‘It’s OK,’ I said.

I thought of my friend Karen, who was probably already in the Green Man across the road from the salon, getting hot under the collar. She hated to be kept waiting, and she’d hinted that she had big news to tell me. Either she was engaged, or she had a promotion. I couldn’t see how she would have saved enough for a house just yet, and there was no way she’d be getting started on having babies.

Oh well, she’d already met Sean, my housemate, who worked there behind the bar. If it was quiet, maybe he’d get chatting to her and take her mind off things.

I worked my way back towards Mark’s crown. At first I’d been dazzled by his good looks, but now I could see he was pale and tired out. Not surprisingly, given that he’d recently had a bereavement. I wondered who it was who’d gone. But it wouldn’t have done to ask.

He smiled at our reflections, and my heart skipped a beat. Suddenly my knees felt weak. Genuinely weak. I’d never experienced that before.

One trick of the trade I’d never had any trouble with was making conversation and using the scissors at the same time. But making conversation with a client who made me weak at the knees? Perhaps not such a good idea. Not if I wanted to send him on his way to that funeral looking his best.

I worked round his ears with the scissors – nice, neat ears, and clean, too.

‘Have you got far to go tomorrow?’ I asked.

It seemed like a fail-safe question. Asking about places and journeys was usually all right. Like, Did you come far to get here? The Queen used that one, apparently, and if it was good enough for the Queen, it was good enough for me.

Mark’s expression in the mirror didn’t change, but his posture stiffened a little. Well, there was nothing comfortable about going to a funeral.

‘Not too far,’ he said. ‘A place you probably won’t have heard of. The cemetery’s in a village south of Kettlebridge, in Oxfordshire. It’s near where I grew up.’

‘Sounds like a nice part of the world.’

‘Mm. It is. Beautiful countryside. Wouldn’t mind going back some day.’

‘I’m a small-town girl myself but I always wanted to live in London. This is as close as I’ve got.’

‘I’d say you’d done pretty well. If that was your dream, you’ve come a lot closer to making it than most people.’

‘I don’t know about that,’ I said. ‘So near… and yet so far.’

I ran the trimmer round his hairline and brushed the little bits of hair away.

‘There you are,’ I said. ‘You’re done.’

I retrieved his coat for him and he shrugged it on. Madame Bovary was still safely lodged in his coat pocket. I said, ‘You’re a keen reader, then?’

He gave me a rather melancholy smile and tapped the paperback as if it was a shared secret.