Between Autobits and Tiger's Lunchbox stands the turquoise awning of Tantastic. A banner advertises new management, new beds, and its window is filled by a picture of a woman on a beach in a pink swimsuit, lithe and golden-limbed beneath the palms.
In April, Cancer Research UK announced that skin cancer is now the most common cancer among young British women - a statistic the charity attributed to the sustained popularity of tanning salons. While rates of melanoma are highest in the south-west, where the weather is warmer and the population older, the sharpest increase has been in the north of England.
Liverpool has more tanning beds than anywhere else in Britain. Here in Orrell Park, Tantastic is one of three on the same street. The salon has five beds and rates start at £1.25 for six minutes, though most customers pay £2.75 for nine minutes on the stronger beds.
Ann, 62, has worked here for a year, covering the day shift from the quiet mornings through to the evenings, when the salon is at its busiest. They are open seven days a week until 9pm. "Summer's busier," she says, "and Christmas, for the parties." Ann lives in Kirkby, half an hour away, and has spent her whole life in Merseyside. "I'd say over the last five years there's been more tanning salons," she says. "I think it's the British weather that's done it."
She takes the money, feeds the tokens into the machines, wipes down the beds. "You have to make sure all the beds are clean," she explains, "and that there's clean towels and there's deodorants. Some salons don't even clean the beds," she says, and covers her mouth, recoiling a little at the very idea. In the quiet spells she sits behind the till and fancies winning the lottery and moving to Windsor where her niece lives. "It's a job where you can daydream," she says.
The radio is tuned to a local station and the cooling fan gives out a constant drone over the waiting area, with its small kitchenette, its row of metal chairs, its cream and pink towels stacked against the wall. There is a pile of gossip magazines, a fridge full of flavoured water, and on the wall hangs a poster of a woman on a sofa in her knickers: "Inspired by Nature," it reads. "Swedish Beauty."
Tantastic has a steady stream of regulars, most popping in every other day. "Nine minutes is the most they do," Ann explains. "Like if you haven't been before, I say don't do more than six." Britain's sunbed industry is currently unregulated, but here they operate a strictly over-18s only policy. "It's up to them if they put lotion on and if they wear goggles," Ann says. "And we always advise them about skin cancer, you know?" She raises her eyes with bemusement. "The men are the worst."
This morning they trickle in: young women in leggings, men in tracksuit pants and flip-flops, scuttling, head-down, to the booths. The transaction is swift: A woman in a tie-dye top and sandals shuffles in from the sunny street, blinking in the sudden darkness. "How long?" asks Ann. "Nine minutes," the woman replies. "D'you want goggles?" Ann offers and the woman shakes her head: "No, I'll just keep me eyes shut."
In the booth there is a mirror, two coat hooks, a flannel, two cans of deodorant, and a bed lined with tubes that spring to life with a flicker and a faint whirr then settle to a steady fluorescent glow of 250W. There is a smell of heat and disinfectant, the faint scent of suntan lotion mingling with sweat.
Towards lunchtime, an older woman comes in wearing a floral skirt and holding a loaf of Warburton's. "Can I leave my loaf?" she asks Ann. A short while later she emerges looking a little pinker. "It's not vanity," she says. "I only use it cos I've got a holiday booked in Turkey in a few weeks and I'm frightened of burning when I get there." She has been coming in twice a week, booking nine minutes but getting off after six. "It's too hot!" she says. The rest of the year she uses fake tan. "Why Liverpool?" she asks. "It's the teenagers. You see them going to school with their fake tan on in the winter time. They just want to be brown permanently. It's the look here."
