Appointment with the looking glass (by Heather)

Write about a fictional scary encounter with your hairdresser/barber.

It was ten minutes to 9:00 on Saturday morning. I stepped into the tiny salon and glanced at Francine, the new hairdresser I’d been recommended. “Hi,” I said. “I’m Mel. Hope it’s okay that I’m a little early.”

Her back to me as she wiped down the sink, she said, “Hi, Mel. No problem; I’m always early myself. Grab the chair.”

I slid into the chair as Francine pulled up behind me, grabbing my hair and giving it a flick with the brush. “All right! What’ll it…” her voice trailed off.

I looked up sharply at the mirror. There, staring at me, colour draining from her face, was … me. Well, two of me, actually. One above the other. One where the client usually sits, one where the hairdresser usually stands. Both with straight red hair (the top one shoulder length, the bottom one an inch or two shorter), skinny nose, pointy chin, freckles standing out like paint spots, laugh lines at the corner of the eyes.

“What the…!” the bottom mouth said. Mine. I heard my own voice in my ears. The bottom mouth was mine.

“Sharon!” the other mouth said, smiling shakily.

“No, Mel. I’m Mel. Who are YOU?”

“You’re MELANIE?” The hair brush dropped to the floor.

The top face was standing there open-mouthed. The bottom face was twirling its hair at the temple around one index finger, which I sometimes do when I’m especially nervous. I brought my hand abruptly back to my lap and turned around to inspect her properly.


An hour later I had a cut and a blow dry. I also had the story. Francine had lived here at Blackhead Beach for all of her life, and had opened this little salon a couple years back. Just over a year ago, she had discovered that she was adopted and had gone on a mission to discover her true roots (not just in the hairdresser way, she said). She’d met with a DOCS counsellor, which is when she found out all the details of her birth and her blood family. Twice through the story Francine twirled the hair at her temple, I noticed. Once was when she talked about her mother, our mother, having died a few years ago, so she could never meet her. And the other time was when she talked about the counsellor carefully informing her that she wasn’t a single birth.

And she had my story: I’d always known I was adopted but had always been resistant about finding out more. Recently my husband and I had moved from Sydney to the north coast and I’d been recommended to Francine’s by my old hairdresser. I’d changed my name a couple of marriages along the way and that’s probably why she hadn’t been able to track me down. She had only my first name right.


I looked in the mirror at her face, which was currently twinkling with some mischief that I was too much in shock to appreciate. “Well,” I said, “I am, to say the least, gob-smacked.”

Francine glanced at the clock. “There’s another part I haven’t told you.” I looked in the mirror at her, at me, and my heart started hammering again. Francine was doing my thing, twiddling with her hair at the temple.

“You found out our mother was a serial killer?” I asked.

She laughed. “That may be true but I haven’t found it out yet. No, what I DID find out was…here, look at this.” She fumbled in her handbag and drew out a photo, a close up of a laughing redhead leaning against a tree.

“You have a photo of me!” I said. Then I caught myself. “Of course, it’s a photo of YOU, when you had short hair.”

“Actually, no,” she said. “This is a photo of Sharon.”

“Sharon?” I said blankly.

She put a hand gently on my shoulder. “Here’s the thing, Mellie. We were actually triplets. Identical triplets. And I found HER a couple weeks ago. She lives in Melbourne and she’s coming up this weekend to meet me.

“Actually, she’s due to show up here at the salon at 10:00. Which means she’ll meet both of us, assuming you hang around to play with your sisters.” Francine laughed, this time a little crazily. “After that I close up shop for the day.”

“She’s due to show up here,” I repeated, without my usual sizzling intelligence. I wondered if this was some joke of the universe, if I was some joke. Some joke with some indefinite number of identical people I’d shared a womb with. How much coincidence could I believe in before it blew my mind?

This had never before happened to me at the hairdresser’s.

“Only triplets?” I asked. “No more?”

Francine hooted. “Not according to the Royal North Shore Hospital records.”

It was quarter to 10:00.

Just then the door opened.

In she walked. It could have been Francine, or me, except with a cropped cut. She looked at us both, went dead pale, and brought her finger up to play with the short hair at her temple.

“Who supplied the Fun House with the infinity mirrors?” she quipped. “Well, HI, I’m Sharon. You must be … my sisters.”