Dreams Before the Start of Time

by Anne Charnock

  Since the panic attack, she’s suffered a recurring nightmare. She dreams she’s swimming in the sea with Theo as a baby. It’s lovely for a while, but then she deliberately lets go of Theo; she allows him to drift away.

  There’s no mistaking that Seb is hers, theirs. He’s a great kid—a bit cheeky. Probably gets that particular trait from her side of the family. But he’ll need a bit of cheek, a bit of charm, to get on in life. He doesn’t have Theo’s advantages.

  A runner crosses her path. They recognize one another and they nod. Neither of them musters a smile. She wonders if he harbours equally dark thoughts during his run in the park.

  Hitting race pace along the straight path bisecting Burgess Park, Amelie almost outruns her worst self-accusation: she should have listened to Nathen. He’d suggested they keep things simple with Theo’s conception, but he gave way in the face of her own certainty. Is it an only-child thing—does she overstate her desires, her wants?

  She pulls up short, sits down at a bench, head in hands. Get over it, she tells herself. Accept Theo as he is. She wipes away her tears and pretends for the sake of a passing runner that she’s checking her stats. Cramp is coming on, so she stands and stretches.

  Nathen pauses by the bathroom door. “I’m putting your lunch in your bedroom.” There’s no reply. He crosses the landing, pushes open the bedroom door and clears a space on Theo’s detritus-strewn desk—a tangle of printed doodles, half-finished constructions, wearables, a sound-effects bracelet prised open. It seems counterintuitive to Nathen that Theo’s room favours a bomb site, whereas Seb’s room is more ordered. The explanation could be that Theo’s mind is in constant flux, and as a result, he shifts restlessly from one activity to another, and to another.

  He pushes a hand through his hair and sighs. Theo might never settle on one thing; he doesn’t seem to have Seb’s tenacity. Seb has two passions, which haven’t changed over the past three or four years. Namely, football and drawing. He’s capable of real focus. And though Seb’s room is untidy at the weekend with strewn football kit, all his art materials—pens, pencils, sketchbooks, tablets, coloured papers—are always carefully set out on his desk and shelves.

  Nan Toni got him started. She says he showed interest in Dominic’s studio. In fact, Nathen reckons Seb, as a small child, was purely interested in the studio door’s bolts and padlocks. Whatever the truth, Nan Toni set up a child’s desk in the studio and gave Seb free rein with old brushes and paints, scraps of paper and crayons. Theo never developed the same curiosity for the studio.

  Nathen sits in Theo’s revolving chair, puts his feet up on the bed. He knows, in time, the differences between his sons will make more sense. He keeps his expectations in check when it comes to Seb. He praises him when the occasion arises. This week, at the midweek match, he praised Seb for an unselfish pass in front of the goal mouth. And he’s impressed that when Seb’s friends come over to hang out, he allows Theo to join them. Nathen can’t imagine the boys will stay close as they get older, but it’s pleasing that Seb looks out for his brother. And Theo looks up to Seb, which is touching.

  If he and Amelie were to have a third child, he’d insist on clinic gestation. He didn’t like seeing her pregnant. Turned his stomach. Embarrassing at times too; people assumed they’d hit hard times.

  Nathen takes a piece of cheese from the plate. He’s about to take a bite when there’s a creak of floorboards. Theo stands in the doorway with his arms around his duvet. He says, “Sorry, Dad.”

  “Good. Can we start the day again, please?”

  Theo smiles, and Nathen says, “And, seriously, I think you should at least have a trim. Get your hair off your shoulders.”

  “I don’t trust the barber. He’ll cut too much off.”

  “I’ll give you a trim. Let’s do it before your mother gets home.”

  MR. FILIPKOWSKI’S LIBRARY

  At the end of her shift, Freya Liddicoat strides out onto the Cornish coastal path from the headland restaurant and, despite her neck ache, performs mental maths on her tipping stats. Five tables: a 20 tip on a bill of 180; 90 on 410; 20 on 290 (no smile for them next time); 100 on 320 (that totally made her day); zero on 95 (the kitchen’s fault, serving up cold steamed mussels). So that’s . . . ? She adds the tips. Two hundred and thirty. And adds the bills. Twelve ninety-five. Overall she can’t complain. The basic pay is the best she’s had in a restaurant, and she keeps her own tips. She’d make more if she worked the evening shifts, but on this side of town, the posh side, most customers order a three-course lunch with wine, and tip accordingly. She lifts her palm to her mouth and says, “Two hundred and thirty as a percentage of twelve hundred and ninety-five.” She knows she’s shy of 20 per cent, but she wants the precise figure.

