by Jessica Ryn
‘For once, Grace, would you just stop with all that positive thinking bullshit and come back to earth,’ Peter snarls before storming out of the office.
It’s just getting light when Grace heaves herself out of the office chair and makes her way to the café. Her mind is full of worries about Peter. What if he has a slip and buys alcohol after all?
He wouldn’t have meant to speak to her like that; the struggle with addiction can play havoc with a person’s mood and she remembers how he had been when he first moved into St Jude’s.
Has Grace just made everything worse? She can’t even go after him as there’s no one to watch the hostel and there’s too much to do in the café.
She tries to find calm in the quiet of the morning as she starts the prep for the day’s bake sale. She’s still weighing the flour when she hears the door open behind her, the one that stands between the hostel and the café.
‘Thought you’d be up early today.’ Jack looks tired but carries his smile and his dimples along as he walks towards Grace.
Heat floods her face and she turns back to her mixing bowl, slowing her breathing in an attempt to look normal. Grace’s heart thumps faster when Jack’s arms fall gently around her waist and she leans back into him, still not trusting herself to look him in the face.
‘I was worried about you after the meeting yesterday,’ he murmurs into her ear. ‘You looked so upset when you told us about the funding, even though I know you half expected it. Thought you might come and see me last night. I kept listening out for a knock on my door.’
Grace covers Jack’s hand with her own. ‘I wanted to. I thought about it. But I couldn’t – not after last time, I’m still so embarrassed.’ She tries to laugh but it comes out as more of a squeak. ‘I feel like I’ve done enough off-loading onto you, you’ve got enough going on without listening to my woes all the time.’
Jack moves his fingertips over her forearm in long, gentle strokes. ‘I came to see if you needed an extra pair of hands. With getting all this ready,’ he adds, still not letting go of her. ‘It’s great that you’re trying. It’s the right thing to do, whether we raise the money or not.’
‘Thanks, Jack,’ she whispers. She twists herself around in his arms and puts her arms around Jack’s shoulders. His body is warm against hers and his mouth is only inches away. Without taking her eyes away from his, she begins to close the gap between them as the café fades away.
Until the door handle squeaks.
Grace jumps away from Jack as if he’s made of needles. Her head darts towards the door as Peter enters the room. He doesn’t smile.
‘Jack, would you mind popping back in half hour? I need a word with Grace.’
‘What do you want?’ she asks once Jack has left the room. The edginess from earlier has left her voice and so has the pleading. Now she’s just drained. What does he want? To apologise? To confront her about Jack? Grace tries to still her racing mind, frazzled from lack of sleep.
‘I just came to see if you wanted a hand – with the baking.’
Grace looks at Peter for a long second before handing him the packet of flour. He takes it and gets another mixing bowl from the bottom cupboard. He walks to the larder and starts pulling out cake ingredients.
‘I don’t blame you, you know. For the inspection,’ Grace says in a low voice, not taking her eyes away from the dough that she’s kneading.
Peter puts a bowl on the scales and starts scooping caster sugar into it. ‘I’ll help,’ he says. ‘With the fundraising. Whatever you need.’
Grace turns her head around and nods at him. ‘You can hold the fort and clean up the kitchen whilst we’re out selling today. Hazel will be here later to do the writing workshop and I don’t want her walking into a mess.’
‘You’re the boss.’
‘Yes, I am,’ Grace says, and she almost smiles.
Chapter 23
Grace
GRACE IS ATTEMPTING TO coordinate the pastry production line with military precision. Not an easy task when the café is bursting with bodies. Almost every resident is up and about and squished around the worktop; kneading dough or sprinkling cakes in preparation for part one of the Save St Jude’s initiative. Energy levels are high as they discuss the day’s plan to corner all the hotspots of Dover and tempt the locals into buying their delicious home-cooked goodies.
‘Mmm. That smell is incredible,’ Jack grins as he swivels back into the kitchen, lightly brushing his fingers across the small of Grace’s back as he passes.
