Elise Moves to The Cottage on the Edge of the Marsh

An Illustrated Edition of this story with Original Artwork Throughout is available for free on my personal archive

Elise Moves to The Cottage on the Edge of the Marsh (Illustrated Edition)

Prologue

The hair on my head had always been more than just hair. It served as my sanctuary and functioned as my mother’s shield after my father walked out of our lives years ago. Reaching past my waist, down to the soft swell of my hips, it was a heavy, burnished golden-brown curtain behind which I could hide whenever the world became too loud. My mum, Mary Nightingale, had spent all my young life brushing it, conditioning it, and praising its lustrous health. It was a shared ritual, offering us the warmth of a mutual defence against the sometimes cold and busy world outside.

I was nineteen, on the precipice of my first term at the local college in Shearhaven, but I was nowhere near prepared for the noise of adult life. While girls my age spent their evenings in the dimly lit pubs on the quay, I preferred the company of my precious books, the delicate transparency of watercolours, and the absolute solitude of my own thoughts.

I was, as my mother often lamented with a mix of affection and exasperation, a girl with her head permanently lodged in the clouds.

Uncle Edward

Mum had received an urgent message that morning concerning my Uncle Edward, her younger brother. He suffered an injury in a fall and, while the hospital expected him to make an excellent recovery, he needed help with his convalescence. Unfortunately, his wife had passed away two years earlier. With no one else close, Mum had no choice but to travel to the other side of the country to nurse him until he could care for himself once more.

Mum said she would drive there that afternoon, but she immediately began to worry about leaving me home alone. Her dream-bound daughter fending for herself was clearly a prospect that filled her with maternal dread. Furthermore, I could not accompany her as I started at college in less than a week, and she was unsure when she would return.

‘You’re too dreamy to live here alone, Elise,’ Mum had declared, exasperated. ‘You’ll burn the toast, forget the laundry, and leave the front door unlocked.’

‘Look, I am nineteen,’ I had offered weakly, looking up from my sketchpad. ‘Mum, I can cook an egg,’ I claimed. ‘And I can even wash a blouse.’

Mum looked at me curiously, her mind churning over my words. ‘No, you cannot!’ she said witheringly. ‘Well, you never have. You even forgot your shoes on the back lawn yesterday, Elise, and let them soak through in the rain,’ she reminded me, bustling about as she packed her beaten leather suitcase. ‘I’ve had an idea…’ she said enigmatically.

At that moment Mum’s phone rang, and she looked at the screen with a relieved smile. ‘Ah, that’s your Aunt Polly returning my voicemail from earlier.’

Aunt Polly

Polly was not a blood relation, though she had occupied a fringe role in my life for as long as I could remember. She and Mum had attended primary school together, and, despite their contrasting personalities and different paths in life, they had remained surprisingly good friends over the years. Where my mother was soft-spoken, refined, and considered, Aunt Polly was loud, boisterous, and fiercely opinionated. They had maintained their bond through charitable work around our small town and, lately, by sharing shifts at the charity shop on the high street.

Aunt Polly lived at the wild edge of town in a rambling dwelling known as Marsh Cottage. It stood right on the margin where the town’s roads gave way to the rougher tracks that led to the tall reeds and brackish waters of the salt marshes.

Mum explained her predicament to Polly over the phone, putting her on speaker.

‘Elise can stay here at Marsh Cottage,’ she offered immediately. ‘She can prepare for her studies here, and it will only be a twenty-minute walk to college, across the causeway, if you are not back before Monday, Mary. Perfect!’ she declared, with the decision made.

The thought of living under the same roof as the noisy and energetic Aunt Polly, for even a brief period, filled me with dread. I gesticulated wildly, shaking my head, conscious that Mum’s phone was still on speaker. Her optimistic smile that arose from grasping the solution to our problem quickly fell away when she saw my reaction.

Disappointed, Mum spoke. ‘That’s kind, but—’

‘No “buts”, Mary!’ Polly countered, her booming voice practically rattling the glassware. ‘Send the girl to me! Marsh Cottage has ample room, and I will be happy to look after her until you get back. So, Mary, no need to worry!’

Seeing the stress on Mum’s face – worrying about Uncle Edward and what to do with me – I knew we had little choice. I shrugged and nodded, and she sighed with immense relief.

