It has just hit Wendy that she has nothing in particular to accomplish. Wendy the chronic under-achiever has nowt to do! Somehow it isn’t fair, she thinks...but dispels that thought. If I just stand my ground, and refuse to decide anything (about my future—oh boy) then I can just about enjoy this trip.
She was already skiving off from Job Party.
Wendy knew that at the back of her mind Aunty Anne would be worrying. (Oh, but what new preoccuptations must Aunty Anne have now? Her hair was yellow—triumphant, near-gold, like stalks of corn, or rape in a field in May.) Despite what went on in Aunty Anne’s life, with the back of her mind she’d be fretting that Wendy was footling and tootling her time away. And actually, in the end, was going out to bars and cafes with Colin—queer bars at that!—any different to the desultory pubbing and clubbing she’d got up to with Timon immediately after her mother’s death? Was she just going back to drinking her afternoons away? She was, wasn’t she? Was Colin any better an influence than Timon?
Wendy hated comparing her friends, one to another.
All my life, she thinks, my friends have been the most important thing.
Of course Aunty Anne would think that Colin was a better influence than Timon. She was bound to. Colin was her son, and perfect, and all...
(But a bum bandit! A delicious bugger! And diseased and all ..!)
And yet...and yet...this isn’t the same as spending all her time in dingy, seedy Blackpool pubs. It isn’t the same at all. Wendy knew this was because Anne had grown up in Blackpool too. Everything there was backward for her.
Wendy’s efforts here in Edinburgh were towards a goal. Getting that money. Getting that money.
No, says Wendy weakly, sadly. I never thought that.
Oh, pish, laughs her aunt.
Wendy tried to ignore her. She concentrated on her friends. Friends are what help you pass difficult time. She lavished her time upon beautiful, frail Colin.
It was Colin who helped his mother to dye her hair gold. When he suggested it she was pleased that someone was taking notice of her hair. The sun had begun to fade the pink out of her and she needed something new to perk her up. She knelt on the bathroom mat with her head over the bath and let Colin pour jugfuls of warm water over her head.
“You’ve got long, gentle fingers, Colin. You could have been a hairdresser. Did you ever think of that?”
“Hm,” he said. Over the years his mother had kept urging three different careers on him. For her he cut the very model of a hairdresser, a priest, and a doctor in a hospital. And he hadn’t grown up to be any of those things.
The packet said twenty minutes for the bleachy dye stuff to take. They both knew from experience that the longer you left it, the better the chance of achieving that burnished gold effect you were after. “Nothing more disheartening,” Anne sniffed, “than taking off your shower cap, rinsing it all out, and discovering that nothing has changed at all.” She proposed to sit in her shower cap and let her hair ferment for a good hour. They went into the living room to watch something, anything, on cable. A TV movie—something tragic and/or uplifting—that would be perfect. Anne draped a towel around her shoulders, in case a trickle of bleach should escape and get onto the regency-striped settee. She knew that by leaving her hair cooking so long she was dicing with the possibility of it all dropping out...but these were the chances you took. She desired golden hair.
They settled down to the film, which was confusing. It was about domestic violence, as far as Anne could make out.
“Where’s Wendy today?” she asked her son during the adverts.
He shrugged. “Out and about somewhere. Making friends.”
“Don’t you feel left out?”
He didn’t rise to the bait. His mother was a great one for teasing. “Not at all. I’m glad of the rest. She’s exhausting to be with. Always asking questions.”
“Is she?” Anne frowned. “She doesn’t ask me many questions. In fact, she gives the impression of being a proper miss-know-it-all.”
“Not at all,” Colin shook his head.
“Oh well,” said his mother airily. “So long as she’s learning something...from someone.”
“What does that mean?”
Now it was her turn to shrug.
He asked, “What’s the point, mum? How come you brought her here?” This was very direct for Colin. He took his mother off her guard.
“You know,” she said. “I explained. She’s a poor orphan now, is Wendy. Her mother dying only a matter of weeks ago, and all...and her two sisters are selfish, really: one pursuing her career, the other her education...and both of them are more interested in the fellas they’ve managed to hook for themselves...”
“It seems to me,” said Colin, fixing his gaze on the creamy ointment inside his mother’s plastic hairnet, “that you’re trying to mould Wendy into something. To educate her and bring her on.”
“Mould her!” laughed Anne. “Into what? My own image, I suppose.”
“Yes!” he said. “That’s what I think you’d like.”
She looked irritated suddenly. “As if I could! She’s got a strong will on her. Oh no, Colin. You talk like she’s...I don’t know, a bit of old cloth I was going to run up and make into something new. But Wendy will do exactly what she wants to do with herself. She’s already let me in on that little secret.”
He laughed, turning back to the film. He’d lost track now, of what was going on, who was who. “Has our Wendy given you a telling off, Mum?”
“Not exactly,” she said. “But I know full well