  The number 17.76% flashes on her wristband.

  Not bad. Way short of her record breaker: Valentine’s Day 2119—a vermilion sunset on cue—at 26 per cent. Share the love! No one wants to look stingy when pursuing a new love interest. Inevitably, there’s a downside—tips are abysmal the weekend after Valentine’s.

  Even on the best days, one table will drag you down, each time for a different reason. A bit like Anna Karenina, as she once explained to Skye. Happy diners are generically happy; unhappy diners are specific in their misery: a delay in being seated, delays in service, cold food that should be hot (as per today), wine arriving halfway through the starters, diners feeling hurried through their courses, no Chilean sodding chardonnay. But Freya tries to keep bitter feelings under wraps. Any angst she does feel, she unloads among friends; many are servers themselves. They turn the misery around, have a laugh. Anyway, there’s no point getting down, because as she keeps telling herself, waiting tables has served her well; one of the few jobs that droids can’t handle.

  Skye always asks her over their evening meal, “Any big tippers today, Mum?” This evening she’ll tell him she served three sets of twins at lunchtime, all sat together at one table. It isn’t true, but he falls for her stories every time: “Honestly? Really?” That’s one of the advantages of this walking commute—along the headland, around Fistral Bay and around the golf course—it gives her time to make up a story. It’s a bit of fun. She wants to make him laugh, help him to feel positive. And as well as the stories, she brings home her restaurant skills. Even if they’re eating egg on toast, she sets the table properly, the cutlery neatly ordered—the blade of the knife facing inwards—Verdicchio bottle as a water carafe, and a napkin each; she has an impressive collection of purloined table linen.

  There’s a northwesterly breeze, and though it chills her back, she’s glad of the wind assist on the two-mile walk into town. She checks the time. She should make the three o’clock bus from Newquay heading north. Some of the restaurant staff take a taxi into town, but she can’t splash out like that. She’s done the sums; she saves enough money walking between town and the restaurant to buy a decent birthday and Christmas present for Skye. Two good presents a year, and a mother who works hard, plus funny stories about the customers. He’ll remember all that, she hopes, rather than the shabby state of their accommodation.

  As she reaches the highest point on the headland path, a skylark shoots vertically from the grassland by her feet. She startles, then stops and peers, trying to spot the skylark’s nest. Nature can be dumb. Why would mother skylark build a nest so close to the path? A dog could easily trample the nest and smash the eggs. She looks up and ahead; there’s an elderly man walking a dog—looks like a springer spaniel.

  When she quits this job—if she quits it—she’ll miss this daily walk on dry days. And who wouldn’t? There can’t be a better walk to work anywhere in England. The Atlantic Ocean crashing into Fistral Bay and, on the other side of the headland, Crantock Beach and the tidal stretch of the Gannel River. The palatial houses perched above the Gannel are the second or even third homes of London types. The owners are an inspiration for Freya. They’re seriously rich.

  The two guys who gave the big tip this lunchtime�
��100 on a bill of 320—are a case in point. She offered them menus, but they waved them away. The younger man said, “Steak rare for both, a selection of side orders, water, no wine. Thank you.” That was all. Menus are for little people, she guesses. She gave them the extra-special treatment, the fine-dining as opposed to the top-bistro service. If ever she becomes rich herself, she’ll order off-menu too.

  For the past three winters, she and Skye have been house-sitters at five mansions along the Gannel. They live in each house for a week at a time in rotation, and make daily rounds of all five. Blissful in some ways—all-day warmth, so much space in these homes that she and Skye lose one another, top-end music and cinema systems, plenty to read. Her favourite house is old Mr. Filipkowski’s, with the real library.