‘Well, if you are sure, Polly, then thank you so much. It is a great weight off my mind,’ Mum gushed. ‘I’ll drop her off this afternoon.’

After finishing the call, Mum hugged me. ‘I know the arrangement is not ideal, Elise, but it is a pragmatic solution. It saves me from worrying myself sick about you while I am nursing your uncle.’

I had accepted the decision meekly, hauling myself down from my self-imposed clouds and pretending to act like an adult. Though I did not know Aunt Polly that well, staying close to the salt marshes where I would enjoy walking, held a romantic appeal that I hoped may influence my watercolours.

I went to my room to pack my suitcase, pulling open drawers and the wardrobe, and becoming increasingly flustered after quarter of an hour with badly folded clothes spread all over the bed. Mum then came into my room, sighing while shaking her head at my ineptitude, and she had me packed and ready to leave in under five minutes.

Arrival

‘Take care of her, Polly,’ Mum had called out through the car window after depositing me and my suitcase at the white wooden gate outside Marsh Cottage. ‘Remember, she’s sensitive,’ she added conspiratorially to Polly more quietly, although I was standing right there.

Aunt Polly wrapped a formidable arm around my delicate shoulders, almost crushing me in the process. ‘She will be proper, well-cared for, Mary. No need to worry about a thing,’ Polly had bellowed. ‘We will be fine,’ she added. ‘So, off you go and give Edward my best!’

As Mum’s car disappeared down the coastal road, Aunt Polly turned and gathered me into an overwhelming, suffocating embrace. ‘So, welcome to Marsh Cottage, little Elise!’ she roared. ‘Let’s get you settled,’ she said, picking up my heavy suitcase as if it weighed nothing.

‘Thanks, Aunt Polly,’ I said genuinely, as she lightly clapped me on the back, but her powerful hand still managed to propel me at high speed towards the white front door.

Then she said something that confused me. ‘We will make a proper woman of you yet!’ she murmured.

Marsh Cottage

‘I have made up the attic room for you so you can spread out all those learned books, writing papers, and suchlike,’ she sniffed. ‘After all, we do not want all that stuff cluttering up the rest of the house, do we?’ she chuckled, confirming my belief she was not academically gifted.

The attic room was everything I had hoped for, even if the rest of the house felt oddly sterile. It was small, with sloped plaster ceilings and a single timber-framed window that looked directly out over the endless expanse of grey-green marshes stretching toward the sea. The solitude was instant and intoxicating. Here, high above the rest of the cottage, I felt safe from Aunt Polly’s overwhelming presence. I pictured late afternoons sketching by the open window, listening to the call of the birds of the marsh, isolated from the world.

The Odd Couple

A peculiar irritation arose in the form of the other inhabitants of the cottage. Aunt Polly’s two children were a mystery unto themselves. Helen and Simon were around my age, and we had even attended the same local school, but we had never spoken. I was not alone in that. At school, they had been shadows on the edge of the classroom and the playground. They were quiet, impeccably neat, and perpetually avoiding the gazes of everyone else. They were frequently referred to as “the odd couple”.

When I had arrived, walking up the garden path, they stood like sentinels by the white front door. Dressed in clothes that I imagined were supposed to be casual wear, their attire was so smart and neatly pressed, they could have been on their way to church. They looked disconcertingly similar too, with matching cream polo shirts; Helen’s tucked into her pleated grey skirt and Simon’s into his grey shorts. Although I nodded and then murmured a greeting as I went indoors, they stood expressionless, their gaze fixed on the marsh in the far distance.

Inside Marsh Cottage, their behaviour was even stranger. Where Aunt Polly was a tempest of noise and motion, her children existed in a state of absolute, eerie submissiveness. They moved through the hallways like ghosts, their expressions vacant, their voices rarely rising above a whisper. It was as though their mother had consumed all the vibrant air in the house, leaving them to subsist on whatever quiet crumbs remained.

When I tried to initiate a conversation on my second evening, sitting at the polished oak dining table, the interaction was fleeting.

‘Do you do any painting at all, Helen?’ I asked softly, searching for common ground. ‘The light over the estuary at four o’clock is magnificent.’

