The Sight of You

by Holly Miller

  Even as Esther cuts him short with a cough, I feel something stir inside me, the waking flex of a sleeping creature.

  “Why don’t you what?” Ben plonks his rugby player’s physique next to me, pint in hand, surveying our faces expectantly. He embodies exactly the end of a working day—shirtsleeves rolled up, hair askew, eyes off-duty.

  “Nothing,” I say quickly. In the drained glass to my right, I notice a ladybird out of its depth in the dregs. I slide my fingers against the tidemark, perform a rescue. It flits away.

  “There’s a job coming up at Waterfen,” Gavin says. “You know—the nature place, where you can go and be tortured for charity? Apparently it’s Callie’s dream career, so—” He breaks off and shoots Esther a look, which is his usual way of objecting to being kicked in the shin.

  Ben straightens up from ruffling Murphy’s ears. “I thought you loved the café.”

  His bafflement scours me like sandpaper. “I do,” I assure him quickly, ignoring Gavin’s raised eyebrow. “Don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere.”

  Ben’s expression becomes relief, and I know what it means—that for the café to be in safe hands would mean the world to Grace. Leaving my job to become manager after she died seemed so obvious it was almost logic. Ben was committed to a marketing role he loved, while I was stagnating at the paint-tin company. I’d been there for eleven years—eleven years of organizing my boss’s diary, making her coffee, answering her phone. It was only ever supposed to be a stopgap after uni, a quick way to make rent—but three months in, it became permanent, and a decade after that, worthy of a long-service award that amused Grace no end. “Ten years loyal to one woman,” she’d teased, when I turned up at hers with the bottle of champagne I’d received. “It’s like a weird little marriage.”

  That was just a year before she died.

  I adopted Murphy from Ben not long afterward. He’d been Grace’s dog, really, but there was a no-canines policy at Ben’s office, and plenty of love going spare at the coffee shop.

  Owning a café was the first steady anything Grace had done in the six years since we’d left uni—but even that started out as a whim. She used an inheritance to impulse-buy the lease on an old children’s clothing shop, taking us all by surprise. She’d been traveling the world in the interim, working as she went—waitressing, telesales, handing out flyers in costume. Occasionally she’d call me from some faraway country, regale me with her latest adventures and disasters, and I’d come off the phone piqued and envious. I’d fantasize briefly about catching a flight myself, feeling the dopamine thrill of having finally fled my own tiny patch of globe.

  I wondered, often, what it would be like to take off like that. I was drawn to places of vast wilderness, endless skylines, dizzying panoramas. We’d learned one term in school about South America, and ever since, I’d lusted over a particular national park in the far north of Chile. Our geography teacher had visited, just two summers earlier, and by the end of the lesson we all felt we’d journeyed there with her. I related her adventures to my dad that night, asked if we could holiday in Chile next summer. He laughed and said we’d ask Mum, which I knew immediately to be his way of saying no. He was probably correct in thinking that no one in their right mind would acquiesce to such a request from a ten-year-old.

  So I traveled to the altiplano in my mind instead, pored over pictures of snow-capped volcanoes and sweeping vistas, dreamed at night of alpacas and llamas, falcons and flamingos. It became my escape, whenever I needed one—to drift off to that corner of Chile, made fable by my imagination.

  I always promised myself I’d go. But after leaving university I had precious few savings, and I wasn’t too sure I suited Grace’s legendary work-as-you-go approach. I had none of her boldness, and far too much of my own self-doubt. The timing never seemed quite right—I was job-hunting, trying to save, working hard, dating. And so the years slipped by, and Chile remained a far-flung dream.

  I know it’s always seemed to Ben that managing the café was a welcome route out of a job I was bored stiff in. But all it’s really done is remind me that serving coffee isn’t my passion. I’m still living in the town where I was born, and meanwhile there’s a world out there—pulsating with possibility as it turns, turns, turns.

  8.

