Read Online Noughties by Ben Masters - Free Book Online Page B

I ask. I hope so, though I know it’s going to be tough. After all that’s happened, I can’t tell if finishing uni is a relief or a tragedy … all the drama; all the heartbreak and confusion. I think we share too much history to lose one another though; we’ve held our thorny secret for so long. But trying to keep it buried has done us no good. I need to talk to her … explain my feelings. I just need to be open.
    “Well—”
    My phone is vibrating demonically. Lucy again—I’m sure of it. This time it’s a long-drawn-out frenzy. Must be a call. I would answer if it wasn’t for Ella. I ignore it and lookat her, each burr and buzz a rampant betrayal. It feels like the bench is moving … tremoring under the pressure of my secrets. She must be able to tell: she’s practically rattling along with it. I smile. I can’t say what I really feel.
    “Probably not
all
of us, eh?” I say, answering my own question.

    Lying in the hairdressers. The back of my neck is being ground into the china rim of a basin, arched and tense.
    “Is that temperature okay for you?”
    It’s unbearably hot. I can feel my scalp blistering and swelling. Is she emptying a kettle on my head?
    “Yeah, that’s fine thanks.”
    It’s a semi-chic salon: black tiles and marble surfaces, extra-large mirrors, bowls of wrapped humbugs, piles of male grooming mags.
    “Is that pressure okay?”
    Do it harder. Harder. Go on,
harder
.
    “Yeah, that’s fine thanks.”
    I can almost feel the sheen of the trainee’s peroxide hair as she lurches over me, giving my head a rub and a tug. Flecks of shampoo make darts for my eyes and slipstreams do mischievous runners down my forehead.
    “Got the afternoon off work then?”
    “Nah, I’m a student.”
    “Oh right, cool.”
    She starts kneading my head like she’s fashioning a man out of plasticine.
    “What do you study?”
    “English?”
    “Oh right, cool.”
    We are reaching nirvana on the head rub. I close my eyes and strain after relaxation.
    “Where do you go to uni?”
    “Oxford?” I say, apologetically.
    “Oh wow. Are you like well clever then?”
    “I don’t know about that,” I say modestly.
    “How did you get into Oxford then?”
    “Well, I guess I was clever enough.”
    “No need to be arrogant about it.” She continues to rummage through my mop. I wonder if she can tell from that angle that I’m blushing. “So what do you want to do with that?”
    “With what?” I ask.
    “An English degree.”
    “Oh, I see. No idea really.”
    “Typical.”
    “
The suburbs are dreaming
,” sings the stereo. “Typical,” echoes the babe. He’s next to me with one of those shower-cap contraptions on his massive head, waiting for some color to set, flicking through a magazine larger than his body. “Hey gal,” he says to my head-fiddler, “ask him about his thesis.”
    “What did you do your thesis on?” she says obediently.
    “You wouldn’t be interested.”
    “How do you know that?”
    “It’s so boring.”
    “Why did you do it then?”
    “Okay. Well, I uh, oh you know, I looked at doubles in Shakespeare through the, uh, lens of dialecticism,” I stutter in embarrassment.
    “Oh, okay.”
    “Yeah, see, it’s pretty dull stuff … I guess.”
    “So are we talking like the Master/Slave dialectic from
The Phenomenology of Spirit
?” she says as she squeezes some conditioner into her palm and lathers it up.
    “Urrr, yeah, kind of,” I say, rather stunned. “Exactly, really.”
    She thinks about this for a second while she begins to rub the conditioner into my hair. “That’s a bit anachronistic, isn’t it?”
    “What is?”
    “Applying nineteenth-century philosophy to the early modern period?”
    “Told you,” says the babe. “I hated that thesis … he lost so much sleep over it; it really tired me out. I’m the one who has to bear the brunt of all the stress and hard work, you see. I am anti theses, that’s for sure.”
    I look up and my eyes