Ellie Phillips - Scissors Sisters & Manic Panics

Opposite the car was a salon I knew only too well. CISSOR’S PALACE – UNISEX HAIRDRESSERS it said, in red block lettering on a shiny black background. In the window I could see Misty with that faithful scrunchie securing her hair à la 1985. Aimée Price was probably in there somewhere too, boring some customer stupid with her motivational slogans.

Go get it, girl.

So what? Was Tony suggesting I go and ask Misty for a job?

‘You’ve gotta be kid–’ I started.

‘Not that one,’ said Tony. ‘This one.’

I hadn’t noticed but we were parked bang outside an ultra-modern salon with tinted windows and coloured spotlights. It was called Stylee Stylee, Roman Road. For this area it was pretty fashionable. I’d never been in it – in fact I was fairly sure I’d never even heard of it or seen it before.

‘Looks OK,’ I said. ‘What about it?’

‘It’s pretty new,’ said Enrico, ‘and it’s run by an old friend of mine.’

‘Oh?’

‘Dariusz Zengelis,’ said Enrico. ‘I was at college with him. He opened this place about three months ago – had a chair in Soho somewhere before – and I hear he’s looking for a Saturday person.’

Dariusz Zengelis was looking for a Saturday person. I, Sadie Nathanson, was looking for someone looking for a Saturday person. This was starting to sound good.

‘Sounds good,’ I said.

‘We thought maybe you should apply,’ said Billy helpfully.

‘Sure, I should apply,’ I said.

‘Cool,’ said Tony and he squeezed my hand.

‘Go on then,’ said Enrico, turning round and flicking his head towards the salon. ‘What you waiting for?’

What was I waiting for?

I wasn’t dressed for it. I didn’t even have my CV to hand. I needed to psyche myself up.

‘I can’t do it now,’ I said. ‘I’m not ready. I need to get my head together. I need my paperwork . . .’

‘Well, get it all together, girl.’ said Enrico, ‘Saturday morning – go in there early and mention that you know me. It might just help.’

In any job there is a surprise element, and hairdressing (or barbering) is no exception. The entrant should be able to demonstrate that they are well prepared for the unpredictable, surprising and exceptional.

Guideline 5: Thames Gateway Junior Apprentice Hairdresser (or Barber) of the Year Award

It was Friday night, and Friday nights in my family are traditionally spent at Aunt Lilah and Uncle Zé’s place, with Mum and Billy of course, and my Great Aunty Rita, who travels down from Ilford on the number 25 bus. We eat a smorgasbord of Uncle’s Filipino faves and my Great Aunty Rita’s finest Jewish delicacies. Uncle’s cuisine basically worships every part of a pig you can possibly eat and Great Aunty Rita has an absolute ban on pig products, being that she’s kosher, but she likes to pickle everything in sight: cucumbers, cabbage, herring, beetroot . . . If you sit still long enough she’ll pickle you. Of course, Great Aunty Rita is more my family than Uncle is – I mean she’s blood – but somehow I haven’t inherited the pickle gene so I tend to go for the pig-product end of the table. And both sides of the family fry everything that isn’t a pickle. No wonder we never have guests.

Except that this evening we’d invited Abe. It was Mum’s idea and it was a bad one in so many ways. Yet, strictly speaking, Abe is my family, so why shouldn’t he come to Friday night dinner?

Great Aunty Rita simply cannot get her head around Abe. As far as she’s concerned he’s connected to our family by an unmentionable substance that she’d rather not have to think about, together with an act of extreme insanity that her niece Angela (that’s my mum) committed some seventeen years ago when she decided to have a child on her own. To be fair to Great Aunty Rita, she has never had any problem with the product of what she considers to be this unholy and unnatural union, i.e. me. And I guess that this is something to be grateful for, but whenever Abe is mentioned she gets an odd look on her face. It’s a look that says, If anybody even mentions the words ‘sperm donor’ I may spontaneously combust . So by and large we don’t. I mean, why would we? Does Aunt Lilah continually mention the night that she and Uncle Zé conceived my cousin Billy? No, thank God, because otherwise we would all lose our dinners, pickles and all.

Great Aunty Rita has met Abe once before. On my sixteenth birthday this year we broke the habit of a lifetime and went out for a meal. Not at Aunty and Uncle’s place. We went out in town. To a restaurant. Like normal people. But in the whole year we’ve known him, Abe has never been to Friday night dinner, so he’s never had the full-on Family-From-Hell Nightmare Experience. I’d wanted to save him from it until the time felt right, because in the beginning I needed Abe to be separate from my actual family, somehow. I wanted Abe to be mine and nobody else’s. Even Mum had done her best to stay out of things between me and Abe. A couple of times she’d stood chatting in the kitchen with Sarah for hours while Abe and I bonded. And we had walked Abe’s Labrador Daisy together three times – just the two of us. We even worked on Abe’s amazing garden one day. I was getting into the habit of being quite outdoorsy when I went to Bough Beeches.

My actual family are completely indoor people. And they are so loud, so dominating, so opinionated, that I sort of wanted to be sure that Abe and I knew each other at least a bit before letting my family loose on him. I mean, he might run away and never come back – and who could blame him really?

So anyway, there they all were when I walked in that evening: Mum, Great Aunty Rita, Uncle Zé, Aunt Lilah, Billy and Abe. I’d been home after school and got changed and then I’d decided to put a colour through my hair – partly because I wanted a new look for when I went into that cool-looking salon the next day to ask for a job, and partly because I hoped it would wind up Aunt Lilah. I had of course thought about boycotting Friday night dinner altogether, being that I was so pissed off at Aunty for firing me, and of course at the exact same time I was full of insecurity that she might have been right to do so. But I knew I was going to have to face her eventually and Mum had already invited Abe, and so I did Revenge Hair (a do that is sooo good your enemy will admit defeat) and used Goldfinger from SFX. I just put one streak in right at the front. It looked completely genius.

‘We’re all waiting for you – what happened to your hair?’ said Aunt Lilah as I sashayed to the table like the room was a giant runway at the grand final of the Thames Gateway Junior Apprentice Hairdresser (or Barber) of the Year Award.

‘It’s totally natural,’ I said, deadpan. ‘I woke up and there it was.’

‘Looks good,’ said Abe.

I went over and gave him a hug and then gave Great Aunty Rita a hug too.

‘How’s my favourite great-niece?’ said Great Aunty Rita – it’s what she always says. I’m her only great-niece, but it does crack her up every time she says it.

‘I’m good,’ I said and sat down at the table.

Everyone tucked into the Friday night spread. I glanced over at Abe. He looked slightly bewildered by the offerings in front of him, but manfully piled his plate with pickled cabbage, pickled beetroot, tsitsaron (bits of pork), gefilte fish (fried fish balls), fried potato latkes (patties) and lumpia (fried spring rolls). I felt like offering him an indigestion tablet too. He’d suffer for it all later.

Conversation lurched around the table – if you could call it conversation. ‘Conversation’ implies that there is a talker and a listener. But nobody in my family is a listener and everybody is a gabber. Mum talked about her clients, who were suffering from something called ‘the downturn in retail’, Billy was sick of revising for his mocks, something had happened to Uncle Zé in the Cash and Carry, and Great Aunty Rita had been knocked out of this year’s League of Ilford Jewish Women Spring Bridge Tournament. Aunt Lilah had something to contribute on just about every topic (surprise surprise). She is the original yakasaurus and loves nothing more than the sound of her own voice. She was thinking of getting a new floor put down in the bathroom.