She flinches and throws him a warning glare from the side of her face. Her nerves are still recovering from earlier. Peter had come so close to catching her with her arms draped around Jack and her mind has been spiralling ever since.
‘I’ve just had a phone call,’ Jack says, his eyes shining. ‘The interview I had with that building company. I only went and got it!’ He catches hold of Grace’s hands before dropping them again as if they were made of lava.
Grace’s chest squeezes with pride. She wants to fling her arms around him and jump up and down with excitement. ‘That’s great.’ She beams at him, instead. ‘We’re all so proud of you, and I’m sure you will be excellent at it. Can you tell me the rest later? I really do want to hear more about it, but we just need to get today sorted.’
The sparkle fades from Jack’s eyes as if he’d had a power cut. He steps back and starts fiddling with the zip on his hoody.
‘Finished!’ Dawn triumphs after she’s added a strawberry slice to the cream topping of her last cupcake. ‘We’re going to rake in a fortune. Where are we all going to start? I think each team should have a competition to see who flogs the most… like on The Apprentice.’
Grace feels a pang of self-hatred for shutting Jack down but she can’t help but smile. Dawn’s enthusiasm is always infectious, she has a way of making people feel like anything is possible and she’s grateful to have her on the team – if only for the boost to morale, she adds to herself as she glances at the precarious slants on the tops of Dawn’s cakes.
Grace pairs Dawn with Cara. They get on well and Grace has seen for herself how much Dawn tries to keep the younger woman out of trouble. She decides to keep them away from the park for obvious reasons and stations them down at the harbour.
After most of the other staff and residents are partnered up and allocated patches to sell on, Grace puts herself with Paul who’s just sauntered through the door and agreed to be involved in something for once. She suggests they try the bottom of Market Square to catch the Saturday morning shoppers. Today needs to go well, and they need to sell, sell, sell.
‘So, I’m suddenly not good enough to be partnered with?’ Jack mumbles into her ear. He says it with a chuckle, but it’s a hollow one, and the pink stains above his cheekbones let Grace know he’s super pissed off. Grace’s throat tightens and her limbs tingle as the reality of the fire she’s been playing with continues to seep in. Jack has played a main part in almost all her thoughts this week, co-starring only with the hostel and how the hell to keep it open. It feels like an arm is missing when he’s not around. She wishes he wasn’t the one person who could make her feel better through the shiny shit-show that appears to be her life lately.
Silent accusations call from the darker parts of her mind and she tries to drown them out by scoffing a cherry Bakewell. No, she isn’t using him – is she? Yes, she has a duty of care towards him. Yes, he’s still a resident, but does that even matter if he’s leaving soon? No, she hasn’t been clinging to him just to make herself feel better.
What if his feelings towards Grace are as real as hers are for him? It’s not as if this thing they have, whatever that might be, could ever actually go anywhere, at least not until Jack has moved out. She’d lose her job for one thing, not to mention her reputation. And then what would Mother Dearest think? Dad would have been appalled too, if he was still alive, but he wouldn’t have been able to get any words in between Mum’s repetitions of I’m just disappointed, that�
��s all. Just disappointed.
She shivers and tries to shake out some of the negativity. No time for wallowing today; there’s too much at stake. What is she thinking, standing around fretting about her love life? Selfish, Grace, Selfish. More important things are at stake. People die each week on the streets without shelter. From the cold, from the heat and from illness. From drugs and from violence and poor nutrition. She can’t let that happen to their lot.
She tries to push away the quieter voice. The one that reminds her how much money they actually need to raise. Peter’s words from the night before ricochet around her mind. He may have apologised – in his own way – but maybe he was right. Perhaps this is all a massive waste of time and custard pies. But it might just help her to claw back some precious time before she thinks of something else.
The hostel needs to be saved. And for that to happen, she needs to believe that it can. As Pinterest had told her several days ago, Negativity is the enemy of creativity.