  It struck Freya, during that first winter, that Mr. Filipkowski had the biggest house she’d ever entered, and it surely couldn’t be a coincidence that he owned every book, it seemed, ever written by a business guru, with catchy titles like My Blunder: 50 Successful Entrepreneurs Reveal Their Worst Decisions, Secrets of a Reluctant Billionaire, How to Build an Empire on $10. Freya likes to read his books while sitting in the armchair in his picture window, which overlooks the river. She prefers the river view to the ocean because it’s peaceful and colourful at low tide—a gorgeous combination of blue-green pools and the river bed’s rippled, orange-y sand.

  It’s a comedown at the end of winter when they move back to their paint-peeled chalet on the campsite. She’s nonetheless grateful; it’s a peppercorn rent, and in return she cleans the site’s shower block at the start and end of each day. When she and Skye returned after their first winter’s house-sitting, she asked Skye—he was seven years old at the time—which house-sit he liked the best. He compared the gardens rather than the houses’ interiors, and chose the one with constructed terraces reaching down to the shoreline. The harsh lines of these terraces were softened by ferns and palm trees, and on the second-lowest terrace stood a timber and glass garden house with a sedum roof. Freya wasn’t sure how the owner used this room—as a studio or a daytime hangout? Skye paced both sides, declared it was bigger than their own home. And, as though the main house overwhelmed him, he preferred to sleep in the garden house.

  Last autumn, the owners of that particular house decided to sell up. Freya cast around to find some way of cheering up her son; he sulked for a full forty-eight hours on hearing the news. So she awarded herself an end-of-employment bonus—that’s how she rationalized her decision, because she doubted she’d actually receive a bonus. She removed a guitar from its stand in the living room and hid it among the ferns on the lowest terrace. She’d had a strum on the guitar in the past. Completely untuned. The whole guitar-on-a-stand thing had probably been the idea of an interior designer—icon of Cornish hip. Freya retrieved the guitar from the ferns as soon as the removal van pulled out of the drive.

  She told Skye the guitar came from the house, but she didn’t say she stole it. She said the owner encouraged her to take something as a thank you. Skye asked if the guitar counted as his birthday present, but Freya said, “No, it’s an extra, for putting up with me.”

  Freya reaches the high street, sees the three o’clock bus climbing the hill out of Newquay. She groans. It departed three minutes early. She messages Skye: Back in 45 minutes. 3 o’clock left early again. So annoying.

  She never walks this part of the commute; it’s too far, and too steep. She decides to grab a peaceful half-hour and makes her way from the high street downhill towards the clifftop overlooking the town beach. Are things unravelling? It’s three and a half weeks since she met Gerard Rossi; he still hasn’t transferred any compensation money. And she’s missed the bus. And she doesn’t have much food at home for dinner. Christ on a bike. Get a grip. She’s only missed the stupid bus, and with four eggs and a handful of mushrooms, she can make omelettes.

  At the clifftop, she flops onto a bench. It’s her first rest in six hours. She stretches out her legs, points with her toes to the horizon, hoping to ease her aching calves and buttocks. Her feet are swollen, as though baked in hot sand. She moves her shoulders through several rotations, forwards and then backwards. Why hasn’t she heard from Gerard? Has his wife put the brakes on? They’re probably arguing about how much Gerard should pay. Or Gerard himself is having second thoughts. She’s desperate to nudge him, but daren’t risk it; he might feel hectored. He might back off completely.

  From her pocket she pulls out a napkin-wrapped sandwich, which the sous-chef handed to her at the end of lunch shift. He said, “In lieu of the lost tip from table twelve. My mistake.” At least he fessed up, though one sandwich doesn’t cover the loss. She peels back the top slice of rye to take a peek: salmon gravlax and beetroot. She’ll save half for Skye—a healthy snack to keep him going until dinner.

  After a couple of mouthfuls, she starts to revive. When Gerard sends the money—she has to believe he’ll do the right thing—she’ll thank him profusely, keep him onside, make him feel good about himself. She learned this touchy-feely stuff in one of Mr. Filipkowski’s books, Everyday Psychology for Entrepreneurs. Gerard’s money—what the books call seed capital—will activate her business plan, and with a bit of luck she’ll be trading before the high season. According to How to Build a Business Empire on One Good Idea, Freya realized, she’s already had her One Good Idea.