  Joel

  I’m accidentally-on-purpose walking past the vet’s practice where I used to work. I do this at least once a week. Don’t ask me why.

  Maybe I’m pretending I still work there, that I’m about to pass through the swing doors like nothing ever changed. Say hi to Alison on the front desk, pause to chat with Kieran on the way to my consulting room.

  I spot him in the car park. He’s outside the rear door with his back to the brick wall, taking five.

  I cross the road and head over. Raise a hand as he sees me.

  “Hey.” He straightens up. “How you doing?”

  “Good, thanks.” I nod like it’s true, though we both know it’s not. “You?”

  “Needed some fresh air.”

  Joining Kieran against the wall, I steal a glance at his navy-blue uniform. It’s identical to the one back at my flat. The same uniform I was proud to wear, once.

  We tip our faces toward late-September sunshine. “Bad day?” I ask him.

  “Not great. Remember Jet Mansfield?”

  “Sure.” The deaf Border collie, with an adorable ancient owner, Annie. She adopted Jet shortly after her husband died. The pair of them were devoted to each other.

  “I amputated his front leg six months ago. Sarcoma.”

  I look at him, take a guess. “And now it’s back?”

  “Just had to break the news to Annie.”

  “How’d it go?”

  “About as well as you’d think.”

  “What’s she going to do?”

  “Fortunately she agreed with me.”

  Max pain relief, I think, and a comfy bed.

  “I doubt he’s got longer than a month.”

  I picture Annie taking Jet home. She’ll be doing her best to pretend everything’s normal. Shaking food into his bowl as she tries not to cry. “You okay?”

  “I guess.” Kieran smiles faintly, looks at me. “Sort of nice having you out here again. Feels like the old days.”

  I’ve kept Kieran in the dark about my dreams: I always feared him assuming mental instability, pitying me. Thinking privately, even, that it was a good job I left.

  Since he’s my friend and ex-boss, Kieran’s respect means everything to me. It’s part of the reason I quit, jumped before I was pushed.

  I force a smile. “Yeah.”

  “Fancy a job?”

  I keep the smile but shake my head. “Too much on right now.”

  “Yeah,” Kieran says, “you do strike me as a guy with a really packed schedule. Just wandering past, were you?”

  “Yep,” I say, straightening up, clearing my throat. “Speaking of which, I should get going.”

  “Hit me up anytime,” Kieran calls out, as I head off across the car park.

  I raise a hand, keep walking.

  * * *

  • • •

  My route home takes me past the café. As I approach, I see Callie outside locking up, Murphy at her heels.

  I’ve dropped in most days since my first visit nearly three weeks ago now. Sometimes it’s Dot who serves me, sometimes it’s Callie. But I always find myself hoping for Callie. Once or twice, I’ve even made an adolescent play for time until I can see she’s become free. Pretended to mislay my wallet, dithered over a sandwich or croissant.

  I’m most unlike myself, I’ve found, whenever I’m around her.

  This morning I was seated near a customer who unwisely decided to disagree with Dot on the definition of brioche (Dot’s view: it’s not a cake). Mid-debate, Callie caught my eye from another table she was serving. We both
struggled not to laugh, until eventually she was forced to seek refuge behind the counter. Meanwhile, I had to put my head in my hands for fear of completely losing it.

  When eventually she came to take my order, I pretended to deliberate before loudly requesting brioche. At which point she started laughing all over again.

  It’s been a long time since I’ve laughed like that with anyone.

  Which is why, now, I’m hesitating. Watching her turn the key, check the handle, take a final scan of the shop front. It’s a moment perfect for approaching her, inviting her out for an after-work drink. But, just in time, I check myself.

  An image of Vicky’s pros-and-cons list fires like a flashbulb in my mind. I think of Kate too, before her, in bed with someone else.

  My life to date: intermittent stabs at normality (school, uni, girlfriends, work) between pockets of instability (wild-eyed experiments, heavy drinking, solitude).

  Honestly, dating? With someone as lovely as Callie, I wouldn’t know where to start.