‘Right you lot, grab your goodies and let’s go, let’s go, let’s go,’ Grace yells like a football coach right before a premiership game.
Jack picks up a tray of gingerbread with a little more force than is necessary, sending a man-shaped cookie hurtling to the floor, snapping off one of the legs on impact.
‘Three-second rule.’ Teardrop Terry scoops it straight up, shoving it right into his mouth.
Jack doesn’t look back at Grace as he strides out of the door followed by Terry, who leaves a trail of gingerbread crumbs in his wake.
Grace looks around for the others. Dawn and Cara are just specks on the horizon. Dawn had been keen to go and get started as quickly as possible and had left only seconds after Paul arrived.
It’s a busy morning in Dover town centre, and to Grace’s amazement, she and Paul have completely sold out after only an hour and a half.
Grace takes out her work mobile phone and calls St Jude’s café. She wants to show off and rub it in Peter’s face. He’d been wrong to say it would be a disaster.
There’s no answer. When she hangs up, a text from Jack/Room 4 appears on her screen, making her stomach twist. Jack shouldn’t be sending messages to her on the work mobile. What if Peter or one of the other staff members had seen it?
Sorry I stomped off. I really need to speak to you. I’ll be in the White Stag. Ps: We sold all our cookies. Mostly good feedback but some of the park customers requested space cakes next time.
Grace slides her phone back into her pocket and turns to Paul, trying to think of a polite way of losing him so she can go to the pub without him trailing behind.
‘Better get back to the ship!’ She opens her smile up as widely as possible.
Paul mock-salutes her before turning to go. Just as Grace’s fingertips find her mobile to tell Jack she’s on her way, Paul has swivelled back around again and taken a step towards her.
‘Before you go,’ he says as a frown falls across his freckled face. ‘I was hoping we could have a quick chat about that Dawn in number six. I probably should have mentioned this before, but she seems really frightened of me. The other day she said something about my red hair. How it had been following her around for over twenty years. She said I’d been getting away with it for too long, but she was onto me.’
‘That’s odd. I’ll talk to her. I think she sometimes gets a bit confused.’
‘Well, yes. Twenty years ago, I was two years old. The only person I followed around then was my big brother.’
Grace is dizzy by the time she arrives at the White Stag. Her head has been spinning the whole way there with thoughts of Jack. His lips, his arms.
His support plan. Her duty of care. How close they’d come to being caught by Peter.
By the time she finds Jack sitting in the back of the pub in the darkest corner, she’s struggling to string a sentence together.
‘You managed to tear yourself away then.’ Jack sounds agitated, his face is paler than usual and his hand wobbles, spilling drops from his drink on the table in front of him as he lifts half a pint of Pepsi to his lips.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says as she sidles in next to him on the wooden bench, an instant spark jolting between them as her thigh brushes against his. Grace shuffles back again a few inches. She won’t go into the ins and outs of why she’s kept him waiting. It’s her job to worry about Dawn and the others, not his, and blurring the professional boundaries between them is exactly what has got them into this mess.
‘I shouldn’t have stormed off like that in front of everyone this morning,’ he says, peeling at a beer mat. ‘It’s just you didn’t even look at me earlier, not even when I told you about my job, and then you jumped away from me every time I went anywhere near you – like I had something you didn’t want to catch.’
‘Jack,’ Grace begins.
‘I know it’s complicated. I know about the rules and that you could lose your job. I don’t want that to happen either, but I don’t want to ignore what we have between us.’
Grace remembers the two mugs from Jack’s room and how only one of them was being used until that first night they spent together in the residents’ lounge. She thinks about how far he’s come since he moved to St Jude’s. How his defences and his anger has fizzed away, dissolving bit by bit. And now he even has a job. She shouldn’t distract him from rebuilding his life.
But he’s been left so many times by people who had promised to love him. Grace knows what that tastes like. How could she make him go back to one mug?
Because if she doesn’t do it now, it will be so much harder later on. For both of them.
