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      ‘So what do you think?’ At last Miranda put down the straighteners and let her flattened hair swing from side to side.

      ‘Everyone’s going to get out of your way,’ I said and then we laughed and it all seemed so normal that I let out a deep sigh which made Miranda smile again.

      ‘Time to go now.’ She bustled round the salon turning off lights and putting the equipment and brushes away. She switched off the music system and waited at the door for me to leave first so she could set the alarm. We kissed each other goodbye in the street. One cheek, two cheek, we hesitated over three before leaving it. ‘I’ll do your hair next time,’ Miranda said. ‘It’ll look just darling.’ But then instead of clitter-clattering down the street on those silly high heels she wore that made her look like an elephant on stilts, she held on to my arm tightly.

      ‘Tell your friend to find a whole lot of made-up stories from somewhere else and pretend they happened to her,’ she said. ‘That way no one gets hurt.’

      ‘Maybe.’ I wanted to believe Miranda.

      ‘I’ve got shelf-loads of love stories you can borrow if you want. It’s all in there.’

      ‘I didn’t know you were a reader.’

      ‘I didn’t always want to be a hairdresser.’ Miranda shook her head so her hair really did flare out, just like it did in her magazine pictures. ‘That English teacher I told you about. He’s got a lot to answer for.’

      I bared my teeth, trying to smile along with her.

      ‘And are you really sure you’re all right?’ she said.

      I nodded, blinking the tears back. This was how to be normal. To learn when to be quiet. There was no reason why I couldn’t do it. Not every story has to have an ending.

      She looked at her watch and then grimaced. ‘I must be off. Mum’s got bingo tonight and I promised I’d look after Dad so she can enjoy a night off. He can’t get around by himself, you know, not since his accident. Mind you, you’d be surprised at the trouble he can get up to in his wheelchair. Speedy, that’s what Mum says we should call him.’ She grimaced and then shook herself. ‘You take care now, honey-girl. Time for me to love you and leave you. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,’ she said brightly, her hair slicing the air around her as she walked away.

      ‘Oh you,’ I cooed as I stood looking at myself in my mirror. I lifted my skirt above my knees, looking at my legs harshly. I couldn’t even pretend they were romantic tonight. They looked fat. Filled up with lies and unsaid things. Mr Roberts was right. The whole of me was nothing more than lumpy, mashed potatoes.

      I shook myself all over in the mirror. My head, my arms, my bottom, my legs. I watched the fat wobble, wanting to prove to myself I wasn’t as flabbily solid as Miranda. That my outline could be redrawn, even my bones broken.

      And that was something I had to believe. That little chance of transformation. Otherwise what was the point of anything?

       Chapter Eight

      ‘I used to be a little scrap of a thing, so small no one really paid any attention to me.’ I ignored Mr Roberts’s snort from the bottom of the ladder as I noticed my voice turn to almost a whisper. ‘Then all of a sudden one morning I woke up and it was as if I’d turned into someone else. With a cartoon sexy body I couldn’t control. I can’t have developed that quickly, of course, but it was what it felt like. None of my clothes fitted and at first Dad refused to waste money on new ones. I got to hate the way he’d glare at me every morning and tell me to pull my skirt down, or button up my shirt properly as if it were my fault I was popping out of everything. He was always on at me.

      ‘I’d walk around with my arms crossed, my shoulders hunched, but you can’t be on guard all the time. Round about that time, all the boys at school started to notice me too,’ I spoke down to Mr Roberts. ‘Even the little boys had crushes on me. Once when they had an exam, they begged me to give them a good luck kiss, queuing up so I wouldn’t miss one out. They’d bring me presents, things they’d stolen from their mothers just so I’d remember them the next time I walked past.’

      ‘What’s that?’ Mr Roberts grumbled. ‘Speak up, Molly. You’re mumbling.’

      ‘But it was the boys my age who were the worst.’ There was no one else in the shop but my heart was knocking against my chest so hard I could almost feel it vibrate against the shelf. ‘My pigeon hole would be filled with notes. I’d find telephone numbers scribbled on my class books. They came round to my house in gangs and just stood outside the door. Once a boy knocked himself out on a lamppost because he was clowning around to get my attention. He had a black eye the next day at school.’

      ‘Teenage boys,’ Mr Roberts sighed. ‘Too many hormones. They never learn.’

      ‘But I wouldn’t go near any of them,’ I said. ‘I think that’s probably why they all kept after me. It wasn’t that I didn’t want a boyfriend. My father would never have let me. He thought it was all my fault.’

      ‘Only natural to want to protect you,’ Mr Roberts said.

      ‘After that, nothing I did was right. I couldn’t stop making him angry,’ I said. ‘I’d come out after school, and there he’d be, waiting for me. He’d glower at every boy who passed us when we walked home. He said he couldn’t trust me. As if it were my fault.

      ‘I learnt never to talk to boys anywhere, inside or outside school. And then not to girls either. He’d always find out somehow and there would be an inquisition. He made me wear all these really frumpy clothes. Once when we were at the shops, he had to leave me alone for a minute and a boy I’d never seen before came up and asked if I knew where the chemist was. That was all, but my father caught us and the fireworks went on for days.’

      ‘Sounds a bit harsh,’ Mr Roberts admitted. ‘Although you do have to look after daughters.’ He seemed unsure though and there was a silence before he spoke again. This time he was more enthusiastic. ‘But did you meet the boy again?’ he asked. ‘The one in the shopping centre? Did you get up to some rumpus-pumpus? I bet you did, Molly. I know your sort. You like your hanky-panky. Nothing wrong with that.’

      I squeezed my eyes shut and pictured the rage on my father’s face as he came out of the gents to see me pointing to the bottom tier of the shopping centre and the boy nodding away. I’d just taken his rage for granted then, something I’d learnt to live with, but now I tried to see it through his eyes. What did he think could happen to make him so angry?

      ‘We did,’ I said. ‘But not after. That same day. I got my father to leave me for five minutes by pretending I was buying him something special as an apology, and then I ran downstairs and met the boy. We went down one of those side corridors no one uses.’

      ‘Just like that? In the shopping centre?’ Mr Roberts whistled through his teeth. ‘Weren’t you worried someone would see you?’

      ‘We were like animals,’ I said.

      ‘You dirty girl. It’s unbelievable.’ Mr Roberts held the ladder steady for me to come down.

      ‘It’s all true.’ After all, my father had thought it was the truth. He probably pictured the whole scene in much more detail than I’d just told it.

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