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Yes, I wanted to yell at him, but couldn’t I have been allowed to decide that for myself ? I sat on my hands and stared down into my lap. For all this time Mum had been lying to me. All these years I’d been imagining my dad in his Stetson and medallion, having commitment issues along with his pancakes and syrup and he’d been – well, where had he been?
‘So where have you lived since you got back from America?’ I muttered, not daring to look up.
He coughed and I heard the clunk of his glass being put down on the table.
‘Here, mainly.’
‘Here, as in the UK?’
‘Here, as in east London.’
My world began to shrink in on itself. I’d been thinking there was an entire ocean between us and it had been a tiny little underground line.
‘But you could have –’ I broke off, suddenly remembering that really he was a total stranger and I probably shouldn’t shout at him.
‘I’m sorry.’ He coughed and shifted in his seat again.
We sat in silence for a while. Only it wasn’t silence for me because the voice in my head now seemed to have acquired a loudhailer. HOW COULD SHE HAVE LIED TO ME ALL THIS TIME? WHY DID SHE TELL HIM WE WERE BETTER OFF WITHOUT HIM? HOW COULD SHE THINK I WAS BETTER OFF WITH ALAN WHEN ALAN ISN’T MY REAL DAD? WHY DIDN’T I HAVE ANY SAY IN IT?
On the other side of the beer garden a girl started laughing. Her hair was short and spiky and dyed jet black with electric-blue tips. She looked so happy and relaxed – despite the metal bolt through her nose and her unbelievably tight leather trousers. I wanted to scream at my mum till I had no voice left.
‘Happy birthday, Cherokee,’ Steve said gruffly. I looked at him and he smiled and a dimple popped up in his right cheek. I smiled back, knowing that an identical dimple would have popped up in exactly the same place on my own face. I felt a weird tug inside of me, like there was some kind of invisible cord linking us.
‘So, what do you want?’ he asked.
‘Oh, er –’ I picked up my glass of lemonade. It was still half full. ‘It’s OK, I’ve got loads left thanks.’
He shook his head and laughed. ‘Nah, I don’t mean to drink. I mean for your birthday. What do you want for your birthday?’
‘Oh!’ In all the drama I’d completely forgotten what day it was. I gave an embarrassed laugh and some lemonade sloshed over the top of my glass. Across the beer garden the girl with the nose-bolt leant back on her seat and ran her hand through her electric-blue hair.
‘A haircut.’ Oh, God! Where had that come from? Now he was going to think I was crazy for sure.
‘A haircut?’ Steve looked at my stupid stringy hair and frowned.
‘Yes, but not just any old haircut . . .’ I stopped mid-sentence, mortified. It was like some idiot game-show host had seized control of my mouth!
‘Oh yeah?’ Steve’s dimple sprang into life again as he grinned across the table at me.
I nodded, figuring I had nothing left to lose. ‘I want a cool haircut. Like hers.’ I pointed to the girl with the blue hair who just at that moment let out a loud belch.
Steve started to laugh and I wanted to crawl under the table and dig myself deep into the dry ground. Now he’d be thinking I was some stupid wannabe kid. He probably wished he’d never sent me the card, that he’d been right to leave it for thirteen years. I may as well just tell him I wasn’t Cherokee Brown at all – that my name was Claire Weeks-as-in-weak and I had no friends and actually people preferred to call me names and throw eggs at me and –
‘Come on then.’ Steve got to his feet and picked up his guitar.
‘Where are we going?’ I felt sick. He’d had enough of me and wanted me to go. He was probably going to march me to the station and put me on the first train back home.
‘Your wish is my command, madam.’ He held out his hand to me, then stuffed it into his jeans pocket. ‘If a haircut’s what you want, then a haircut’s what you’re gonna get.’
‘Really?’
‘Really. But don’t worry – I ain’t gonna do it. Not unless you want a skinhead? I’m a dab hand with a set of clippers.’
‘No!’
He threw his head back and let out a raucous laugh. ‘I’m joking, man. Come on, I know just the place. And don’t worry, it’s so cool you’ll come out of there with frostbite.’
Chapter Six
‘The gifted writer won’t need pages and pages of description. Often they will be able to sum up what they need to say in just one word.’
Agatha Dashwood,
So You Want to Write a Novel?
I followed Steve out of the beer garden and along the side of the market back to the busy main road. As we waited for the traffic lights to change I saw two women on the other side of the road staring at him. I recognised the look they were giving him immediately – it was the kind Helen and I used to give the hot skater boys at the Southbank when we were checking them out. I glanced at Steve out of the corner of my eye. He was standing chewing gum, his head gently rocking to some silent beat, a small smile playing on his lips. His guitar case was hitched over one shoulder and both of his hands were stuffed into his jeans pockets. I was so used to being seen in public with Alan and people shooting him mocking stares as he talked really loudly on his phone, it was totally weird to be with my real dad and have women checking him out. Weird, but kind of nice. I felt my must-text-Helen reflex start to twinge – she was not going to believe the birthday I was having.
