‘How’s yer downstairs?” bellows West End Curls manager Rita (Sarah Hadland) at the scrunched-up ball of postnatal exhaustion that is Gemma (Aimee Lou Wood). “I had a C-section, Rita,” sighs Gemma from the depths of her (deeply) distressed leather jacket. “Remember?”
“Oh,” replies her boss, crestfallen. “The upstairs, then?” The upstairs, alas, is stuffed. Gemma’s norks are “in agony”, her lactation-based woes exacerbated by sleep deprivation and the fact that her insufferable berk of a mother is currently stuffing the spare room with statement cushions and endless unasked-for reflections on her butcher boyfriend’s cleaver. “It’s been three months now,” says Gemma, fixing Rita with a thousand-nappy stare. “It’s hell.”