  It came to her years ago, while working in a beach bar where all the staff turned their hands to every job: mixing cocktails, food prep, waiting on tables, mopping floors and, in the low season, revarnishing the tables. Hard work, average basic rate, negligible tips. The kitchen had an old hotplate for making pancakes, and she always volunteered for the pancake orders. It was satisfying and simple: pour a ladleful of batter on the hotplate, and when the surface starts to firm, flip the pancake. The chalkboard menu offered just three fillings—traditional lemon and sugar, chocolate sauce, mashed banana.

  Three things occurred to her as she made her first pancake. The memory’s clear as day. One: there’s no high-value food wastage in making pancakes—that’s a kill factor for any catering business. Two: the beach bar could charge more if they wiped Pancakes off the menu board and chalked up Crêpes. Three: if she owned the bar, she’d offer savoury fillings too—Galettes. People pay more for a savoury snack; it’s closer to a proper meal. She now recognizes that these observations—made while the batter bubbles popped on the hotplate—constituted an instinctive entrepreneurial insight.

  The problem Freya faced back then was twofold: no savings, and no prospect of ever having business premises. Fast-forward to last summer: Freya was chatting with old Tom, who operated the chip ’n’ sauce van at her local beach, and she mentioned she’d love to have a small business like his. He gave her the nod that he’d be retiring soon, and the license would be up for grabs. She went straight round to her ex-boyfriend Craig, who was by then married to the parish council clerk. Freya is good mates with both of them, partly because she makes it her business not to fall out with anyone; it’s a small community. Freya told her ex she wanted the license, had saved up some money, and had written a business plan. Which she hadn’t at the time, but all the figures were in her head. And she told him she’d already researched all the health and safety codes, which again she hadn’t. Plenty of time to do her homework. As soon as old Tom terminated his lease, the clerk told Craig, and Craig told Freya. She prepared the best ever business plan for a street food operation, thanks to Mr. Filipkowski’s library, and submitted her application.

  So now she’s in the proverbial chicken-and-egg situation. The parish council met last night, and there on the agenda—sooner than Freya had expected—was Applications for the street food vendor lease. If she’s offered the lease, she’ll have to prove she has the resources. That is, the money to execute her business plan: money for the monthly licence fee, a hotplate, build costs for a moveable stall, and a start-up supply of wholesale foodstuffs.

  On the bus, she closes her eyes. Thank God. Tha
nk God Almighty. Gerard has messaged her: Sorry for the delay. I’ve been travelling. Money transferred. Don’t spend it all at once. Freya doubts his reason for the delay. But that doesn’t matter. She could go out tomorrow and buy a second-hand chalet, a newish one, on a residential park. But she won’t. Business comes first.

  Freya steps off the bus, spots Skye running towards her across the beach. Her eyes mist—he watched out for her. Behind Skye, there’s a deranged game of football in progress, and Freya sees Skye’s friend Billy. He kicks the ball high into the air; the wind whips it away. On dry days, she and Skye meet here at the end of her shift. His first question is invariably, “Any food?” So Freya is already pulling the salmon sandwich from her pocket. But today he shouts, “Heard anything, Mum?” He reaches her, red-faced and sweaty.

  She shakes her head. “Not yet. The clerk might be writing to me at this very minute. But I guess there’s more important stuff to deal with, planning applications, that kind of thing.”

  He takes the sandwich from her outstretched hand, and without checking the filling, he takes a mouthful. “I haven’t told anyone. Promise.”

  “Don’t speak with your mouth full.” He rolls his eyes at her. “Once I hear, Skye, you can tell anyone you like.”

  “And you’re sure you’ll get it?”

  “Can’t be sure, my lovely, but most of the councillors know me. They know I’ll work hard. Why do you think I organized the beach litter-pick last week?”

  They sit cross-legged, side by side on the sand. “I hope you get it, Mum. You’d be here by the beach all through the summer while I’m playing.” He looks up at her. “Will me and my friends get free pancakes?”

  She laughs. “All you think about is food. Go on, join the others for ten minutes. Then we’ll go back to the chalet.”