I’ve been growing it for years, but until I was big enough to fight them off my hair was an unkempt bird’s nest because they never understood how to treat it. They didn’t understand how to treat me. The night before each new school term they would shove me down on a hard chair as if I was Anne Boleyn being prepared for the block. He would hold me down while she would start chopping at it with a pair of kitchen scissors.
No point wasting money on a hairdresser, it’s just ugly, dead material.
I learned to control the impotent tears as she hacked and he shoved and I watched the russet curls, the emerging tendrils struggling to prove themselves, kinking up even when they were only a few inches long. Shorn, limp, kicked about on the dirty floor like withering autumn leaves. Where did I come from? Who in my biological past had, or has, this hair?
‘I’ve stepped over a line. Taken liberties.’ These aren’t questions. They’re statements. Gustav Levi is watching me again, trying to read me. He’s not succeeding.
But even through the sudden wretchedness I can still see the way my blue pashmina dangles over his arm like a waiter’s napkin as comical.
I shake my head. ‘I’m just reminded of things, people, I’d rather forget.’
‘You don’t like your hair being touched?’
‘Au contraire,’ I sigh. ‘I have just discovered that I love it being touched. No-one’s ever – it took me by surprise, that’s all.’
‘I’m continental. Too tactile. And you Anglo-Saxons?’ He flips his hands dismissively. ‘Ice in your veins.’
‘I always think of myself as Celtic. Fire, not ice. But no, Gustav. I’m trying to tell you it felt nice. Lovely. It was just more intimate than I’m used to.’
He raises his eyebrows questioningly.
‘I would defy any man not to want to either stroke it or paint pictures of it all day long. Christ, even mammals groom each other, don’t they?’ He pushes the hair off his face and unbuttons his coat. ‘You telling me your mother never brushed it? All that sunset splendour?’
‘Brushed it?’ I repeat harshly. ‘God no. She pulled it when I was naughty, the little baby hairs just in front of my ears, oh, and she chopped it off, as soon as it grew more than a few inches, because she hated it. It wasn’t sunset splendour to her. It was ugly and ginger.’
A shadow passes over Gustav’s face. A brief cloud, followed by watery sunlight. I wonder if he realises how easy he is to read. The black gleam in his eyes steadies to understanding, as if he’s listening to a piece of music he used to play.
‘I’ve never told anyone that before. No-one has ever stood still long enough to listen.’
‘My God, Serena,’ he says, very softly, his eyes softening. ‘You really are a lost soul under all that chutzpah, aren’t you?’
‘Not lost. Fighting to be heard. I’m fine. You learn to be the cat who walks alone when you’re kicked about often enough.’
A small, dark man in an impeccable suit appears soundlessly from behind a huge vase of winter flowers. ‘Mr Levi. How very good to see you. Your usual tipple this evening?’
Gustav nods. ‘Thank you, Jerome. If you have my favourite seat, too?’
The tinkle of glasses and low murmur of voices start to trickle out of the bar as if we’ve disturbed birds sleeping on a wire.
‘And very sexy they are too.’ Gustav takes a step towards the bar.
‘What are?’
‘Cats. Cold, distant. And you have the eyes, too. Green, slightly slanted. Perfect for Halloween.’ Gustav crooks his arm again. ‘They sometimes pounce on mice for fun, when no-one’s looking, don’t they? Don’t make that face. I mean it in a good way.’
I toss my jacket and gloves at him, as if he’s a servant. His hand shoots out overarm as if he’s catching a cricket ball.
‘Are we going to have that drink or what?’
He laughs and slaps his leg. Those expressive hands. ‘Of course. What would you like?’
‘Surprise me. And could you look after my camera, while I freshen up? Guard it with your life.’
‘Oh, I will, Serena. Don’t you worry about that.’
I know he’s watching me, my butt, my supposedly fertile woman’s hips, my legs, sketching me all over again in his head as I make my way self-consciously down the airy corridor to the ladies’ room. The knowledge that he’s watching makes hot sweat spring through my cold skin. I pray I don’t trip. I push open the big white door, slip inside. Alone at last.
False pretences. I don’t really need the bathroom. I just need a moment. Work out what’s going on. Get a grip. I need to, what do those counsellors say? Regroup.
Polly, the only person who looks out for me, would still be nagging me.
You have no idea who this guy is. He could be an axe murderer. He could be twice your age. Get the hell out of there, before something happens.
But I want something to happen! That’s precisely why I came to London, isn’t it? And it’s not as if I’ve gone down a dark alley with him, is it, tempted as I was, or allowed him to drag me back to his lair.
I start to tremble. I close my eyes and let it take me over. I know what that means. It’s my body’s reaction to the possibility of danger. Gustav Levi’s lair. What would that be like? What would happen there? What would he do to me if I went there with him?
I open my eyes and stare at the girl reflected in the huge mirror. I barely recognise her. In the house on the cliff they used to nail up one or two dusty panes of mirrored glass in the only places where it was absolutely necessary. The bathroom, beside the front door, so the handful of visitors, the priest, the doctor, the undertaker, could check that they looked sane before taking great lungfuls of fresh air on departure.
Only two days ago this girl was still in that house, reflected in those paltry mirrors. Pale, transparent, only catching sight of herself out of the corner of her eye. She was a ghost, not just because the house was deserted, no furniture now, never any ornaments or pictures, no cushions or rugs. Not just because everyone else was dead and gone, burned to a crisp like the tables and chairs and beds. But because in that house she had never had a life.
Even the girl at the railway station yesterday, shoving the beret down on her hair, applying lip gloss to stop her biting her lips, looked drained and anxious as if any minute someone would burst in like it was a Wild West saloon and tell her she would never leave this one-horse town.
This girl, the one who got to London in the end, is loitering in an expensive hotel, about to have a drink with a very attractive vampire, possibly a dangerous stranger, and she’s up for it. There. I’ve said it. I’m going to do whatever the hell I like, wherever the hell it leads me.
This huge mirror is a mirror that invites, that celebrates reflections. Not makes them out to be something vain and sinful. It’s almost too brightly lit, as if put there to help Hollywood starlets apply their stage make-up. Pampering and vanity is encouraged in this boudoir with its piles of soft white face towels, its elegant curved taps, its primrose-flavoured, oily, perfumed handwash in crystal bottles attached to the basins so that urchins like me won’t nick them.
But the girl in the mirror has altered. It’s like the portrait of a different girl. Her face is pale, cheeks flushed with red. Her eyes, her Halloween cat’s eyes, are sparking with anticipation. The mouth with its pillowy lips is open, as if I’m out of breath. Those lips earned the nickname Fishy, taken up by every bully at school.
Here’s my tongue, running along the lower lip, catching on the curve because the surface is so dry.