‘We need to put the past couple of weeks behind us,’ she says in a low voice, as if the whole of St Jude’s board of trustees is standing in the next room, listening through pint glasses they’ve pressed against the wall. ‘It’s for the best. I’m your hostel manager. Your point of call for housing-related support along with Peter. And that’s the way things have to stay.’
Jack shakes his head and stares intently at the ice cubes at the bottom of his glass. ‘I know you feel this… thing we have between us. You’re just too scared to take a chance on it, because, God forbid, it just might make you happy.’
Grace winces as Jack slams his empty glass back down on the table. She sucks back the tears that are stinging her eyes as they stick to her mascara. The hostel must come first.
‘I’m not even going to be a resident forever. If you can look at me, straight on without blinking and tell me you don’t want us to be together, I’ll drop it. I’ll go back to being the resident in number four and never bother you again unless it’s to tell you my toilet’s leaking, the laundry room is still locked or that I’m moving out.’
Grace locks eyes with the only man who’s ever made her feel like she matters.
‘I do care about you, Jack, but in a professional capacity. I care because it’s my job.’ The coldness in her voice ricochets from the corner of the walls in front of her and freezes her in place.
She watches the wall rebuild itself in front of Jack, rendering his eyes dull and empty. He shakes his head, gets to his feet and walks away for the second time that day.
The afternoon heat must have pulled every spare bead of sweat from Grace’s back. She peels off her sticky summer cardigan and ties it around her waist as she strides up the path to the hostel, still swallowing back the tears. She’d taken the long way around. More steps equal less stress.
Apparently.
The creative writing workshop must be running over time, as Grace can see the back of Hazel’s head and an outline of two other bodies huddled around a table in the café through the window. She looks back across the sea, willing it to wash away some of the guilt and disappointment. The cover of her diary says, Better to regret something you did than something you didn’t do. Actually, regret seems to come and bite you on the arse either way.
Grace feels her work smile crawl across her face as she opens the door to the café. ‘Hi everyone.’ Her voice sounds nor
mal. Happy, even. How long had she been putting on this mask that now moulds to her so easily?
‘You’re back!’ Peter sounds excited. Peter never sounds excited. His face is flushed and his eyes are sparkling behind his thick lenses. Grace remembers his anger from last night and worry pricks at her as the word relapse flickers across her mind. But he looks focussed and his speech is clear. He and Hazel are bent over a sheet of A3 and a set of marker pens.
‘Now, this looks like my kind of party,’ grins Grace before slipping into an empty chair next to Teardrop Terry. ‘I didn’t know you went to writing group.’
‘Writing group’s over,’ Terry says. ‘We just thought we may as well crack on with the fundraising.’
‘Hazel’s agreed to give us a hand,’ Peter explains.
Grace sees the glint in his eye and suppresses a knowing grin.
‘Wait till you hear what we’ve all come up with.’ Terry’s teardrop looks at odds with his wide, cheesy grin.
Grace looks at the three of them, pens in hand, and hopes they’ll forgive her for wasting their time when it’s all over. She’s pleased they want to help, and that they’re excited, but whatever their ideas are, it just won’t be enough to raise the kind of money they need.
‘Thanks for stepping in,’ she says to Hazel.
‘This was a group effort,’ Hazel waves her words away. ‘And it’s my pleasure. Holding my workshop here is the highlight of my week. Such a creative bunch. Even Peter joined in earlier.’
‘I did!’ Peter rubs his hands together. ‘And I’m coming back next week too. I don’t know why I’ve never taken part before.’
‘What do you think?’ Terry slides the paper across the table so it’s in front of Grace. A long list of ideas is written in black marker pen, and one of them has been bubbled in with squiggly pink ink.
‘We thought we could do a midnight walk around Dover – all the way up to the castle and back. We’re going to advertise on Facebook, link it to our JustGiving page…’
‘Amazing. Love it.’ Another image comes into Grace’s mind as she pictures the residents hiking round the very streets they used to sleep on. She sees them lined up in sleeping bags under doorways.