I looked. They were just my eyes, nothing to write home about. But they were an awesome colour. Leastways, that was what Lara said. From the way the pair of them were love-bombing me, you’d swear I was gorgeous.

‘I think we’re gonna go pretty short here,’ Dino said. ‘Your head shape is good enough to take it.’

I opened my mouth to object, then realized that I didn’t have to.

It was Garv, you see.

Despite popular opinion, he’d actually been very easy-going. At least, about most things. But there was some stuff that he simply was not open to negotiation on.

1. He would have no truck with electric blankets –dying of cold was preferable. He insisted that if you stayed in an electric-blanket-warmed bed for too long you’d – and I quote – ‘pop up like a slice of toast’.

2. He hated me getting my hair cut. Visits to the hairdresser were fraught, because even when I only got a blow-dry, Garv used to examine me on my return and insist that they’d lopped off four inches. And getting a trim was a total nightmare – no matter how often I explained to him about split ends and what Bad Things they were. While his insistence on long hair used to irritate me, I indulged him, because when I could never find time to go to the gym and so lost most of my muscle tone, he didn’t once complain.

But as Dino’s hands sketched shapes around my face, I suddenly saw that I was free to do whatever I liked with my hair. I could shave my head if I wanted.

‘I don’t want it too short.’

‘Your face can take it.’

‘But my hair can’t. It goes into awful curls if it’s shorter than three inches. I look like a cauliflower.’

There have been many hairstyles over the years: the Shingle; the Bob; the Purdey; the Rachel. Well, I lived in terror of the grim halo of curls they called the Irish Mammy.

‘I hear you,’ Dino said, clicking open and closed a huge pair of steel scissors, practically pawing the ground.

‘You’ve got to wash it, first,’ Lara murmured.

‘I know’.

As dark clots of wet hair fell to the white tiles, the weight on my head noticeably lightened. It felt strange: it was ten years since I’d had anything other than a trim. Now and then anxiety leapt, as I forgot how much my life had changed. Garv would kill me. Then I remembered he wouldn’t. He couldn’t.

‘How’d your date with the dancer go?’ Dino asked Lara. ‘Gimme the 411 on her.’

As the old me fell away, the pair of them chatted easily. Then I was being blow-dried with my head upside-down, then finally I was being turned to the mirror, face to face with a sleeker, sparklier version of myself. By comparison, the earlier me seemed pathetically crude and lumpish – and very long ago.

Words finally found me. ‘I look different. Younger.’

‘The right cut is as good as a facelift,’ Dino said.

And almost as expensive. It cost a staggering one hundred and twenty dollars! With a twenty-dollar tip! I could have got four haircuts at home for the same amount and had enough change for a bag of Maltesers for the drive home. But if that’s how they do it here…

As we left, Dino said, ‘You know what? You have great eyebrows, but they could use a shape… You know what I’m thinking?’ he questioned Lara.

‘Anoushka!’ they declared together.

‘Who?’

‘Eyebrow shaper to the stars,’ Dino explained.

In a by-now-familiar scenario, Lara already had the palm pilot and the cellphone out. ‘Madame Anoushka? My girlfriend is having a brow crisis.’ She looked at my eyebrows. ‘It is an emergency, Madame Anoushka.’

For some reason I couldn’t be bothered being offended.

Lara paced anxiously, then, ‘Saturday, five-thirty?’ She turned to me. ‘OK?’

I nodded. Why not?

Next stop, Lara’s Venice apartment to pick up clothes for the pitch. I liked Venice. There was something bleak and charming about the clapboard houses with their peeling paint, the secret, hidden little streets which darted away from the road, the dusty trees weighted low over front yards, casting a mysterious, sub-aquaish light.

Lara’s apartment took up the entire top floor of a big, wooden house. From her windows you could hear the swish and roar of the ocean.

‘My closet is through here.’ She marched into her bedroom, me in her wake. Then I took one look at her bed and all I could think of were porn film titles. Hot Lesbian Love Action. Ladies Who Munch. City Lickers.

I couldn’t help it. This was the first lesbian bedroom I’d ever been in – I defy anyone not to have the same reaction.

Blithely unaware, Lara was pulling clothes from the closet –not a pair of dungarees in sight.

‘There’s this pant suit. Or how about this skirt and jacket? Lemme show you the shirt that goes with it… Try this on,’ she kept urging. ‘Try that on.’ And when I finally got round to doing so, she stepped out of the room while I got changed.

Then, my arms full of business-like clothes, Lara gave me a lift – or ride, if you prefer – home to Santa Monica. Night was falling and the light draining away. As we drove down an avenue lined with palm trees, their silhouettes black against the fading sky, I noticed again how lanky and skinny they were. They say some people get to look like their dogs. Well, Angelenos get to look like their flora.

As I ran in home, I glanced through the window into Mike and Charmaine’s front room. To my great surprise there were loads of people there, sitting amongst flickering candles. They all had their eyes closed. In fact, they were so still I wasn’t even sure they were breathing. With a strange thrill, I wondered if I’d stumbled on a Jim Jones grape-flavoured-Kool-Aid mass-suicide-pact-type thing.

While I’d been out, Emily had gone into a pre-pitch frenzy and tried on every item of clothing she owned. They were scattered on the bed, the floor, the chairs, flung over her television, and she was on her hands and knees pawing hysterically through them.

‘I have nothing to wear tomorrow!’ She didn’t even look up.

‘But what about the lovely things you bought on Saturday?’

She shook her head. ‘I hate them. They’re all wrong.’

Only then did she notice my hair. ‘Holy Christ, I’d hardly recognize you! You’re BEAUTIFUL.’

‘Listen to me. There’s something funny going on next door –’