‘Right then,’ Steve said as the lights changed and he guided me across the road and past the drooling women. ‘Let’s get that barnet sorted.’
As I walked along beside him, trying my hardest to disguise my limp, I felt all of the following in one go: excited, terrified, sick, giggly, angry, tearful and in a state of shock. Steve, on the other hand, seemed totally laid-back – as if being reunited with your long-lost daughter and taking her for a haircut within an hour of meeting her was the most normal thing in the world.
‘We’ll try the Truman Brewery,’ he said, leading me down a side street.
‘Brewery?’
He let out a laugh. ‘Don’t worry, it ain’t a brewery any more.’
I followed him into a large courtyard. To our left, clusters of people sat around wooden tables, drinking wine and eating pizza in the sun. To our right, a group of Japanese tourists were traipsing into some kind of art gallery, huge black cameras dangling from their necks. And straight ahead of us, grey-brick, factory-style buildings loomed high into the sky, dwarfing the row of food stalls beneath them. Across from the stalls a queue of people snaked out from an old graffiti-covered trailer. The graffiti spelled out the words dancing chopsticks and it shone like a metallic rainbow in the sun. It seemed to be some kind of crazy Chinese takeaway on wheels. The courtyard buzzed with the same kind of people I’d seen in Spitalfields. People with wedged, spiked and dyed hair and every clothing combination you could possibly imagine. Suits and Converse high-tops. Prom dresses and cowboy boots. Jeans and pork-pie hats. It was like an industrial estate had mated with an art college and we were standing slap bang in the middle of their freakish offspring. I instantly fell in love with it.
‘The hairdressers is round here, by the Chill Bar,’ Steve said. He stopped and looked at me. ‘You sure you still want to do this?’
I nodded. I felt as if I was sleepwalking my way through some crazy, psychedelic dream, and I definitely didn’t want to wake up yet.
‘And you’re OK hanging out with me for a bit longer?’ He suddenly looked really nervous.
I nodded again. ‘Yes. Definitely.’
His face broke into a grin. ‘Sweet! OK, follow me.’ He led me past one of those old-fashioned double-decker buses with the open back – only this one had been converted into an organic wine bar. I wondered how much randomness a human brain could take before it actually exploded! We turned right at the end of the courtyard and into a section of the brewery where the ground floor had been converted into shops. This time the clothes store mannequins were skeletons on skateboards, playing guitars, and the coffee shop was also a record label. The text to Helen I’d been composing in my head started filling with OMGs and WTFs.
‘Here we go.’ Steve came to a halt and I gazed up at the shop in front of us. It was called PUNKED and it took me a moment to realise it was actually a hairdressers, not a nightclub. If I had to choose just one word to describe it then that word would be black. From the sign above the door, to the door itself and the walls and the floor. Walking in was like entering a cool, dark cave.
‘Can I help you?’ A woman emerged from the darkness to greet us. She was wearing so much black she looked as if she’d been drawn in charcoal.
‘Yeah, man. We’d like a haircut please. She’d like a haircut,’ Steve said, gesturing to me.
As I felt my face start to burn I was kind of grateful for the surrounding gloom.
‘Cool,’ the woman replied. ‘Take a seat.’ She waved me over to one of the black leather chairs facing jagged-edged mirrors on the wall. Steve sat down on a black leather sofa by the door, propping his guitar case next to him.
‘Hello.’ A male hairdresser appeared from the back of the shop. Like the woman he was dressed from head to toe in skin-tight black leather. He was also wearing some kind of cowboy holster slung across his narrow hips – but instead of a gun it held a pair of scissors and lots of different combs. He held out his thin, pale hand to shake Steve’s. ‘I’m Wayne. Can I help you?’
Steve shook his head. ‘No thanks, man, I’m just here to watch,’ and he nodded over in my direction.
‘I’m Raven,’ the woman said to my reflection in the mirror.
‘I’m Cl– Cherokee,’ I replied, and the thermostat in my face cranked up a couple more notches.
‘Wow, what a cool name,’ Raven said, starting to play with my hair the way hairdressers always do at the start of an appointment. ‘How come you’re called that?’
I felt a surge of panic. I didn’t have a clue.
‘Cos her great-grandmother was a Cherokee Indian,’ Steve called over. ‘From the Great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina.’
‘Wow!’ Raven replied and I thought in unison. ‘That’s so cool!’ Raven looked back at my hair. ‘So what kind of style are you after, Cherokee?’
I looked back at her in the mirror and it felt as if my heart was singing. I could practically see little crotchets and quavers floating up my throat and out of my mouth. I had a great-grandmother who was a Cherokee Indian. From an awesome-sounding place called the Great Smoky Mountains. In North Carolina.
Suddenly anything seemed possible.
‘Could you cut it so that one side is long and kind of hangs down over my face and the other side is really short?’
Raven went and got a magazine from a rack over by Steve. Then she flicked through it until she got to a picture of a model with exactly the same hairstyle as the vanilla-ice-cream-hair girl from the market.
‘Like that?’ she asked.
