Ellie Phillips - Scissors Sisters & Manic Panics

First published in Great Britain in 2013

by Electric Monkey, an imprint of Egmont UK Limited

The Yellow Building, 1 Nicholas Road, London W11 4AN

Text copyright © 2013 Ellie Phillips

The moral rights of the author have been asserted

ISBN 978 1 4052 5820 3

eISBN 978 1 7803 1329 0

www.electricmonkeybooks.co.uk www.egmont.co.uk

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Stay safe online. Any website addresses listed in this book/magazine are correct at the time of going to print. However, Egmont is not responsible for content hosted by third parties. Please be aware that online content can be subject to change and websites can contain content that is unsuitable for children. We advise that all children are supervised when using the internet.

EGMONT

Our story began over a century ago, when seventeen-year-old Egmont Harald Petersen found a coin in the street. He was on his way to buy a flyswatter, a small hand-operated printing machine that he then set up in his tiny apartment.

The coin brought him such good luck that today Egmont has offices in over 30 countries around the world. And that lucky coin is still kept at the company’s head offices in Denmark.

One for the girls: Bette, Jo, Tilly & Gail, and

‘The Writing Ladies of the Royal Festival Hall’

Cover

Title page

Copyright First published in Great Britain in 2013 by Electric Monkey, an imprint of Egmont UK Limited The Yellow Building, 1 Nicholas Road, London W11 4AN Text copyright © 2013 Ellie Phillips The moral rights of the author have been asserted ISBN 978 1 4052 5820 3 eISBN 978 1 7803 1329 0 www.electricmonkeybooks.co.uk www.egmont.co.uk A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Stay safe online. Any website addresses listed in this book/magazine are correct at the time of going to print. However, Egmont is not responsible for content hosted by third parties. Please be aware that online content can be subject to change and websites can contain content that is unsuitable for children. We advise that all children are supervised when using the internet. EGMONT Our story began over a century ago, when seventeen-year-old Egmont Harald Petersen found a coin in the street. He was on his way to buy a flyswatter, a small hand-operated printing machine that he then set up in his tiny apartment. The coin brought him such good luck that today Egmont has offices in over 30 countries around the world. And that lucky coin is still kept at the company’s head offices in Denmark.

Dedication One for the girls: Bette, Jo, Tilly & Gail, and ‘The Writing Ladies of the Royal Festival Hall’

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Have you read . . .?

About the Publisher

It is essential for the hairdresser (or barber) to have a part-time apprenticeship, at least one day a week, in a registered salon.

Guideline 1: Thames Gateway Junior Apprentice Hairdresser (or Barber) of the Year Award

I was having a bad hair day when this whole thing started.

Up until that point everything had been pretty peachy. I mean, I’d been feeling like my life was totally sorted for once: I had a cool boyfriend, I had a dad-type figure in my life who actually listened to me and I was following my ambition to be a greatass hairdresser. Unfortunately this last bit meant working every Saturday in my Aunt Lilah’s salon – which was where the bad hair day came in and everything in my life went BANG . . .

That Saturday began as it always did, with Aunt Lilah yelling at me for not sweeping up the hair right. How can you criticise someone for the way they’re sweeping ?

‘For the fifteenth time, Sadie, sweep the floor from left to right.’

‘I am.’

‘No, you’re the wrong way round – from left to right facing the back door. That’s the way the floor tilts. If you go the other way it’s uphill and the draft comes under the door and blows the hair all over the salon again.’

‘Yeah, it does do that actually. It blows all over the salon,’ repeated Tiffany, who’s so dumb that it’s like the wheel’s spinning but the hamster’s dead.

Tiffany’s the junior stylist who Aunt Lilah employs solely so that she has someone to bitch and complain at all the other days of the week when I’m not there. Saturday is Tiffany’s day off from Aunt Lilah’s bitching and she spends it repeating whatever Aunt Lilah’s just said to me.

‘Left to right.’

‘Yes, Aunty.’

‘Yeah, you gotta do it left to right.’

‘Thanks, Tiffany.’

And it went on from there as usual.

‘That’s the wrong mug.’

‘The wrong brush.’

‘The wrong setting on the drier.’

‘The wrong rollers.’

‘The wrong sized pot.’

‘The wrong gown.’

Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong.

‘Sorry, Aunty.’

‘Yeah, it is wrong actually.’

‘Whateva, Tiffany.’

It’s not like I wasn’t grateful to Aunty and all for making me Girl Saturday in her salon. Hair is, after all, my ‘thing’. I was doing Level 1 Hairdressing at college one day per week, plus I was taking things to the next level in World of Hairdressing by entering the Thames Gateway Junior Apprentice Hairdresser (or Barber) of the Year Award – and all this on top of going to school. It was hard work, but I’m not lying when I say that I was loving it. I was flying! Except for Saturdays, when I was in Aunty’s shop and I was not flying at all. I was stuck on the runway with no prospect whatsoever of a take-off.

At three thirty that Saturday Mrs Nellist came in for her cut-and-colour while Aunty and Tiffany were out the back having a coffee and a Kit Kat, leaving me to sweep up from left to right as you’re facing the back door, and that’s kind of where everything got really ugly.

It was the hairstyle that Mrs Nellist never knew she wanted. That’s all it was about. I don’t know why everyone had to go so completely hysterical about it, but that’s my family for you.

I think it was maybe the colour. In a certain light I’ll admit that when she came out from under the dryer, Mrs Nellist’s hair did look a little bit pink. I swear to God on a stack of Holy Bibles that it was not intentional. I’d tried out the tiniest smidgen of one of the new Manic Panic shades I’d been wanting to use for the longest time. Manic Panic do dayglo colours – like Fuschia Shock, Vampire Red and Electric Lemon. None of Aunt Lilah’s customers would ever be up for any of those, being that they’re all over thirty-five years of age and say things like, ‘Oooh, I’m going to really be daring and go a shade lighter’ or ‘I want something radical: two millimetres off the top. It’s going to be a whole new me.’