The Last One To The Party

Did Deb drink too much? Or was she simply catching up?

- Katie May

Tea? Coffee? Wine?” “Wine?” said Deb. “Oh yes,” said the hairdresser. “It’s all about feeling pampered.”

“For free?” said Deb.

“It’s complimentary, yes.”

“Well in that case, I’ll have a glass of white, then please. Why not, eh?”

Deb usually cut her own hair, leaning over the sink, and checking the back with an old shaving mirror. Since she’d turned grey, she dyed it herself, too – just a light ash blonde, nothing too noticeable.

It didn’t really matter much, anyway. She had the kind of waves that made any proper haircut never look quite right, and she spent most of her time with it scragged back in an elastic band. Now that the Whitstable sea was warming up in the late spring sunshine, she was swimming every day again, and her hair was always slightly crisp with salt water.

The cut and colour at a smart salon on Harbour Street was a birthday gift from her daughter, Cherie. When she found the voucher in her card, Deb’s first instinct was to say, “Oh no, love, there’s no point spending money on this,” and she pulled at her ponytail to show off the split ends. In return, she received the stern look that she was so used to getting from Cherie.

“That’s the whole point in going somewhere proper, Mum. They’ll sort all that out for you.”

Until that moment Deb had been blissfully unaware that she needed “sorting out”, or at least that anyone else thought so. But there you go. Cherie had been trying to reform her mother since birth, and she wasn’t going to stop now.