by Jenny Colgan
‘Gramps, someone’s at the door,’ she said. ‘I have to go. But I’m going to get up to see you on Sunday.’
‘Hello? Hello?’ her grandfather said into the phone. He sounded like he’d been connected to a different line altogether. ‘Hello? Can you hear me? Who am I speaking to?’
‘It’s Issy, Gramps.’
‘Hmm. Issy. Yes. Good,’ he said.
Issy felt a cold grip of fear on her heart. The door buzzed again, loudly. If she didn’t get it, the man would go away and she’d need to pick up the parcel from the depot and that was definitely time in her day she could not carve out right now.
‘I have to go. I love you.’
‘Yes. Hmm. Right. Yes.’
Issy wrapped her ugly but comfy dressing gown around her and answered the door. Yup, it was the delivery man with her box of wine. She’d thought, just for a split second, just for a tiny moment, that Graeme might have … Maybe flowers … No. Anyway, everyone knew she was in the café all day. She signed for the box and peered inside. Yup, Californian red again. Her mother must know on some level that Issy only drank white and pink wine, mustn’t she? That whenever they’d been out, she had never ever ordered red wine as it gave her a headache? Maybe it was her mother’s way of encouraging her not to drink too much. Maybe it was her way of showing she cared.
Meanwhile, up in Edinburgh, Graeme woke up in the Malmaison Hotel, and came to a decision. He’d been thinking about it for a long time and now he knew. He was a decisive man, and a forceful one, he told himself, and it was time to go and get what he wanted.
At the shop, Louis cheered her up a little by giving her a huge cuddle and a card he’d made, covered in orange splodges.
‘Thank you, darling,’ she said, grateful and enjoying the feeling of his little arms around her neck. He gave her a wet sloppy kiss.
‘Happee birdee, Auntie Issy,’ he said. ‘I is five!’
‘You’re not five,’ said Pearl indulgently. ‘You’re two.’
Louis gave Issy a mischievous look as if they were sharing a secret. ‘I is five,’ he said, nodding his head emphatically.
‘Well, I am a bit older than five,’ said Issy, admiring the card and hanging it up in the café.
‘Happy birthday, boss,’ said Pearl. ‘I would offer to bake you a cake, but …’
‘I know, I know,’ said Issy, strapping on her apron.
‘So …’ said Pearl. She turned round and reached into her bag and pulled out a Tupperware box. Opening it up, Issy squealed with delight and stuck her hand in front of her mouth.
‘We cannot show anyone who comes in,’ said Issy.
‘No’ said Pearl, smiling. ‘Anyway, it would fly away.’
There was, tentatively hanging together, a little cake shape. But instead of sponge, it was made of interlocking crisps; a net of Nik Naks, piled up on top of a base of square crisps, crowned with a Hula Hoop tower, with a chipstick flag sticking out the top.
‘I got some very odd looks on the bus,’ said Pearl. ‘It’s held together with Marmite.’
Issy threw her arms around her. ‘Thanks,’ she said honestly, feeling her voice getting slightly choked up. ‘For everything. I wouldn’t … I don’t know how I’d have managed without you.’
‘Oh, you and Caroline would be expanding to Tokyo by now,’ said Pearl, patting her on the back.
‘What’s that about me?’ said Caroline, marching in. The girls turned to look at her. Caroline wasn’t due on till lunchtime, and she never got her shifts wrong.
‘Yes, yes, I know, I’m early. Is it your birthday?’ she said to a dumbfounded Issy. ‘OK, this is my present for you. It’s a morning off. I’ve outsourced the bloody children.’
‘You mean, they’re at school?’ Issy asked.
‘Yes,’ Caroline said. ‘Pearly Gates and I can hold the fort, can’t we?’
Issy knew this was meant to be an affectionate name for Pearl, but she could feel her colleague bristle. Everyone knew the Pearly Gates were gigantic.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course,’ said Pearl, ‘we can hold the fort. Off you go!’
‘But I won’t know what to do with myself!’ said Issy. ‘Time to myself … I just don’t …’
‘Well, it finishes at one thirty when I have my reiki session,’ said Caroline. ‘So I’d get on with it if I were you.’
