Split Ends

By Brynmore Wilkins

What happens behind the scenes of a busy London hair salon, is going to make your hair curl! Divas and directors, bullies and bitches, sex pests and carnal one-night stands.

Armed only with his talent - and a pair of sharp scissors, young Stevie Deadwo

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brynmore Wilkins
• Release date: May 31, 2021
• ISBN: 9781802270112

Book preview

Chapter One:

Opening Day

What the fuck was that? That loud scratching had woken me up again. I was freezing. It wasn’t even 6am, and I couldn't sleep. I had been waiting for today for such long time and here the thing is, scratching at me. I had chased it around the flat for weeks and still couldn’t work out how the little bugger was getting in or out. There were no visible holes, no gaps in the woodwork or skirting boards.

It was a cold October morning, but not bitter. I hadn’t slept. A mix of fatigue, stress and excitement chilled me, but I was smiling as I looked at the goose-bumps on my forearms. I was actually opening my own salon today. Something I had worked towards for as long as I could remember.

My outfit had been laid out in the living room days before. It consisted of blood red leather Oliver Sweeney brogues, my best black jeans, a new, crisp, white, v-neck T-shirt and my favourite, vintage, blue pinstripe jacket. All dressed up and ready to leave, but there was that scratching again and it made me jump. The traps hadn’t worked. Poison hadn’t worked. It must be somewhere near the kitchen units, but where?

The new salon was only half finished. The builders had, of course, run late and had to be physically thrown out at noon the day before. There were missing light fittings, cables hanging out of their cavities. The first clients were due in at 10.00am that morning and the night before we had mopped the salon floor ten times, but the sawdust just resettled in a thin layer of grease, and it would need doing again before opening for business. We had all worked endlessly. Terrie, Jon, Adam and me. We had turned a building site into a salon in an afternoon. Backbreaking, and yet it still looked so bloody dusty.

Adam and I had planned to open our own salon, but we got distracted by Terrie and Jon’s proposal. You get to a certain point in our career where you’re forced into making a decision. That decision. To strike out on your own, or not. Our new joint salon looked small and a bit cheaper now that it had chairs and mirrors fitted in it. Ten chairs on the ground floor level, and a basement which would eventually hold seven more. The builders hadn’t even started on the basement. A large salon to some, but it was a bit on the pokey side for us. We had been spoiled by the West End with all its glitz and glamour.

Terrie had sold us on the idea of a ‘boutique’ salon. The word had started to pop up everywhere. Boutique this, boutique that! She had said things like: ‘oozing with opulence and sumptuous textures’. She didn’t speak like that normally and must have picked it up from a copy of Elle Deco in a doctor’s surgery. I was overexcited about the interior. That felt like the really glamorous upmarket bit. Furniture, trips to Heals, fittings, brushed steel, slate edged mirrors, industrial meets bohemian, taxidermy, paint with French names like Eau De Nil, which apparently was ‘Prada Green’, a client had told me.

The building really was a bit fabulous and in a lovely spot on a slightly faded square in Fitzrovia. It had old school panache and bags of potential, in one of those lost London locations that only locals and Londoners know. I used to wander over to this forgotten part of town and just sit there reading sometimes. So peaceful, and a welcome distraction from living in Soho. The premises Terrie had spotted was on a row of run down, random, dated shops - a number of them vacant or repossessed. It was going to be tough stimulating new business here, but there was plenty of foot traffic and no decent salons. That was one of the compelling factors in Jon and Terrie’s proposal pitch. They had found a place in my London, and I was sold on the idea.

The refit of the ground floor was nice enough, but there was nothing ‘bespoke’ about it. The interior turned out to be much like any other modern salon. ‘Tuscan’ cream was another word for pale beige, I had never been a neutral tones man. Off- white walls, golden pine laminate flooring, halogen lighting with a colour scheme that Terrie called ‘breakfast tones’. There were putty coloured ceramic mugs, MDF sideboards in various shades of mushroom and brown, and some coffee-coloured shelving that glowed with a promise to last no more than six months tops. Earthy, soft, organic and minimal. The problem was all of this had been done so many times before. Inoffensively safe…but where was the opulence?

The interior design, however, was a done deal. Adam and I hadn’t been asked for our input with any of our suggestions quickly talked over. This was Terrie’s domain. She would flirt with samples, a few torn out pages from a Laura Ashley catalogue. She had the flowery descriptions, but the salon was the exact opposite of what Adam and I thought it would be.

