The Beach Café

by Lucy Diamond

  ‘Good work, Matthew,’ I murmured, staring around in awe at all his slaving. It must have taken him hours. I gingerly picked up the kettle and filled it, then wiped my fingerprints off the sparkling chrome with a tea towel. While it began boiling, I took my bags upstairs.

  Walking into our bedroom gave me a start. I hadn’t seen it so spotless since the day I’d moved in. My eyes boggled at the cream-coloured armchair that stood in one corner. It was usually covered with heaps of my clothes – but not now. They had vanished, presumably all put away for the first time ever. I’d almost forgotten there was actually a chair there beneath them.

  The bedside tables were both empty too. I blinked in surprise at mine: when I’d left a few days earlier, there had been a teetering tower of paperbacks on it, a clock and several old glasses of water. Now there was . . . nothing.

  I found that my arms had wrapped themselves around my body. Surprise and delight had turned to an uneasy feeling. Standing in our bedroom felt like being in a depersonalized, sterile hotel room. It didn’t feel like my home any more.

  I don’t know how long I stood there (I didn’t dare sit down on the bed for fear of creasing the duvet cover), but the next thing I knew, a key was turning in the front door and I heard Matthew come in. His footsteps were sure and heavy – one, two, three . . . and then I heard a moment’s silence. Ahh. He’d clocked my denim jacket on the coat-rack, I guessed. The mess-maker had returned. I wasn’t even sure what his reaction would be. Pleased, surely? Pleased that I, his long-standing girlfriend, was back in our home – yes, of course. But did a ripple of annoyance also go through him as he noticed that I’d left my handbag on the floor by the shoe basket? Did his fists clench when he saw that I’d dumped the day’s post skew-whiff on the hall table? I shook myself. I was being ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous. This was Matthew, my boyfriend, after all, the man who’d saved my life!

  ‘Hiya,’ I called out, hurrying to the top of the stairs. ‘You okay?’

  He was standing there in the hallway and it was like seeing a stranger for a moment. Then he smiled. ‘You’re back,’ he said. ‘Hello.’

  I ran down the stairs and hugged him. ‘I barely recognized the place,’ I said, my face against his shirt. It was slightly damp with sweat from his cycle ride home. ‘You’ve been busy.’

  He gave me a squeeze. ‘Well, I had to do something while you were away,’ he said lightly. ‘I’m glad you’re home.’

  ‘Me too,’ I said. I squeezed him back with rather more enthusiasm. ‘We should go out tonight,’ I suggested, the idea popping into my head. ‘Have dinner together somewhere nice and romantic, catch up properly. I feel as if we haven’t seen each other for ages.’ My spirits rose at the thought of dressing up and finding a table in a cosy, intimate bistro or restaurant. And having food cooked for us and brought to us too – even better. I’d had enough of my own kitchen nightmares recently to warrant a visit from Gordon Ramsay.

  His arms loosened around me. ‘Mmm,’ he said. ‘But with your job starting tomorrow, you should probably have an early night,’ he added. ‘And we are going out on Friday, remember, for your mum’s dinner. That’s going to cost a fortune. I’m not sure we should go out tonight as well.’

  I hesitated. He was probably right. Almost certainly right. Best to be sensible and not rock up to meet the pharmaceutical boffins tomorrow at my new workplace stinking of night-before wine and garlic. Good first impressions, and all that. And yet . . . part of me wished that for once, just once, he would throw caution to the wind and say, Yes, let’s be spontaneous, let’s go and find a party we can crash, let’s go and do something really fun and outrageous together. NOW! We both knew that wasn’t going to happen, though.

  ‘True,’ I said. ‘Lucky I’ve got you to keep me on the straight and narrow, isn’t it?’

  ‘Very lucky,’ he said.

  I had the distinct impression there was something else going on behind this conversation – a subtext, as if some other, unspoken dialogue was taking place between us concurrently – but I couldn’t quite grasp what, couldn’t tune into it.

  Once again I gave myself a brisk shake. It was probably just the fact that we hadn’t seen each other properly for ages, that was all. Give it a few hours and everything would be back to normal, I was sure.

  Chapter Nine

  ‘So, how’s the new job going?’ Ruth asked on Friday night. We were sitting in Brasserie Blanc on Walton Street for Mum’s birthday dinner, and there was a familiar gleam in her eye as she sensed another ‘Evie fucks it up’ story in the offing. She knew me so well.