The sun was already warm on her back as Issy marched up the road, feeling oddly light and free – nobody knew where she was! She should get a bus to Oxford Street and go shopping! Hmm, maybe she didn’t have enough money to go shopping, she really needed to check with Austin. She had no idea what shape her personal finances were in. She felt incredibly uncomfortable having to ask him about it. He’d probably only give her another bollocking. But why should she care? They had no personal relationship at all, so she shouldn’t worry about it: she could ask him a professional query. He’d made it 100 per cent clear that was where he thought they should stand, and anyway, she didn’t care. She cared a little bit about having to walk past all the other cafés on Stoke Newington High Street though. She hadn’t forgotten what happened the last time. It had been horrible, but they hadn’t come round to bother her since.
Well, bollocks to that too; she wasn’t going to care about anything today. It was her birthday, and if she wanted to walk up past all the other cafés on the high street, then she would. Head in the air, hoping to render herself unrecognizable, she strode up the road, careful to avoid eye contact and feeling a bit nervous, but also defiant. Whether everyone else liked it or not, she was part of this community now and that was an end to it. She belonged.
At the pub opposite the bank, she sat down on one of their new outside tables. Maybe one day she could order some for the café too: no one had formally complained about clients sitting under the tree, but it felt rude, and the ironmonger looked at them crossly as he scurried past at odd times of day. She asked for a coffee. It was horrible, but it was only one pound fifty. Issy could live with that. At ten past nine he appeared, scurrying as usual, with his shirt untucked and coming out from his trousers – over, Issy couldn’t help noticing, rather a nice bum. It must be the sunshine. She never normally noticed anyone else’s bum, not compared to Graeme’s gymhardened buttocks of which she sometimes thought he was unpleasantly proud. Anyway, she wasn’t looking at Austin’s bum. She needed to ask him a professional question, that was all. It wasn’t that she was desperate to see him, even if the blue shirt went beautifully with his eyes. Not at all.
‘Austin!’ she called tentatively, waving her newspaper. He turned round then, seeing her, and looked at first very pleased, then anxious for a second. Issy felt cross. He didn’t have to look like she was some kind of scary stalker person.
He crossed the road. Inside, he was annoyed with himself about how pleased he was to see her. It would be a business proposition, for sure.
‘Don’t look so frightened, it’s just a business proposition,’ said Issy. She’d meant it to sound light-hearted, but now she felt it had come out terribly weird-sounding.
‘Hooray,’ he said, sitting down. Issy felt disappointed. ‘OK then. Can we have coffee and I’ll call it a business meeting?’
Issy watched as Austin called Janet. ‘Yes, I forgot to mention … really? I’m double-booked? Oh, please tell them I’m terribly sorry …’
Issy shook her head. ‘How does Janet cope with you?’
‘She makes a face like this,’ said Austin, giving a stern scary look. ‘I’ve told her the wind will change, but she won’t listen. Nobody listens to me.’
Austin’s coffee arrived.
‘This place has got better,’ he noted.
‘Really?’ said Issy, sipping the bitter dregs of the catering-jar ‘beverage’.
‘Oh God yes, this is luxury compared to what you used to get.’
‘I’ll take your word for it,’ said Issy. She was glad to feel that at least there wasn’t any residual awkwardness. Even though there probabl
y ought to be; he didn’t really deserve her being nice to him, she thought. She didn’t ask about Darny. Too personal. ‘Now, I need to know … do I have any money?’
‘Well, that depends,’ said Austin, stirring in four sugars. When he spotted Issy staring at this, he poked his tongue out at her and put another one in. Sometimes, with Issy, he just couldn’t help himself.
‘You are such a peculiar banking adviser,’ sighed Issy.
‘No I’m not. The other ones play golf, can you imagine? How weird is that? Golf!’
‘Depends on what?’ said Issy.
‘The money? It depends what you want to do with it. Are you planning on packing it all in and retiring to South America?’
‘Can I?’
‘No. So I was just pointing out, you know. Not that.’
‘OK,’ said Issy. ‘Actually, I was wondering … can I go shopping?’
