Linda Phillips - Old Dogs, New Tricks

OLD DOGS,

NEW TRICKS

Linda Phillips

Cover

Title Page OLD DOGS, NEW TRICKS Linda Phillips

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About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Marjorie Benson was drowning. She struggled beneath the hands, tried to hold on to her breath, fought the cold clamp that clutched the back of her neck. She was about to black out. She was going …

But a second later she was allowed up from the sink and the world returned to normal – except that there was still that startling news she’d just heard.

‘What was it he said?’ she demanded of the young stylist hovering over her. ‘That chap on the radio just now?’

Angie tightened the towel around Marjorie’s head so that her words, too, came as if from another world.

‘Um … something about Spittal’s closing down, I think … Oh –’ the girl sucked in a gasp, ‘– that’s where your old man works, isn’t it? Spittal’s?’

‘Yes, yes, he does.’ Marjorie put up a hand to blot a cold trickle, and found that it was trembling.

‘I didn’t really take in much of what he was saying,’ Angie said. She shrugged. The radio was only on in the background for the music – nobody really bothered to listen to it.

Marjorie frowned. She hadn’t paid much attention either. She thought the cheerfully delivered information had included such time-worn phrases as ‘job cuts’, ‘redundancies’, and ‘bitter blow to the area’, but her ears had only pricked up on the one word: Spittal’s.

‘I can’t believe it, if it’s true,’ she muttered, allowing herself to be guided across to the cutting chair. Groping for the padded arms she sank down on to the seat, the black cape billowing around her and making her feel like a crow.

The salon’s attempt at smart black and white decor did nothing for Marjorie’s complexion. She tried not to see the tired pale oval of her face reflected back at her, or the big bare forehead that was normally hidden. Angie always seemed to manage to wash away most of her make-up, she tutted to herself. Or was it the harsh lighting from those spots in the ceiling that was responsible for the bags under her eyes? Perhaps it was the shock that had made her look so haggard.

‘Are you sure he said “Spittal’s”?’ she asked Angie, but Angie could tell her no more, and as the scissors began to snip and slash, to grind and grunt, Marjorie forced herself to pay attention to the matter in hand. Not that she could do much to stop the carnage taking place. She could only sit there and witness it.

She knew from many years of experience that Angie, like every other hairdresser she had ever come across, was programmed to carry out a certain series of manoeuvres on whatever head lay beneath her hands, irrespective of the wishes that head might try to communicate to her, or what would suit it best.

‘Thought any more about highlights?’ Angie suddenly asked, perhaps thinking it best to distract her client from the unpalatable news. ‘Or how about a coloured rinse – to blend in, sort of thing?’

Marjorie compressed her lips. Every month over the past few years it had been the same sort of suggestion. Yes, she was going a bit grey, but she wasn’t yet ready to succumb to it.

‘No thank you, Angie,’ she said, gritting her teeth in anguish as the scissors hacked into her fringe. It was going to end up far shorter than she wanted. And wasn’t it crooked on the left-hand side? Why was there a bit of a gap over one eye, for heaven’s sake?

‘That OK?’ Angie asked finally, her scissors poised above Marjorie’s head, ready to swoop for another bite if only given a word of encouragement.

Marjorie nodded and grinned back at her, dismayed at her stark eyebrows, her naked ears and her over-long neck. It would be at least three weeks before she could look in the mirror again with anything approaching equanimity.

But worse was to come. The drier whirred into action and began to scorch her scalp as Angie wielded her fiercest, most root-tugging brush. Tufts of hair were tortured and teased, blasted and blown, yanked this way and that without mercy, as Angie contrived to puff them out where they should have been allowed to lie flat and flattened them where she ought to have puffed. It was all Marjorie could do, not to wrest the brush from the girl’s hand and beg to finish the job herself.

‘There!’ Angie declared at last, adding to Marjorie’s agony by giving her a glimpse of ragged neckline with her hand-held mirror. ‘That all right for you now, do you think? Yes? All right? OK?’

‘Fine. Fine. Lovely. Thank you very much.’ Marjorie nodded at herself in the mirror, turned her head and nodded again.

Angie began rubbing her hands together then – with satisfaction Marjorie thought at first, only realising her mistake on finding waxy stuff being fingered through her hair. Why on earth had the girl done that? Now it looked greasier than before she’d walked into the salon.

She wanted to steal home by dead of night; crawl under the nearest stone. No one must see her like this. Instead, she stood up, scattering hair round her feet, and fished in her handbag for her purse. Angie conveyed her usual surprised pleasure over her generous tip, and the frightful ritual came to a close.

Only as Marjorie handed her credit card to the girl at the desk did the news hit her again. Could it possibly be true that Spittal’s was closing down?

She pulled open the door to the street and stepped out into the late afternoon sunshine of a perfect spring day. No, it was absolutely inconceivable. Spittal’s was a successful, modern and go-ahead company. They made microprocessors and other hi-tec components. How could they think of closing down?

And Philip, occupying a senior position with the company, would surely have had advance warning of any such possibility. But he’d not breathed a word about it. Not a single word. So of course it couldn’t be true.

At home, Marjorie reached for the flexible spray on the end of the bath and waited for the water to run warm. Kneeling on the bath mat she bent over the tub and set to work with shampoo. Soon she had erased most of Angie’s efforts in a glut of medicated foam. Wax, mousse and all kinds of gunk were banished down the plug hole, along with a few more hairs. At this rate, she thought grimly, chasing them round the bath, she would be bald. As well as a little too heavy round the hips. And droopy round the mouth. She sighed. Life could be so cruel.

And what if Spittal’s really did close down? Not only would it be dreadful for the hundreds of people who worked there – and God help all of them and their families – but for her, personally, it would be disastrous. Particularly right now. Because just as she’d been thinking events were swinging her way and her months of hard work were beginning to pay off, it looked as though she’d be having Phil hanging about at home with time on his hands while he looked around for another job. Time to get under her feet and throw all manner of spanners in the works. Time to dismantle the plan that she and his parents had been secretly hatching for the past couple of months. He might even – for want of something better to do – try muscling in on her act!

Now that simply wasn’t to be borne. Phil had always refused to have anything to do with his father’s business, so why should he be allowed to step in at this late stage? No, not now that she was about to do that very thing.