  Forget it. What’s the point? Ridiculous.

  Besides, I’ve no actual evidence that she’d even be interested. To her I’m probably just another customer, and a slightly peculiar one at that.

  So instead I just watch, like I’m peering through a keyhole into another life. Callie’s wearing a pale denim jacket now, has pulled her dark hair into a topknot. Murmuring something in a low voice to Murphy, she slips on a pair of sunglasses. And then together they start to walk away.

  I experience a rare rush of wishing it were me by her side. One arm around her shoulders, high on her laughter as it mingles with mine.

  9.

  Callie

  In early October, a fortnight or so since my evening at the pub with Ben and the others, I take the morning off work to go flat-hunting.

  True to form, Ian’s first offering is a damp basement bedsit where I spot mousetraps in a kitchen cupboard. “I don’t want to live with mice, but I don’t want to break their necks either,” I confess.

  Ian looks at me as if he’s never met anyone so entitled in all his life. “You’ll be homeless at this rate,” he chides—though he’s smiling like it’s funny, which it’s not.

  In the living room of my next appointment—an upper-level flat in a Victorian terrace, where the landlord, Steve, wants to meet prospective tenants himself—I notice a framed picture. It’s of a dog almost identical to Murphy, made up of hundreds of tiny paw prints.

  “That’s Hayley’s,” Steve says, following my eye. A personal trainer, he’s head-to-toe in gym wear. “My wife. She’s a real dog person. Actually, that reminds me—I did ask Ian to check, but you’ve not got any pets, have you?”

  I cross my fingers and tell him no. It was pointless asking Ian to show me pet-friendly flats, mainly because they don’t exist.

  Still, so far, I’m impressed. The street is pleasant and tree-lined—which bodes well for a dawn chorus—and only a couple over from where I live now. The rent’s fifty quid more expensive a month, but then so was the bedsit and this is easily fifty quid nicer. It’s a bit stuffy up here beneath the rafters, but the communal hallway doesn’t smell of sick or urine, which, on a budget like mine, is depressingly rare.

  “There’s outside space,” Steve says, when I ask if there’s a garden, “if that counts.”

  We both know it doesn’t—that outside space is really only code for somewhere to keep the bins—but I force my face to look interested. “Oh?”

  He takes me over to the kitchen window, where I stare miserably down onto another concrete nightmare, this one crazy-paved, straight out of the seventies.

  I long, so much, for a lawn. Just something green to look at.

  “That all belongs to the guy downstairs,” Steve says. “Well, not actually belongs—he rents, like you. Sorry it’s so scruffy. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind tidying up if I asked.”

  “No,” I say quickly, because those dead leaves and old bricks, rotting wood and dodgy fence panels, are truly the only things going in that oversized patio’s favor. “Don’t. It’s good for the nature, all that stuff.”

  Steve frowns. “The . . . ?”

  “You know—the beetles and insects. Moths, spiders. They prefer . . . a bit of mess. For shelter, and . . .” I trail off, then switch on a smile because I really don’t want to lose this flat on account of appearing deranged. “So what’s he like? The downstairs neighbor.”

  Steve pauses for a long time, which forces me to wonder why a simple description like nice guy or decent bloke wouldn’t cover it.

  “Well, he keeps himself to himself,” he says eventually, which I’m fairly sure is a neutral way of saying antisocial. “You’d barely see him, probably.”

  I try briefly to picture this person, elusive as a polecat, slinking between shadows, nocturnal and nervous. Maybe a little domestic mystery is what Dot has in mind when she says I need more excitement in my life.

  * * *

  • • •

  Dot wrinkles her nose when I relate all this to her later that afternoon. A party girl at heart, she doesn’t really see the point of neighbors unless you can spend half your time hanging out in their flat sharing weed and flipping through their record collection. “You misspelled cappuccino,” she points out. “Two c’s.”

