“I ran around like there was no tomorrow,” Felicity continued, and Annie was discomfited by the fact that she seemed to be looking her right in the eye. “I loved men, and boy did they love me. I was practically the town bike—”

“Really, now...” Rose interrupted, but Felicity smiled, continuing her story as if she hadn’t been interrupted.

“I don’t mind. I had loads of men running after me, and I thought it was great. Mad craic altogether. Then I stopped being twenty and became thirty, and still I thought I could live the same life. Then thirty became forty,” she explained. “And I started waking up with lads I didn’t remember, in places that weren’t my own. Then one day I was on the far side of forty-five and there was no one. All the men were settled and married. My friends had moved on and had families, whereas I had just me.”

A hollow feeling began to fill Annie’s stomach as she listened to a story that sounded way too familiar. It was as if the older woman could see right into her soul. She didn’t want to be Felicity. She wanted a family, preferably while she was young enough to enjoy it. But there was no sign of that anywhere on the horizon just now.

It took her a moment to realize that her hand had stopped its work and was hovering just above Betty’s head.

Everyone was looking at Felicity, surprised. No one had expected that story. She was a frequent customer but not one who routinely chitchatted about personal stuff like some of the others. Today she’d revealed more than any of them ever had.

Now Felicity’s gaze met Annie’s full-on and there was no mistaking the warning in them.

“Decide what you want and go for it, Annie. Don’t think that tomorrow will always be there. You won’t always be thirty, or even forty. One day, the way you lived in your younger years will catch up with you.”

Annie got it. She understood. She already felt as if she’d lived as long as some of the women who came to the salon. She was tired.

Tired of meaninglessness, empty encounters, having no one she could call on to be there. She looked at Felicity, with her sad eyes, gray hair and wrinkled brow. Would she look like that in thirty years’ time? Would she be telling someone else a similar cautionary tale in years to come?

Not if she could help it.

“Well, it just got very serious in here,” Rose joked, breaking the stillness. Everyone laughed. Everyone but Annie.

Felicity’s story had hit home.