The first hair I found on my colleague’s jacket could easily have been a coincidence.
We shared an office. Occasionally, a taxi. There were any number of reasonable explanations.
I removed it before his presentation.
“Thanks,” he said.
At that stage, neither of us understood what was happening.
I had begun losing my hair the previous autumn. Nothing dramatic. A little more scalp in photographs. A growing reluctance to stand directly beneath the kitchen lights.
My wife said she hadn’t noticed.
She said this while moving a lamp.
I was fortunate in having a reasonably shaped head and a profession in which thinning hair was generally taken as evidence that you had considered the figures.
Nevertheless, I missed it.
What troubled me was how little opportunity there had been to say goodbye.
The colleague was called Andrew.
He joined us in January to oversee a restructuring. Pleasant enough. Good shoes. The sort of man who remembers your children’s names without ever seeming burdened by the information.
He was also, when he arrived, almost entirely bald.
By March, there was a softness around his temples.
“Something’s working,” I said.
He touched the area.
“Apparently.”
I thought this an oddly evasive answer, although I was still inclined to be pleased for him.
Then he developed my parting.
It is difficult to explain how one recognises one’s own hair on another man.
There are no distinguishing marks. No reliable way to establish ownership from across a meeting room.
But I knew that little turn above the left ear. I had spent thirty years trying to flatten it before weddings.
And there it was, sitting obediently against Andrew’s head.
He had done nothing to earn that.
I went home early.
My wife listened with admirable patience.
“Are you saying he’s taking it?”
“I don’t know whether taking is the right word.”
“What word would you use?”
I had been avoiding this.
“Receiving.”
She looked towards the kitchen window.
I asked her not to tell her sister yet.
The consultant was familiar with the pattern.
“Occupational transfer,” he said. “You spend a great deal of time together?”
I explained the restructuring.
“And how do you feel about his leadership?”
I said he was competent.
The consultant waited.
“Very competent.”
He nodded.
Apparently, hair can begin favouring another man before its original owner is consciously aware of any dissatisfaction.
“It isn’t a judgement on your character.”
I asked whether it was a judgement on anything else.
He straightened a leaflet.
The condition was usually gradual. Individual hairs began commuting, often returning at weekends. Over time, if the receiving environment remained favourable, they made the arrangement permanent.
“Can I encourage them back?”
“You can make yourself available.”
This was difficult to hear in a room where I was already paying to be present.
Andrew was mortified.
Or said he was.
We spoke in a small meeting room usually reserved for confidential calls.
“I honestly thought it was the shampoo.”
He offered to change desks. To stop attending the Tuesday management meeting. At one point, he suggested working from home until we understood the boundaries.
I appreciated this, although I noticed he did not offer to shave it off.
Instead, we agreed on a few practical measures.
Separate coat hooks. Less direct overlap at lunch. He would stop using the phrase “a fresh approach” while touching his fringe.
For my part, I would try not to watch him so closely.
The hardest moment came at the barber’s.
I had been going to Colin for seventeen years.
Usually, we discussed the traffic before agreeing that he should do what he had done last time.
On this occasion, Colin stood behind me for a long while.
Then he put down the scissors.
“I saw Andrew yesterday.”
I looked at him in the mirror.
“Did you recognise it?”
He nodded.
“How did it seem?”
Colin brushed something from my shoulder.
“Well,” he said. “Very well.”
I wish I could tell you I handled everything generously.
For a while, I became petty.
I began arriving early, before Andrew’s hair had had time to settle. I took a small satisfaction in wet weather. When someone complimented his appearance, I found reasons to mention how difficult the crown could be.
My wife eventually intervened.
“You’re making everyone uncomfortable.”
“It was mine.”
“Yes,” she said. “And we all remember.”
That evening, I put away the products.
Some were almost full.
Things are easier now.
Andrew has moved to another firm. We still meet occasionally for lunch, and I am learning to appreciate him without assessing the distribution of his volume.
Last month, he sent me a photograph from his daughter’s wedding.
He looked happy.
The hair looked magnificent.
I showed my wife.
“Lovely,” she said.
And, after a moment, I found that I agreed.
There was a message beneath the photograph.
Colin says the little turn’s come back.
I read it twice.
Then I put the kettle on.