of it too.”

“You still have hair.”

“Less than I arrived with.”

“You’ll survive.”

“I know. I had toast.”

We walked as far as the corner, where Janey stopped under the awning of a chemist and looked at me properly. The wind had already found every part of my head. It moved across the buzz as if there was nothing between me and the weather at all.

“You’re not coming for a drink,” she said.

“I am.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I thought you needed one.”

“I do. I also have eyes.”

“That must be difficult for you.”

“You want to go and show Kevin.”

I said nothing.

Janey smiled, not smugly, which was considerate of her.

“You may as well,” she said. “You’ll be useless company until you do.”

“I was going to tell him later.”

“You’ve just had nearly all your hair clipped off, Allison. Later is a ridiculous idea.”

I touched the side of my head again. I had not stopped doing it since we left Marianne’s. It was soft one way, rougher the other, and every time my fingers found it I had the same small shock.

“I should change first,” I said.

Janey looked me up and down. “You should.”

“That was quick.”

“You look wonderful, but you also look like you’ve been sitting under falling hair for an hour.”

“I have.”

“Exactly. Go home. Put something good on. Make him work to keep his face sensible.”

I laughed.

Janey lifted a hand to her new fringe, still getting used to it. The blunt line sat low near her brows and made her look sharper than she had that morning. The bob tucked neatly under her jaw, honey-brown and glossy, with just enough feathering at the sides to keep it soft.

“You look good,” I said.

“I know.”

“That wasn’t vanity?”

“No. Accuracy.”

I smiled at that, because it sounded like Sylvie, and because Janey did not know it did.

She pointed at me. “And don’t go all strange if he stares. He’s going to stare.”

“I know.”

“He’d be odd if he didn’t.”

“That is almost comforting.”

“I’m very good at this.”

“You are.”

She leaned in and kissed my cheek. “Go on, then.”

 

I went home first.

Not to hide. To make the haircut look like a decision instead of an accident.

I washed the loose hair from my neck, dried the buzz in less than a minute, and stood for a while with my hand pressed against the back of my head. There was no styling to do. No fringe to arrange. No crown to lift. No little feathered nape to check.

That was still the strangest thing.

I chose a satin blouse the colour of warm champagne, with a soft collar and a low enough opening to make my gold chain sit properly against my skin. With it I wore high-waisted rust-brown trousers, a wide leather belt, gold hoops, and heeled boots. It was the sort of outfit I would have worn with the copper pixie on a good night out, but the buzz changed it. Everything looked cleaner now. Plainer in one way, more deliberate in another.

I stood in the room for a moment with my coat over my arm, rubbing the back of my head with the flat of my hand.

Then I stopped, because if I kept doing that I would never leave.

—-

Kevin’s building was colder than outside. The stairs smelled of damp wool, old paint, and somebody’s boiled dinner. I climbed slowly, partly because of the heels and partly because I could feel my nerve arriving late.

At his door, I paused.

I had imagined this part too many times in the week before. Kevin opening the door. Kevin going quiet. Kevin trying not to show what he thought before he knew what I needed him to think.

I almost laughed at myself.

Then I knocked.

There was movement inside, a chair leg scraping, his footsteps across the floor. The door opened with the chain still on.

Kevin looked through the gap first, then blinked, then shut the door just enough to slide the chain free.

When he opened it properly, he did not speak.

He was wearing his blue shirt open at the throat, the tan jacket he always thought made him look less like a footballer, and dark trousers. His hair was still slightly damp, feathered around his face and longer at the collar, and his moustache made the silence look more serious than it probably was.

His eyes moved over the blouse, the hoops, the bare shape of my head. He understood, I think, that I had not come to be rescued from the haircut. I had come to be seen in it.

I leaned one hand against the doorframe.

“Well?” I said.

His eyes moved back to my head.

“You did it.”

“I did.”

“All over?”

“Yes.”

He looked again, slower this time. Not rudely. Not like Terry would have looked. Properly, as if he knew there was no useful answer until he had actually seen me.

“It’s shorter than I pictured,” he said.

“Does that disappoint you?.”

“Of course not.”

“You went quiet.”

“I know.”

“Still trying not to say something stupid?”

“Yes.”

That made me smile.

He stepped back. “Come in before I make it worse.”

The flat was warm in a tired sort of way. There was a lamp on near the record player, a stack of books beside the chair, a coat thrown over the back of the sofa, and a football paper folded on the small table. It looked like Kevin: untidy, comfortable, and slightly pretending not to be.

I stood in the middle of the room while he closed the door.

