‘You’re overreacting,’ Jared says. ‘We’re all adults here.’
‘Adults, right. Becauseadultssleep with their girlfriend’s best friend while basically ignoring said girlfriend, but really looking for any given opportunity to shove a tongue down aforementioned best friend’s throat. You bothknewI was coming this morning, and you couldn’t even keep your hands off each other for one teeny-tiny minuteorhave the presence of mind to lock the door behind you.’
‘I thought it was locked.’ Vickie’s cheeks are still a shade of burgundy and she won’t meet my eyes. ‘The lock’s old, you think it’s clicked but it hasn’t.’
‘Well, aren’t I lucky that it didn’t? Otherwise, who knows how much longer you’d have kept this up while I blundered on in blissful obliviousness…’ I can feel the hysteria creeping in, and the talk of locks reminds me that my keys are still on the floor, and I bend to pick them up and the metal cuts into my palm where I’m gripping them too tightly.
Vickie tries again. ‘I’m so, so sorry, Dolly. I know that doesn’t fix it, but you’re my best friend. I didn’t want to hurt you.’
I give her such alookthat she shrinks back like I’ve actually thrown something. The satisfaction is fleeting, because the main thing I feel is the hollow, sucking ache of loss. I turn to Jared, hoping he’ll have something to say to make this right.
‘I’m sorry too, Doll,’ he tries, but it lands with all the impact of a wet teabag.
They both stand there, shuffling their feet and avoiding eye contact, and I realise that it’s over. Not just the dream café, but everything. I can’t open this place with her. The Nostalgia Café will never be, and neither will the future I thought I had with Jared, or the friendship with someone I thought would be in my life until we were old, wrinkly, and still reminiscing about our happy memories of growing up in the nineties.
This is too much. It’s all too much, and I have to get out of here.
‘I hope you’ll be very happy together.’ I hear myself saying the words like an out-of-body experience. ‘You deserve that.’
I meant to say ‘each other’. You deserve each other in a bad way. But it comes out sounding like I accidentally wished them the best, and I use their combined confusion as a cover to back out of the door I came through, what feels like hours ago now, even though it can only be ten minutes in reality.
Outside, the street looks exactly the same as it did earlier, but everything has changed. The estate agent’s sign mocks me now. The time and dreams I’ve funnelled into this, and thehopeas well, with a friend who I thought was infinitely trustworthy, and a boyfriend who wasn’t perfect, but I convinced myself that we could work it out.
I stand there for a moment, breathing in car exhaust fumes and the faint smell of bleach from the tattoo parlour, trying to work out what happens next. My phone buzzes with a text – probably Vickie, or Jared, or both of them trying to explain why this is all perfectly reasonable and doesn’t have to change anything. I don’t look at it. Instead, I start walking, one foot in front of the other, with absolutely no idea where I’m going.
2
My feet have carried me to the local park without any conscious thought on my part. One minute I’m standing outside the café that will never be, the next I’m pushing through the squeaky iron gates and breathing in the smell of cut grass. There’s something oddly comforting about the familiarity of it all. The same wonky bench where Grandma and I used to sit when I was little. The same patch of mud by the pond where the ducks have trampled the grass. The same old bloke in the flat cap who’s here every morning with a bag of bread, ignoring the sign that says ‘Please Don’t Feed the Ducks.’
I should probably be having some sort of breakdown right now. Crying, outright wailing, kicking things, or whatever it is people do when their entire life implodes before breakfast, but a strange sense of calm has settled over me. It’s an odd sort of relief. A feeling that I finally understand the doubts I’d been having. Something really was going on with Vickie. Things really did feel off with Jared. Iwasn’timagining it. I find myself walking towards the duck pond like I’m eight years old again and Grandma’s holding my hand.
‘Come on then, little doll,’ she used to say when Mum and Dad’s shouting got too loud. ‘Let’s go and see if the ducks are behaving better than the grown-ups. You can’t be sad while you’re feeding ducks.’
