‘I’m all right,’ she says eventually. ‘I’m good, actually. Glad it’s over and done with.’ She doesn’t look nearly as decided as she’s trying to sound.
‘Good for you,’ I say anyway. ‘And you’re staying? The spare room’s all yours.’
‘Can I?’
I saw her suitcase in the back of her car as we walked past it a moment ago. I didn’t mention it. ‘Always,’ I tell her. It’s on the tip of my tongue to say I wish she could stay forever, but then I remember my Birmingham escape plan and keep my lip zipped. I haven’t mentioned the idea to Lucy yet either, and this doesn’t seem like the right time. She’s always loved coming here for visits. It might add to her upset if I tell her that won’t be an option any more someday soon.
‘I might stay the night, then. If that’s OK?’ she tells me.
We clink our mugs to seal the deal just as the door opens, not with its usual screech at the hinges but with a slow, drawn-out mouse squeak that makes me turn in my chair.
Ever so gradually, a pair of wide eyes peer around the door, scanning as if for predators. Then, even more cautiously, a slight little body emerges too, squeezing through the narrow opening they’ve allowed themselves as though they don’t want to let in any more chill December winds than strictly necessary.
‘There you are!’ Izz calls from the kitchen hatch, and the delicate person, now on the doormat and seemingly trying to close the door without being the slightest inconvenience to anyone, flinches. ‘You’re Fern,’ Izz informs her, and the girl nods, her eyes darting around the cafe from customer to customer.
It’s an averagely busy day; half of the ten or so tables and booths are occupied, enough to make the place steamy. There’s condensation clouding the windows behind the nets.
‘Well, come in, then,’ Izz coaxes, and the girl clasps her own elbow with her hand, her head low.
The petrified thing steps further into the room where everyone examines her. Out of pity, I turn back to my mug of tea, but I keep my ears trained on the pair.
Izz is asking the girl, ‘So, what have we here?’
To be fair to Izz, I haven’t seen anyone quite like Fern before either. For a painfully shy scrap of a thing, she’s dressed like she has the confidence of a town crier.
I glance at Lucy, worried I’m being judgy too, and find she’s simply smiling at the girl in the ankle-length brown plaid smock dress and umpteen layers of flouncy, woolly things that seem so out of time that even my granny might have found them old-fashioned. She’s wearing modern jewellery, though, and big specs that make her light eyes moley and rather endearing. And, impossible to miss, there are what look like little mushrooms and acorns dangling from her petite ears. I take the quickest glance back just to check she really is wearing some kind of lacy drape over her red hair too. Yep, she is. I don’t understand it at all.
As Izz bustles the girl to a vacant table, I take my chance to ask Lucy in a whisper exactly what is going on there. ‘Is she a cartoon character?’
‘I thought you had Instagram?’ is all Lucy has time to hiss at me. None the wiser, I decide I’ve been nosy-parkerish enough and I’d better leave the poor girl to her induction, but Izz is just as bewildered as me, evidently.
‘So what’s this get-up you’re wearing?’ I hear her ask.
The girl whispers something inaudible that prompts a ‘Come again?’ from her inquisitor.
‘It’s cottage core,’ the girl breathes out. ‘Little bit of forest core. It’s my aesthetic.’
‘Oh, ’tis, is it?’ Izz says in a jolly, well-I’ve-seen-it-all-now kind of way.
Both Lucy and I are conspicuously not conversing. In fact, everyone in the cafe seems to be silently earwigging as Izz asks the girl what sort of things she makes at home.
‘Uh, petticoats, obi belts, tried a few bits of corsetry,’ the girl says.
‘Whatfood?’
‘Oh! Um…’ There’s a long wait before Fern ventures timidly, ‘Avo’ smash on toast?’
There’s another moment’s silence for the death of Izz’s hopes of finding a waitress to take the strain off her this winter.
‘Can you manage a full fry-up?’ Izz asks. ‘Or kippers? Omelettes? Home-made soup? Toasties and the like? Could you do a Victoria sponge?’
‘I don’t know,’ the girl says in such a defeated, delicate way that I just know it’s accompanied by a shrinking shrug.
‘Well,’ Izz says, standing. ‘Ooft!My knees. You’ll be needing an apron to cover your pretty dress. Come on. I’ll show you your way around my stoves.’
Lucy and I have to pretend we’ve been chatting. Lucy goes so far as to fake a laugh in response to something I didn’t say as Izz and the girl slope across the cafe and into the kitchen.
‘Cottage core?’ I say immediately after they’ve gone.