For a second we were both too aware of the haircut, which was ridiculous, because there was hardly any of it left.

Kevin came closer.

“Grade four?” he asked.

I stared at him. “How do you know that?”

“Changing rooms.”

“Of course.”

“It’s a good length.”

“That’s very professional.”

“I’m being helpful.”

“You are trying.”

“I am.”

He smiled then, properly, and something in me loosened.

“It suits you,” he said.

“You don’t have to say that.”

“I know.”

“Do you hate it?”

“No.”

“That was quick.”

“I don’t hate it.”

“That is not the same.”

He looked at my head again, then at my face.

“Allison,” he said, quieter. “I like it.”

I believed him.

Not because he sounded certain. Because he sounded a little surprised by his own certainty.

“Oh,” I said.

His mouth twitched. “You’ve gone short of words.”

“I used several earlier.”

“Did you?”

“Mostly that one.”

He came a step closer and lifted his hand, then stopped before touching me.

“Can I?”

I had expected the question and still felt it somewhere low in my chest.

“Yes.”

He touched the side of my head with the backs of his fingers first, very lightly. Then his palm settled there, slow and careful, following the clipped hair from my temple toward the crown.

His eyebrows lifted.

“It is soft.”

“That seems to be the main review.”

“It’s a good review.”

He stroked it once more, and the movement sent a shiver through me before I could stop it. I shut my eyes for half a second, just long enough for him to notice.

“All right?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

He smiled, but not in a way that made fun of me. His thumb brushed the short hair just above my ear.

“You like the feel of it.”

“I haven’t decided.”

“You have.”

“I’m allowed to be mysterious.”

“You’re terrible at it.”

I opened my eyes. “I like it.”

His hand moved to the back of my head. That was stranger. The nape was gone. The little feathered edge Marianne had left months ago had disappeared under the clippers, and Kevin’s palm now met only the even velvet of the buzz.

I felt bare and held at the same time.

“You look different,” he said.

“I am different.”

“I know.” He looked at me for a moment. “More like you’ve caught up with yourself.”

That was dangerously close to kind.

I looked away first.

“You’re getting better at this,” I said.

“I’ll try not to let it happen again.”

“Please don’t.”

He laughed softly and leaned in, kissing the side of my head just above his hand.

The kiss was light. Barely anything. But because there was no hair in the way, no shape to disturb, no softness except the clipped velvet itself, I felt it sharply.

I closed my eyes again.

Kevin noticed that too.

“Oh,” he said.

“Don’t.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You sounded like you were about to.”

“I was.”

“Then don’t.”

He kissed the buzz again, slower this time, near the crown. My hand went to his sleeve. I meant to steady myself. It did not feel like that was what I was doing.

“You’re pleased with yourself,” he said.

“I am not.”

“You are.”

“I’m pleased with Marianne.”

“And Sylvie Marr.”

“No.”

He waited.

I sighed. “A little.”

“She made it look possible?”

“Yes.”

“And now?”

“Now I know what it feels like.”

Kevin’s hand moved over the back again, gentle and deliberate.

“And?”

I thought of the chair, the cape, the clippers starting. The first strip above my ear. The bright copper falling down onto the brown cloth. The strange cold at the side of my head. Janey’s face. Marianne’s hands. The moment when I had looked and seen no fringe, no loose pieces, no nape.

“I like having done it,” I said.

Kevin nodded as if that made perfect sense.

Then he kissed me.

It was not a careful kiss. Not after the first second. His hand stayed at the back of my head, and the feel of it against the buzz made me press closer before I had meant to. I could feel his moustache against my upper lip, the roughness of it, the warmth of his mouth, his other hand finding my waist.

When we broke apart, I was laughing a little.

“What?” he said.

“Nothing.”

“That is rarely true.”

“My head feels odd.”

“In a good way?”

“Yes.”

He brushed his palm over it once more, and I had to look away again.

“You are going to be impossible now,” he said.

“I was already impossible.”

“Worse, then.”

“Probably.”

We stayed in the sitting room a while longer, though neither of us sat. Kevin kept finding reasons to touch it again: the side, the crown, the back where the nape had been. Each time, I discovered another small piece of the change. Air on my scalp. His fingers. Earrings suddenly bigger. My neck longer. Nothing to hide behind and nothing to fix.

Eventually he took my coat from the chair where I had dropped it and hung it badly on the hook by the door.

“Terrible,” I said.

“What?”

“That. The coat.”

“It’s hanging.”

“It’s suffering.”

“I’ll apologise later.”

