A Certain Chemistry by Mil Millington Page A

around my neck was saying to me, “but I’m
not
easy.”
    She pushed a toe on the pedal of my chair, and I descended with a hiss. “What do you want?” she asked me in the mirror, her eyes adding, “As if I didn’t know—you weirdo.”
    “Um . . . can you just, you know, tidy it up a bit?”
    She stared at me. I lifted up my arms and indicated my requirements by the vaguest of actions—as though both my ears were hot and I was fanning them with my hands. She nodded and set about her work. Pointedly, she didn’t say anything to me, not even asking whether I was going on holiday this year. All around us the other women hairdressers and their women clients bubbled with talk. One woman of about fifty (with small locks of hair teased out of the holes in a rubber highlighting cap, so her head looked like a semiflaccid, balding porcupine) was relating the trouble she’d had with the council about that hedge. Her hairdresser spent as much time paused, arms akimbo, shaking her head at the astonishing twists and turns of the story as she did doing any actual bleaching. Another was worn out with everything that needed to be done for the wedding; she didn’t know how she was going to organize it all—and Jimmy was useless, of course. And I was just becoming quite enraptured by the whispered tale of someone else’s sister from Spean Bridge when I heard the sirens.
    Through the plate-glass windows at the front of the shop we could see that people had stopped in the street and that police cars were pulling up onto the pavement. While we were still wondering what had happened, an officer opened the door and leaned in.
    “We’ve received a bomb threat. I need everyone to evacuate this area now. If you’ve seen any suspicious packages or people, please let us know.” He leaned back out of the doorway and darted off to the next shop. There was a pause inside the hairdresser’s—a silent suspension of everything. Then a loudspeaker outside began repeating pretty much the same message as the officer had given, and we all flicked into action. The overriding desire of everyone present was to begin, as quickly as possible, to complain. Sighing, tutting and moaning that somebody had to plant a bomb . . .
here
. . .
now
. It was just typical. Making us get up and traipse down the street halfway through a haircut? Well . . . it had just better not turn out to be a hoax, that’s all.
    Now, while it was patently ridiculous for a woman having her roots done to complain that she was being interrupted by something as trivial as a bomb,
I
was due—in less than twenty-five minutes—to see Georgina Nye. I couldn’t turn up at Georgina Nye’s hotel room with my hair halfway through a cut. I’d look like a mental patient.
    “Couldn’t we just finish off?” I pleaded to the hairdresser, who was tugging her coat on.
    “What?”
    “Couldn’t you just finish doing my haircut, before we go?”
    “There’s a bomb scare.”
    “Yes, yes, I know. But you, well . . . look at my
hair
.”
    “Tanya, come
on,
” an older woman I guessed was the owner called from the doorway.
    “I’m coming. This gentleman was just trying to persuade me to stay and finish his cut.”
    The owner squinted at me.
    “What is it? A dry cut?”
    “Aye,” Tanya nodded. “I was trying to leave some of the length on top.”
    “Mmmm, don’t overdo it, though. His hair hasn’t got the thickness.”
    “Okay.”
    “Now, come on, for God’s sake. We could all be dead any second.”
    I hurried out into the street, pausing half in, half out of the doorway and shouting after them.
    “Couldn’t you take some scissors?” I pleaded. They were hurrying off up the street and didn’t reply. I sprinted after them. (Hoping that all was not lost and wanting to keep the atmosphere, I was still wearing the plastic apron. It flapped around at my sides as I ran along—imagine Batman with bed hair and his cape on backwards.) “We could get to a safe distance and you