I cheated on my hairdresser!

Will he have me back? Or have I blown it?

For several blissful years I went to a lovely hairdresser. (In case he reads this and is embarrassed I’ll call him ‘Joe’). It was one of those things where you just know they’re right for you. We’d chatter away and he’d do just what I wanted and everything was perfect.

We got to know each other pretty well, chatting about our dogs, partners, jobs, friendships and local neighbourhoods. Everything really. I even confided in him. And although he’s nearly two decades years younger Joe never made me feel like an old lady or spoke to me in that awful conversing-with-the-elderly way that some young people slip into: SO ARE YOU DOING ANYTHING NICE LATER?

Joe never patronised me like that. I’m so lucky! I thought.

And then I did a terrible thing. I left him!

What actually happened is that Joe and his husband are always going away and I’m never organised enough to book him well in advance. So I kept getting, ‘Sorry, Joe’s on holiday.’ And there’d be something I’d need my hair doing for - a work thing usually, to give the impression that I live my life in a respectably groomed state.

I want work people to think I sit all pert at my desk in stylish cashmere with a little plate of papaya slices beside me, maybe a mug of ginger and lemongrass tea.

The reality is, I hoover down several small ‘lunches’ (in one day) comprising things like a handful of stale crisps from the gigantic sack I tore open last night, and a wodge of Port Salut cheese, and the ‘heel’ from a sliced loaf (as my husband terms it, weirdly) slathered in Marmite followed by a banana that’s so overripe it’s turned to liquid.

None of these ‘lunches’ are eaten from plates. Who’s to know? I spend 95% of my life staring at my computer writing books. It’s not a ‘public facing’ job. It’s a hermit’s job, which means you can leave your head hair unbrushed, face hair sprouting wildly, poking at neighbours on the rare occasion when you haul yourself out of the house to buy milk for your 137th cup of coffee of the morning.

I call this look ‘home worker’s hair’

For such excursions I’ve been known to pull on yesterday’s leggings with the knickers still in them. I know. Being a home worker can make you quite unsavoury.

But then a work thing comes along and some semblance of respectability must be attained, so I call Joe and he’s bloody well in Ibiza! AGAIN! So what am I to do? Book an appointment somewhere else.

I slope out of this new, unfamiliar salon with my hair conspicuously just done. ‘It was just a one off,’ I tell myself. ‘It didn’t mean anything.’ But two months later I creep back again - to this other hairdresser - even though I felt kind of sullied last time.

Then I go again and again. I can’t stop myself - I’m stuck in this cycle now - yet I don’t even gain pleasure from it!

It’s not the hairdresser’s fault. She’s perfectly nice and cuts and colours my hair the way I want it. It’s more the junior person, and I feel terrible saying this because she’ll be paid a pittance for washing hair and who wants to be washing an old lady’s hair anyway?

SO ARE YOU DOING ANYTHING NICE LATER, she asks.

‘Probably just a bit of shopping then going home,’ I reply, aware that she’s been instructed to chat to clients and that at seventeen years old I’d have died of queasiness, having to shampoo the head of a woman of my advanced years, let alone be forced to converse with her.

‘That’s nice,’ the child says, no doubt thinking Oh God another two hours before I can leave I think I might die before then why didn’t they warn us in school that the grown up world really is this shit?

‘THINKING ABOUT CHRISTMAS YET?’ she barks.

‘No, not yet,’ I reply, my heart seizing at the thought of it as the water goes inexplicably cold.

‘TEMPERATURE ALL RIGHT FOR YOU?’

‘It’s great! Thank you! Yes!’ I never say otherwise because I’m useless at saying when things aren’t right.

‘NOT TOO HOT?’

It’s fucking freezing! ‘No, it’s great.’ She’s punishing me, I think, for the fact that she has to talk to me as part of her job description. It wasn’t like this at Joe’s salon. As we discussed our hopes and dreams and complicated parental relationships, two hours would fly by.

‘ARE YOU GOING ANYWHERE AFTER THIS?’

You’ve already asked me this! ‘Just home,’ I mumble, before returning, dripping, to be faced with my bleak reflection in the stylist’s chair. Later, my debit card splutters as I pay up and leave, wondering - as I always do these days - if Joe will spot me, obviously freshly coiffed by a rival, and ask me about it.

I can just imagine it. Kind, smart, entirely reasonable Joe saying, with a shrug, ‘So, if you’ve moved on it’s totally fine…’

I get home and message him casually on Instagram about some local gossip. Immediately his name flashes up as an incoming call.

Joe is calling me on the actual telephone! I drop it as if it’s radioactive. I can’t speak to him now. What would I say? I fell into that other salon by mistake? I take the call, babbling that I’ve cheated on him and I’m sorry but can I come back?

Men don’t do this - have you noticed? They just go for haircuts wherever they want!

Joe is 100% cool about it. Of course he has tons of clients and his business model doesn’t revolve around me. ‘Can I make an appointment?’ I whimper.

‘Sure!’ he says. It’s weeks away, and by then my colour will have grown out and I’ll be walking about with a dishevelled thatch on my head.

But he’s worth it.

Love,

Fiona xx