I sit on our old bench and watch a family of mallards paddling about while I pull my phone out. Twelve missed calls from Vickie, six from Jared, and so many text messages that the notification number has just got a plus sign next to it, and I can’t bring myself to read any of them.
I shove the phone back in my pocket and assess the damage.
Job: quit. Business: dissolved before it’s even started. Best friend: shagging boyfriend. Boyfriend: shagging best friend. Flat: gave it up last year to move in with said cheating boyfriend. I’d known that was a mistake too. It was too soon, and I wasn’t ready to give up my flat, but it made the most financial sense, so I’d let myself go along with Jared’s plan. It was sensible, even if it hadn’t felt right, and now I know why.
What on earth am I going to do now? I have no job, no income, and no place to live. I’ve put everything I had into The Nostalgia Café, in an emotional sense, and in an unfortunate financial sense. Vickie and I have just scraped together a deposit and a few months’ rent on the shop. I will never be able to afford a flat by myself, never mind find a job fast enough to satisfy any potential landlords. I could throw myself at the mercy of my old boss and beg for my job back, but that wouldn’t solve the living situation. I don’t even have a car of my own. Everywhere we went, Jared drove, again because it made financial sense, even if it hadn’t felt right. That was a common theme in our relationship, it seems.
I have no family to turn to. Grandma and Mum are both gone, and Dad left years ago for a new life with a new family that didn’t come with a forwarding address. Vickie was my only real friend. She was such agoodfriend that I never felt the need to forge relationships with anyone else, and now, I’m completely alone. I don’t even have someone I can call and ask to sleep on their sofa for a night or two while I figure out what to do. The loneliness crushes me from above, like the sky is sinking downwards and pressing on top of me. There isno oneI can turn to.
I close my eyes and try to channel some of Grandma’s no-nonsense wisdom. What would she say if she were here? Probably something about pulling myself together and getting on with it. ‘Life’s too short for wallowing, little doll. Save the tears for when someone dies, and even then, don’t take too long about it. The best thing you can do for the dead is entertain their ghosts byliving, not fannying about and wasting time on nonsense.’
God, I miss her. I miss the way she made everything seem manageable, even when Mum and Dad announced they were getting a divorce and Dad was moving out of the country. I miss the way she’d turn up with emergency homemade cakes and the ability to find something positive in any situation.
She was a huge inspiration behind The Nostalgia Café. She used to reminisce about the food she’d loved as a child. Food that could no longer be found in modern-day shops, but that she could recreate perfectly with a whisk and a mixing bowl. Her descriptions could make you nostalgic for puddings you’d never even heard of, and she passed her love of traditional baking onto me, and her dedication to keeping the past alive even when supermarkets stopped selling it was a huge influence on my idea of an old-fashioned café where vintage bakes were on the menu, and then Vickie saw the business-sense behind it and encouraged me into believing it was something we could bring to life together, and as usual, I brushed my doubts under the metaphorical carpet and went along for the ride.
I watch a mother duck shepherding a trail of fluffy yellow ducklings towards a clump of reeds, keeping them safe from the territorial swan that’s side-eyeing them from across the pond. She doesn’t have a manual for this, does she? No guidebook on how to raise ducklings or avoid predators or find the best bits of pond weed. She’s just getting on with it, doing what needs to be done.
Maybe that’s what I need to do. Just get on with it. Do what needs to be done.
First things first – I need to go back to Jared’s house and collect some of my stuff. Shove a few necessities into a bag and get out of there. The last thing I want to do is face him again, and if I go now, he’ll still be out, and I’ll have the whole day ahead to figure out what comes next.
By the time I stand up, the mother duck has navigated her brood to safety and they’re now happily dabbling about in the shallows. If a duck can have her life together, so can I, minus several needy ducklings and swan-related peril, anyway. And at least I’ve learned one important lesson this morning: never, ever tempt fate by suggesting it will be a good day.
3
