Joe and Clara's Christmas Countdown

by Katey Lovell

  ‘I work near here,’ Joe said. ‘The guy who owns this place came in one day with a bunch of flyers to leave on the counter at the hardware store. They had a twenty-per-cent-off coupon on the bottom so I found myself coming in on my lunch break. I’ve always been a sucker for a bargain.’ He stopped to take a sip from his mug, the rich hot chocolate sliding down his throat like silk. It was pure bliss. ‘Anyway, by the time all the flyers had been used up I was totally addicted to the hot chocolate. They don’t do mince pies all year round, obviously, but the muffins are excellent too, especially the double choc chip. I’ve been a regular here for a long while.’

  ‘I can see why. Although I’m glad we don’t have a café like this near the youth club. I’d end up spending half my wages on food.’

  Joe smiled, thinking of Linda’s, the café across the road from The Club on the Corner. The lace voiles that hung in the window were a dirty yellow from years of exposure to grease and the laminated menus looked as though they hadn’t been given a wipe clean since the last millennium. ‘Yeah, it kinds of eclipses Linda’s burnt toast and stewed brews.’

  ‘Just a bit. At least the cake shop’s on hand for the days when I can’t survive without a sugar rush.’

  They sat quietly, savouring their drinks and each tucking into a second mince pie. They watched the people on the street passing by through the haze of the steamed-up window, bundled-up bodies rushing past as quickly as they could to get to somewhere – anywhere – where the biting wind wouldn’t sting their cheeks. The silence was comfortable.

  ‘How are you enjoying it at the youth club?’ Clara finally asked, placing her fork on her plate. It made a tinkling sound, reminiscent of Christmas bells. ‘I know the kids are a bit crazy, but they’ve got good hearts beneath the tantrums and teen angst.’

  ‘I remember my teenage years,’ Joe said, with a shudder. ‘Pretty horrific. And although Simone isn’t the sort of girl to get into any bother, even she has her moments.’

  Clara nodded a knowing reply. ‘They all do. I was a right little madam when I was her age. I remember the newsagents ringing my mum when they’d caught me stealing.’

  Joe’s mouth formed a questioning ‘o’. ‘I didn’t realise I was liaising with a common thief. If I had I might have thought twice before bringing her to the best café in Manchester.’

  Clara cocked her head and winked.

  ‘That’s me, Manchester’s answer to the Artful Dodger, pinching things all over the city,’ she grinned. ‘Not really, obviously. I was caught taking a lipstick that was free with a magazine. I’d probably have got away with it as well if it wasn’t for Mrs Long’s eagle eyes spotting the rip on the cover where I’d pulled the Sellotape too hard. She always did notice every little wrinkle in her precious stock. Hated anyone looking at the magazines before they bought them.’

  ‘What happened?’

  Clara grinned. ‘I had a flash of genius. As she was shouting at me I put the lipstick on. I knew she’d never ask for it back once it had been near my lips.’

  ‘Crafty.’ Joe was both shocked and impressed by teenage Clara’s brazen behaviour. ‘Thinking on your feet. That probably prepared you for the work you do now.’

  ‘Oh yeah, I’m sure it did,’ Clara replied. ‘Everything they do I did myself.’

  ‘Sounds like I’ve still got a lot to learn, both about you and about youth work.’

  Clara eyed up another mince pie and reached out to take one before withdrawing her hand and letting out a sigh.

  ‘Go on, have another,’ Joe encouraged. ‘I’m going to. And best do it quick before they go cold. The burn on your tongue is half the fun.’

  ‘You’ve twisted my arm,’ Clara said, taking the largest of the remaining mince pies and adding it to her plate. ‘Although when you have to roll me along the road like a snowball because I’ve eaten too much, you’ll be regretting telling me to go for it.’

  ‘I’ll probably need rolling myself, but it’ll be worth it.’

  The waitress came by, asking if they wanted another mug of hot chocolate. Clara clutched at her stomach, making out as though she couldn’t manage another drop of the thick chocolatey drink, but Joe ordered two more regardless.

  ‘No flake with mine this time, please,’ Clara called after the girl, showing a modicum of control. ‘I’ve already had to undo the top button of my jeans,’ she whispered conspiratorially.

