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‘Go on, Andrea, love, give her a freebie,’ said Paul King, shouting on a brick-shaped mobile over the construction noise of his new salon, opening in Wembley. ‘But don’t make a habit of it.’

Andrea returned to Irie with the good tidings. ‘ ’Sall right, darlin’. This one’s on us.’

‘But what – ’ Irie stared at her Hiroshima reflection. ‘What can you-’

‘Put your scarf back on, turn left out of here and go down the high road until you get to a shop called Roshi’s Haircare. Take this card and tell them P. K.’s sent you. Get eight packets of no. 5 type black hair with a red glow and come back here quick style.’

‘Hair?’ repeated Irie through snot and tears. ‘Fake hair?’

‘Stupid girl. It’s not fake. It’s real. And when it’s on your head it’ll be your real hair. Go!’

Blubbing like a baby, Irie shuffled out of P. K.’s and down the high road, trying to avoid her reflection in the shop windows. Reaching Roshi’s, she did her best to pull herself together, put her right hand over her stomach and pushed through the doors.

It was dark in Roshi’s and smelt strongly of the same scent as P. K.’s: ammonia and coconut oil, pain mixed with pleasure. From the dim glow given off by a flickering strip light, Irie could see there were no shelves to speak of but instead hair products piled like mountains from the floor up, while accessories (combs, bands, nail varnish) were stapled to the walls with the price written in felt-tip alongside. The only display of any recognizable kind was placed just below the ceiling in a loop around the room, taking pride of place like a collection of sacrificial scalps or hunting trophies. Hair. Long tresses stapled a few inches apart. Underneath each a large cardboard sign explaining its pedigree:

2 Metres. Natural Thai. Straight. Chestnut.

1 Metre. Natural Pakistani. Straight with a wave. Black.

5 Metres. Natural Chinese. Straight. Black.

3 Metres. Synthetic hair. Corkscrew curl. Pink.

Irie approached the counter. A hugely fat woman in a sari was waddling to the cash till and back again to hand over twenty-five pounds to an Indian girl whose hair had been shorn haphazardly close to the scalp.

‘And please don’t be looking at me in that manner. Twenty-five is very reasonable price. I tell you I can’t do any more with all these split ends.’

The girl objected in another language, picked up the bag of hair in question from the counter and made as if to leave with it, but the elder woman snatched it away.

‘Please, don’t embarrass yourself further. We both have seen the ends. Twenty-five is all I can give you for it. You won’t get more some other place. Please now,’ she said, looking over the girl’s shoulder to Irie, ‘other customers I have.’

Irie saw hot tears, not unlike her own, spring to the girl’s eyes. She seemed to freeze for a moment, vibrating ever so slightly with anger; then she slammed her hand down on the counter, swept up her twenty-five pounds and headed for the door.

The fat lady shook her chins in contempt after the disappearing girl. ‘Ungrateful, she is.’

Then she unpeeled a sticky label from its brown paper backing and slapped it on the bag of hair. It said: ‘6 Metres. Indian. Straight. Black/red.’

‘Yes, dear. What is it I can do?’

Irie repeated Andrea’s instruction and handed over the card.

‘Eight packets? That is about six metres, no?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Yes, yes, it is. You want it straight or with a wave?’

‘Straight. Dead straight.’

The fat lady did a silent calculation and then picked up the bag of hair that the girl had just left. ‘This is what you’re looking for. I haven’t been able to package it, you understand. But it is absolutely clean. You want?’

Irie looked dubious.

‘Don’t worry about what I said. No split ends. Just silly girl trying to get more than she deserves. Some people got no understanding of simple economics… It hurts her to cut off her hair so a million pounds she expects or something crazy. Beautiful hair, she has. When I was young, oh, mine was beautiful too, eh?’ The fat lady erupted into high-pitched laughter, her busy upper lip making her moustache quiver. The laugh subsided.

‘Tell Andrea that will be thirty-seven fifty. We Indian women have the beautiful hair, hey? Everybody wants it!’

A black woman with children in a twin buggy was waiting behind Irie with a packet of hairpins. She sucked her teeth. ‘You people think you’re all Mr Bigstuff,’ she muttered, half to herself. ‘Some of us are happy with our African hair, thank you very much. I don’t want to buy some poor Indian girl’s hair. And I wish to God I could buy black hair products from black people for once. How we going to make it in this country if we don’t make our own business?’

The skin around the fat lady’s mouth became very tight. She began talking twelve to the dozen, putting Irie’s hair in a bag and writing her out a receipt, addressing all her comments to the woman via Irie, while doing the best to ignore the other woman’s interjections: ‘You don’t like shopping here, then please don’t be shopping here – is forcing you anybody? No, is anybody? It’s amazing: people, the rudeness, I am not a racist, but I can’t understand it, I’m just providing a service, a service. I don’t need abuse, just leave your money on the counter, if I am getting abuse, I’m not serving.’

‘No one’s givin’ you abuse. Jesus Christ!’

‘Is it my fault if they want the hair that is straight – and paler skin sometimes, like Michael Jackson, my fault he is too? They tell me not to sell the Dr Peacock Whitener – local paper, my God, what a fuss! – and then they buy it – take that receipt to Andrea, will you, my dear, please? I’m just trying to make a living in this country like the rest of everybody. There you are, dear, there’s your hair.’

The woman reached around Irie and delivered the right change to the counter with an angry smash. ‘For fuck’s sake!’

‘I can’t help it if that’s what they want – supply, demand. And bad language, I won’t tolerate! Simple economics – mind your step on the way out, dear – and you, no, don’t come back, please, I will call the police, I won’t be threatened, the police, I will call them.’

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’

Irie held the door open for the double buggy, and took one side to help carry it over the front step. Outside the woman put her hairpins in her pocket. She looked exhausted.

‘I hate that place,’ she said. ‘But I need hairpins.’

‘I need hair,’ said Irie.

The woman shook her head. ‘You’ve got hair,’ she said.

Five and a half hours later, thanks to an arduous operation that involved plaiting somebody else’s hair in small sections to Irie’s own two inches and sealing it with glue, Irie Jones had a full head of long, straight, reddish-black hair.

‘Is it straight?’ she asked, disbelieving the evidence of her own eyes.

‘Straight as hell,’ said Andrea, admiring her handiwork. ‘But honey, you’re going to have to plait it properly if you want it to stay in. Why won’t you let me plait it? It won’t stay in if it’s loose like that.’

‘It will,’ said Irie, bewitched by her own reflection. ‘It’s got to.’

He – Millat – need only see it once, after all, just once. To ensure she reached him in pristine state, she walked all the way to the Iqbal house with her hands on her hair, terrified that the wind would displace it.

Alsana answered the door. ‘Oh, hello. No, he’s not here. Out. Don’t ask me where, he doesn’t tell me a thing. I know where Magid is more of the time.’

Irie walked into the hallway and caught a sneaky glance of herself in the mirror. Still there and all in the right place.

‘Can I wait in here?’

‘Of course. You look different, dearie. Lost weight?’

Irie glowed. ‘New haircut.’

‘Oh yes… you look like a newsreader. Very nice. Now in the living room, please. Niece-of-Shame and her nasty friend are in there, but try not to let that bother you. I’m working in the kitchen and Samad is weeding, so keep the noise down.’