On the way back everybody dozed, their faces fiery in the sunset. The children flopped like puppies and the cassette clicked off. Only Eleni stayed awake. I learnt her name then. She sat next to me, wriggling her toes in her peep-toed sandals. I could smell her suntan oil.

My hands felt big and manly on the wheel; she made me feel like that. Forty sleeping souls were in my care—I was new to coach driving, and the responsibility of them. She told me about the hairdressing salon where she worked, and how she’d once been on Top of the Pops.

‘Who’s been let loose on this?’ she asked, touching my hair with her long red fingernails. ‘Who’s the butcher? Your girlfriend?’

‘I haven’t got a girlfriend.’

‘Tell you what,’ she said, after a pause. ‘I’ll do you for free.’

The next Wednesday I sat in the salon, helpless under her fingers. She tilted my head, ruthlessly, this way and that; she smelt of a perfume I’d smelt on other girls. In the mirror our faces were strangely private; when she turned away she became other people’s but then she turned back and our eyes flashed, we were intimate.

She tapped her foot to the music; she looked restless and professional. She wore plum-dark lipstick today; snip-snip went her scissors as she hummed along to The Supremes. Her hair was reddish, and piled up. Only two meetings, and already we had seen each other at work; this made us familiar. She told me how trapped she felt, living with her sister. She wanted to get out, out, out, she mouthed to the beat. Out.

When she had finished we both sat back and looked. Then I grabbed her handbag, took out her lipstick and, on the mirror, scrawled a big, dark tick. It was true; she had given me a wonderful haircut.

She grabbed back the lipstick. I thought she was angry at me for blunting it—years later she would have been. But this time, this early, when we were new to each other, she leaned across to the mirror and scrawled three big XXXs. We smiled at our reflections through the graffiti, and I was lost.

Now my hair tickled my neck. For six years she had looked after it. Now I’d have to find a barber’s shop. How much does it cost, nowadays, for a haircut?

I had pulled off the road. This frightened me—I didn’t remember stopping, or turning off the engine. I was parked beside a dual carriageway; beside me, a car crept past in the fog.

I noticed with surprise that my ashtray was full. In the cubbyhole was a carrier bag; I had put the comics into it but where had I bought them? Which shop, in which town?