An omen. A beige, inoffensive, little omen.

9.30am, and my matte black Motorola flip was buzzing with All Saint’s ‘I Know Where It’s At’ blaring at maximum volume. Terrie was freaking out. She was going mental. I couldn’t understand her at first, it sounded like she was in some sort of trouble. Some drama?

Terrie, I can’t understand what you are saying.

She sounded like she was on Mars, the reception was really shit and crackly. Terrie could be a bit of a cheapskate like that, and had one of those piddly old mobiles that you get with vouchers. She had simply overslept. Bossy but harmless enough. Straight-laced but not a nasty person, and she had never been late for anything in the ten years that I had known her. Yet she was going to be late for the opening day of her salon. Our salon.

Adam turned up in silence. He wasn’t a morning person, so I tried to stay out of his hair until gone 11.00am. Terrie started barking orders into the phone, perhaps hoping to distract me from the fact she was late.

Make sure you poke those cables into the cavities where the light fittings are supposed to be. And don’t leave the mops or cleaning fluid out where anyone can see... I held the phone away from my ear and gave Adam an upward eye roll.

What’s the matter with her? asked Adam, as he started shaking a tea-bag and taking off a brand new blue leather Duffer bomber jacket that I hadn’t seen before. Adam was stealth with his clothes. Blues, lots of grey shades, denims and blacks, but they were a decent cut. He knew his shape and he looked good. Secretly vain, unlike me he never made a song and dance about what he wore.

They are going to be late I mouthed to Adam, with a silent but wicked panto chuckle. I was genuinely tickled, but Adam just looked at me blankly and expressionless. It was too early for him.

Just get here when you can I said, flipping my phone shut and cutting Terrie off.

The four of us had worked together for years. Ten years of knowing each other and working together, and you just get used to people’s funny little ways. Terrie was bossy. I had always written it off as just a little quirk. It had never bothered me. But here in our new smaller ‘boutique’ salon, I got the feeling that her bossiness might start to rub me up the wrong way. It was now a bit too close for comfort.

In a way, we had grown up together. We had all started work at Charlie Mason’s salon when we were in our early twenties. Charlie Mason’s in the 90’s was the place to work. Covent Garden had turned into a Mecca for the cool, and Neal Street was the epicentre and pulse of Covent Garden. It was a catwalk for London street fashion.

I still can’t believe how I got in to Charlie’s. A classic example of happening to be in the right place at the right time. I don’t believe in fate, I believe in luck, and every hairdresser in London wanted to work there. The local boy from Bexley had got in past the velvet rope. Everything has its price though. Charlie had a draconian way of dealing with people. Hair hierarchy. He had a small number of favourites and would pretty much ignore everybody else.

Charlie was the ‘hairdressers’ hairdresser’. In the 1980’s, he had caught the tail end of the Sassoon phenomenom and made a name for himself through working for Vidal. Charlie Mason had gone on to open his own salon which was thriving – something I aspired to do. Sassoon had changed hairdressing forever, and Charlie had an association with that. Credit where credit is due. Charlie produced and published a number of iconic hair images that the industry truly worshipped. The hairdressing community adored a man they didn’t know. Hairdressers idolised Charlie and that was the sole reason for many of them wanting to work at his Covent Garden salon.

I’d been happy hairdressing in Bexley Village. A combination of people’s disapproval when I finally came out and the lure of the city made me less content. The Kent village just seemed to shrink one day.

I started hairdressing at 16 straight from school, and by 19 I was already qualified and teaching. I fell in love with hair at a well-established suburban ‘six strong’ salon company with its own hair academy in South London. At the tender age of 20, I was sent to America with two others to assist in setting up a new sister hair academy. A ‘school of cosmetology’ as the New Yorkers called it.

I was too young to be in that role, but New York was the tipping point, making me realise there was more to life than the suburbs of South London. It changed me, but I was by no means the first person who had New York rock them out of suburbia forever. Determined to escape Bexley, I had applied for a position at all the big names, and I didn’t get a single reply from any of them. Then I sent my CV to Richmond Hairdressing and to my surprise got called in for an interview. If that’s what you call it.