  ‘Crap,’ I replied baldly, skimming through the menu. Asparagus, soft-poached egg, lemon butter sauce. Yum. Just the way the food had been described on the menu made it sound delicious. Back at the café, Jo had chalked everything up on the board, so there hadn’t really been a menu as such. It was a case of: Pasties: trad Cornish, beef & ale, chicken & veg. Maybe when I was next there I could make them sound more enticing, I thought to myself: take a tip from Raymond and glam the list up a bit.

  ‘What do you mean, crap?’ Ruth persisted. She was sitting opposite me and leaned forward, her long rope of jet beads swinging against her glass of water with a clink. She looked almost hungry to know about my latest failing. I was surprised she wasn’t rubbing her hands with glee in anticipation.

  ‘Oh, just dull,’ I replied, waving a hand dismissively. This was the understatement of the year. My new colleagues were so boring and uptight they made the Crossland gang look like a bunch of party animals. I did not want to think about them on a Friday night. Time for a swift change of subject. ‘I’m going to have the soup to start, and the fishcake for a main. What’s everyone else having?’

  Thankfully everybody started discussing food options and we could veer away from my career. There were eight of us – Mum and Dad, me and Matthew, Louise and Chris, Ruth and Tim. But despite the fact that it was Mum’s birthday and she should be the main focus of attention, and despite the fact that Ruth usually liked talking of nothing other than Ruth-world, the conversation kept bouncing back to me and the café and my job, as if these were topics they were all completely fascinated by.

  ‘How did it go, Evie, when you were in Cornwall?’ Mum asked, calling down from her position at the head of the table. She looked slightly tipsy already. ‘Are you still thinking of selling up, or—?’

  ‘No,’ I interrupted. ‘Not selling.’

  ‘Really ?’ Louise put in, wide-eyed. ‘I thought you were selling? I thought she was selling?’ This last to Matthew, as if I wasn’t to be trusted to speak for myself.

  I suddenly felt tired of this conversation, which I seemed to have had about a million times by now with every single member of the family, and half the population of Carrawen Bay too. ‘No,’ I said firmly. ‘I’m not selling. Not until the summer’s over, anyway. And it went fine, Mum. Had a great time. So . . .’ I cast about for something to change the subject. Again. ‘Has anyone—’

  ‘But how are you going to manage it, all the way up here, if you’re not selling?’ Ruth wanted to know. ‘No disrespect, Evie’ – yeah, right, I thought, not much – ‘but how is that going to work? I just don’t understand.’

  My fists were tightly balled and I hid them under the table in my lap, trying to keep my temper. ‘Look, I don’t know, all right? I don’t know how it’s going to work, but it just will. I know you’re all desperate for me to make a tit of myself, as usual’ – a clamour went up at that, of course, all of them denying it hotly – ‘but I’m just going to give it a try, see what happens. It’s what Jo wanted, after all. And now, if you don’t mind, can we talk about something else for a change?’

  Silence fell and I realized I’d practically shouted my last sentence. Several diners from other tables had turned to stare at me. I drained my glass of wine with a gulp and glared them out. ‘Yes, have a good look,’ I said meanly. ‘Okay? Angry woman on table nine. Seen enough? Right.’

  ‘Evie!’ hissed Matthe
w, his hand on my arm. ‘Behave yourself!’

  Behave myself. Like he was my dad, for God’s sake. I wrenched my arm away from his like a stroppy teenager. Whose side was he on, anyway?

  ‘Well, I’m sure we’re all very sorry for being concerned,’ Ruth said sarcastically. A victorious smile played on her lips. And Evie falls for it once again. The black sheep proves that, yes, for the hundredth time, she is well deserving of her title. ‘I’m sure we’re all deeply sorry —’

  ‘All right, Ruth, that’s enough,’ Dad mumbled.

  ‘. . . If we’ve offended you by asking after you, like normal families do,’ Ruth finished, ignoring Dad.

  Normal families. Ha. That was a laugh.

  ‘We’re going to be down there over half-term,’ Tim said. He had a big, bland face, Tim, as if he’d been made in a factory. The Nice-but-Dull-Husband model. ‘Cornwall, I mean. We can pop in, make sure things are okay, if you—’

  ‘Can we?’ Ruth asked sharply. His face fell, and I felt sorry for him. Poor sod. He was only trying to wave an olive branch around. Ruth had just snatched the olive branch and broken it over her bony knee.

  ‘Thanks, Tim,’ I said pointedly. ‘That’s really kind of you.’

