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It was quiet in the shop, even for a Monday morning. We’d had the first spurt of commuters just after we opened, shortly followed by the first spurt of regulars. But now it was nine o’clock, slap-bang in the middle of a lull, and I had taken the opportunity to step out from behind my till and give the other tills a wipe-down with some anti-bac.
The chair upon which I now perched had seen better days. It was a recycled office chair with five wheels – although two of them were long gone, so it was really three wheels and two empty spaces. The back didn’t stay upright unless I propped it against the wall, and the fabric cover was torn, so you could see the yellow sponge coating on the seat beneath. Nonetheless, I parked my backside on it with a groan of relief that belied my fifty-two years, then sighed. I found this job mind-numbingly boring at the best of times, and as I quietly observed the two customers toting their spoils around the little convenience store, my mind wandered back to Petra.
I looked at the clock again: two minutes past nine. The prospect of a long Monday would still be stretching ahead for her. She turned up every day at seven-thirty and wouldn’t get home until gone five – whoever said that teachers only work from nine until three was clearly never married to one. Mondays were her worst days as they were for so many people, and I felt a pang of sympathy for her. Monday was my worst day too – a nine-hour retail shift was nobody’s idea of a picnic – and I knew we’d both be spent when we got home.
From there, I couldn’t help reminiscing on the early days. Back when Petra had been ‘just a teacher’, if such a thing was possible. Even as ‘just a teacher’, it had never been her only job. At the best of times she had been a mentor, a first-aider, an invigilator, a stand-in mother. And now she was the deputy head teacher, the pressure was ever higher. Not to mention the fact that we now ran the village choir too. Back then, however, nine years ago, Petra had been more relaxed. Romantic. Thoughtful. Well, she still was the latter two – although I still wasn’t convinced that she’d initially remembered the anniversary of my mother’s death yesterday – but I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen her truly relaxed. Probably during the first pandemic lockdown, when the whirling stress of the school year had just… stopped.
The core of her was still the same, though. She was still the same woman who’d helped me after I dropped my shopping nearly ten years ago. I’d been aware of an Enigmatic Newcomer to the village, floating around with the presence and beauty of a goddess, but I hadn’t yet managed to get a glimpse of her. But on one memorable day, I dropped my armful of shopping as I stumbled on the step out of Mr Elliot’s grocery shop, sending a cloud of oats puffing into the air and a fruit-salad’s worth of oranges and raspberries rolling down the hill.
Chaos had ensued. I’d started coughing violently, having inhaled some oat dust, and had stumbled forward yet again, dropping the bottle of cream that had been the remainder of my shopping. All I could do was wheeze, but once I’d got my breath back, I’d been aware of the Enigmatic Newcomer walking up the hill holding two of my oranges. I’d felt my face go red as I started levering myself back up to my feet, trying to avoid the broken glass and scrabbling together what remained of my dignity before I faced her properly.
“Do these belong to you?” I’d heard a voice say from behind me, followed by a simple, understated… “Wow. That’s quite a mess.”
Customer service smile, I’d told myself.
“I only wanted to make cranachan-” I began to say, before losing my breath all over again as I looked up.
She was simply stunning. Late twenties, at a guess, with sun-kissed olive skin that, as clichéd as it sounded, glowed. Her hair cascaded from her head in a high ponytail, the colour of dark chocolate with all the lusciousness of the treat. Her red-lipstick-clad lips were slightly raised in a sympathetic smile, although I couldn’t gauge its authenticity due to the huge sunglasses dominating her face. I had to look up to face her, and although tall women tended to intimidate me, something about this one drew me in. It was the first time a woman had ever rendered me speechless.
She was not my conventional type, and I had embarrassed myself in front of her. Plus, she looked super straight. Yet we’d ended up talking while she helped me clear up the mess I’d made, and she’d told me that she’d just moved down from Ipswich. She was a newly-qualified teacher, starting at the village school when the summer term began a few weeks later. “But I’ve not made a very good job of acquainting myself with the locals so far,” she’d said, biting her lip.
“Well, I’m a local. Why not come to my place for dinner sometime?” I’d said without missing a beat.
From there, of course, we’d fallen in love. We’d discovered our mutual love of music at that first dinner, and I’d immediately invited her to the next choir practice. She’d umm-ed and aah-ed, but I’d reassured her that although our next concert was only a week away, nobody would be expecting her to actually perform. “Just see how you get on this week, and then maybe you can start attending properly next term.”
“I’ll give it a shot,” she’d replied with a mysterious smile, and so I’d seen her at the choir’s final pre-concert rehearsal that Tuesday. From all the way over at the very end of the alto section, I’d immediately been able to discern her euphonious voice. Without even blinking, she’d sight-read all the pieces and blended right in, leaving everyone around her stunned, and me staring like a lemon.
“I used to be a professional singer,” I’d heard her say to the people around her. “Gave it up to become a teacher. I didn’t realise it would come in useful so soon!”
Then she’d looked over at me with the warmest, most heart-melting irresistible smile. As if she’d known I was staring at her. And it felt like a little piece of my heart had clicked into place.
My reverie was broken by the arrival of a customer. I switched on the smile and greeted him cheerily, although now my heart was pounding and my sinuses had that prickly feeling of impending tears. He didn’t seem to notice, and the feeling soon went away as other customers continued to distract me with their various requests for cigarettes, scratch-cards and vape liquids. But my heart kept pounding, and when I sat down again I realised that I hadn’t seen that genuine smile of hers in so long. Longer than I’d last seen her relaxed.
Is she happy? I suddenly asked myself.
Is she happy… with me?
Chapter Three
“Cake,” was the first word out of Petra’s mouth when she got home that evening.
“Cake?” I repeated quizzically, and she jerked her head back to the basket of deputy headteacher detritus she was towing through the door on wheels behind her.
“Cake,” she agreed.
“You’ve got cake?”
“Gwendolyn brought it in for her birthday. I snagged you a piece while the staff room was empty. It’s one of your favourites.”
I then spotted the little napkin-wrapped package nestled in the top of the basket. I unwrapped it to find a square of coconut- and jam-topped sponge awaiting me.
“Ooh, cake!” I said approvingly, then smiled at her. “You beautiful Greek goddess, you. Come here.”
I embraced her, but she only bussed her lips over my cheek briefly before moving back to the front door to shut it.
“We need to finalise the songs we’re doing this term before tomorrow,” she said without even stopping. “I just had Katie Graythwaite stop me in the street to ask whether we’re binning off Ave Maria. I don’t think they’re responding well to it at all; I think it’s just a bit too technically challenging for our present lot. But what would we swap it out with? I’d like something classical, and we did that other arrangement last summer. I was looking online in between meetings, and there’s an SSA version of Ave Verum that looks beautiful, but once again it’s in Latin and three parts and…”
She went into the kitchen and her voice grew harder to hear as she went into the utility room. Eventually I heard her stop talking as she clearly finished whatever it was she was saying. I followed her into the kitchen, hearing the zipper of her trousers being undone and the crumple of the fabric as they hit the bottom of the washing basket. A couple of seconds later, she emerged out of the utility room, clad only in her matching black-and-gold underwear. This was her routine, to discard her work clothes and change into something more comfortable as soon as she got in, but I wasn’t always present for it due to my work shifts.
