Free Days by James Lovegrove Page B

she put the skills she acquired at the salon to use, first on friends and then on friends’ friends, building a client base by word of mouth. Right from the start she was undercutting the prices of any professional coiffeur by at least a quarter, which certainly contributed to her success, and that and the fact that she could do housecalls made her particularly popular among shut-ins and the elderly. It wasn’t long before she had established a thriving, though not especially remunerative, little business that helped tide her and Gordon over through the five lean years and added to their growing Days nest-egg.
    All in all, Linda feels she has every right to be proud of herself and disappointed in her next-door neighbours, who have allowed life to get the better of them. If only they would try a little harder, if only they wouldn’t wear their defeat so openly, a Days card could be theirs as well – though not, she suspects, a Silver.
    Gordon is ensconced in the back seat of the idling taxi, drumming his fingers on his knee. Linda deliberately takes her time over swinging the garden gate shut and ambling across the pavement to climb in beside him. Not only does she not like to be hurried, but she wants as many of the neighbours as possible to see her leave. She knows for a fact that Bella, three houses away, is peering out from her kitchen window. Although Linda can’t actually see Bella pinching apart two slats of the venetian blind, she has an instinct for these things. Likewise, five doors down on the opposite side of the street, Margie is watching from behind the net curtains in her living room. Linda has glimpsed her silhouette through the curtains’ lacy folds. Others, she is convinced, have their eyes on her. Everyone in the street must know where she and Gordon are going today.
    The taxi’s interior reeks of an awful air-freshener, a pine scent so noxious that the first thing Linda does after closing the door is wind the window all the way down. The driver is a gaunt man with lank hair, sunken eyes, and a shaggy moustache. He glances at Linda in the rearview mirror, gives a tiny nod as if he has come to some sort of conclusion about her (although the gesture could simply be a hello), and indicates to pull out.
    The taxi grumbles down the street. Linda puts her face to the open window not only so that she can breathe air which hasn’t been “freshened” but so that people will be able to see her more clearly. She is so thrilled she can barely think straight. Days! They are on their way to Days! In all her thirty-one years Linda can’t recall feeling this excited before. Even on her wedding day, although she is sure she was happy, she was too nervous and plagued by doubts to enjoy the occasion to its fullest. Now, unlike then, she is filled with the blissful certainty that this is what she really wants.
    Of course it’s what she wants! Ever since Linda was small, her ambition has been to have an account at Days. Her mother used to laugh at her when she would state, with absolute, unshakeable conviction, that one day she would walk through the doors of the world’s first and (unquestionably) foremost gigastore with a card with her name on it in her hand. “Unless you win the lottery or marry a millionaire,” her mother would reply with a laugh, “the only way you’ll ever see the inside of Days is wearing a sales assistant’s uniform.” But then that was the kind of woman her mother was. Linda’s father was a cold, distant brute of a man who kept his wife in her place with constant venomous criticism, and her mother meekly accepted being treated that way because she was scared to believe that life could offer her more, since that would mean admitting she had settled for less. Linda grew up determined that she would not end up like her mother, and glory be and halleluiah, she hasn’t. Today is the proof of that.
    As the taxi reaches the end of the street, Linda catches sight of Pat coming out of the