  Ruth gave a huffing noise, glaring daggers at anyone foolish enough to make eye contact with her.

  ‘This is meant to be a happy occasion,’ Mum said, seeming nettled that she’d been temporarily forgotten about. ‘Do we have to argue on a birthday? Come on, girls.’

  ‘Sorry, Mum,’ Louise said, patting her hand and shooting stop-it looks at Ruth and me. ‘Your hair looks gorgeous, by the way. Have you had it done this week?’

  Mollified, Mum began a long explanation of her latest style and the inspiration behind it, and what the stylist had said (quite a lot about how young it made her look, blah-blah) and where the stylist was going on holiday (Morocco with his boyfriend for a week in June) and how she’d tried a new thickening spray, and it had been wonderful.

  The subject of the black sheep was dropped. But not forgotten, judging by Ruth’s contemptuous glances, which punctuated the meal. I found myself sinking into a mood of drunken gloom that not even half-hearted sex with Matthew at home could lift.

  ‘I wish you’d stuck up for me,’ I said when it was over and we were lying there, back on our separate sides of the bed. My voice sounded small in the darkness.

  ‘Mmm?’ he said, not moving. I could tell he was on the verge of sleep; his breathing was deep and slow, his voice far-away.

  I hesitated. Was there any point in pursuing this? You couldn’t force someone to be on your side, or stick up for you in an argument, after all. ‘Nothing,’ I said in the end. But it didn’t feel like nothing. It felt like a problem that kept me awake, wondering and worrying, for hours into the night.

  Matthew went off to the gym the following morning, and I knew he’d be gone hours, so I phoned Amber and arranged to meet her for lunch in Fratellis. Then I kept myself busy, sorting out washing, and tidying up (my possessions seemed to have spread themselves all over the house again within the few days of my being back), before sitting down and sorting out the business banking.

  I tried not to wonder how things were at the café without me. I also tried not to think about the night before. Every time Matthew’s ‘Behave yourself !’ flashed into my head, I did the mental equivalent of sticking my fingers in my ears and singing ‘La-la-la, I can’t hear you’.

  I wouldn’t talk about my feelings (what feelings? what problem?) with Amber, I decided. She had never said as much, but I kind of knew that she had never been as blown away by Matthew as I had. Naturally I’d really wanted the two of them to get on, and in the early months of our relationship had arranged all sorts of pub nights and dinners where they could get to know each other, but it hadn’t exactly panned out as I’d hoped. He thought she was irresponsible and immature, and she thought . . . well, she’d always been very careful to say she thought he was ‘nice’, but I knew deep down that he wasn’t her cup of char in the slightest.

  Once, when she and I had both been ratted on a girls’ night out, she’d let slip something about him being boring, but had then looked as if she wanted to chew off her own hand at such a gaffe. ‘Oops,’ she’d muttered. ‘Sorry. Rewind, delete . . . I never said that, right?’

  I’d laughed it off, but the words had stayed with me, clear and sharp as print, even through the fug of my next-day hangover. And I’d wondered what else she thought of him but hadn’t wanted to admit.

  So, no. I wouldn’t say anything, I vowed as I strolled down the road later on to meet her. I’d bury the feelings of doubt, put on a happy face. I didn’t want to open up a seething can of worms.

  But then again, I’d never been any good at bottling things up. I was useless, in fact, at bottling things up. Which was why, despite my best intentions, as soon as we sat down, I found myself blurting out, ‘Matthew and I aren’t getting on very well’, before I even knew the words were coming.

  We were in the courtyard garden, with a bright May sun beaming down on us. Amber lifted her shades and looked me in the eyes. ‘What’s happened?’ she asked.

  And that was all it took for my worries to come spilling out. Our different views on the beach café and what I ought to be doing for the rest of my life; the way he’d cleaned the house so spectacularly while I’d been away that I seemed to have been scrubbed out of the place; and the argument last night at the restaurant.

  ‘Hmm,’ she said, popping an olive into her mouth. ‘And how’s your sex life? Has it survived all this, or—?’

  ‘It’s crap,’ I told her gloomily, dropping my gaze. I had my elbows on the table and propped my chin up in my hands. ‘I initiated a shag last night because I felt a bit . . . needy, I guess. And he went along with it, but, you know, there’s no passion any more. No Phwooarr, come here, you big gorgeous thing, let’s . . .’ I shrugged, aware that the woman at the next table was listening in. ‘You know.’

