‘I can’t tell you all my secrets.’ Luc faux gasps and gestures towards the rest of the café. ‘We’ve only just started dating.’
Leanne is back before we know it, her apron stained with a plethora of colours. She hands us a ceramic tile, adorned with its own rainbow. She explains to us how the paint works at this particular studio: how many layers each colour needs and what colours can and can’t be layered on top of others. I nod enthusiastically like a child in her favourite subject.
‘Any questions so far?’ Leanne asks.
I shake my head.
‘Fantastic,’ Leanne beams. ‘You can use as many pottery items as you like in the two hours you have. All items are individually priced when you leave and then there’s a six-pound studio fee per person.’ She rubs her knuckle on the apple of her cheek and smears a small amount of purple paint. ‘Just let me or any of the staff know if you have any questions. Would you like a drink?’
‘I’ll have a decaf cappuccino with almond milk, please,’ Luc says. ‘Sienna will probably want a camomile tea?’
‘You remember,’ I say in a breath. My voice is a croak, thedryness cracking in my vocal cords. Whenever it gets past six o’clock, I can’t drink anything with caffeine or the decaf version of anything which usually has caffeine because of the placebo effect.
Leanne simply nods and invites us to choose our pottery.
Luc drapes his arm across my shoulders as we stand in front of our options. We are truly spoilt for choice. ‘Maybe we should do one of these.’ He points to the large mugs. His voice is low enough to make everyone think he meant this only for my ears, but loud enough for them to be able to hear exactly what he said. ‘We can hang them up. Pride of place in our first home together.’
A home with Luc is something I never allowed myself to imagine. If my brain went there, if my brain goes there now, I might never get it back. Sharing a life with someone like that is scary. Having all your belongings and your finances linked together in a huge, messy knot. In those few months we were together in 2014, I only briefly imagined what it would be like for me and Luc to end up together in that way. It was that final date, when we were walking around Richmond Park trying to find the deer. There was a flashing thought.This could be my life. Terrifying at the time for a twenty-year-old whose album just went to number one for the first time. It didn’t fit in with what I was planning for myself.
I swallow loudly, a lump firmly lodged in the back of my throat, and try to force a laugh, to react in any way. But I’m frozen. Like my brain has forgotten how to work my mouth, the connection severed. I pick up the mug. ‘Sounds good to me.’ When I look at him, the warm tint in his brown eyes disappears in the low light of the café, the bulb overhead broken.
‘Thank you for doing this, Lucas.’ His full name in my mouth makes it feel like I’m being less sincere than I am, the way it bundles on my tongue and dissolves the lump in my throat before creating a newer, softer one. I’m so close to hisface in the tiny space between the tables and pottery shelves. I try to fixate on his eyes, spotting the tints of other colours in the brown, and his loose eyebrow hairs, the small scattering at the top of his nose.
My eyes trail down his face to where a few beard hairs were missed from his latest shave and, before I know it, my eyes land on his lips. My gaze traces the small crack in the middle of his bottom lip, brushing over the soft cupid’s bow before I realise what I’m doing and force my eyes back to his.
‘It’s nothing,’ he whispers, shaking off my emotion, and picks up a second large mug.
We get to work on painting straight away. I don’t have a plan on what I want to design. Had I known what we’d be doing, I would’ve researched some ideas. Got on Pinterest, put together a plan. Practised drawing it a few times on paper. But the nature of being surprised means not being prepared. I decide to trace the outline of a few whole lemons and some lemon slices. I like yellow, a sunshine colour.
‘Has your mum retired now?’ I ask him, not looking up from my yellow paint.
‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘She retired early on health grounds. She has bad arthritis and, when it flares, she struggles to get out of bed, and she can’t type anymore. And there’s something not very confidential about dictating what you want to type into a computer.’
When I first met Luc’s mum, she was working in their local hospital as a receptionist in one of the outpatient facilities. I think it was trauma and orthopaedics to start with, but then she moved a few floors up to immunology. She loved her job. She loved being able to help people without the responsibility of a doctor or a nurse.
‘That sounds awful. How is she doing with retirement?’ I look up and flex the cramp in my hands from holding the tiny paint brush.
‘Doesn’t love it, wants to keep busy.’ Luc shrugs. ‘Thinkshe’s taking inspiration from me because she said she wants to write a book.’ The beam which crosses his face sends a shiver rolling down my spine. ‘Obviously she can’t type but we got her some dictating software so now she speaks her novel into her laptop all day every day. She’s getting quite good at it.’
‘That’s amazing. I’d love to read it when she’s finished.’
‘She willloveif you tell her that,’ Luc laughs.
We look down, concentrating so hard on the painting we hardly speak for the next while, a few muttered complaints about bits we’ve ruined or colours that aren’t quite right for what we wanted. The longer we’re in Leanne’s café, the more comfortable with the environment I get. I’m free to get up, look at the stencils, wash my hands, explore. No one bats an eye in my direction.
I told Luc I wanted to feel normal, and he has somehow achieved that.
I don’t know how he’s done it.
Leanne’s café is my new happy place. The first place in more than eight years I’ve felt like this.
I painstakingly go around all my lemons with a light green paint. I’m on my third layer and can’t remember which bits I’ve done and which I haven’t because the paint dries so quickly. There are probably some places on my mug which have four layers and others which have one because I’m starting to lose concentration.
‘Do you remember when we did that cooking class?’ Luc asks.
‘Not the disastrous cooking class,’ I laugh. It was ten years ago now, so I’ve started to look back at it fondly.
‘I haven’t fainted since,’ Luc snorts.
