‘She leaves it in a used envelope underneath the empties,’ he’d lied. If he had said, ‘I call in and we have a good old natter and a laugh,’ he wasn’t quite sure what Gladys would have done next.

*

Cindy tapped her cigarette ash into the sink with her polished nail and, with expert precision, turned the tap on to extinguish the butt before she flicked it into the bin behind the sink. Then, turning the tap off, she shook in a liberal grey cloud of Vim and began to rub to remove the smell of the ash and perming solution from the sink before the next customer came in. She had over an hour until Maggie Trott arrived for a perm and set. The entire process would take three and a half hours and Cindy often commented that she spent more time with some of her customers than she did with members of her own family.

Glancing in the mirror, she frowned at her reflection. She wore her strawberry blonde hair backcombed into a cloud that tucked in just behind her ears. Reg often complained about the amount of time Cindy spent on her own hair.

‘Reg, if my hair doesn’t look marvellous, why would anyone want to come to my hairdresser’s, for goodness’ sake? I’m a walking advertisement,’ she would retort.

Turning off the hose, she rubbed her hands down the front of her coverall to dry them and patted an errant lock of hair back into place. Her make-up looked dewy from a morning spent with an overhead dryer blasting out into the small space, so she took out her handkerchief and dabbed her nose. The colour of her skin complemented her hair, and powder-blue eyeshadow enhanced the bright blue of her eyes. She was pretty and she knew it and was proud of the fact that she had passed twenty-one and was still single, a rare bird indeed on the Dock Road.

‘By the time we get married, I’ll be collecting my pension,’ Reg joked, every time she rejected him.

‘Reg, I keep telling you, stop asking me,’ she would reply, as though Reg bored her. But he would do it again, with a bouquet of flowers in his hand or as he had last week, with a new Ingersoll watch in a padded box. He had bought the ring two years ago and she had told him to keep it safe somewhere, but that he was never to ask her again with a ring unless she gave him permission. The women of the four streets often begged her to regale them with this story.

‘Well, you’re playing a very dangerous game, my girl,’ Kathleen Deane said to her, more than once. ‘He’ll be getting down on one knee to someone else one day soon. You’re playing with fire, you are, Cindy.’