I nodded and smiled. ‘Yes, please.’
While Raven washed my hair, Wayne started talking to Steve about music and by the time she’d finished Steve had got his guitar out and was strumming it absently.
‘Do you know any Rolling Stones?’ Wayne asked.
Steve let out a snort of laughter. ‘Is the Pope a Catholic?’
I felt another tug inside of me. Could making puns about the Pope be another thing we had in common, like our dimples? Maybe my Cherokee great-grandmother had made them too, while sitting around the totem pole beneath the Great Smoky Mountains. I pictured an Indian chief in full headdress sitting cross-legged next to a beautiful squaw and asking her, ‘Would you like a tote on this peace pipe, Cherokee’s great-grandma?’ And the beautiful woman smiling back at him before grabbing the pipe and saying, ‘Is the Pope a Catholic, Big Chief White Bear?’
The glint of Raven’s scissors snapped me from my daydream and I felt a sudden wave of panic.
‘Would it be OK if –’ I broke off.
‘If what?’ Raven asked.
‘If I turned round, so I’m not facing the mirror.’ I could barely look at her I felt so embarrassed.
Raven stared at me blankly for a moment, then her face broke into a smile. ‘Oh, I get it,’ she exclaimed. ‘So it’ll be like one of those makeover shows on the telly and you’ll only see the before and after. Cool!’
I nodded and breathed a sigh of relief. As long as she didn’t realise I was too much of a chicken to watch what she was doing, it didn’t matter what she thought.
Over on the sofa Steve started singing softly.
‘Oh, I love this one!’ Wayne exclaimed.
‘Me too,’ Raven said, swivelling my chair round so I was facing into the shop.
As she started snipping away at my hair I decided to try and lose myself in the song to stop myself from panicking, which wasn’t difficult as it was really beautiful. I didn’t want to embarrass myself by asking what it was called, but I figured out from the chorus that it must have been ‘Wild Horses’. As I watched Steve playing, the voice in my head went all serious and newsreader-ish. He is your dad. That man is your dad. Your name is Cherokee. Your great-grandmother was a Cherokee Indian. That is why you look nothing like the rest of your family. But you do look like your dad. And you probably look like your great-grandmother too. And that is your dad. That man playing the guitar and singing so amazingly. Oh my fricking God!
The song came to an end and Wayne burst into applause. I couldn’t help clapping too and even Raven stopped snipping for a few seconds to join in. Then I looked down at the floor by my chair. It was covered in dark hair. My dark hair – and judging from the amount, pretty much all of it. Holy crap! Mum’s face popped into my head, the two lines between her eyebrows that always remind me of a claw-print, deep with rage. What was she going to say when I got back home? But then I remembered all the lies she’d been telling me all these years. She’d have no right to be angry at me. Not after what she had done.
‘You got any requests, Cherokee?’ Steve asked, tightening the strings on his guitar.
‘Oh – er –’ I wondered if he knew any Screaming Death. Everything he’d played so far had been pretty old-school.
‘No, wait up, I know.’ Steve strummed a few chords and then began to sing. ‘Happy birthday to you, Happy birthday to you –’
‘Oh my God! Is it your birthday?’ Raven exclaimed.
I nodded, trying really hard to stop a stupid grin splitting my face in two.
‘Wow! That’s so cool!’ She and Wayne joined in the singing and I felt like my heart might burst with embarrassed joy.
Afterwards Steve and Wayne started talking about Stevie Wonder and Raven bent forwards so close I could smell her minty breath. ‘Your dad is so cool!’ she whispered.
‘But how –’ I was going to ask how she knew Steve was my dad, but I stopped myself just in time. She had automatically assumed it, which meant that I must look as if I belonged with him. But before I had time for that fact to sink in Raven had turned on a set of clippers. I sat, frozen rigid as she worked away, the clippers buzzing at the side of my head like a swarm of angry wasps. After what seemed like ten years she turned them off and picked up a hairdryer. I felt a surge of relief – at least there was still some hair left to dry! And then it was done.
Raven put the hairdryer in its holder and stood back, looking at me as if I were an exhibit in an art gallery. ‘Wow!’ she said. ‘Cool!’
Steve put his guitar down and he and Wayne walked over to join her.
‘Awesome!’ Wayne said.
‘Rock and roll!’ Steve murmured. ‘Rock. And. Roll.’
‘Are you ready?’ Raven asked.
‘Yes,’ I lied, my stomach attempting some kind of backflip.
She swivelled my chair round and I stared into the jagged-edged mirror. Only it wasn’t like looking into a mirror, it was like staring through a window at another girl. A girl with big brown eyes and hair that looked as if it had been carved into her neck on one side while it hung down in a silky dark curtain on the other. Even my face looked totally different – more heart-shaped, less long.
‘Oh my God!’ was all I could say.
‘Oh my God!’ the girl said back.
‘Good job, man,’ Steve said to Raven with a wink. Then he looked at me in the mirror and smiled. ‘Happy birthday, Cherokee.’
‘Thank you,’ Cherokee replied.
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