Page 33 of Just for the Season

‘Oh. Okay. Fine. Fine. I’ll do it now.’

The café door chimes at that point, signalling that someone’s coming in, so I’m literally saved by the bell, and soon there’s a bit of a rush, so I have no time to do anything other than serve people, and then I could reasonably just forget about moving plans, except Simon, now elsewhere doing his interior design thing, messages me to ask if I’ve texted Marcus yet.

I accept the inevitable and send a quick message, saying:

Hi Marcus. Sorry sorry sorry to ask but Simon has pointed out that it would look REALLY odd if my ‘boyfriend’ doesn’t help me when I move out of Ellie’s and into here at the weekend, so, and again I am SO SORRY, is there any chance that you could possibly help? And by help I don’t mean ACTUALLY help really. I mean you just need to be visibly here. Like carry a couple of boxes inside but that’s all. It probably has to be when the café’s closed, because Simon and I will both be working when it’s open. If you have other plans PLEASE don’t worry – in fact great!! But anyway, sorry again to ask and let me know…

He replies quite quickly, saying:

Good morning. I should have messaged before now to thank you for the lasagne – it was delicious. We all loved it. Yes, of course I’ll help you move. Would the early part of Saturday evening work for you?

I reply:

The early part of Saturday evening would be PERFECT for me. THANK YOU.

* * *

My phone vibrates with another text from Marcus a few minutes later, which surprises me, because he doesn’t come across like someone who will text-chat unnecessarily.

I’m right. He’s texting with purpose:

How long is it until your grandmother’s party? It’s just occurred to me that in order to be convincing as a couple we’re going to have to ‘see each other’ occasionally.

I write:

Oh fuck.

And then:

Ha, sorry, rude, I mean I’d LOVE to see you, I mean, you know, I don’t mean I wouldn’t love to see you. Anyway. You know what I mean. Can I buy you a thank-you-for-moving-my-stuff takeaway on Saturday if you have no other plans? You and the kids? The café will be closed. OR with Ellie and Jack? And Simon? I’ll check who’s around if you’re up for that.

There’s a short pause and then Marcus comes back with:

Sounds great.

Well, that isn’t what I expected: I have a fake date for Saturday night.

* * *

Saturday morning arrives at a strange pace. I love baking, I love people, I love Simon. So you’d think this would be the dream job. The thing is, though, when it’s busy it’s very busy, so you don’t have a lot of cake-appreciation time or quality chatting-to-people time, it’s more just serve, serve, serve. And then when it isn’t busy… well, time goes slowly.

Things improve when I decide that I’m going to bring my laptop and get on with some party planning, some new-career research (honestly, I have no ideas right now other than not working in a café, in fact) and finishing the book I’ve been writing for the past three years. The thing is, though, that I’m stuck inside the whole time and I want to get outside and drink in the remains of the long summer we’ve had and enjoy the leaves turning brown and amber as autumn rolls in.

Basically, overall, my work days are dragging.

The evenings, though, well those are lovely with Ellie (and Jack when he’s around). I’m a little bit worried about how it’s going to be when I’m living alone in the flat and having empty evenings on top of empty days. It’s definitely for the best, though. Ellie and Jack are accustomed to living by themselves, just the two of them, and, even though we’re extremely close, I don’t want to intrude for too long given that they don’t have that much time now before Jack leaves school and hopefully goes to uni. (At the moment he’s thinking he’d like to study engineering.)

Anyway. I shouldn’t think about time dragging; given the situation I was in only a week ago, I’ve been incredibly lucky.

And right now I should jump out of bed and get myself over to the café because, according to Simon, Saturdays are always crazy-busy.

He’s proven right, and we have barely any time to chat during the day.

When we’ve closed and finished cleaning up, we drive over to Ellie’s to fill my car. Marcus arrives shortly afterwards.

It doesn’t take long to pack everything into the car because I didn’t fully unpack in the first place.

‘Marcus, why don’t you leave your car here and drive with Frankie,’ Simon suggests (instructs), ‘so that you look like you’re together? And we’ll follow you. And we can order the takeaway when we get there.’