Miranda's Big Mistake - Jill Mansell [0]
by
Jill Mansell
* * *
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 1
`Fenn Lomax salon, how can I help you?'
It was the first day of April. Seeing the reception desk temporarily unmanned, Miranda snatched up the ringing phone.
`Hello.' It was a male voice. `I need a complete restyle.'
`We do have a long waiting list,' Miranda warned, uncapping a biro with her teeth. `Could I have your name, please?'
`Duncan Goodhew.'
Over the phone, she heard gales of background laughter.
`Oh ha ha, well done, very good,' Miranda recited dutifully. `If only Eddie Izzard was as witty as you.' She rolled her eyes at Bev, the salon's glamorous receptionist, now racing back from the loo.
`Who was that?' said Bev as Miranda hung up.
`A big wally. April Fools' Day, don't you just love it?'
Grabbing her coat and rummaging in the pockets, Miranda dragged out one green woollen glove and one pink leather one. Well, imitation leather.
Bev's manicured blonde eyebrows went up.
`Lunch break already? It's only half past eleven.'
`Dogsbody duty.' Making sure she wasn't being watched,
Miranda pulled a face. `Cigarettes for Alice Tavistock. And a box of herbal tea bags. And half a dozen first-class stamps. That woman, honestly, I don't know why she doesn't write out her whole week's shopping list, pack me off to Sainsbury's and be done with it.'
`And when you've finished that,' Bev suggested helpfully, `you could valet her car.'
`Pop her washing round to the launderette.'
`Mow her lawn.'
`Fill out her tax return.'
`Clean her loos,' Bev blinked innocently, `with her own toothbrush.'
`Miranda, are you still here?' Fenn Lomax, emerging from the VIP room, shot her a look of disbelief.
`Sorry, Fenn, no, Fenn, I'm gone.' Miranda jammed her gloves on, getting three fingers stuck in one thumb-hole. She grinned at Bev and made a dash for the door. `Back in ten minutes, okay?'
Fenn called after her, `Make that five.'
Since Fenn Lomax had landed himself a regular slot on the hugely popular TV show It's Morning! his client list had blossomed beyond recognition.
As the show's producer had pointed out, he was a seriously attractive heterosexual hairdresser. How could he fail?
The female producer had been right.
With his streaky-blond shoulder-length hair, thickly fringed hazel eyes and come-to-bed smile, Fenn had a way with women and scissors that had done his business no harm at all. No longer buried in the back streets of Bermondsey (special rates for pensioners on Mondays and Wednesdays),he had been catapulted upmarket to the altogether glossier pavements of Knightsbridge' s Brompton Road (special rates, never). Celebrities queued up, for months sometimes, for the privilege of shelling out two hundred and fifty pounds and being able to boast to friends, journalists… well, anyone who'd listen, basically, that theirs was a Fenn Lomax cut.
Nowadays you could spot his clients a mile off, thought Miranda, teetering on the edge of the kerb as a chauffeur-driven limo pulled up inches from her toes. The snow had all but melted now, leaving only squelchy dregs, but the woman emerging from the back of the limousine was kitted out in enough fur to see her through a hike across the Antarctic. Gingerly, in her fur-lined boots, she picked her way through the slush.
Well, it was an awfully wide pavement. All of six feet from the car to the apricot-tinted-glass and brass doors of the salon.