  ‘Hmm,’ she said again. ‘So have you told him how you feel? Have you talked about this?’

  I shook my head. ‘I keep putting it off,’ I confessed.

  The waiter brought us a couple of beers, misted with cold, and I raised mine to my lips and took a long, cool slug of it, not bothering with the nicety of pouring it into a glass.

  ‘I feel as if I just . . . exasperate him,’ I found myself saying. ‘Like I’m some kind of inconvenience. Honestly, last night, the way he spoke to me, it freaked me out. “Behave yourself,” he said – like I was a kid. I’m surprised he didn’t tell me to go and sit on the naughty step, or send me up to my bedroom.’

  ‘That’s pretty naff,’ Amber said carefully. ‘You’re meant to be equal partners, after all, not—’

  ‘I know!’ I interrupted. The beer was sinking through me very pleasantly and loosening my tongue. ‘It was so patronizing, so . . . putting me in my place. I’d never dream of speaking to him like that, so why does he think he’s got the right to boss me around? And honestly, Amber, the whole thing with the café – it’s been like pulling teeth, trying to get him to see my point of view.’

  I was off into rant mode. No stopping me now. All the niggles and irritations I’d felt towards Matthew came streaming out in a tirade, from A to Z. The way he cleared his throat so loudly. The way he never forgot things, and always knew exactly where he’d left his house keys. The way he was always early for everything. Even the way he breathed sometimes annoyed me.

  I only stopped when our food arrived; the mushrooms glistening black, garlicky and pungent, the sardines silver and oily, a large bowl of crisp green salad leaves and a basket of bread. I had drunk my beer already and clocked the waiter raising his eyebrows.

  ‘You want another?’ he asked.

  ‘What the hell,’ I mumbled. ‘Yes, please.’ Well, it was Saturday and I was having a major crisis. It was allowed, wasn’t it?

  ‘Okay,’ Amber said, as we divvied up the food. ‘Now tell me the good stuff about h
im. You’ve been together years – there must be loads of things you love about him too.’

  ‘Oh, sure,’ I said, spearing a fat mushroom. ‘Well, there’s Saul, of course, and . . .’

  Amber shook her head. ‘Evie,’ she said, ‘you can’t count Saul. He’s not Matthew. Carry on.’

  I was starting to feel bamboozled by the beer and the sunshine and just how serious this conversation was. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Good stuff about Matthew. Well . . .’ The problem was, whenever I tried to think of what I loved about Matthew, Saul’s face kept appearing in my mind, smiling back at me. ‘Um – well, he’s practical,’ I said after a moment. ‘Reliable . . .’

  ‘You’re making him sound like a Ford Focus,’ Amber pointed out.

  ‘He makes me laugh,’ I added quickly.

  ‘Does he?’

  I chewed a bit of sardine while I thought about it. ‘No, not really,’ I admitted. I slumped in my chair. ‘God, this is terrible.’

  ‘Do you still fancy him?’ Amber pressed. ‘Do you look at him and think Hell-o!, and give his bum a cheeky squeeze when he walks by?’

  I hesitated. ‘I do love him . . .’

  ‘You’re not answering the question,’ Amber said, jabbing her fork in my direction.

  ‘I . . . I don’t know,’ I said. ‘But he did save my life, remember. I love him for that.’

  ‘Hmm,’ she said. She didn’t say anything else.

  We ate in silence for a few moments. ‘Hypothetically speaking,’ she said after a while, ‘if you and Matthew . . . went your separate ways, what would be your gut feeling?’

  I bit my lip. ‘Don’t say that,’ I replied. ‘Just because I’m having a moan, it doesn’t mean we’re about to split up, or anything.’

  ‘Of course not,’ she said, waving a hand. ‘But what if you did . . . ?’

  I couldn’t meet her eye. My first thought had been how much I’d miss Saul. How awful of me was that? Missing Saul before I missed his dad – how traitorous could you get?

  ‘If we did go our separate ways,’ I said slowly, testing out my feelings as I spoke, ‘I would be . . .’ I frowned, trying to digest the scenario. Breaking up with Matthew would mean being single again and I’d kind of assumed that one day Matthew and I would have a family of our own, would get married. The idea of facing the rest of my life on my Jack Jones, and those things being taken away from me, made me feel queasy. ‘Well, my whole life would be totally up in the air,’ I said. I put my knife and fork down as conflicting emotions swirled around my head. ‘I’d feel – lonely. And sort of . . . scared about what to do.’