  Joe could feel his cheeks heating up at the thought. Clara was a striking woman, with her edgy haircut and the small diamond stud in her nose. Now he was getting to know her better he’d noticed how she tried to hide her vulnerabilities. He recognised the bravado for what it was, though. He’d been painting on a brave face for long enough. In the half-light of the café, and loosened up by the super-sweet liquid chocolate, Joe felt more attracted to Clara than he had to any woman for a long time. It left him wracked with guilt.

  ‘You dodged my question,’ she said afterwards. ‘How are you finding it volunteering? It’s a bit different from working in a shop.’

  ‘Some of it’s the same. Chatting to people, trying to help them out. It’s just that most of my customers are at the other end of the age spectrum to the kids. And I’ve never had one of them tell me to piss off, like Jordan did last night.’

  Clara put her face in her hands. ‘Deirdre told me about that. He’s got a bit of a chip on his shoulder, but he’s a nice lad underneath it all. He’s a young carer for his mum,’ she revealed. ‘She’s got multiple sclerosis and needs a lot of looking after. On a bad day she can’t make it out of bed without someone to help her.’

  ‘That’s tough for anyone to go through, let alone a young lad like Jordan. No wonder he lashes out from time to time.’

  ‘He’s not got an easy life. He’d have every right to be a misery on two legs juggling what he does at home along with keeping on top of his schoolwork, but most of the time he’s a decent kid. That’s one of the things I love about being at the club, though, it gives kids like him a place to get respite. Jordan’s only real escape is the club. No wonder he values the freedom from his responsibilities and the chance to talk about football until the cows come home.’

  ‘That’s why I volunteered in the first place. It benefits everyone if there are places like the club. It’s good for the young people to feel part of the community too, and to give them a chance to make a difference. I’ve never forgotten the way Deirdre forced us to get involved in the summer carnival. It was embarrassing as anything dressing up like an Oompa Loompa for the float, especially as a fourteen-year-old trying to pretend to have some street cred, but we made loads of money shaking buckets at all the bystanders who’d come along to laugh in our round, orange faces. We donated it to the hospital.’

  Joe hoped he didn›t sound as if he was bragging about volunteering – he’d hate to come across as holier than thou – but having parents who worked for the church made a difference too he supposed. ‘Love thy neighbour’ was an action his parents both encouraged and lived by, not just an empty platitude, and he and Simone had been brought up to donate their time to worthy causes.

  ‘Deirdre was right when she said you had a good heart.’

  ‘Has she been talking about me again?’ he said with a modest smile. ‘She’s terrible.’

  ‘All positive, though,’ Clara replied. ‘Kept saying you were good boyfriend material.’

  Joe spluttered, shocked by Deirdre’s audacity. What was she playing at talking about him in those terms when she knew he was still struggling to deal with Michelle’s death? He’d had to be honest with her. When he’d offered to help he’d told her part of the reason was facing the past, including the memories linked to Michelle and the club, head on.

  Clara looked at him as she sipped at her hot chocolate. All of a sudden he felt flustered.

  ‘Dean’s made me very cautious about relationships, sadly. I want to fall in love again, one day, but only if it’ll be straightforward.’

  Joe smiled. ‘Sadly I don�
�t think there are any guarantees when it comes to love.’

  ‘That sounds like the voice of experience,’ Clara replied with an empathetic smile. ‘Have you ever had your heart broken? And I mean really broken, where you don’t think you’ll ever give it to anyone again because it’s damaged beyond repair?’

  Joe thought before he replied. ‘I’ve not had many serious girlfriends, to be honest, despite what Deirdre said the other day.’

  Clara shifted her eyes so she was focused on the drink in front of her.

  ‘I’ve only been in love once,’ he continued, ‘and although I don›t think either of us went into it thinking it’d last forever, the more time went on, the more I realised how much better my life was for having her in it.’

  Joe swallowed, uncomfortable.

  ‘Did she cheat?’ Clara asked, sympathetically clucking her tongue before carrying on without waiting for a reply. Joe had the feeling that once she got onto the subject of lovers’ betrayal Clara could go on for days. ‘It’s the worst. I wish Dean had told me straight out that he’d been sleeping with someone else, because deep down I knew. He’d been carrying on with her for weeks and all the time I’d been driving him to the clinic pretending everything was fine. Talk about a mug. I might as well have had it written on my head in permanent marker,’ she babbled, shaking her head. ‘I’ve learned from it, though. I won’t give anyone the chance to treat me like that again.’

