‘Fish? Fish! Oh, great, I got them home safely.’ Just then she realised her gaffe.
‘Really? I thought you already had them?’
Caught.
‘Look, Pete, I’m no good at lying. I was whacked yesterday and I made a stupid excuse to leave. Then I had to go and buy the fish to make it the truth.’
He looked at her and began to laugh. ‘You went out and actually bought a whole aquarium to un-tell a lie? I’m impressed. So, do they have names, like say .?.?. Fish and Chips?’
‘That’s gruesome, I can’t think of them as food. I was thinkingmore something like Bonnie and Clyde?’
‘We all know how that ended. Could be tempting fate .?.?. How about Harry and Sally?’
She smiled. ‘Now you’re talking.’
Just then there was a ruckus. The bell rang and four women piled through the door, chatting animatedly. Oh my God, this was her ultimate nightmare: real-life pressure with no one to help. Breathe, she said to herself. She just needed to remember what Dave had told her: if you get a crowd, tell them to take a seat, take their order carefully and explain you’ll bring the stuff down to them. Don’t let people hassle or stress you, that’s how you make mistakes.
Work steadily, he’d said, everyone’s going to want their order yesterday. Customers were like wild animals, she’d noticed. They could smell panic. She’d have to look confident, no matter how she felt.
Pete took a seat wordlessly at a table just down from the counter but still within her line of vision. She went through the sequence: warm the cups, grind the coffee, make the shots, froth the milk. When in the past she’d seen baristas flicking away at this lever and that, it had always looked so straightforward, obvious even, but there actually was an awful lot to remember. At one point she left out a stage and was about to panic but, meeting her eye, Pete gave her a thumbs up and her shoulders dropped.
She managed four coffees and delivered them on a tray, then retreated behind the counter to observe their reaction from between the straws and the tips jar. The volume of chat never changed. Everyone seemed to find their orders perfectly unremarkable. The truth was that you had to be either very good or very bad to stand out. Good enough would have to do for now.
* * *
Just before a quarter to one, as promised, Dave reappeared. Ally could tell he was making a brave attempt at his usual easy-going manner, but the strain coming from him was palpable. He barely met her eye and carried on for the rest of lunchtime burying his head in work, thankfully taking over most of the barista duties. As the queue eased up, she wanted to enquire how the appointment had gone but there was a ‘keep away’ vibe around him that warned her off.
By three thirty she threw her long grey coat on over her work clothes and made for the door, where she bumped into Pete.
‘Which way are you heading?’ She smiled at him.
‘Nowhere right now, I’m just parked round the back.’
There was something evasive in his manner, despite how friendly and helpful he’d been that morning.
‘Thanks for today.’ She smiled.
‘For what, slagging off your coffee?’
‘No, just being there, it was supportive.’ She knew only too well that she could have lost her nerve at any moment and freaked out without him.
‘Go away out of that. Sure, you were all over it.’
He stuck his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans, pensively. Somewhere in the fringes of her mind she was vaguely aware of how snugly they clung to his taut buttocks.
‘Do you think Dave is OK?’ she asked.
‘No, but I think he’ll tell us nothing till he’s ready.’
‘You know him, don’t you?’
‘Yep, we used to play schools rugby together, back in the day.’
‘Wow, interesting.’
She knew from endless boring conversations over the dinner table at home that schools rugby was a serious business.Meanwhile, another part of her brain altogether was concluding that this explained his taut ass.
‘Anyhow,’ he remarked, ‘you’d better head on. Harry and Sally will be missing you.’
