When David steps out of the front door he is blinded for a moment by the white, fizzing1 sunlight and reaches instinctively for his dad’s hand.
It’s the first really warm day of the year, an unexpected heat that bridges the cusp2 between spring and summer. Father and son are on their way to the barbershop, something they have always done together.
Always, the routine3 is the same. “It’s about time we got that mop of yours cut,” David’s dad will say, pointing at him with two fingers, a cigarette wedged4 between them. “Perhaps I should do it. Where are those shears, Janet?”
Sometimes his dad chases him round the living room, pretending to cut off his ears. When he was young David used to get too excited and start crying, scared that maybe he really would lose his ears, but he has long since grown out of that.
Mr. Samuels’ barbershop is in a long room above the chip shop, reached by a steep flight of stairs. There is a groove5 worn in each step by the men who climb and descend in a regular stream. David follows his father, annoyed that he cannot make each step creak like his old man can.
David loves the barbershop—it’s like nowhere else he goes. It smells of cigarettes and men and hair oil. Sometimes the smell of chips will climb the stairs along with a customer and when the door opens the waiting men lift their noses together.
Black and white photographs of men with various out-of-fashion hairstyles hang above a picture rail at the end of the room, where two barber’s chairs are bolted6 to the floor. They are heavy, old-fashioned chairs with foot pumps that hiss and chatter as Mr. Samuels, the rolls of his plump neck squashing7 slightly, adjusts the height of the seat.
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