Helen stared at me with wide, pale blue eyes, her chin-length brown hair gently framing her face. She looked at her mother, who was busy furiously scrubbing a pot at the sink, and then looked back at me.

‘Mother says painting encourages idle thoughts,’ Helen murmured, her voice flat, almost robotic.

‘Ah,’ I said, taken aback. ‘I see,’ which, of course, I did not.

Simon sat beside her, his sandy hair falling in a slightly tangled, tousled mop over his forehead. He kept his eyes fixed firmly on his plate, chewing his food with a mechanical rhythm.

‘What type of books do you like to read, Simon?’ I attempted. ‘History? Science? Novels?’

‘Mother says novels are a wasteful use of time,’ Simon stated, without looking up from his meal.

Given their unwillingness to converse, immediately after sharing each meal with them, I withdrew. I spent those warm late-summer days retreating to my attic kingdom. I wore my casual summer clothes, including my favourite short, cotton dress with floral prints that allowed the breeze to touch my legs. Although I loved to wear my long hair loose, often holding back with a simple hairband, the warmth of summer had persisted. So, I usually piled my heavy locks into a loose, messy updo on top of my head to keep the heat off my neck. I believed the look I had curated for myself would help me adjust and fit in as a student. Enjoying hours down on the marsh banks, sketchbook on my knees, I dreamt of how much more I would learn when the college term began.

I felt entirely secure in my isolation. After all, I was merely a temporary guest, passing through an eccentric household, believing I would be untouched by its strange undercurrents. However, I was terribly wrong.

Saturday Morning

After three full days at Marsh Cottage, each day proving delightfully similar, I did not expect anything different at the weekend. It remained unseasonably hot, so, after a quick and uncommunicative breakfast, I returned to my attic room. Sitting by the open window with the aromatic salt-laden air from the marshes wafting by, I returned to my Thomas Hardy novel, hoping to finish without disturbance before lunch.

Around nine o’clock, a sharp, metallic chime echoed from the front door down below. I paid it no mind. Visitors were Aunt Polly’s affair, not mine. I leaned back against my pillows, twisting a stray lock of my hip-length hair around my index finger, lost in my book.

Thirty minutes passed in peaceful silence. Then, a voice shattered the quiet.

‘Elise! Come down here this instant!’ Aunt Polly’s loud command rattled up the narrow wooden attic staircase. ‘Mrs Baxter is here!’

I blinked, irritated, marking my page with a dried fern leaf. Mrs Baxter? I did not know anyone by that name. Expecting nothing more than a brief introduction and an offering of tea, I padded barefoot down the stairs, my long hair still pinned in its casual, messy updo, my short cotton dress fluttering around my thighs.

When I stepped into the large country kitchen, the spectacle that confronted me stopped my passage through the doorway.

The room was completely different from how it had been an hour earlier. It no longer looked like a domestic kitchen but now resembled a cold and utilitarian barbershop of all things. The heavy oak chair that usually sat at the head of the dining table, used by Aunt Polly, was now located in the centre of the tiled floor. The large kitchen table was up against the back wall.

Sitting in the oak chair was Aunt Polly. But she looked astonishingly different from how she had earlier.

Mrs Baxter

Standing behind Aunt Polly was Mrs Baxter. A massive, broad-shouldered woman with iron-grey hair, she wore a stiff rubberised apron over a nondescript dark dress. On the kitchen counter beside her lay a small leather suitcase filled with a glistening array of haircutting equipment. This included combs, glistening shears, and most distressing of all, large red hairclippers like you see in old movies.

Mrs Baxter was holding a pair of enormous metal scissors that looked less like haircutting shears and more like garden pruning shears.

Changes

Aunt Polly’s nondescript shoulder-length hair had vanished. Well, not strictly true, as her former brown locks littered the floor around her, with remarkably little evidence remaining on her head. In its place was a stark and aggressive stye that a soldier would refer to as a “flattop” haircut. However, bizarrely, it was a middle-aged charity shop worker who was wearing it.

The shaved back and sides of her head exposed pale, bare skin, while the hair on her crown resembled a stiff brush, standing erect and no more than half an inch high. Fresh, dark hair clippings covered her shoulders and filled her lap.

