I always take at least one book, one magazine and my phone to the hairdresser, just in case they try to talk to me. But today, with the rain hammering down outside and a hot cup of coffee and a head filling with foils, my hairdresser and I talk for almost an hour about, of course, holidays - we’ve both just had holidays from which we need to warm up, and she shows me her secret holiday place, which is exactly where I need to go next time - and end up on families. Her former stepfather and my Cancer Dad seem to have been cut from exactly the same cloth, and we both spent years on eggshells, tiptoeing round mood swings and manipulations. We talk about how we didn’t know how relationships should work, for the longest time. By the time we compare notes on how they’d both pretend to be leaving our families for good, bidding us goodbye and good luck as we sobbed, only to turn up hours later baffled at our tear-stained faces, we are smiling. When we describe how we now imitate their darkest moments, their cruellest words and their scariest actions, exaggerate them to make other family members laugh, we are doubled over with our own laughter, unable to speak. She finishes my foils. ‘We’re fine now, though, aren’t we!’
They are the best highlights I’ve ever had.