I arrived at the Kensington High Street flagship salon. I was told by the beautiful but heinous receptionist to join the queue with her wagging finger. I say ‘told’, but I am pretty sure she didn’t actually say anything, just motioned me away as though I smelled. The queue was a single file out of the open front door of the salon, and was at least 20 people strong. I got a sinking feeling. How was I ever going to make an impression with so much competition? My competitors were icy, good looking and all looked way cooler than me. They mostly wore black and looked expensively unwashed. There was a lot of Vivienne Westwood, flight bomber jackets, Boy T-Shirts, DM’s and braces. I felt like Suburban Steve amongst this urban crowd.

The queue went down surprisingly fast, with fresh applicants joining the back every few minutes. It was a mass interview. More like a casting. As I shuffled to the front, I started to get clammy hands. I didn’t really get nervous, so this caught me off guard. The anxiety of the other hairdressers was rubbing off on me. The deathly silence didn’t help much either.

Three from the front now. It was a bit like that scene from Flashdance where Jennifer Beals is looking through a crack in the door to the see the other dancers auditioning. I was looking through a crack in a chrome mirrored door. I could see what must have been an educational seminar room in the basement of the gigantic super salon. The room was empty, apart from one chair in the middle of the room facing a table of four interviewers. I walked uncomfortably into the room when it was my turn, and I had that bloody song ‘What a Feeling’ racing around my head, very loudly.

The interviewing team’s strategy was to fire random questions all at once at the applicant. It was over in a ferocious minute or two, and I left feeling confused and underwhelmed. How on earth would that tell them anything about me? To my complete surprise I was asked back for a second interview but declined the offer. I had landed myself an opportunity at Charlie Mason’s. Charlie’s wanted to interview me, so Richmond’s was suddenly yesterday’s story.

To be honest, when I received the letter inviting me in for that interview I was stunned. I had butterflies even re-reading the letter, asking me to call the salon to book an interview. I sent them my application letter first, months ago. I hadn’t even managed to build up the courage to walk into the Charlie Mason salon and ask for a price list. I had collected every other top salon’s and they were all sitting in a folder in my bedroom. I knew the salon well. I had stalked it often enough. It was my favourite salon in London.

It was open plan and had fantastic distressed walls, buzzing with a sophisticated energy. The decor looked a bit like Freud’s, a tiny Covent Garden cocktail bar that everyone was talking about at the time. The staff essentially wore a street uniform. Early 90’s Manhattan black. They all had immaculate hair and managed to be both alluring and intimidating. Not one of them looked like they could have been from Bexley Village.

Like the Richmond’s interview, it was all a bit of a sweaty blur. I had been interviewed for the plum Stylist position by Ross Vine, the salon’s art director. He was handsome, flippant and sarcastic. Ross asked me back the following week to cut three models in a ‘practical’ interview. What snippers call a ‘trade-test’.

I found a quiet corner on the basement floor in the overwhelming salon. As asked, I cut my three models, styled and presented them to the godlike Ross in a line up presentation. I wasn’t nervous at all by now. I was enjoying the opportunity. Cutting away and being in the moment. It seemed inconceivable that I would fit into this world but my ‘models’ were my friend Sarah and my two faithful sisters, whom I’d persuaded to let me do what I wanted to their hair. I really pushed the boat out and gave one of them a halo, an asymmetric crop and an A-line graduated bob. I was relaxed but determined. After scrutinising my haircuts in silence Ross led me to the office to give me his verdict. I had enjoyed my day at the salon doing models, and I was content with the experience but then he coolly said,

I’m prepared to give you a chance.

I was in through the front door. The hard bit of proving yourself hadn’t even begun. I was now in training. I was vardering at Charlie Mason’s. This was one of the most anxious but exciting times of my hair career. I had six, fast, short, hectic weeks at Charlie’s. It was to be make or break!

In many ‘elite’ salons a new employee has to retrain to meet the standard of the salon. Where you come from made no difference back then, as Charlie Mason’s attracted some of the best hairdressers on the planet. This training period consists of finding models and working on your technical weaknesses. At the end of your six weeks of vardering you would present a ‘floor test’ on your last Saturday. To make it feel even grander this happened in the evening. The whole salon stayed to observe every single floor test. It was the time where you either graduated onto the salon floor, or you were fired...in front of everyone. Really theatrical, but then we were in the West End so why not put on a show?