Struggling to take in the astonishing scene, I averted my gaze, still rooted to my vantage point in the kitchen doorway. Perched on the breakfast stools across the room were Simon and Helen. They sat unnaturally straight, their hands folded neatly in their laps, watching their mother with vacant and unblinking expressions. Furthermore, their appearance had also changed.

Helen’s soft chin-length bob that framed her face beautifully had gone. Brutally and mercilessly sheared, she now exhibited a severe bowlcut. What hair remained now resembled a glossy helmet that terminated in a stark, blunt line above her delicate and previously hidden ears. Below the uncompromising perimeter, the entire lower half of her head, including her nape, was bald. A stark, microscopic fringe covered only a small proportion of her forehead.

Simon’s cute, tousled locks were on the floor, covered by those of longer tresses that had once adorned the heads of his mother and sister. He was wearing what I could only describe as a traditional short-back-and-sides, a style that I had previously only seen on well-spoken gentlemen in old black-and-white movies on TV. His head was uncompromisingly bald up past his temples, with the small patch of hair remaining on top heavily greased down and parted with razor-like precision on the left side.

Furthermore, even stranger, was that they had changed their clothes since breakfast. Before Mrs Baxter had arrived, they replaced their casual clothes with their stiff and formal “Sunday best”.

Helen wore a knee-length dark navy dress made of heavy velvet-like fabric, featuring a large rounded white collar around her neck. Thick, opaque, ribbed white tights covered her legs despite the summer stifling heat. Simon wore a dark navy wool suit, a starched white collared shirt, and a dark necktie.

The stillness of the room, and the unnatural silence, made me feel I had walked into a waxwork display of a family group at a funeral. I gasped, swallowing hard, staring at the horror of the scene. I wished desperately that I had remained hidden in my room until Mrs Baxter had left, before descending to discover why Aunt Polly had called me. Slowly, I began to back away from the kitchen.

The silence suddenly broke with the high-pitched whine of an electric motor filling the room. Tearing my gaze away from the vacant “Even Odder Couple”, I saw that Mrs Baxter had set down the heavy shears, and she had picked up the large and heavy hairclippers that looked tiny in her massive hand.

Aunt Polly caught my eye in the doorway. ‘Don’t just stand there gaping like a landed fish, Elise,’ she boomed, her broad face gleaming with satisfaction. ‘Wait over there by the children.’

Mrs Baxter proceeded to reduce the fine stubble on the back and sides of Aunt Polly’s skull to a blank canvas. Obliterating her hairline created the eerie illusion of lowering her ears, such was the contrast between stiff bristles and skin.

My heart began to hammer against my ribs, but I did as she told me, hoping to get answers. ‘Aunt Polly, er… what is this?’

However, she did not respond, the awful, insistent whine of the hairclippers drowning my gentle voice.

As I stood beside Helen and Simon, they both turned their heads in perfect synchronisation to study me, their blank expression unchanging. After ten seconds, they reverted to staring intently at Mrs Baxter shaving their mother.

‘All done, Polly,’ Mrs Baxter loudly announced in a deep rasping voice. They were the first words she had spoken and made me jump. She wiped Aunt Polly’s neck with a coarse brush, then whisked away the haircutting cape.

Aunt Polly clambered up from the heavy oak chair, dusting the lapels of her suit and checking the neck of her stiff blouse for any stray hairs. I was relieved Mrs Baxter would now be leaving, and I could get on with my day once I had learnt what Aunt Polly wanted.

The moment their mother stood, Simon and Helen synchronised perfectly. As she checked her appearance in the kitchen mirror, smiling with profound satisfaction, they clapped three times in unison. Then they looked at each other, smiled briefly without a trace of real warmth, and resumed their motionless posture.

Their peculiar behaviour chilled me, only made worse by their bizarre appearance. Taking a step away, I intended to retreat up the stairs until their guest had left. ‘I think, er… I will go back to my room,’ I murmured, shuffling around the edges of the kitchen towards the doorway.

‘Your turn, Elise,’ Aunt Polly invited, her voice ringing out with terrifying cheerfulness as she gestured toward the hair-covered oak chair.

Invitation

Four pairs of eyes swivelled expectantly in my direction as I clumsily negotiated the small gap between the ironing board and the litter bin. I let out a forced, nervous laugh, treating it as the joke I assumed she intended it to be.

