* * *
After a long and busy day, I catch the bus as usual, planning out my evening in my head. It’s Wednesday, so Charlie’s dad will collect her from school, which means I can either spend my evening productively sorting through café paperwork or I can eat chips and watch box sets in bed. By the time I’ve shown the driver my day ticket, chips are already the clear winner because the paperwork can wait. The paperwork can always wait.
Thankfully, it’s not too busy and I sit near the front. I’ve never liked the back of the back of the bus; I prefer to gracefully exit, rather than pinball off everyone when the tyres hit a pothole.
I watch a woman in her mid-twenties who sits in the seat in front of me. She’s wearing the cutest red and gold-flecked bobble hat with matching gloves and she looks incredible. She looks like a woman whose life is as sparkly as her winter accessories. I wonder what she has planned for tonight. I bet it’s far more electrifying than what I have planned… of course, that wouldn’t be hard. I bet there are prisoners in Barlinnie with more exhilarating evenings planned.
When I first broke up with Stuart, I used my free time wisely. I’d organise dinners with friends, I’d go to the cinema alone, hell, I even tried to learn Spanish online, but none of it lasted. While I was busy starting again, everyone else was busy settling down. Girlfriends became wives and wives became mothers who I saw less and less of. I was the single mum and secretly every married friend was grateful it wasn’t them. I tried dating, but nothing ever quite stuck. Most dates never made it to a second and those that did, fizzled out quickly. So, dates turned into hook-ups and sometimes hook-ups turned into flings, but after a while I realised that I’d stopped being flung completely. It’s been three years since I had sex and I’m not even sure that I miss it.
The driver beeps angrily at a cyclist, snapping me out of my melancholy. I’m two stops from home and the wind and rain has picked up, clattering loudly against the window. In front of me, the bobble-hat girl begins a loud, shrieking conversation with someone called ‘Babe’ causing passive-aggressive tuts from everyone, as I glare at the back of her head. I might not be young, or particularly perky, but at least I’m not an inconsiderate bus arsehole. I secretly hope her hat blows off.
Once home I delight in the fact that for an entire Charlie–free evening, I have nowhere to be and no housework to catch up on. I pull the blinds, turn on some music and head to the bedroom to plug in my electric blanket so I don’t have to deal with cold sheets later. As I turn on the bedside light, I look around my room. It’s a space that hasn’t been used for anything other than sleeping for a long time. The charity shop clothes pile in the corner is reaching new heights, filled with pre-weight gain purchases I can no longer fit into, nestled against a dressing table covered in makeup and toiletries I rarely use anymore. A bedroom can speak volumes about its owner and this one belongs to someone sad. When did I become so sad?
I catch myself before my chin starts to wobble.Enough!You have a happy child and your own business. You just need a hobby or something.
I march myself into the living room and sit on the couch, fuming. This is all their fault – Faith and Victoria’s – with theirooh, here’s a great man for youandooh, forty is special except when you’re alonebullshit. They know I will dwell on this, that’s why they do it. I’ve managed ten years without dissolving into some weepy single stereotype and I don’t intend to start now. I might have had my wobbles, but I’m still treading my tightrope, trying not to look down. If they think I’m waiting for some big strong man to catch me, they’re very much mistaken.
CHAPTER5
Thursday is ‘pie, chips and peas’ day at the café, which always sells really well, especially to the local tradesmen, but stinks the place out. Some people remark that the smell reminds them of school dinners in the seventies, making me very grateful that I didn’t start school until 1983.
‘We only have twelve left,’ Victoria informs me, sliding the last tray of pies into the oven. ‘Then we’re out. Table two should be ready to order if you want to get them.’
I nod, grabbing my notepad, while Tracey plucks two lunch order tickets from the stand and begins working on them both at the same time. Despite our fancy coffee machine, the rest of our operation is pretty much old-school. We still write everything down and ding a bell when an order is ready.
After a particularly deaf pensioner at table two asks me to explain the difference between lattes, cappuccinos and flat whites several times, I return with their order for two pots of tea and some scones.
‘Do you know what popped into my head last night?’ Victoria says, filling up a bowl with tiny packets of white and brown sugar. ‘Those ugly pyjamas you used to wear at uni.’
I’m instantly bombarded with flashbacks of pink flannel. ‘Hey, those were warm as hell and probably lifesaving considering our digs didn’t get central heating until the year we left.’
She laughs. ‘I know, but they were hideous! They had red wine and pot noodle stains all over them. I kind of miss those days.’
‘You miss being poor and cold?’ I ask, as the memories flood back, not all of them welcome.
For four years, I’d studied drama and English while Vic studied business and economics. We’d shared a pokey three-bedroom flat in Fountainbridge, along with a German girl, Lena, who studied chemistry and was a complete poker shark. It was grim, cheap and we had the best time. I must look up Lena on Facebook. She’s either a millionaire now or in jail.
While Vic might miss them, those were the days when I’d worked in a coffee shop part-time to keep me in the aforementioned red wine and pot noodles while I studied. It was where I continued to work between acting auditions after we graduated at twenty-two, and where the handsome, older engineer I served every morning asked me out and eventually knocked me up aged twenty-five. Vic went off to work in America, I never went to another audition again.
‘Those pyjamas are the only thing I miss,’ I finally respond. ‘Weird thing to remember, though. Do you often think about my nightwear?’
‘Never,’ she replies. ‘Must be an age thing. I’ll forget my own name eventually, but never those bloody pyjamas. Take these peas to six, will you?’
I nod and reluctantly pick up the dish of lumpy green slop, knowing I will be spending the rest of the day trying to put the past back into its little box at the back of my brain.
‘Here’s your peas, Jean,’ I say, setting them on the table. ‘Sorry if you’ve been waiting, we’re a bit manic today.’
‘Don’t worry, Dora,’ she replies, passing them to the woman on the right. ‘They’re not for me, anyway. Mary likes to take them home for her Great Dane.’
I glance at Mary who’s scraping the dish into a Tupperware box and wonder how someone who’s barely five foot and approaching eighty copes with a Great Dane.
‘My Wilbur used to hate peas,’ Jean begins. ‘But then, at his wedding – what did they serve? Pea puree with the scallops! I couldn’t believe it… Mary… hold it steady… that’s going to spill all over your carpet bag if you’re not careful.’
I slip away unnoticed while they deal with their pea crisis.
* * *
I get home at six and after a disappointing dinner, I settle down on the couch with the new John Grisham novel that Victoria lent me while Charlie retires to her pigsty. However, ten pages in, she appears at the living room door.
