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Alice waited in the kitchenette while Thea led her client upstairs, small talk accompanying their footsteps. Then she returned to the waiting room and removed magazines by any rival publisher, arranging her copies of BoyRacer, HotSpots, GoodGolfing, FilmNow, YachtUK, and Vitesse. Something to cater for all of Thea’s clients, she hoped. She sat and waited, fidgeting with her hair, twisting her pony-tail up into a chignon, then French plaiting it, letting it fall in billows around her shoulders. She smiled, remembering how, when they were young and horse mad, Thea would marvel that Alice’s flaxen hair really was like a pony’s tail.
‘It’s so thick and amazing!’ Thea would say.
‘It’s a bother,’ Alice would rue, ‘I’d prefer your soft silky hair.’ Thea would brush Alice’s hair smooth, utilizing a technique they’d been taught at the riding school – holding the bunch in one hand whilst softly, gradually, rhythmically, sweeping strands away. Finally, she’d take the bunch in one hand and spin it before letting it fall, wafting down into a tangle-free fan.
‘If we were ponies, you’d be a palomino and I’d just be a boring old roan,’ Thea had said, without rancour.
‘Then pull out any dark hairs!’ Alice exclaimed. ‘Apparently, palominos can’t have more than twelve dark hairs in their tail.’
Even now, Thea automatically searched Alice’s hair. Though, if there were any rogue dark hairs to pluck, Alice gave her West End colourist an earful. She was still flaxen, but the glint and shine of her pre-teen hair now required strips of tinfoil and banter with the colourist about holidays and soap operas, for two hours and a small fortune every two months.
Thea’s six o’clock all but floated down the stairs at ten to seven and paid cash for the Cloud Nine privilege. Alice waited behind a copy of BoyRacer until Thea came to her.
‘Ready?’ she asked.
‘Nearly,’ Thea replied, ‘I just have to tidy my room.’
‘Shall I come?’ Alice suggested. ‘Help?’
‘If you want!’ Thea laughed.
Thea’s room, at the top of the building, though small in terms of square footage, appeared airy and more spacious because of the oddly angled walls and Velux windows. It was also painted a very matt white which appeared to obscure the precise surface of the walls and gave the small room a sense of space. Underfoot was a pale beech laminate floor. A simple white small melamine desk with two plain chairs in white frosted plastic were positioned under an eave. The bed was in the centre of the room. Shelves had been built in the alcove and they were piled with white towels. Three baskets, lined in calico, were placed on the bottom shelf and filled with potions and lotions in gorgeous dark blue glass bottles.
‘It’s lovely since it’s been redone,’ Alice said. ‘Did all the rooms get the same makeover?’
Thea nodded. ‘New beds too. It’s a great space to work in – our client base has soared.’
Alice pressed down onto the bed as if testing it. Then she looked beseechingly at Thea. ‘Go on, then,’ Thea sighed, raising her eyebrows in mock exasperation, ‘just a quickie.’
‘Is that what you say to your clients?’ Alice retorted. ‘Seriously,’ she whispered, ‘do they never get the wrong idea?’
‘What?’ Thea balked. ‘And ask for “extras”?’
‘Most of your clients seem to be gorgeous sporty blokes,’ Alice commented.
‘Fuck off!’ Thea objected. ‘I’m a masseuse, I specialize in sports injuries, I barely notice what clients look like – all I’m interested in is the body under my hands and how I can help to put it right. Anyway, sporty beefy isn’t my type.’
‘Yes, yes – you don’t have a type,’ Alice said, ‘just a feeling.’ She and Thea caught eyes and laughed. ‘Well, I tell you, I wouldn’t mind copping a feel of some of your clients.’
‘Well, you’re a filthy cow,’ Thea said, ‘and I’m a professional with standards.’
‘Have you let Giles into your pants yet?’ Alice asked, taking off her top.
‘No way,’ said Thea, ‘not my type.’
‘You’ll be a virgin again soon,’ Alice remarked as she silently slipped her shoes off and unzipped her skirt. She eased herself onto the bed, lying on her stomach. She placed her face into the hole of the padded doughnut-ring at the head end.
‘OK,’ Thea said softly, ‘let’s have a feel of you.’ She placed her hands lightly on Alice and then began to work. Within moments, it felt to Alice as though a troupe of fairies was travelling all over her back, lifting her shoulder blades and dusting underneath, doing synchronized roly-polys down her spine, breathing relief in between her vertebrae, unfurling the muscles around her neck, marching over her biceps, soothing her scapulae, giving her hip-joints a good spring clean. She hadn’t had a massage from Thea in ages. Guiltily, she recalled how dismissive she had been when Thea had announced years ago that despite her first-class geography degree, she was going to train as a masseuse.
‘Pilates has had a really positive effect on your back,’ Thea declared, bringing Alice back to the present, ‘but you should check the ergonomics of your desk, chair and screen at work.’
Slowly, Alice sat up. Her face was flushed and her eyes were gently glazed with relaxation. ‘You’re a genius,’ she declared woozily, ‘you have healing hands.’
Thea, however, snorted almost derisively. ‘Don’t be daft,’ she said, ‘they’re just “helpful hands” – if you want truly healing hands, you want to have Reiki with Maria. Or Souki’s acupuncture. Or have Lars tutor you in the basics of Feldenkrais. My massage is more a satisfying after-dinner mint to the main course served by the other practitioners.’
‘Would you just give yourself some bloody credit, girl,’ Alice said, almost angrily. ‘You didn’t see the look on your last client’s face. Blissed-out is an understatement.’
‘I didn’t need to,’ Thea shrugged, ‘I felt his back say thank you all by itself.’
‘Can I make one tiny suggestion?’ Alice asked. ‘Ditch the plinky-plinky rainforest music in reception. It made me want to yell and wee simultaneously.’
Later that night, Thea sat up in bed, flicked on the bedside light and looked at the clock. It was in fact the early hours of the next day. She couldn’t sleep and she knew the worst place to be was her bed. She pulled on her fleece dressing gown and padded out of the room. The brutal change from soft carpet to cold floor tiles still unnerved her though she’d lived with it for four years. By the time she reached her small kitchen – a matter of only a few steps – her feet had acclimatized to the tiles. She made a cup of tea and went through to the sitting room and the comfort of carpet once more. Her mother liked to say that the flat was placed around a sixpence and it made her quite dizzy. The perpetually cold central hallway, small indeed and basically circular, was the hub off which the other rooms radiated. The bedroom, the kitchen, the sitting room, the bathroom. Standing in the hallway with all the other doors shut and surrounding you was a slightly disorientating experience. But Thea loved it. ‘It’s my little slice of Lewis Carroll Living,’ she’d proclaimed to her mother when begging her for a loan for her deposit. Viewed from the pavement, the side of the building where Thea’s flat was located was a turreted, cylindrical add-on to an otherwise unremarkable Victorian exterior.
‘A satisfying expression of Gothick-with-a-k,’ Thea’s usually serious and conservative older brother had declared with surprising approval, ‘don’t you think so, Alice?’
‘I reckon your sister just wants her Rapunzel moment!’ Alice had said.
Thea scrunched her toes into her shaggy rug and sat down, hugging her knees. She didn’t drink the tea – the ritual of making it and cupping her hands