When I was training, Ross critiqued every strand of hair I touched. He didn’t hold back and dished out harsh one-liners. He taught me as much about taste as he did about technique. The pressure was brutal and notoriously tough. I knew it was all or nothing as I watched the guy before me fail his graduation floor test. Collecting his equipment, bag and coat. Never to be seen again. I was determined to get as much out of the experience as I could. To shine if possible. I would do the best presentation I could and the best line up of models I could find. I didn’t fail. My presentation was deemed ‘adequate’. I was hired. I had the bloody job.

I didn’t meet Charlie himself until I had worked for him for several weeks. He was out of the salon a lot. When I finally met him, I was disappointed. I’d been looking forward to meeting the legend. The first time I did actually get to meet him I was shocked. He was rude to his staff and quite arrogant. Charlie wouldn’t make full eye contact. So one day I stood there physically in his path so he couldn’t ignore me.

Who are you again? Charlie asked, as he squinted disapprovingly at his latest employee’s hair.

Hi he said uncomfortably.

I’m Stevie ... Stevie Deadwood I said and put out my hand.

Charlie looked at me and then down at my hand and smiled awkwardly before spinning and turning his back on me to begin talking to Ross. He blanked me…he definitely saw me try to shake his hand. Why was I not worthy? Was there a rule that you weren’t allowed to touch Charlie until you had worked at the salon for a while? Did you have to graduate to hand shaking?

My three future business partners already worked at the salon. They had been in the ‘audience’ for my test. Terrie Anne was the friendly, girl-next-door type. She too had just finished her ‘vardering’, recently qualified, and was the friendliest and warmest person at the salon. Adam was working as a colour technician. I’d never seen anyone in a tight t-shirt with a chest and biceps like that before. Jon arrived at the salon the day before I finally graduated. Jon was so laid back I was sure he’d never make it. Not in a million years.

I didn’t know it back then, but these three faces were going to be my future.

That night back in my Soho flat I had yet another broken and sleepless night. My unwanted guest was somehow trapped under the kitchen units. It must have snuck its way in somewhere and couldn’t get back out. I turned the kitchen upside down, and then noticed one hiding place I hadn’t checked.

The vacuum cleaner arm attachment.

I hate mice. Hate them.

I kicked the metallic tube.

Nothing.

I slowly picked it up and bought the tube to head level. Like a bullet the furry fucker shot out of the tube just missing my face. It darted across the living room and scared the life out of me. Attempting to compose myself, I chased the little grey vermin around the kitchen French farce style. I went one way, it darted behind a fridge. I could open a business, but couldn’t get a mouse out of my flat. It was ridiculous. I chased this mouse around the flat until it disappeared under the fitted kitchen cupboard. Beaten, I decided to give up and go to bed.

The following morning I bounced out of bed ready for a fight. On a mission. I marched to the hardware shop in Old Compton street and splashed out on an arsenal of anti-mouse materials. I left with six, sticky mats labelled ‘humane’. Maybe it was overkill, but I wasn’t coming home to a mouse scratching at my wooden skirting boards any more.

I had completely forgotten about the sticky mouse mats until I got home that evening from my second day at the new salon. The mouse was stuck to one of the mats. It must have been there for some time. Possibly hours as there was blood and little pieces of torn fur on the mat. There had clearly been a struggle. For the first time I actually felt slightly sorry for the little bastard. It was exhausted and awkwardly pinned by one foot and an ear to the sticky surface. It was however still alive and kicking and wiggling in that horrible way mice move. I had to put it out of its misery, and quick.

Looking around the flat for inspiration I soon concluded that I couldn’t stab it, or even splat it with something heavy and cumbersome.

I had a brain wave.

I covered the mat with some newspaper and with the mouse now motionless I picked up the not so humane adhesive sheet. I marched swiftly down the stairs and out onto Soho streets, down to Shaftesbury Avenue. I placed the mat about a foot away from the curb and waited sadly for the No.38 bus.

Within two minutes, in true London style, three buses arrived at once to do the job for me. The West End certainly had a way of finishing you off.

Chapter Two:

The Three Steves

The last six months of life for us at Charlie’s were grim, but you can bond in the darkest of hours. For six months we had shared our frustrations. We all shared the dream to create something fresh, something perhaps the hairdressing world hadn’t seen before. The rickshaw craze had recently hit London, and we used the Asian imports regularly to ferry us on secret missions from Covent Garden to Fitzrovia whilst we oversaw the building work on the new place. Adam and I had finally given in. Terrie and Jon had been so persistent. Terrie wasn’t taking no for an answer.

