The communication between hairdressers in P. K.’s being poor, no one told Andrea that Irie had washed her hair. Two minutes after having the thick white ammonia gloop spread on to her head, she felt the initial cold sensation change to a terrific fire. There was no dirt there to protect the scalp, and Irie started screaming.

‘I jus’ put it on! You want it straight, don’ you? Stop making that noise!’

‘But it hurts!’

‘Life hurts,’ said Andrea scornfully, ‘beauty hurts.’

Irie bit her tongue for another thirty seconds until blood appeared above her right ear. Then the poor girl blacked out.

She came to with her head over the sink, watching her hair, which was coming out in clumps, shimmy down the plughole.

‘You should have told me,’ Andrea was grumbling. ‘You should have told me that you washed it. It’s got to be dirty first. Now look.’

Now look. Hair that had once come down to her mid vertebrae was only a few inches from her head.

‘See what you’ve done,’ continued Andrea, as Irie wept openly. ‘I’d like to know what Mr Paul King is going to say about this. I better phone him and see if we can fix this up for you for free.’

Mr Paul King, the P. K. in question, owned the place. He was a big white guy, in his mid fifties, who had been an entrepreneur in the building trade until Black Wednesday and his wife’s credit card excesses took away everything but some bricks and mortar. Looking for a new idea, he read in the lifestyle section of his breakfast paper that black women spend five times as much as white women on beauty products and nine times as much on their hair. Taking his wife Sheila as an archetypal white woman, Paul King began to salivate. A little more research in his local library uncovered a multi-million pound industry. Paul King then bought a disused butcher’s on Willesden High Road, head-hunted Andrea from a Harlesden salon, and gave black hairdressing a shot. It was an instant success. He was amazed to discover that women on low income were indeed prepared to spend hundreds of pounds per month on their hair and yet more on nails and accessories. He was vaguely amused when Andrea first explained to him that physical pain was also part of the process. And the best part of it was there was no question of suing – they expected the burns. Perfect business.

‘Go on, Andrea, love, give her a freebie,’ said Paul King, shouting on a brick-shaped mobile over the construction noise of his new salon, opening in Wembley. ‘But don’t make a habit of it.’

Andrea returned to Irie with the good tidings. ‘ ’Sall right, darlin’. This one’s on us.’

‘But what – ’ Irie stared at her Hiroshima reflection. ‘What can you-’

‘Put your scarf back on, turn left out of here and go down the high road until you get to a shop called Roshi’s Haircare. Take this card and tell them P. K.’s sent you. Get eight packets of no. 5 type black hair with a red glow and come back here quick style.’

‘Hair?’ repeated Irie through snot and tears. ‘Fake hair?’

‘Stupid girl. It’s not fake. It’s real. And when it’s on your head it’ll be your real hair. Go!’

Blubbing like a baby, Irie shuffled out of P. K.’s and down the high road, trying to avoid her reflection in the shop windows. Reaching Roshi’s, she did her best to pull herself together, put her right hand over her stomach and pushed through the doors.

It was dark in Roshi’s and smelt strongly of the same scent as P. K.’s: ammonia and coconut oil, pain mixed with pleasure. From the dim glow given off by a flickering strip light, Irie could see there were no shelves to speak of but instead hair products piled like mountains from the floor up, while accessories (combs, bands, nail varnish) were stapled to the walls with the price written in felt-tip alongside. The only display of any recognizable kind was placed just below the ceiling in a loop around the room, taking pride of place like a collection of sacrificial scalps or hunting trophies. Hair. Long tresses stapled a few inches apart. Underneath each a large cardboard sign explaining its pedigree:

2 Metres. Natural Thai. Straight. Chestnut.

1 Metre. Natural Pakistani. Straight with a wave. Black.

5 Metres. Natural Chinese. Straight. Black.

3 Metres. Synthetic hair. Corkscrew curl. Pink.

Irie approached the counter. A hugely fat woman in a sari was waddling to the cash till and back again to hand over twenty-five pounds to an Indian girl whose hair had been shorn haphazardly close to the scalp.

‘And please don’t be looking at me in that manner. Twenty-five is very reasonable price. I tell you I can’t do any more with all these split ends.’

The girl objected in another language, picked up the bag of hair in question from the counter and made as if to leave with it, but the elder woman snatched it away.

‘Please, don’t embarrass yourself further. We both have seen the ends. Twenty-five is all I can give you for it. You won’t get more some other place. Please now,’ she said, looking over the girl’s shoulder to Irie, ‘other customers I have.’

Irie saw hot tears, not unlike her own, spring to the girl’s eyes. She seemed to freeze for a moment, vibrating ever so slightly with anger; then she slammed her hand down on the counter, swept up her twenty-five pounds and headed for the door.

The fat lady shook her chins in contempt after the disappearing girl. ‘Ungrateful, she is.’

Then she unpeeled a sticky label from its brown paper backing and slapped it on the bag of hair. It said: ‘6 Metres. Indian. Straight. Black/red.’

‘Yes, dear. What is it I can do?’

Irie repeated Andrea’s instruction and handed over the card.

‘Eight packets? That is about six metres, no?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Yes, yes, it is. You want it straight or with a wave?’

‘Straight. Dead straight.’

The fat lady did a silent calculation and then picked up the bag of hair that the girl had just left. ‘This is what you’re looking for. I haven’t been able to package it, you understand. But it is absolutely clean. You want?’

Irie looked dubious.

‘Don’t worry about what I said. No split ends. Just silly girl trying to get more than she deserves. Some people got no understanding of simple economics… It hurts her to cut off her hair so a million pounds she expects or something crazy. Beautiful hair, she has. When I was young, oh, mine was beautiful too, eh?’ The fat lady erupted into high-pitched laughter, her busy upper lip making her moustache quiver. The laugh subsided.

‘Tell Andrea that will be thirty-seven fifty. We Indian women have the beautiful hair, hey? Everybody wants it!’

A black woman with children in a twin buggy was waiting behind Irie with a packet of hairpins. She sucked her teeth. ‘You people think you’re all Mr Bigstuff,’ she muttered, half to herself. ‘Some of us are happy with our African hair, thank you very much. I don’t want to buy some poor Indian girl’s hair. And I wish to God I could buy black hair products from black people for once. How we going to make it in this country if we don’t make our own business?’

The skin around the fat lady’s mouth became very tight. She began talking twelve to the dozen, putting Irie’s hair in a bag and writing her out a receipt, addressing all her comments to the woman via Irie, while doing the best to ignore the other woman’s interjections: ‘You don’t like shopping here, then please don’t be shopping here – is forcing you anybody? No, is anybody? It’s amazing: people, the rudeness, I am not a racist, but I can’t understand it, I’m just providing a service, a service. I don’t need abuse, just leave your money on the counter, if I am getting abuse, I’m not serving.’

‘No one’s givin’ you abuse. Jesus Christ!’

‘Is it my fault if they want the hair that is straight – and paler skin sometimes, like Michael Jackson, my fault he is too? They tell me not to sell the Dr Peacock Whitener – local paper, my God, what a fuss! – and then they buy it – take that receipt to Andrea, will you, my dear, please? I’m just trying to make a living in this country like the rest of everybody. There you are, dear, there’s your hair.’