Nerves cramping her stomach, sweat dripping from her armpits and her overtight new bra digging in under her non-existent tits, Nula tried to look together but she was feeling out of her depth. The stylists were scary. Cool, young, brimming with confidence. Beautiful. Everything was about beauty these days. Like Jean Shrimpton, who she’d read about in Marie Claire – Jean was having a hot affair with the photographer David Bailey. Oh, to be part of that world, that life.

Nula felt about two inches high the minute she stepped through the door of the salon. The pretty mini-skirted girl who took her coat and hung it up looked at it like it was a rag – which, to be fair, it was – and then she looked at Nula, barely stifling a mocking smile.

So what? thought Nula. I’m used to that. People laughing at me, sneering, making fun.

She’d had it at school, in the new awful communal changing rooms after the hell of games or gym or – the worst – cross-country running. She’d lumbered around, unable to keep up, red-faced and breathless. Then, after the ritual humiliation of the showers, there was dressing. Her old-fashioned Mum’d still had Nula wearing a vest at fifteen, which had been the cause of much hilarity in the changing room. Also, Nula was flat-chested, while most of the other girls were blossoming into young women, wearing pretty starter brassieres and beginning to take an interest in boys.

Not Nula. She knew her chance of attracting boys was zero. Her mirror confirmed it.

But now, having had her hair washed in an excruciatingly painful back-basin, she was draped in a black towel, plonked in front of yet another mirror, and was confronted with her reflection. Pale. Fat. Frizzy-haired. As Michael Holliday sang ‘Starry Eyed’, the apprentice wrenched a comb through it, pulling at the knots. It hurt.

Then the stylist came over, a stunning young man in hipster jeans, black shirt and a big TEXAS brass belt buckle. He pawed over her wet hair with a frown and said: ‘I’m Simon. So what can we do for madam today?’

‘I want you to cut it, please. In this style.’ Nula produced a hairdressing magazine and pointed to a picture of a ravishing girl with a long casual bob. ‘And I want to be blonde. Like that.’

‘Blonde? You sure?’ He was staring at her like she was demented.

‘Absolutely.’

He shrugged, disinterested. The customer was always right. Nula wondered if perhaps he might do a small test on her hair, to see how it would take the colour. He didn’t. Instead he went off to a back room and returned with a dish of lilac-coloured gunge, which he proceeded to slap onto her head. After fifteen minutes, it was stinging. Then he wrapped her head in foil, put her in a chair with a pile of last year’s magazines, set a timer and left her there.