‘Oh! No, thank you. I am not having a haircut.’ Nervously, I looked from Polly’s bristly head to Helen’s severe bowlcut, by way of Simon’s short back and sides. I felt like a deer in headlights under their uncompromising stares. ‘My hair is fine.’

Aunt Polly’s smile vanished instantly. Her face flattened into a look of stern, uncompromising authority. The tone of her voice became far more severe than anything I had ever heard from her.

‘We all have our hair cut when Mrs Baxter pops around,’ she chided, stepping toward me with deliberate, unyielding steps. ‘It is a matter of household discipline and cleanliness. Sit down immediately.’

The sheer weight of her tone froze me. I was nineteen, but under that sudden, dictatorial glare, I felt reduced to a frightened schoolgirl. Helen and Simon exchanged another of their brief, clockwork smiles at my discomfort. I panicked, trying to find a middle ground that would appease her without destroying my identity.

‘Well… maybe just a trim then,’ I stammered, my voice trembling. ‘Just… just the ends? It might be nice to have the ends neat for when I start college on Monday.’

Mrs Baxter, standing by her tray of tools, let out an audible, mocking scoff. The sound chilled my blood.

Before I could protest further, Aunt Polly’s strong hands clamped onto my shoulders. With an unrelenting grip, she steered me into the heavy oak chair. My knees gave way under the pressure, and I sank onto the hard seat.

Immediately, before I could push myself up, Mrs Baxter draped a massive, heavy rubber cape over me. She snapped it tight around my neck, making it so tight that it pinched my throat, before pulling it down over my arms and torso. Unlike the light garment they used in the salon where I infrequently went for a trim, the thick material was horribly restrictive, smelling overpoweringly of rubber, disinfectant, and hairspray. The weight and length trapped my hands, and, despite my ineffective flapping of arms to take back control, the chair held me captive.

‘So, the usual?’ Mrs Baxter asked, stepping around to face us, her cold eyes sizing me up.

The Usual

The word made no sense to me. I had never seen this woman before in my life, so how would she know what was usual? There simply was no “usual”!

I opened my mouth, desperate to assert myself. ‘A trim! Please, just half an inch off the bottom –’

‘Yes, that’s right,’ Aunt Polly interrupted loudly, overriding my voice completely. ‘Give her a bowlcut like you do for all the girls around these parts.’

Bowlcut? Girl? Who was she talking about, I wondered as I panicked. ‘Aunt –’

‘The exact same as Helen’s,’ Aunt Polly elaborated to my horror and disbelief. She stood in front of me with arms crossed over her navy suit, with that look of profound satisfaction she reserved for when she believed she was right. ‘And make it a short one, Mrs Baxter,’ she added gleefully. ‘She looks like she hasn’t had a decent, respectable haircut in years.’

Mrs Baxter threw back her head and laughed along with Aunt Poly with a dry and grating bark. Helen and Simon exchanged another of their brief, clockwork smiles when seeing my dismay, amplifying my concern tenfold.

‘True enough!’ Mrs Baxter agreed, tears of mirth running down her cheeks. ‘You only need to look at her wild mop! Whatever has Mary been thinking, letting her go around town for so long looking like a hippie.’

Aunt Polly finally took a deep breath to calm herself. ‘And don’t even get me started on her clothes,’ she smirked, shaking her head.

‘Look, don’t worry, Polly,’ Mrs Baxter chuckled. ‘I don’t charge by the inch of hair that I cut off; otherwise, you would be bankrupt!’

Reacting to their laughter at my expense, a mix of anger and panic exploded in my chest. ‘No! Aunt Polly, stop! You cannot do this!’ Once again, I thrashed ineffectively beneath the rubber cape, trying to wriggle my arms free, but the heavy rubber gripped my clothes, keeping me bound. ‘I do not want a bowlcut! I love my hair long. My mother loves my hair long! She has brushed it every day since I was a child!’

‘Nonsense!’ Aunt Polly snapped, her voice cutting through my dread like an iron blade. ‘It is the harvest festival at church tomorrow! You are staying under my roof, under my care, and I will not have you walking into God’s house looking like an unwashed hippie!’

