Two weeks after her visit to Mr Fox, Nula was admiring her now blonde and restyled hair in the mirror in her bedroom when she noticed that a chunk of it was missing from the side. Two days after that, more was coming out. As she combed it, it snapped off an inch from the root. And no matter how gently she tried to wash it and style it, more hair was coming off day by day.

She could have cried.

Everyone was noticing. Her parents – although her mum was sweet about it, saying not to worry, it would grow back in no time – and Jimmy, who thought it was hilarious. Her mates at work. Everyone. Once again she was a laughing stock. She couldn’t go back into that posh place and face up to Simon. She went to another salon, where the middle-aged female stylist took one look at the damage and said: ‘Who the hell did this?’

‘Simon at Mr Fox,’ said Nula.

‘You ought to go back. Complain to the management.’ The woman lifted a few brittle strands and looked at Nula with compassion. ‘There’s only one thing to be done with this, I’m afraid.’

‘What?’

‘Cut it short to the head, recondition heavily and let what’s left of the colour grow out.’

Christ!

‘All right then. Do it.’

So an hour later Nula had patchy half-coloured hair cropped short to her round dumpling face. She looked worse, not better.

She held the tears in until she got home and was safely penned in her bedroom with chocolate bars and crisps. Then she ate – and cried.

10

Nula’s hair was growing out. Getting longer, getting – thanks to her latest stylist – stronger, too. When the last of the blonde was chopped off, there she was again: mouse-coloured Nula Perkins with her hair cropped close to her fat head.

Well, the hair would grow. And she’d try again with the colour, that could be solvable. But . . . her fat head.

The truth was, Nula loved food. It was her consolation for all that the uncaring world threw at her. Comforting Sunday dinners, sausages and mash, Sunday teatime treats of cream and tinned peaches. Salty crisps and big chocolate bars and ice cream. Her parents were fat. Her brother was fat. Even her grandparents had been fat. But she kept reading things like Vogue and Harpers, wherein beautiful young things with glossy rich-girl hair and skinny figures pranced and danced and lunched out on steak and salad. No roast potatoes. No treats.

She still went up Carnaby Street with her mates, who had been – like her – the school losers, the quiet unpopular ones; she was Nula the fat arse, then came Stella with the stutter, Hilda with the limp, Joanie with the cleft palate that made her talk funny, and Sylvia with the ears that stuck straight out from underneath her thin brown hair like radar scanners.