On Saturday morning, shortly after 11, I enter the youngest one’s bedroom. I place my foot on the back of his sleeping form, and press.
“Wake up!” I shout. “It’s haircut day!”
“Go away,” he says, into his pillow.
“But it’s haircut day!” I say. “You can have the first haircut!”
“You go first,” he says.
“OK!” I say. “I will!”
Haircut day is a quarterly fixture, when hairdressing twins Kelly and Hayley come to the house to cut everyone’s hair and do my wife’s highlights for a job lot price. But Kelly and Hayley are late.
“I can’t help noticing that my hair isn’t being cut,” I say to my wife.
“They’re stuck on another job,” my wife says. “They’ll be here soon.”
Kelly and Hayley turn up half an hour later, harried and behind schedule.
“And it’s our birthday,” Hayley says. I used to get Kelly and Hayley mixed up, until my wife furnished me with a handy mnemonic: Kelly cuts; Hayley highlights.
“Happy birthday,” my wife says. “How old are you?”
“Forty one,” Hayley says.
“Forty three,” Kelly says.
I sit down and Kelly drapes a sheet over my shoulders. My wife says that it must be 20 years since she had her first haircut from Kelly or Hayley, back when they worked at a salon up the road run by a man who was once credited with changing David Cameron’s side parting.
“I remember,” I say, “because he also changed my side parting.”
“He changed everyone’s side parting,” says Hayley. “He could only cut hair the one way.”
“The salon is now my optometrist,” I say. “Whenever I go in there I say, ‘I used to get my hair cut here.’” No one speaks.
“It’s OK,” I say. “Because there’s a different person behind the counter every time.”
Hayley mentions other recent changes of use in the area. We talk about the pubs that have closed, and the pubs that are still pubs.
“We were in there the other night,” my wife says of one pub.
“What were you doin’ in there?” Hayley says.
“There was a party,” my wife says.
“She won’t go in there,” Hayley, says indicating Kelly.
My haircut finishes. The youngest one comes in and takes my place in the chair. The oldest one and his girlfriend appear. The oldest one’s girlfriend is reading a story about twins in the newspaper.
“These twins dream the same dreams,” she says.
“We’re a bit like that,” Kelly says.
“Like sometimes we’ll be in a place and we’ll just look at each other,” Hayley says. “And know that we both want to leave.” I look at my wife, her head now an armoured helmet of foil flaps.
“We don’t really have that,” I say.
“No,” my wife says. “He had to leave the pub early because someone kicked him, but I stayed.”
“What, a stranger just came up and kicked you?” says Hayley.
“I don’t go in there,” Kelly says.
“No,” I say. “I know her.”
“What had you done?” Hayley says.
“It was unclear,” I say. “We were chatting and she suddenly said, ‘Are you taking the piss?’ And then she kicked me.”
“Like, kicked you hard?” Kelly says.
“Some beer flew out of my glass,” I say. “And then she said, ‘Are you going to write about this?’ Actually, she might have said that before.”
“And then he had to go home,” my wife says.
“I didn’t leave because of the kicking,” I say. “My back was aching, and I was a bit queasy, and tired.”
“He’s falling apart,” my wife says. I bend to look in the glass door of the oven.
“Good hair, though,” I say.
