Fethering 08 (2007) - Death under the Dryer Read Free

of keys and was meant to open up at eight forty-five. No sign of her.”
    “Probably stayed in bed for naughties with that young boyfriend of hers. And actually…” he raised an eyebrow towards his boss’s mirror image “…you look as if you might have been doing something similar.”
    His insinuation prompted a rather sharper response. “Don’t be ridiculous!” Embarrassed by her own outburst, Connie looked at her watch. “I don’t know what she’s doing, but when she does finally deign to arrive, I may have a thing or two to say to Miss Kyra Bartos.”
    Theo slapped his hands to his face in a parody of Munch’s Scream . “Oh no! I’ll have to wash my nine-thirty’s hair myself!”
    “Just as I’ve had to do with my nine o’clock.”
    “Yes.” Theo grinned in the mirror at Carole. “I hope you’re appreciative of the quality of service you’re getting.” And he flounced off to hang up his leather jacket.
    Carole caught Connie’s eye and mouthed, “What did he mean about ‘the human pincushion’?”
    “Ah. Young Kyra’s taste for body piercing. It seems to be her ambition to get more perforations than a tea bag.” Another peeved look at her watch. “Where is the bloody girl? I’ll ring her when I’ve finished with you. Now do you want the cut slightly layered?”
    “No,” Carole countered doggedly. “I want it the same shape, but shorter.”
    “Right.” Whatever reservations Connie might have had to this conservative approach, she kept them to herself, and started cutting.
    At that moment Theo’s nine-thirty skulked into the salon. In spite of the mild September day, she wore a raincoat with the collar turned up, a headscarf and dark glasses.
    “Sheeeeeena!” Theo emoted. “Sheena, my love, how gorgeous to see you.”
    “Not gorgeous at all, Theo darling,” his client drawled. “That’s why I’m here. Morning, Connie,” she said as Theo removed her coat.
    “Morning, Sheena. This is Carole.”
    “Hi. I tell you, Theo, I just need the most total makeover since records began. When I looked at myself in the mirror this morning…well, it took great strength of will not to top myself on the spot.”
    “Oh, come on,” Theo wheedled, “we’ll soon have you looking your beautiful self again. Now let’s take off that scarf and those glasses.”
    “No, no. I’m just not fit to be seen!”
    “You’re amongst friends here, Sheena darling. Nobody’ll breathe a word about what you looked like before …Will you, Carole?”
    Though rather unwilling to pander to the woman’s vanity, Carole agreed that she wouldn’t.
    “And when we get to after , Sheena… after I’ve worked my magic…you’ll look so gorgeous, men in the street will be falling over each other to get at you.”
    “Oh, Theo, you’re so full of nonsense.” But it was clearly nonsense his client liked.
    After further dramatic delays, Sheena was finally settled into the chair, and there followed the great ceremony of removing her scarf and glasses. Carole, squinting at an angle into the adjacent mirror, wondered what horrors were about to be unveiled. What optical disfigurement lay behind the glasses? What trichological disaster beneath the scarf?
    After the build-up, the revelation was a bit of a disappointment. Sheena was a perfectly attractive woman in her late forties—and, what’s more, one whose blonded hair appeared to have been cut quite recently.
    But she had set up her scenario, and was not going to be deterred from playing it out. “There, Theo. Now that’s going to be a challenge, even for you, isn’t it?”
    Her stylist, who must have been through the same scene many times before, knew his lines. “Don’t worry, darling. Remember, Theo is a miracle worker. So what are we going to do?”
    “We are going to make me so attractive, Theo, that I become a positive man-magnet.”
    “Too easy. You’re a man-magnet already.”
    “I wish, I don’t understand.” Sheena let out a long sigh.