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“Chocolate cake,” she repeated, nodding determinedly. “You got it.”
And with that, she turned the key, knocked the car into first and rolled out of the car park.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
True to her word, she did make the cake that afternoon. I’d hoped that baking would have its predicted therapeutic effects, but she seemed just as edgy afterwards as she had done in the car. After a quick dinner, she retired to bed, claiming exhaustion and repeating her need for as much energy as possible before the last half term.
I went up to bed a couple of hours later, and as I got in she rolled over and sleepily batted at me until she found my hand.
“Seven weeks, Jean,” she mumbled. “Don’t forget.”
“Seven weeks, you got it,” I whispered, parroting her phrasing from earlier, but that only served to bring the incident to the front of my mind again. This time, it was accompanied by a bolt of anger. Why should I have to sacrifice my wife’s love completely for the sake of her job?
Because that school and all its kids would be lost without her, my mind reminded me. And it’s better for you to be lost without her than for them to be lost without her. Damage limitation.
And then of course we were up and running again in the morning. It was Monday, so another six a.m. shift for me. Petra actually got up with me at a quarter to five – getting up together two days in a row was quite a feat for us now – and was still yawning into her coffee cup when I left for work.
The whole time, neither of us said anything. But it wasn’t an awkward silence, per se. We just didn’t have anything to say to each other.
I found myself being grateful for the morning rush of customers. They were mostly rude, harried, perpetually-running-late commuters due to our position just off a main road in the middle of nowhere, but in they streamed one after another, rinsing my kiosk of vapes, tobacco products and cashback, and running the coffee-to-go machine dry.
After the rush, however, the shop went dead and, of course, my thoughts came flooding in. Perched on the shabby little seat that by this point was more plastic base than sponge covering, I felt my eyes glaze over as I tumbled into myself, my back hunching as I ran through the events of yesterday.
I’d had a panic attack. I could see that clearly now. There had been a time just after Lyndsey died that I’d had them on the daily, but they’d always been full-blown, all-consuming, crying-and-hyperventilating types. Yesterday’s had been far more low-key – one in which I’d appeared perfectly fine on the outside, but had been screaming on the inside. I mused that in public, it was probably the best type to have. Less embarrassing than the few times I’d had a meltdown in public. The trigger yesterday had been cigarette smoke. It had reminded me of what I’d lost in my sister – and now my parents.
And Petra had noticed. Which was a good thing. Well, noticed afterwards, when the worst of it had been over. She hadn’t exactly seen my anguish, but she’d picked up on something being off, which was about as good as I could expect from her right now, especially if her thoughts were filled with something – or someone – else.
Seven weeks.
I clung to that promise like a lifeline.
The door opened, and one of the regulars stepped through the door, little dog tucked under her arm as always. Tilly the poodle wasn’t technically allowed in the shop, as a canine, but we made an exception for Mrs O’Callaghan, who had recently been diagnosed with dementia and always forgot that dogs were banned. I practically felt myself being flung back into performance mode as I rushed out of the kiosk and to the door to help the old lady unhook her dog’s lead from the basket handle.
“Oh, you are a good girl, Jean,” she said as I unclipped the lead from Tilly, whipped it out of the basket and reattached it. The little dog’s tail wagged nineteen-to-the-dozen as she explored my fingers with her little pink nose. Smiling and chatting to the old lady as she got her bearings served as the perfect distraction from the fact that she’d called me a girl.
My initial reaction, unusually, had been a flash of anger. How dare you call me a woman? You don’t know how I’m feeling. But I stuffed it down, and I knew that my work face – upon which I’d always prided myself – didn’t show even a flicker of anything except jovial professionalism. My voice sounded strange to my own ears, but at the same time there was nothing different about it. I just focused on the feel of Tilly’s rough fur, and let my autopilot carry on the conversation until Mrs O’Callaghan left to do her shopping.
Back behind the till, I served a few more customers, noting the elderly lady’s progress around the shop. There had been a couple of instances where she’d gotten herself lost, and I was always on alert in case it happened again. But she made it back to me with a now full basket of shopping, which I scanned through for her while simultaneously chatting and packing her bag. She fumbled with her cash for a while, but we got the notes out, and I handed her some coins for change. One of them missed her hand entirely and hit the table, where it bounced onto the floor at my feet.
“It’s alive!” I laughed as I handed it back to her.
“What is, dear?” she said absentmindedly as she put the coin in her purse.
“The coin,” I said, feeling like a bit of an eejit as I realised how I sounded. This feeling was amplified when she turned her gaze on me, now with a steely look in her eye. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have had her down as an elderly Kate Mundy from Dancing at Lughnasa.
“How can the coin be alive?”
“Well, because it jumped onto the floor. Obviously I know it’s not-”
“You do know that attributing human attributes to inanimate objects is one of the first signs of madness, don’t you? It’s called anthropomorphism.”
And with that, she picked up her dog and her shopping and shuffled off towards the door.
My first response was ‘You can talk, you silly old bat,’ but I bit it back immediately. It scared me how close I came to saying it – it was right on the tip of my tongue, from my heart to my mouth without consulting my brain whatsoever. But as I watched her departing figure, I actively processed what she’d said, and sighed instead.
Perhaps she was right. Perhaps I was going mad.
Chapter Forty