It had taken weeks, maybe months, for us to finally agree to open a salon with them. Even then I had doubts. We had to be super discreet. Sometimes Terrie and Adam disappeared, sometimes Jon and I. Whoever was free to nip out of Covent Garden and bolt over to the new premises without causing suspicion. It was an unlikely alliance. Terrie and Jon were so very close to Charlie, and would even babysit his temperamental daughter on a regular basis.

Terrie was one of Charlie’s favourites. Perhaps his all-time favourite. They had a professional and personal bond. He would occasionally speak to Jon. He acknowledged Adam, but he had always ignored me. But Terrie’s previous intimacy with Charlie had soured. This added another uncomfortable and intense dimension to our new would-be business partnership. Something had happened. She never bitched about him to us, Terrie was the same old Terrie to Charlie’s face, but she was angry about something, and she was deceiving him.

Charlie had always used Terrie to communicate to the staff. He simply didn’t have time for anyone else, except for a few fake smiles. It wasn’t as if Terrie had a deep connection with the team either, but over time she got comfortable with this perceived position of power. It might have been this that created the monster in Next slacks she was destined to become. She always had that aura of a safe middle-aged woman, even when she was 21.

When Adam and I first started talking about breaking away on our own, we had originally been looking in East London and around the Docklands area. We had been planning it for a while, but Terrie and Jon wanted to stay West End. Adam and I were seduced by Terrie.

You’re too good to leave the West End. Talent of your calibre doesn’t go east. The West End needs you she would say massaging our egos.

I admit. We lapped it up. And that is how we ended up in Fitzrovia with Terrie. It was going to take some getting used to. Just the four of us and a receptionist.

On my first day at work at Charlie’s, Roberta the less than friendly manageress asked me a question that she clearly knew the answer to – what’s your name then?

Oh I’m Steve. Steve Deadwood

Roberta was tiny and perfectly groomed, head to toe in Westwood. She had an incredibly short Sinead O’Connor inspired early 90’s crop, telephone box red lips and terrifying eyebrows. She was right on point with everything. Drenched in Issey Miyake. A dense, slow moving gas cloud, leaving traces behind her wherever she moved. She managed to make me feel foolish and intimidated. Absolutely her intention, I’m sure. Looking me up and down, she said…

We already have two Steves.

There was a pause and I began to feel even more uncomfortable. I was unwelcome. What was I supposed to say to that? Everyone seemed streetwise and worldlier than me at the time. New boy paranoia.

Nobody needs three Steves she said. Looking me up and down. Studying me, she added...

How about Jerome? Jerome sounds much more like it, she nodded contently to herself. Naive and impressionable, my feet almost left the ground as I felt my spirit lift for a moment. So Jerome was to be my ‘hair’ name. My stage name. The name I would style under. For a short time anyway. I had achieved a lot for my age, but didn’t see myself as ambitious. I wanted to work at Charlie’s because it was the coolest salon in London. I was blown away by the talent there, but unlike so many hairdressers I didn’t idolise Charlie, which was perhaps why he resented me from day one.

For me it was Katherine Hamnett, Leigh Bowery and The Face magazine that were exciting. Charlie just wasn’t stimulating. He was a combination of socially awkward and vain. He couldn’t have a conversation with anyone unless it was about him. For a hairdresser, he had terrible social skills and was more star-struck by his own industry fame than anyone else’s. Charlie Mason had become one of the industry’s biggest hairdressing personalities. So many more would follow in his footsteps, all fighting for a corner of that industry stage. Other hairdressers were in awe of him. I can clearly remember Charlie autographing copies of trade magazines for young tourist hairdressers who had been brave enough to wander into the salon. Charlie had become more than a well-known hairdresser. He was a hair celebrity.

After deepest, darkest suburbia, Covent Garden was a breath of fresh air. The hairdressers at the Mason salon were a variety of fashion label victims, retro vintage types, female juniors with soft clipper crops, and a drag queen. This stormy character was called ‘Radiation’. He never technically wore full drag in the salon, but his man makeup was stepping heavily in that direction. Everyone called him Radiation when they were away from clients. Sometimes he would wear the odd item of female attire and cross dress in his/her day wear. Demi drag. I found Radiation fascinating and he/she wouldn’t let me out of her sight.