Issy had moved her personal accounts to Austin’s branch shortly after the shop opened; as she was funding so much of the café herself, it seemed to make sense to have everything under the same roof. It felt odd that Austin should know so many personal things about the state of her bank account, when they’d seemed to somehow agree that they weren’t going to get any more personal with one another.
‘For what?’
Issy felt a bit embarrassed suddenly.
‘Well … the thing is … it’s my birthday.’
Austin looked half surprised, half guilty. ‘Cheers! What a surprise!’ he said. ‘Oh no, hang on, that sounded a bit phoney. I knew that. It’s on all your application forms,’ he said, feeling himself getting a bit flustered. ‘Um, I happened to be filing them away just recently. So. Kind of. I know. But I didn’t want to make a big thing of it in case you were ignoring it. You know. Except you wouldn’t of course, so: happy birthday.’
He smiled weakly and not entirely successfully.
‘I should have ignored it,’ admitted Issy. ‘Honestly. It’s a bit of a shit one. Well, apart from work. Work’s been nice. But that means,’ she said fervently, ‘that just shows that I’ve based my entire life around my job rather than finding my work/life balance! It means I get all my emotional sustenance from work and I’ll never be able to move on …’
‘I think that means you’ve been reading too many self-help books,’ said Austin.
‘Oh yes,’ said Issy, calming down a bit. ‘That’s possible too.’
‘You should be so proud of yourself at this stage of your life,’ said Austin. ‘Look at you, businesswoman all afloat.’
‘I know,’ said Issy.
‘What were you doing last birthday?’
‘Well, I just went out with the people from my office …’
Austin rolled his eyes. ‘See?’
‘Well, what did you do for your last birthday?’ asked Issy.
‘Well, Darny and I went to a hot-dog festival,’ said Austin.
‘Whose idea was that?’
‘Well, maybe it was Darny’s.’
‘Uh-huh. And how did that turn out?’
Austin winced at the memory.
‘Well, OK, I would say we saw some of the hot dogs again. Splashed on the pavement.’ Then he smiled. ‘But Darny insisted it was all worth it. And I still have the card he gave me, look.’
Austin slipped his hand into his suit pocket and rooted around. Then he pulled out some dry-cleaning receipts, a small plastic cowboy and a voter registration form.
‘That’s where that went,’ he said to himself. ‘Well, I did have it. And it was brilliant. Darny drew a picture of me and him fighting off a giant poo monster. And we had a lovely day, apart from the spew. We got over the spew with ice cream.’
‘Was that wise?’ said Issy, smiling.
‘Holds things down better than you’d think,’ said Austin. ‘You learn a thing or two in this substitute-parenting lark.’
Suddenly, Issy decided something. OK, so she’d been rebuffed before. She’d sworn she wouldn’t do this. Yet somehow her feet had taken her here … She could easily have rung Janet for the balance on her accounts. But she hadn’t, had she? She was going to do it. She was going to ask him. She swallowed.
‘Um,’ she said, ‘would you … and Darny I suppose, or maybe you can get a babysitter? Or maybe no, obviously no, it would be a stupid idea, forget I mentioned it.’
‘What?’ said Austin, suddenly feeling a little prickly round the ears and nervous.
‘Um, it doesn’t matter,’ said Issy, conscious that her deep blush was back, and as she felt it, realizing how long it was since she’d done so. Was that progress?
‘What?’ Austin needed to know what she was going to say. This dancing around was agonizing. But did she mean it? And what was she really after? Issy was now staring at the floor, looking absolutely tortured.
‘Did … I was going to ask if you fancied a drink tonight, but obviously that’s daft, don’t listen to me. I’m just being stupid because I should have told my friends – and I have loads of friends actually—’
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ interjected Austin.
‘—well, anyway, it doesn’t matter. Never mind.’
Issy glared at her lap, miserably.
‘OK,’ said Austin. ‘Actually, I’d have loved to. I have something on tonight though.’
‘Oh,’ said Issy, not looking up.
They fell silent. Issy was too humiliated – what on earth was she thinking? Was she asking her banking adviser for a drink? After he’d already made it clear he wasn’t interested? And now, as if to rub it in even more, he’d just turned her down, and now they’d have to work together for ages and he’d think she totally fancied him. Great. This was turning into a super day. Best birthday ever.
