OR, TO BE more precise, in Borstead.

There were two options:

1. Scott’s, the barber’s

2. Griffin’s, the chemist’s

The small window of Albert Scott’s shop on Church Street featured four photographs of handsome, smiling men sporting oiled but different hairstyles, none of which was available to clients on the premises. Scott did only one kind of haircut, the kind that he had been inflicting on the men and boys of Borstead since 1936. It involved ten minutes’ smart work with comb and scissors, followed by several runs up the back of the neck with manual clippers that clacked like a mad dog’s teeth. The window also displayed a dusty collection of combs, brushes, and gentlemen’s shaving requisites, and, down in one corner, a little yellow plastic sign shaped like a tent. On it, the almost-word ONA above the word LUBRICATED. ONA was also printed on the small packages that Scott would supply to men who nodded when he murmured, brushing the hair from their lapels, “Something for the weekend, sir?”

Scott had been murdering Clem’s hair, and his father’s, since Clem was five. So it would be perfectly fine if he marched in there and requested, “A packet of three Ona, Mr. Scott, please. No, on second thoughts, make that two packets. I’ve got a lively weekend coming up.”

No, it wouldn’t.

And his mum worked in Griffin’s.

So that was that.