  ‘She didn’t cheat on me.’

  Joe closed his eyes, concentrating on breathing. He still found it hard to talk about Michelle. When he opened them Clara was watching with confused wonder.

  ‘I met her at The Club on the Corner, the day after her fifteenth birthday,’ he said, his heart beating furiously in his chest; and Joe thought, not for the first time, that if he’d spoken about it more often he’d have a speech down pat by now. As it was, most of the conversations he’d had about Michelle since her death had been with himself, either talking to the mirror like a crazy man or going round and round in circles in his head. ‘It was Hallowe’en and she was dressed as Morticia Addams, head to toe in black.’ He smiled at the memory, at how her perfect feline eyes had been circled with eyeliner the colour of midnight. He’d loved her eyes, especially her irises, which had been a brilliant purplish-blue like Parma Violets. She hadn’t realised how beautiful they were, but he had. No one else had eyes like Michelle’s. No one. ‘I found out after that she hadn’t need a wig, she had long straight hair that trailed right down her back anyway.’

  Clara listened, but didn’t speak.

  ‘We’d been together for six weeks when I first told her I loved her.’ A cynical laugh escaped him. ‘Looking back, fifteen seems so young, but it was pretty intense, you know. We spent all our spare time together. We were a package deal. When it came to time to apply to universities, we applied to all the same ones, and were so happy to both get accepted at Durham. We were even placed in the same halls of residence. It was as though it was meant to be. We moved into a shared house in our second year and on her twentieth birthday I asked her to marry me. Everything was perfect. We rented a tiny flat together in our third year, just us two. We thought we were so grown up. But she died.’ His mouth was dry, the words sitting heavy on his tongue. ‘In a car crash.’

  ‘That’s terrible, Joe. Horrific. I don›t know what to say.’

  Clara›s hand was clamped tightly over her mouth as Joe’s words hit home.

  ‘I still miss her every day.’

  ‘Of course you do,’ Clara said, reaching out and touching his hand. Joe instinctively pulled back, memories of Michelle raw and painful. ‘You loved her.’

  ‘Love wasn’t enough to keep her alive.’

  Joe took a sip of his hot chocolate so he wouldn’t have to talk any more. It was cold now, and the milk had formed an ugly layer of skin on the surface.

  ‘So when you asked if my heart’s ever been broken, I guess it has. I feel cheated, mainly. Cheated out of finishing my degree because there was no way I was staying in Durham after that, with memories of Michelle on every corner. I thought coming home would help, but I soon discovered memories haunted me here, too. Cheated out of a relationship that could have gone the distance, if it had had the chance. Cheated out of Christmas, too. She always loved it, just like you do, but she died in December.’

  ‘It makes sense now, why you don’t like Christmas.’ The pity etched on Clara’s face made Joe feel worse. ‘I should never have asked in the first place, it was too personal a question. You didn’t have to tell me.’

  Joe shook his head. ‘I wanted to tell you, but it’s not something I talk about often. It’s not the easiest thing to bring up, a dead fiancée.’

  ‘I guess not.’

  ‘You’d have loved her,’ he said, his voice a whisper. ‘Everyone did.’

  Joe looked out of the window, at a couple walking past. The young woman had a bobble hat pulled down tightly over her baby-pink hair, her hands pushed in the pockets of her heavy woollen coat. The man had an arm draped around the woman›s waist, his fingers gripping against the coarse-looking fabric.

  ‘Sorry for putting a downer on the night.’

  ‘You haven’t put a downer on anything. I’m glad you felt you could be honest with me. I just wish you hadn’t had to go through it in the first place. It must have been dreadful.’

  ‘It still is,’ he admitted. ‘It’s eight years since it happened, but some days it feels like it happened yesterday. It’s like a cut. It starts to heal, but all it takes is one knock for the scab to fall off and it hurts more than it did in the first place.’

  ‘I can’t imagine what it must be like. You were so young yourself. You must have been really mature.’

  Joe laughed. ‘I didn’t feel mature at the time. I dropped out of uni with just one semester to go before graduation. People said I was crazy for throwing my education away, but I couldn’t bear to stay.’

