I’d like to know, she thought, while the silent person behind her obediently opened the window and then continued pinning her curls, what Werner would think if his barber suddenly confided in him that his wife had run off! Besides, she was pretty sure that Werner never made anything but small talk with his barber. There were certain situations that only happened to her. She was too naive, too trusting.

While she sat under the dryer, and the pastel blue figure disappeared somewhere in the back, it felt like suddenly someone gave her heart a hard squeeze. She groaned loudly and shut her eyes to escape whatever horrible thing was coming, sneaking, slithering, like a crafty animal that had long been waiting, ready to ambush her. She didn’t know what it was. Her thoughts jumped, terrified, away from it, but it caught up to her, condensed into one short sentence, which in a whimpering, inaudible gasp glided across her lips: I’m losing him!

But, as if some unknown being was just trying to test her stamina (there was no other way she could explain these severe mood swings), or tease her like a child with a kitten, she felt lighter as soon as she said it, or had she only thought it? Instantly she felt happier, more or less the way her friends saw her: warm, impulsive, full of interesting ideas, and always eager to drop whatever she was doing and come speeding like an ambulance as soon as anyone she knew had a problem.

She breathed deeply and smiled at her reflection. Oh, she was really going to be a beacon of good cheer as soon as she was out of here. Buy gifts for the children, for the housekeeper, prepare a nice dinner with the red wine Werner loved. Do herself up, especially her hair. Regardless of what Werner might say, just to tease her, her hair was still captivating, shiny and vibrant, blonde as sheaves of wheat, despite her forty-five years. It simply refused to grow old. And she decided, as if she had only just thought about it for the first time, to ask him flat out who that female voice was, calling on the phone last week. As soon as she heard he wasn’t home, she hung up. Of course there had to be some completely natural explanation for it. She actually didn’t know a single married woman who wasn’t mystified by something like that once in a while. She would be insane to think – no, it was laughable.

Light in her heart, she started paging through one of the magazines that lay on the shelf under the mirror and her thoughts returned to the little hairdresser: poor girl, so young and pretty – there are plenty of men for her in the world.