‘Well, I’d better get on,’ said Issy quietly.
‘OK,’ said Austin. Then they both awkwardly stood up at the same time and turned to cross the road.
‘Uh, bye,’ said Issy.
‘Bye,’ said Austin. Then in a clumsy gesture he raised his arms as if to kiss her on the cheek, and Issy leaned in, equally clumsily, before she thought that maybe that wasn’t what Austin was doing at all and tried to lean back again. But it was too late and Austin had realized that Issy seemed to be moving in for one of those social kisses he found so absolutely awkward, so he tried to do what was expected of him and leaned in to kiss her cheek, just as she dodged round to reverse and accidentally got the side of her mouth by mistake.
Issy leapt back, pasting a broad fake smile on her face to cover her consternation, while Austin couldn’t help his hand, briefly, flying to his mouth.
‘Bye!’ said Issy brightly again, feeling her face as hot as the sun – and, just momentarily, and tantalizingly, the feel of his surprisingly soft lips against hers.
Austin was even more distracted than usual that morning in his late meeting. God, this girl.
Issy didn’t go shopping in the end. Instead, she bought a cream cheese and smoked salmon bagel, and a tiny bottle of champagne with a straw – which might be a bit off for mid-morning, she figured, but she didn’t really care – and a magazine, and went to sit in the sunny park. She tried to enjoy the yells of other people’s happy children throwing bread to the ducks, and the slightly jolty, unnerved sense she got whenever she thought of Austin’s accidental near-kiss.
Lots of friends were sending remote regards via Facebook which, while she realized it wasn’t exactly as good as everyone coming to celebrate her birthday, was better than nothing, and made her phone ping cheerily every time another one came through. After the bagel, she bought an ice cream too, and lay down and looked at the clouds for a bit and reflected that truly, from last year to this, she had come a long way, she really had. So she must stop being so grumpy and be more positive and … nope. It didn’t help. She felt queasy from the champagne and, suddenly, in the midst of the bustling park and the noisy people, terribly lonely.
‘Cheer up, love,’ said one of Kate’s builders.
Issy turned to Pearl. She was ba
ck in the shop; she’d sent Caroline away again, noticing that Caroline had been telling Pearl a convoluted story, punctuated by customers, about her holiday in the Dominican Republic, which Issy could tell Caroline thought in some completely mad way would impress and endear her to Pearl and it was doing neither of those two things.
‘Nine,’ Issy said.
‘Nine what?’ asked the builder, who was already slurping the Smarties off his cinnamon cupcake. ‘Mm, these are great.’
‘Nine times someone has come in and said, “Cheer up, love.”’
‘And three “It might never happens”,’ added Pearl helpfully.
Issy glanced round the café. It was bustling nicely; she’d spontaneously bought a bunch of lilies on her way back from the park to cheer herself up, and the scent was permeating through the room; with the windows thrown open and the door held wide (totally against fire regulations, Pearl had pointed out, but they had had so very little summertime), the café felt fresh and summery, filled with the chink of china and the sounds of conviviality. She’d introduced some new floral plates too, to set off the lighter lemon and orange sponges with the candied peel on top that sold so well during the warmer days, and they looked absolutely beautiful. The two students who’d spent the wet spring finishing up their theses off the free wifi were, she noticed, cuddled up together, alternately typing and kissing. She suspected they were sharing more than the wifi now. Well, it was nice that at least some people weren’t lonely on her birthday, she thought mournfully.
‘What’s up then?’ asked the builder, taking a slow sip from his cappuccino. Issy bit her lip. Kate was going to have her guts for garters. She’d actually asked Caroline ‘as a friend’ to stop serving them cappuccino. Caroline had explained that on a cost/benefit analysis, no marketing expert worth their salt would ever run a business on that basis and Kate had lost her temper and told her that before she’d given up her entire life to care for two ungrateful individual children, she’d had an MBA, thank you very much, and didn’t need a lecture from some ex-wife, and Issy had to step in before Kate took her sewing circle somewhere else and she lost some much-needed income. She too, however, took Caroline’s approach and would serve anyone who walked in the door, whatever someone else thought they should have been doing.