You need some hindrances, Kent Boy. You’re no Jerome, I’m going with Stevie said Radiation, stabbing me in the back with one of his bony black nail varnished fingers. He had a twisted but warm sense of humour, and was one of the three Steves at the salon. He really was one of the funniest people I had ever met, and responsible for introducing me to the world of after-hour nightclubs and the monthly event that was Kinky Gerlinky.

Kinky Gerlinky was unique. It was the last, real, glam dress up club in the city, before dressing down and drugs took its place. Dressing up was the name of the game for Kinky. If you hadn’t made an effort for the themed club nights, you would be refused entry, even with a ticket. The most outrageous thing I saw at the monthly gathering was in the queue. A tall mixed race man stripped completely naked to get in and past the judgemental queens on the door of the Cafe de Paris Leicester Square nightclub. He remained naked for the entire evening, dancing away on the ballroom dance-floor.

The more outrageous your costume or ‘look’, the bigger hit you were. Half the salon team were at the anything-goes mixed, gay, straight extravaganza. Oddly, it was at Kinky Gerlinky that I first bonded with Adam. I was surprised to see the normally quiet hair colourist bare chested, wearing a carnival mask and dancing unreservedly on the dance floor. The clubʼs theme for the evening was Rio and it was packed, full on Brazilian skimpy samba. Feathers, bronze flesh and fuck loads of glitter. Adam was hard to speak to that night as we tried to smash tequila slammers. He was surrounded by lots of animated looking female Japanese club kids wearing blonde wigs and giant platform shoes.

It was in those early days of Charlie’s that I met my very first lipstick lesbian. A real one. Not just the ones I had read about in Elle. Coco was a femme androgyny type and best buddies with Roberta the scary Manageress, who wasn’t a lesbian but looked more like one than Coco. I started to get obsessed with Coco. She hardly said a word. She too wore uniform Manhattan black all year round. She might sport the odd, fiercely coloured scarf just to break it up. She had an immaculate, short, graduated, tucked bob that never seemed to grow. Ever.

The 90’s staffroom at Charlie Mason’s was a cooler bohemian version of the Canteen from Star Wars, all of them exceptionally talented creatives rather than bounty hunters. Charlie’s was a creative magnet and a nucleus of hair talent. There was a brilliant but scary stylist from Liverpool who had an unbelievable Minnie Mouse voice and occasionally wore different wigs to the salon. There was a stylist called Shelley whose statement hair was one length to her bottom, copper and so thick she had to lie down occasionally because the weight of her hair gave her headaches. There was an offish and cold French male hair colourist and a tiny female Japanese hairdresser who could ‘scissor over combed’ hair like a barbering machine. She also wore giant platforms to work and was buddies with Adam.

Terrie had shiny, creamy, bleached blonde hair, beautiful blue eyes, red rose checks and a wholesome girl-next-door smile. She was a smart, safe dresser, normally wearing black and white. Sometimes there was a white, low cut feminine ‘GAP’ shirt top with the staple black slacks and a lightweight cropped black jacket.

She promised to go, but never made it to Kinky. It probably would have done her the world of good. She was so nice and down to earth in those days. She was teased constantly by Radiation for being an ‘actual’ farmer’s daughter (which was true). That said, I liked her. How could you not? She was harmless. Jon, her side kick, was your laid-back, handsome South African. A surfer at heart who had travelled around much of Europe in a camper van. His travels ended in London like so many antipodeans to work for 18 months on an employment visa before going back home to Joberg. He was pleasant enough, but I avoided sitting next to him all day - he more or less had the same conversation with each client. He chose a subject and pretty much stuck to that routine conversation for the whole day. The colourists at Charlie’s would wind Jon up endlessly about doing the same haircut on every client. Although a bit mean, there was an element of truth about it.

On Tuesday 4th May, Radiation was fired. He had been going off the rails for some time and partying way, way too hard. He kept turning up to work wasted, and it was starting to be a surprise if he turned up for work at all. Then one morning, the normally indifferent manageress Roberta completely lost it with him.

Steve, you need to sort yourself out. Your client is waiting upstairs. She isn’t happy. Neither am I, she said, fuming.

What whaddya mean he slurred slightly.

Radiation was slumped at the staffroom table with last