‘Fine, then I won’t go to church!’ I shouted back, finally having a chance to assert myself, tears of humiliation hot in my eyes. ‘I will stay here! You cannot force me!’

‘If you stay under my roof, then you will go to church!’ Polly bit back instantly, leaning down so her face was inches from mine. ‘And you will go looking respectable! This long hair of yours is nothing but foolish and childish vanity! It is high time you grew up, young lady!’

‘It is my identity!’ I sobbed, my head spinning. ‘My mother—’

‘Your mother is miles away nursing her brother!’ Polly interrupted sternly, talking over my every word. ‘And when Mary returns, she will be deeply grateful that I took you in hand and turned you into a respectable and neat young woman instead of letting you wallow in childish nonsense!’

‘Besides,’ Mrs Baxter added calmly, picking up her giant shears and assessing the blade with a sharp snip-snip in front of my eyes, ‘your Aunt Polly simply does not know how long you are staying here. A mere “trim”, as you call it,’ she spat, ‘would mean me coming back here every month. That is neither practical nor economical for anyone concerned.’

‘Exactly,’ Polly agreed loudly. ‘If I am paying for your haircut, my girl, then I intend to get my money’s worth! A proper, short cut will last you for months, and it will last clear through to the spring if you are still here!’

I was unsure whether the prospect of a haircut or staying in this madhouse for another six months filled me with greater dread.

‘Much better to do it right for the whole family at longer intervals,’ Mrs Baxter chimed in.

Their arguments were an absurdity. It was a bizarre tag-team barrage of circular logic designed to confuse, browbeat, and overwhelm me. And it worked. The heat of the kitchen, the suffocating constriction of the heavy rubber cape, and the thunderous authority of Aunt Polly’s voice made my mind spin. With the utter helplessness of my position, I grew hot, flustered, and dazed, unable to find the words to break through their fortress of absurd reasoning.

Realising the futility of screaming in Marsh Cottage, out of earshot of anyone and inhabited by mad people, I sat trapped. My heart hammered against my ribs like a caged bird, searching desperately for escape.

Overwhelmed, my chin simply dropped toward my chest in utter misery.

Defeated

As my head bowed, a subtle shift occurred in the room. The tension broke. Both older women brightened noticeably.

Across the room, the watching children snapped out of their frozen stillness. Simon and Helen turned their heads simultaneously, faced each other, and smiled. It was that same robotic, terrifyingly vacant smile, before turning back in unison to watch the spectacle. To them, my hair’s destruction was simply the next act in the family ritual.

‘Hold her head up, Polly,’ Mrs Baxter ordered softly.

Aunt Polly’s broad, firm hand reached out and grabbed my chin, forcing my head up and clamping it in place. I was looking straight into her satisfied eyes, and I could not look away. I could not even move.

‘Perfect!’ Mrs Baxter judged, plucking the large decorative pins from my messy updo, allowing my long hair to unfurl, and then tumble down the back of the chair with an audible thump. She did not section my hair, comb it out, or treat it with any care at all. My golden-brown locks had taken me a decade to grow, and my mum and I cared for my hair every day. But that was not Mrs Baxter’s way. Unceremoniously, she wrenched my tresses into a massive ponytail at my nape and brutally shoved the heavy blades of her garden-like shears around it.

The loud and sickening crunching sound as the blades closed was horrifying as they severed hundreds of thousands of thick and healthy hair strands. The sound was bad enough, but then I felt a sudden, terrifying release of weight at the back of my head.

With a second brutal chop, she severed the entire length in one go. Years of growth and maternal care vanished in a fraction of a second. Mrs Baxter scoffed at the giant, heavy tail of hair and callously tossed it into the kitchen rubbish bin.

Tears spilt over my hot cheeks, but no sound came out of my throat. I was numb with shock.

‘There now,’ Miss Baxter said brightly. ‘That’s the worst of that mess gone.’

‘At last,’ Aunt Polly sighed, her grip on my chin unwavering. ‘Now make it look proper like it should.’

Shaping

Mrs Baxter picked up the red hairclippers she had used on Aunt Polly earlier and, I presumed, Helen and Simon before I arrived. I shivered at the prospect of her using them on me. I heard the motor’s noise increase to a deafening whine, then felt an unholy vibration of the metal blade digging in what remained of my hair, high up the back of my head.