The ordinary joke settled me more than any reassurance could have done.

He came back to me and touched my face, not my hair this time.

“They’ll talk,” he said.

“I know.”

“The lads.”

“I know.”

“People at the paper.”

“They already have opinions.”

“Do you care?”

“Yes.”

He looked surprised.

“A bit,” I said. “Not enough.”

“That’s good.”

“It feels good.”

“And strange?”

“Very strange.”

He smiled. “Still glad?”

I looked up at him.

I thought about telling him something clever. Something neat enough to sound as if I had understood myself all along. But the truth was simpler, and Sylvie had already told me how to say it.

“I wanted it,” I said.

Kevin’s expression changed, just slightly.

Then he nodded.

“All right.”

That was enough.

Later, when the room had grown warmer and the lamp seemed softer, he took my hand and led me down the short hallway toward the bedroom. There was no hurry in it. No performance. Just the two of us moving through the flat together, with him glancing back once as if he still could not quite believe the shape of my head in the low light.

His bedroom was small and neat only by accident. A brown blanket was folded over the bed. A shirt hung from the wardrobe door. The bedside lamp made the wallpaper look warmer than it probably was.

I sat on the edge of the bed and took off my earrings first.

Kevin watched.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

“You look pleased.”

“I am.”

“With yourself?”

“With you.”

That was worse. I looked down and undid my necklace, because it gave me something to do.

We changed without making a ceremony of it. He put on soft cream pyjamas, the top loose at the throat. I wore a pale satin slip I had tucked into my bag before leaving, because some part of me must have known I would not want to go home early.

With the buzzcut, it looked different.

Less sweet. Cleaner.

I sat beside him under the lamp and ran a hand over my head again.

Kevin laughed under his breath.

“What?”

“You’re still doing it.”

“I’m allowed.”

“I didn’t say you weren’t.”

“I know that tone.”

“What tone?”

“The one where you’re about to touch it again.”

“I was being patient.”

“That’s rarely stopped you before.”

He smiled, then lifted his hand.

I leaned toward him before he reached me.

His palm settled over the crown, warm and broad. He stroked the short hair slowly, and this time I did not pretend not to enjoy it. I closed my eyes and let the feeling arrive properly.

“There,” he said softly.

“There what?”

“You like it.”

I opened one eye. “You’re very observant.”

“I have moments.”

He kissed me again, and we got into bed together, awkward at first because the blanket was tucked too tightly and Kevin had put one knee exactly where I needed to move. I complained. He told me I was ungrateful. I told him his bed was badly managed. He said he would take it up with the staff.

Then we settled.

His arm went around me, and my head rested against his shoulder. The buzz brushed against his shirt with a faint, unfamiliar rasp. I could feel everything sooner now: cotton, skin, warmth, the edge of his fingers at the back of my head.

Kevin touched it once more in the dark.

“Still strange?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Still good?”

I listened to the quiet of the room, the traffic passing somewhere beyond the window, the old building creaking around us.

“Yes,” I said. “Still good.”

——

By Monday, people at the office had opinions.

They always did.

Mr Ellison looked at me for a full second longer than usual, then said, “Council transport,” and dropped a file on my desk as if that settled the matter.

Brian from sport stared until Janey asked whether he had lost something on my head.

He stopped.

Janey’s bob and fringe got almost as many comments as my buzz, which pleased her enormously.

“Yours is more shocking,” she said, touching the blunt line of her fringe.

“Thank you.”

“But mine is more elegant.”

“Also true.”

“And easier to explain to relatives.”

“My relatives don’t need an explanation.”

“They will ask.”

“They can ask.”

She looked at my head and smiled.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Say it.”

“It really does suit you.”

“You’ve already said that.”

“I’m saying it again. Don’t make it sentimental.”

“I wouldn’t dare.”

She went back to her desk, her new bob swinging neatly against her jaw.

I sat down at my typewriter and ran my palm once over the back of my head before putting paper into the carriage.

People could think what they liked. They would anyway.

But after Sylvie’s studio, after Marianne’s clippers, after Janey standing beside me with her own new fringe, after Kevin’s hand at the back of my head in the warm quiet of his room, their opinions felt smaller.

I had not done it to stop being pretty.

I had not done it to become Sylvie.

I had not done it to prove something to Kevin or Janey or anyone at The Lancashire Clarion.

I had wanted the change itself.

The choice.

The sound.

The first pass.

The impossible moment when something familiar became something else.

Now it was only my head, my hand, and the soft rough grain of the buzz beneath my palm.

I did not need to look twice.

Not anymore.