Lisa Heidke by Lucy (mobi) (book club reads TXT) 📗

Given that I can’t stand the sight of anyone in my house, I follow Gloria’s advice and get me to a beautician for a general overhaul; the birth of a brand-new me. A new life . . . my life without Max. It’s time to move on. Because today I’m thinking I can get by without Max. What’s the point of wishing someone would come home when they clearly don’t want to?

I spend the afternoon gaining a new perspective on my life as the beautician sloughs dead skin from my heels and paints my toenails fire-engine red. I also have a manicure, eyebrow wax, eyelash tint and an exotically named youth elixir oxygen therapy facial, which involves a combination of oxygen treatment and a cocktail of vitamins and minerals slathered over my face to restore, tighten and rejuvenate my skin. Excellent.

I decide it’ll be fine if Max never comes home - as long as the finances are under control, which they will be once I transform myself and am offered a television contract.

Lucy Springer is getting her life in order! I’m damned if I’m ever going to do an audition for a dog poo ad again. If Gracie Gardener, slut and my nemesis, can act then so can I. She has a coke habit, for God’s sake. I’m no longer even opposed to adopting an Asian orphan. I could do that. I’m sure Sam wouldn’t mind sharing his room. I’ll have a new life post-Max. So he left me for the babysitter? So he’s in Bali? Big deal.

Walking out of the beautician’s, I feel on top of the world.

Moments later, I saunter past a hairdressing salon and spot a hairdresser - male, drag queen, complete with make-up (obviously). He has the Priscilla thing going and looks fabulous. I’m in love. In love, and unhappy with my same old redhead do. I look exactly like old Lucy Springer, not new me at all.

I walk in, introduce myself to the drag queen - Pete, he tells me - and demand he ‘do me over’.

‘Love, are you serious?’ he screeches.

‘Absolutely. Do whatever you want,’ I tell him, feeling silently queasy. After all, I love my red hair. It’s my trademark.

‘Get rid of the red,’ Pete snaps straightaway. ‘Doesn’t suit you.’

I spend the next three and a half hours having a complete hair makeover. In addition to blonde, I have honey, copper and ash stripes through my hair, the base colour being chocolate. Not a hint of red.

After it’s done, I say to Pete, ‘I want to look more Newtown than North Shore, but do I just look like an aging, cheap slut?’

‘You’re an artist, darling. Artists are entitled to own any hair they want.’

I bobble out of his salon feeling chuffed, proudly flicking my multicoloured hair from side to side . . . and that’s when I happen upon a travel agent’s window.

Fate.

I remember Dom’s comment, about me needing to sort out my marriage before moving on with my life. He has a point. Then there’s Bella and Sam. They need to see their father. I need to see their father. I’m stuck in limbo land, and as much as I think I want to move onward and upward, I really should sort out my feelings about Max as well.

I walk through the travel agent’s door.

If Max can take off to Bali, so can I.

I’d love to say that my day ended on that spectacular note, but as this is a diary I have to be honest and confess how Patch and another builder caught me in my underwear less than an hour after I arrived home from my day of beautification.

Really, it wasn’t funny.

Why was I clad only in my Elle Macpherson Intimates? Because after my beauty treatments, I decided I was looking somewhat pale - I’m naturally a fair-skinned redhead after all. So I proceeded to slather myself in Clinique fake tan - the downside being that I couldn’t put my clothes back on for fifteen minutes until the lotion had completely dried. Eight minutes in, I needed to use the toilet. I didn’t think anyone other than Bella and Sam were in the house. God knows, it was four o’clock and Patch never works late on Friday afternoons.

So there I was, about to enter the bathroom, when Patch and another builder appeared on the landing, having just climbed up the ramp.

‘Avert your eyes,’ I cried and fell into the bathroom, where I stayed for a good half-hour, only emerging after Sam reassured me several times that there were ‘No strange men in the house, Mummy.’

Day 34

‘Have you gone barking mad?’ Gloria screeches when I tell her about Bali. ‘It’s that hair, the chemicals, the bleach - it’s rotted your brain.’

‘But we’ll miss school,’ says Sam.

‘What about the germs?’ asks Bella.

‘I thought you both wanted to see Dad,’ I say, admiring my new hair in the rear-vision mirror and making To Do lists in my head as I drive them to their respective sports. We’ll need swimmers of course, sunscreen, passports . . .

‘Bali?’ my mother snaps when I finally find the courage to ring her.

‘Yes, Bali - and don’t try to talk me out of it. I’m taking Bella and Sam too. It’ll be fun.’

‘You’re not going to do anything silly, are you?’ Mum continues. ‘I mean, anything sillier than flying to some godforsaken Third World country with my grandchildren, what with bird flu, drug-smuggling -’

‘Don’t forget terrorists,’ I say, inflaming her further.

‘Exactly. And for what? To chase after your lecherous husband and his silly girlfriend. And just what, please tell me, are you going to do, Lucy, when you find them? If you find them, assuming they’re still in Bali.’

While I do have a plan, of sorts, I’m not telling Mum. My information release to her is on a strictly need-to-know basis. I’ve told her we’re off to Bali - that’s as much as she can cope with for now. I