She repeated the action around my head at the same height, above my ears at the sides, until she reached the front, where longer tendrils still obscured my vision. But not for long. Although I could not see clearly, I knew Aunt Polly had released her grip on my chin, and I sensed Mrs Baxter standing close in front of me. The vibrating blades of the clippers dug into my forehead, high above my eyebrows, and a delighted barber was staring directly into my eyes. I realised I had a fringe for the first time in my life. As it turned out, it was a hideously short, straight, blunt fringe that left my entire face exposed and defenceless.

The sound and vibration had echoed directly through my skull as Mrs Baxter outlined my new haircut. It grew even worse when she drove the clippers upward from my hairline to the line she had established around my head with long, forceful strokes. Up and up the blades went, removing every tiny hair from the base of my neck all the way around my ears.

Chilly air instantly struck skin that had never seen the sun, making me shiver violently beneath the hot rubber cape. I could feel that my entire lower scalp was completely hairless, carved away into a stark, skin-cleared border that ended sharply at the rim of the imaginary bowl.

Mrs Baxter worked with efficient and brutal speed. Even with the bulk of my hair already consigned to the trash, I watched in morbid fascination as large, thick clumps tumbled down the slope of the heavy rubber cape, pooling in my lap, before sliding to the floor.

‘Now for the clean finish,’ Mrs Baxter said cheerfully, turning to the counter, whipping up a thick lather in a ceramic shaving mug, a dipping a stiff brush inside.

Finishing

I went into shock as she painted the warm foam liberally over the back of my neck, around my ears, and up into the freshly clipped stubble of my lower head. The metallic scrape of a straight razor followed.

Mrs Baxter held my skin taut, gliding the sharp blade over my nape and around my ears, erasing every single trace of fuzz or bristle below the high perimeter of the bowl cut. Once satisfied, she wiped away the residual foam with a damp towel that stung my freshly scraped skin.

She unfastened the rubber cape and whipped it off with a flourish. ‘All done, Polly!’ Mrs Baxter announced triumphantly, with no reference to me.

I sat frozen and trembling. I raised a shaking hand – a hand that felt strangely light – and touched the back of my head. Where my thick, glorious curtain of hair had been, there was nothing. Nothing but soft and completely smooth skin running from my neck up to the middle of my skull. Above that naked belt sat a thick and heavy mushroom-like cap of blunt hair, fronted by a ridiculously tiny fringe.

Aunt Polly, with an expression of pure glee, unhooked the mirror on the wall and held it in front of me. I did not recognise the girl who was staring back at me. The soft, dreamy, mysterious artist with her face hidden behind a golden veil was gone. In her place sat an exposed, stark, strange creature with wide, terrified eyes, with previously hidden prominent ears sticking out proudly, and a head that looked cropped for a strict orphanage for under-fives.

‘Perfect for church,’ Aunt Polly declared, stepping back to admire Mrs Baxter’s diabolical work with a beaming and triumphant smile. ‘Just look at you, Elise! Absolutely respectable. You look like one of the family now!’

Family

Across the room, Simon and Helen stood up in unison. They clapped their hands together three times in praise, their faces lighting up with identical, serene expressions. ‘One of the family,’ they chorused together, their voices echoing in frightening harmony. ‘One of the family.’

Mrs Baxter began packing her shears and razor back into her leather case, chuckling. ‘I will return in six months, at the start of spring, for your regular pruning,’ she said, glancing at each member of the family in turn.

Aunt Polly nodded while, predictably, her children failed to react.

‘However,’ she said, pausing as her gaze lingered on my shocked and wide-eyed countenance, ‘looking at this one, I might pop by in a couple of weeks, free of charge, of course. We need to remind her of the importance of maintaining a respectable haircut.’

‘That is very generous of you, Mrs Baxter,’ Aunt Polly said smoothly. Then, both older women turned their eyes onto me, their gazes stern and expectant.

The air in the kitchen grew thick again. They were waiting.

I swallowed the lump in my throat. They had stripped my identity away, crushed it under heavy shears, shaved it down with clippers, and rasped it off with a razor. I had nothing of my own left with which to fight.

‘Thanks… Mrs Baxter,’ I murmured, my voice barely a whisper, looking down at the tiled floor covered in my lost hair.

