Page 75 of Just for the Season

Hooray. He’s acting completely normally; he clearly doesn’t know that Marcus stayed last night.

And then, when Ruby goes over to a table in the corner with an order, he whispers, ‘I saw Marcus sneak out. Ruby didn’t.’

I’m still wincing when Ruby returns to the counter, and Simon says, ‘Thank you so much, Ruby. You should call your dad now to let him know you’re done for the day, because you’ve reached your hours-worked limit.’

‘Does that really matter?’ Ruby asks. ‘I’m very happy to stay.’

‘We’d be very happy to have you,’ Simon says, ‘and we love working with you, but unfortunately the legislation and employee rights do matter, so I’m going to have to send you home. But we’ll be looking forward to seeing you on Saturday morning. And—’ he goes into the kitchen, opens the cash box that he keeps takings in and takes a twenty-pound note out ‘—here’s a bonus for coming at short notice.’

‘Thank you!’ Ruby beams at him and I really want to hug her.

Marcus arrives in his car shortly afterwards and waves at Simon and me through the café windows as Ruby goes out. I can feel Simon looking at me and really struggle to keep a huge, huge smile off my face.

Marcus. What a night. He’s, well, perfect.

Also, his big secret is wasabi farming. And I’m not even disappointed by that.

Because he’s perfect. And I…

I love him.

And the weird, weird thing is that I think he might have proper, loving feelings for me too. Like, as he said, maybe I am lovable. Maybe my mother having no interest in seeing me is all about her and not about me.

I’ve never, ever felt like this about anyone before. The thought of splitting up with my faux (maybe no longer faux) boyfriend Marcus causes me almost physical pain. Previous splits, by contrast… like Rick for example… I was humiliated, and stressed about the lack of job and home, but I wasn’t sad about losing his company. Not having to see him any more was in fact the one good thing about the whole split.

Yes. Things are different now. Maybe I’ve just chosen the wrong people in the past.

‘Hello, hello, Earth to Frankie,’ Simon breaks into my thoughts.

‘Hello.’ I turn away from the window and move back behind the counter to where Simon is.

He looks me up and down, cocks his head to one side and says, ‘So I was listening to a podcast recently where the hosts were agreeing that it’s total crap that you can tell when someone got some last night, like how can you tell? And I thought, yes, I totally agree. Except, just saying, only once, that it turns out that on occasion you can tell.’ He raises his eyebrows and waggles them before letting out a very loud cackle.

I roll my eyes and try not to smirk.

Simon suddenly gets serious. ‘I hope you know what you’re doing. I worry about you. That’s why I interrupted you during the party when you and Marcus were staring at each other with heart-emoji eyes, like make him work for it so you know he wants this rather than just, you know, a quick one. Like… obviously I was trying to get you together to start off with, but that’s when I was thinking it would just be a rebound fling for you. If it feels like more than that from your side… be careful. I mean, I’m sure it’ll be fine, but, you know…’

I nod. ‘Thank you.’

I think I do know what I’m doing. I think I love Marcus and I think… he might love me too.

24

MARCUS

Mid-afternoon, out for a kickaround with Sam, I take advantage of him stooping to retie his shoelaces (after strong encouragement from me) to send a very quick text to Frankie:

Hi.

A kind of checking-in message. Well. Actually. If I’m honest. A kind of ‘I love you but I don’t fully have the words to tell you that right now so I’m just going to act like a teenager and say Hi’ message.

I do love her. I’m not sure when I realised that. I think it happened gradually. Or all at once at the beginning, like how do you know Frankie and not love her. But obviously it was a gradual thing realising that I almost can’t do without her in my life. And now is the first time that I’m admitting it to myself.

She sends a Hi reply, and I smile.

‘Dad,’ Sam yells, and hoofs the ball at me.

Yeah. I have the kids to think about. I’ll consider the ‘I love Frankie’ thing later.