‘Thanks. That’s really nice of you.’
‘Anytime.’ He tilted his head and gave her a lop-sided smile then sat down and opened his laptop back up.
She left the coffee house with a spring in her step, completely forgetting that she’d gone in for lunch and hadn’t eaten anything.
8
Steph couldn’t believe she was facing another Friday night with nothing to do. She was on her way to the last stop of the week, a small village called Old Hollow. It was one of her favourites, although she thought of most of her stops fondly. There was one customer, Zoe, who worked from home on Fridays, so she always called in and Steph was hoping to see her today. They usually put the world to rights over a cup of tea and a few biscuits.
The stop was in a visitor’s car park for people visiting the Malvern Hills. In the summer Steph sometimes had trouble finding enough room to park the van. It was the same with the Red Lion Inn car park which could be heaving on a hot summer’s day but today, there was a light mist which had settled over the hills and there were just a handful of cars.
Steph got the tea and biscuits out and busied herself with some admin which was left from the previous stop that day.
‘Steph! Got the kettle on?’ Zoe was wearing her usual high-end excuse for a tracksuit which was cream and probably cashmere, with her perfectly highlighted blonde hair piled in a neat bun on the top of her head. She was probably in her late thirties and her job was something to do with PR for a cosmetics company.
‘Course! How are you?’
Zoe rolled her eyes dramatically, sat down on one of the stools and started nibbling at a custard cream. ‘Oh, god. Date from absolute hell last weekend, Steph,’ she said, picking up a stray crumb from her lap and licking off her finger.
‘Tinder disaster?’ asked Steph. This was just what she needed. A good gossip about terrible dates would confirm that it was safer to stay in tonight.
‘If only. I could have buggered off after ten minutes if it was. No, it was a friend of a friend, so then you have to see it through, right?’
Steph nodded sympathetically.
‘Honestly, if Sasha really thought we’d get on I’m not sure she actually is a friend. He was shorter than me. Shorter! I mean, that is not okay.’
‘But aside from that?’
Zoe took her phone out and showed Steph a picture. The guy was attractive. Not rugged enough for Steph’s taste but she could appreciate that other people, lots of other people would think he was a catch. ‘See?’
‘Um, he looks okay…’
‘Exactly! He does in that picture. I mean I might as well rely on Tinder if my friend,’ she did air quotes, ‘thinks this is representative.’
Steph handed her a cup of tea. ‘So he didn’t look like that?’
‘He did not. He has shaved his hair. Short. This,’ she pointed to his blonde quiff in the picture, ‘is gone. Honestly Steph, I could have cried. Is it too much to ask for men of a certain age to just try using caffeine shampoo before they resort to shaving their heads?’
She was so affronted that Steph had to muffle her giggle with a bourbon biscuit.
‘I’ve had a very similar experience recently.’ Steph took her phone out and presented the picture of Sylvester.
‘God!’ Zoe recoiled from the phone then laughed. ‘You win! That’s the definition of a Tinder disaster. It just makes you want to jack it all in and stay single, doesn’t it?’
While Steph could see where Zoe was coming from because all the evidence pointed to the fact that it seemed to be near on impossible to meet anyone normal in the world of digital dating, Steph was a believer. She really believed that somewhere there was a man who was The One and she knew, she believed she’d find him. One day.
‘Mmm,’ said Steph as she munched on yet another biscuit. ‘But when you find the right man, it’ll have all been worth it.’
Zoe shot her a dubious look. ‘Well, he’d better show himself soon, that’s all I can say.’
A couple of other regulars called in and Steph chatted to them while Zoe chose a selection of books.
Chatting to Zoe had given her the lift she needed. After she dropped off the van at the Hive, she walked home via Tesco Express and picked out a nice bottle of red then as soon as she got in, ordered a pizza. All she needed was this - good wine, good food and BBC iPlayer. She flicked down the listings until she found Gavin and Stacey and settled in for the evening. It didn’t matter how many times she watched it, she still loved it as much as she had the first time. And it gave her hope that there really was one person out there. The right person. And you might see them lots of times without realising they were they one straightaway, like Smithy and Nessa, but the universe would sort it out for you in the end. That was all she had to do. Keep looking and eventually, she’d find him.
9
It was a crisp late Autumn day which made Lois’s bike ride to Croftwood a lot more pleasurable than the past couple of days which had been drizzle all the way, and the fact that it was a Saturday meant that the roads were a lot quieter than in the week.