‘And for church tomorrow,’ Aunt Polly added, rubbing her own prickly flattop with a hand, ‘you will borrow one of Helen’s lovely and respectable dresses. We will not have any of your hippie attire embarrassing us in front of the congregation.’

‘Yes, Aunt Polly,’ I whispered, feeling the chilly air circulating around my naked ears. ‘Thank you, Aunt Polly.’

Church

Sunday morning arrived with crisp inevitability and relentless clarity.

I stood in front of the tall mirror in Helen’s bedroom, dressing under Aunt Polly’s watchful eye. The garment chosen for me was a blue woollen dress, identical to Helen’s in style but lighter in shade. With its suffocating rounded white collar, I could barely speak with it pressing so tightly against my neck.

Furthermore, because I was three inches taller than Helen, the dress fitted me horribly. The sleeves pulled tight across my shoulders, and the skirt, meant to fall below the knees, hit high up on my thighs. It was a stark, awkward length made even stranger by the ribbed and opaque cream-coloured tights that covered my long legs.

My long hair was gone. The severe bowlcut sat on my head like a helmet, its high-clipped fringe leaving my entire forehead unnaturally bare, while the freshly razor-shaved back and sides of my head felt unnaturally exposed to the cool breeze coming through the open window.

We walked to the village church as a single unit. Aunt Polly led the way in her navy suit and severe flattop, followed by me in my borrowed dress, with Simon and Helen bringing up the rear, side by side, in their Sunday best.

As we approached the heavy stone arches of the church, the vicar stood at the doors, greeting the arriving parishioners. When his eyes fell upon our group, a look of surprise crossed his face, quickly erased by profound approval.

‘Well, is that really you, Elise Nightingale, that I see before me,’ he gushed, clasping his hands together as if in prayer. ‘My goodness,’ he added, looking me up and down, admiring the strict simplicity of my dress and the austere severity of the bowlcut on my head.

‘Yes, sir, it’s me,’ I mumbled, keeping my eyes fixed on the stone steps.

‘She’s an absolute credit to you, Polly,’ the vicar said warmly, reaching out to pat me lightly on the shoulder. ‘A respectable and neat young woman. It is so refreshing to witness after all those years of nonsense with her hideous long hair and those, er, artisan clothes she wore. I have no idea what Mary Nightingale was thinking when letting her girl run wild like a bohemian. You have done Elise a great service, Polly.’

‘Just doing my duty, Vicar,’ Polly boomed proudly. ‘Proper discipline makes a proper young person, just like my Simon and Helen. We see her as one of the family now.’

Her offspring had moved from protecting my rear to flanking me, as if providing a bodyguard while standing in front of the vicar. With uncharacteristic and unexpected verve, their voices rang out in harmony. ‘One of the family!’

Epilogue

As we waited to enter the quiet sanctuary of the church, a coastal breeze rustled the leaves overhead. I waited for the familiar sensation of my long hair flicking against my cheeks. But it did not come.

My painfully short hair did not move at all. It sat rigid and stiff, unmoving, clamped to the top of my skull. Instead, the cool wind washed across the bare skin at the back of my head, sending a shiver straight down my spine. And in that precise moment, something shifted inside me.

For nineteen years, I had used my hair as a shield to protect my identity. I retreated into it to shelter from the world. But as I stood there, I realised that they had not stripped me of that identity. All that I had once been, was still there. They may have taken my gorgeous hair and forced me into that awful dress, but they had not touched the essence of me. My mind was still entirely my own. The haircut had not destroyed my identity. However, it had stripped away my armour and forced me to show my true self to the world.

When term started on Monday, I would not walk onto the college campus as a timid, hidden girl crouching behind a curtain of hair. I would walk in exposed and visible, an awakened woman who was finally ready to face the world.

‘Come along, Elise,’ Aunt Polly commanded. Her heavy hand settled onto my shoulder, guiding me into the dark church aisle. ‘You are one of us now.’

I lifted my chin and stepped forward, shrugging off her grip. ‘No, Aunt Polly,’ I corrected. ‘I am one of me.’

The End

A Note from the Author

Further to sharing a selection of my stories here, they are also published on my personal archive

The Hair Apparent Stories

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