The Single Girl’s To-Do List. Lindsey Kelk

was another three hours and forty-five minutes of sheer torture before Tina managed to say something that made me smile.

      ‘And you’re done.’

      Never one to miss an opportunity for drama, she’d had the mirror at my station covered until she’d decided she was finished. Given how much hair I’d lost already that day, I had been a little alarmed to see chunks falling all around me, but not nearly as concerned as I’d been by the variety of colour processes that had been burning my scalp. My hair had never been exposed to anything more aggressive than Sun-In before today. I’d always been a blonde. Not a sexy Brigitte Bardot blonde or anything but definitely blonde. I wasn’t mysterious enough to carry off brunette and highlights needed too much attention. What had she done?

      ‘Can I see?’ I asked, not sure I actually wanted to. If she pulled the towel off the mirror and my hair was purple, I was going to have to go the full Britney. Shaved head, trashing her car with an umbrella, barefoot eating Cheetos in the loo, everything.

      ‘Ta-da,’ she pulled away the towel with a flourish.

      Woah.

      My almost waist-length blonde hair had been replaced by a short, red bob that bounced around my chin. I hadn’t had a fringe since I was a little girl but now there were long, sweeping strands framing a pair of bright blue eyes. Were my eyes always this colour? My hair was red. Really, really red. I looked like someone else. And she looked amazing.

      ‘No way!’ Em leapt out of the seat she’d been occupying for the last hour or so while every straight stylist in the place pawed at her in between appointments. ‘You’re a redhead! Like me!’