Community – I love that. Why not take advantage of it?
Grabbing my purse and a carrier bag for any groceries I might find en route, I set off. First stop is Giorgio and Patrick’s. I’m no sooner inside the door before I’m hailed by Giorgio himself.
‘Freya, my darling,’ he says, in an exaggeratedly Italian accent. ‘We have not seen you for so long. I must give you a kiss,carissima.’
He emerges from behind the counter and kisses me Italian style, three times on the cheeks.
‘Afternoon, Giorgio,’ I say, feeling the tight knot in my chest melt. ‘Thank you, I needed that.’
‘We could do it again,’ says Giorgio and he does it again. Lovely!
‘Giorgio, sweetie, I think she came in for coffee,’ comes the sardonic voice of his partner, Patrick, who’s the tall, businesslike member of the pair.
‘No, Patrick,’ I say. ‘I needed that,’ I add, feeling myself tear up. I wish I wasn’t so hopelessly receptive to kindness these days.
‘I was only teasing,’ says Patrick instantly, clearly seeing my tears.
Weirdly I am not embarrassed and Mildred keeps her mouth shut.
Being sad is not a hanging offence, I realise. Excellent!
I do not have to be Freya The Viking at all times, after all.
‘Sit down over here.’ Patrick bustles forward and finds me a seat, where I am adjacent to the kitchen.
‘This is our quietest little nook,’ he says. ‘Now what will it be?’
I think about it for a minute because my mind has gone blank.
‘Junior moment,’ said Giorgio, abandoning the Italian accent briefly. ‘Like a senior moment but you are youthful and beautiful. I hate that phrase,senior moment. Youth is in the mind. You just sit there, sweetie, and we’ll bring something out.’
Giorgio races off and I sit there and look around. They’ve put me in absolutely the best place in the little café, because from here, I can see everything. I’m far enough away from the window not to be in full view ofpassers-by and yet I can see everything. People walking outside, mothers pushing buggies with small children, a couple of teenagers who are probably bunking off school early. A tall and thin old lady making her way slowly but with great determination towards the café ...
Miss Primrose,I think, delighted. A moment later she comes in, and even though Whisper is the most adorable white fluffy dog, I’m thrilled to see she’s on her own, because that means she can sit with me and not linger at the door ordering her coffee, which is what she normally does, I now know.
‘Miss Primrose.’ I stand up and wave to her.
‘Freya, my dear girl,’ she answers, in that lovely, slightly posh voice. I never realised it before, but Miss Primrose sounds decidedly upper class. There is something of theold-fashioned grande dame about her. And yet my idea of a grande dame is that they are always isolated and looking down upon the rest of us. There is nothing of that with Miss Primrose. She comes to sit beside me and Giorgio goes ‘tush’ and helps her out of the way while he organises a little throne of cushions behind her.
‘Really,’ he says, ‘you know better, with your lower back problems.’
She pats his hand gently.
‘Dearest, how kind you always are.’
In moments, we have food and drinks in front of us. Neither of us has ordered but it appears that Patrick and Giorgio not only run a café, but they operate a psychic ordering system as well. I have a mocha and I can smell the blended chocolate and coffee and feel myself salivate, which is weird because I don’t like mocha normally. Yet this smells delicious and just what I want. I also have a heated berry scone with raspberries bursting out of it, a little mound of butter in a tiny delicate dish, and some juicy jam.
‘Sometimes I give them my jam,’ Miss Primrose remarks, ‘but I don’t have enough fruit or the energy to make it these days, I find. I need to sit a little bit more than I used to when I was younger. And one must listen to the body, I always think, don’t you?’
She looks at me with those pale grey eyes and I realise that there is nothing of the faintly dizzy old lady about Miss Primrose. She has the clear, penetrating gaze of a headmistress.
‘Yes,’ I reply, because I’m not sure what else to say.
Miss Primrose has a couple of very plain biscuits and a beautiful china pot of what smells like Earl Grey tea.
‘I do love the cakes that dear Patrick makes but, unfortunately, when one gets to my age, what one wants and what one can actually consume vary greatly. Whisper is the same. She is older than I am in dog years, I think. I rescued her, so I’m not entirely sure. But she has an old soul.’ Again she looks at me with a penetrating gaze.
‘How lovely to have saved her,’ I say.