  ‘Where did you say you went to university? Durham?’

  ‘Fell in love with the place when I went for an open day and knew I didn’t want to go anywhere else, and Michelle felt the same. She adored the architecture. When you’ve grown up in a city as great as Manchester, you realise most cities are all the same. They might have their own quirks, but the high streets are full of the same shops, same restaurants and chain pubs. We didn’t want that, and that’s what was great about Durham. We applied to all the small-town universities, even looked at Lampeter and Aberystwyth, and they’re practically at the end of the world.’

  Clara laughed. ‘I went on a school camp in Aberystwyth once. It did feel like the end of the world. It took forever to get there and the girl I was sat next to threw up her bag of Wotsits. Put me off them for life. I’ve never seen vomit that colour before or since.’

  ‘Urgh. I don’t think I’ll ever eat a Wotsit again.’

  ‘Good. Because I couldn’t socialise with anyone who ate them,’ Clara said with a teasing twinkle in her eye.

  ‘Anyway,’ he said, vomit another subject he was keen to avoid. ‘Tell me some more about you. Besides your teenage delinquency, which your current profession suggests you’ve grown out of, I don’t know very much about you at all.’

  ‘There’s not much to tell.’

  ‘There must be something. Tell me about your family. Any siblings?’

  ‘No,’ she said, her face hardening. ‘Only child. My parents separated when I was ten, and me and mum moved to live with my grandparents. When I was twelve we moved to Wythenshawe. I did alright at school, other than having a reputation for being a bit lippy, and even then knew I didn›t ever want to live anywhere other than Manchester. It’s like you said, it’s got personality. It’s got grit. Plus my friends are here. I didn’t see any reason to go anywhere else.’

  ‘Not even to escape the rain?’

  Clara smiled. ‘I even like that. When I first started working at the youth club I decided I was going to treat my mum to a holiday somewhere warm – take her away
for some winter sun. We’d not been abroad since … well, since before Dad left. We’d barely even left Lancashire, thinking about it. So I booked us this last-minute package deal to the Algarve. Nothing fancy, but it was all-inclusive. When we got there we hated it. November is meant to be drizzly and cold. It didn’t feel right walking around in short-sleeved clothes.’

  ‘You’re close to your mum, then?’

  ‘She’s my best friend. Sounds cheesy, but it’s true. I’ve moved back in with her since splitting up with Dean. I’m lucky, because she’s always supported me without being pushy. She worked every hour she could to make sure I didn’t go without, and I’ll always be grateful to her for that. She’s the best role model a girl could ask for.’

  ‘Sounds like it.’

  Clara eyed up the last mince pie, lonely in the centre of the plate. ‘Do you want that?’

  Joe shook his head. Talking about Michelle had caused his hunger to ebb away. That and the calories he’d already consumed lying heavy in the pit of his stomach. ‘You have it.’

  Clara unfolded an unused napkin that had been on the table as they’d been talking, and carefully wrapped the mince pie in it before placing the parcel in her handbag.

  ‘Saving it for later?’ he asked.

  ‘Taking it for Mum,’ she replied with a shy smile. ‘If that’s okay?’

  ‘More than okay,’ he said. ‘From what you’ve said, it sounds like she’s earned it.

  Clara

  Wednesday, December 6th 2017

  After she’d finished carefully wrapping the almost-square box in metallic gold paper, Clara had decided she might as well go the whole hog. In a bid to make it look like something from one of the posh shops’ window displays, she’d tied a thick red ribbon around it. The fancy trimming had immediately made the present look more appealing – she only hoped Joe wouldn’t be too disappointed when the gift inside failed to match up to its lavish wrapping.

  Clara waited by the main door, fiddling around with the adverts and posters pinned on the notice board. She had a terrible habit of rearranging the boards, even when everything was up to date and relevant, but even though she didn’t want to admit it to herself, she knew exactly why she was lingering in the hallway. She wanted to hand Joe the gift as soon as he walked through that door. Partly because she wanted to make up for the failed attempts so far, and partly because after he’d been so honest about his grief she felt more than ever that she wanted to bring positivity into his life. Nothing was going to go wrong this time. It wasn’t edible, there were no stalls for it to be sold on – this gem of a gift was getting placed straight into his hands.