  It’s been a slow afternoon, maybe because storm clouds are filling the sky. I’m balanced on a stepladder, rewriting every one of our smudged menu items in bright white chalk pen and my best calligraphy.

  I lift a cloth to the board, wipe out half of the offending word, and try again.

  “Mind you,” Dot says, “I suppose he might be hot.”

  “Don’t start.”

  She shrugs, then starts anyway. “I still think you should let me introduce you to my kickboxing teacher.”

  “No, thanks. He sounds terrifying. And please don’t bring him in here.” Dot’s got form on this, inviting guys she thinks I might like in for coffee and cake. I’ve told her to stop, that it’s weird while I’m at work—not much different from going on a date in your office, running them through your hobbies, top holidays, and favorite films between bouts of photocopying.

  Naturally, Dot persists. “What about that guy I met speed-dating?”

  “Dot, I’m not going out with your speed-dating rejects. How desperate do you think I am?”

  Dot looks at me as though she wishes the question weren’t rhetorical. But before she can open her mouth to say as much, we’re interrupted by someone clearing their throat.

  Turning to see Joel behind the counter, I palpitate with embarrassment as I try not to imagine how long he’s been standing there. I never even noticed him walk in.

  “Sorry to interrupt.” His eyes are wondrous, near-black.

  He’s been coming to the café almost every day for at least a month now, usually first thing, sometimes late afternoon. He always sits in the same seat by the window, asks me and Dot how we are, fusses Murphy, tips generously, and brings his crockery to the counter on his way out. I’ve often spotted him brushing the crumbs from his table into a paper napkin, or wiping it down because he’s spilled a splash of coffee.

  Dot leaves me to it, shoulders shaking with mirth as she heads into the back office.

  “Sorry,” I fluster, clattering down the stepladder. “We were . . . Never mind. Idle gossip.”

  “No worries. Just wanted to—”

  “Of course. Sorry. What can I get you?”

  He orders an egg-and-tomato sandwich—he’s vegetarian, I discovered, like me—and a double espresso. He’s dressed for the cooler weather today in a charcoal crew-necked jumper, brown boots, and black jeans.

  “Speed-dating,” I find myself saying, rolling my eyes as I scribble down his order. “My idea of hell.”

  Joel smiles. “Yeah.”

  “I mean, it’s bad enough being judged by one pers
on on a blind date, but twenty people lining up to do it, with scorecards?” I affect a shudder. “Can’t think of anything worse. Isn’t it better to just meet naturally, and then . . . ?” Catching his eye, I trail off, the silence that follows more than overdue.

  He clears his throat and shifts his weight, like all he wants to do is make a break for the table by the window. “Couldn’t agree more.”

  Brilliant, Callie. Now he thinks you’re trying to hit on him. Really running with the desperate theme today.

  “Don’t wait,” I say hastily. “I’ll bring everything over.”

  “You’ve gone all clammy.” Dot laughs, reemerging from the office once Joel’s walked away, Murphy at his heels as if the pair of them arrived together.

  I let out a hoot of laughter, then hand her his order, clambering up the steps to finish writing where I left off. “What?”

  “You’re all pink and flustered.” She picks up some tongs, reaches into the cabinet for Joel’s sandwich.

  Outside, rain starts pelting the pavement with a shower of misty bullets. I lift the pen and start writing again. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Was he flirting with you?”

  “Definitely not.”

  “You know he comes in here virtually every day?”

  With a shrug I turn to her, though it’s Joel in my peripheral vision. “I think he’s just bonded with Murphy.”

  “Yeah,” Dot says, pursing her lips. “Murphy. That must be it. He really, really likes your dog.”

  * * *

  • • •

  “You can’t stay here all night, Cal.”

  “I don’t want to wake him.”

  “I’ll do it, then.”

  “No! Don’t. Give him five minutes. There’s plenty I can be getting on with.”

  Dot tilts her head and looks at him, like she’s taking in a particularly nuanced piece of art. “So what’s his deal, do you reckon?”