The Note: An uplifting, life-affirming romance about finding love in an unexpected place

by Zoë Folbigg

  ‘After you,’ James signals, as he holds out a palm for the man with the fold-up bike who never takes off his helmet, no matter how hot he is. Or the fact he won’t need a helmet for the next thirty-five minutes. The man with the fold-up bike came down the carriage lightning quick, to rob James and Maya of their moment. As Train Man walks on and concedes to standing by the doors, Maya tries not to scowl at the man with the fold-up bike, smug and sweaty in the seat opposite her. And she knows she can’t keep letting incidences like these shape her entire day.

  He won’t have seen the game show anyway.

  Maya consoles herself with the thought that at least Train Man won’t have heard her strange TV voice. Maya’s never even heard Train Man speak.

  I hope he doesn’t have a weird voice.

  A woman further down the carriage cranes her neck to have a closer look at Maya’s familiar face, she’s sure she saw her on the telly last night.

  *

  ‘Hi Tom, it’s Nena… Nincompoop Nena, from Arlo’s party?’ Nena’s trademark purr is tamed today by a rare feeling of nerves.

  ‘Nena hi! I hoped you’d call.’

  ‘Well here I am,’ she says, twiddling Tom’s business card in her brown hand as she lies on her back in a silk vest and shorts, in bed even though it is way beyond brunch time. Her flatmate Signe’s laptop balances on her taught tummy, open with tabs of children’s TV programmes, all playing simultaneously on mute. If Nena hadn’t been interested in a career change, she wouldn’t have done this much homework.

  ‘You were so great at Arlo’s party, I just thought it would be brilliant if you could come in for a screen test. Look around the studio, see a bit about what we do and the programmes we broadcast, see if it could work out.’

  Nena punches the air silently with her free hand. ‘I think I could do that,’ she says calmly.

  ‘Great, when’s good for you?’

  Nena thinks of the days of the week song she just watched presenters in primary colours sing, knowing Tom probably made it, and she sings, badly, down the line. ‘“Give it up for Friday…”’

  Toms laughs and Nena remembers his huge smile and twinkling deep-set eyes.

  ‘Friday’s good! Let’s say 3 p.m. yeah?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘And Nena…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘There’s always one clown.’

  Nena hangs up, smiles, slides Signe’s laptop onto the bed and kicks muscular legs in excitement as if she’s dancing on the ceiling with glee.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Maya is standing in front of a whiteboard with a lump in her throat. She hasn’t taught a class since July and suddenly the prospect of doing so again fills her with dread, even though she knows that by 9.30 p.m. she will be on a high, that feeling of having faced a challenge and overcome it. This is what Maya does. She tests herself. This is why she travelled to the jungles of Colombia at eighteen, this is why she runs distances that don’t suit her legs, this is why she signed up to be a volunteer teacher at the Hazelworth Collective College. This is why she is trying, still without success, to work out the alchemy of the macaron. Jacob is getting a little fed up with icing sugar all over his cramped kitchen at the weekends, but he can see an end in sight because Maya is looking at flats to buy and soon Jacob’s girlfriend Amelia will move in.

  Even though Maya feels a bit sick right now, the memory of two years of hilarious, bizarre and engaging students makes Maya marvel in nervous anticipation. Who will walk through the door this year? Stab turns to tingle and Maya shuffles her notes.

  In walk students who might also be feeling a little nervous to be taking the plunge, doing something they talked about doing for years. Or perhaps they signed up on a whim when they passed by on the open day last weekend. Maya looks at new faces as they enter the room and tries to look as friendly as possible. She has been told her resting face can seem a little serious.

  ‘Wow you look like a dream!’ A big New York voice comes out of a very small woman as she shuffles in. ‘How are ya?’

  Maya smiles. ‘Welcome. You are…?’ Maya looks down at her list of names and looks back up – or down rather – at the tiny bundle of a woman with cropped grey hair and thick bottle-end glasses.

  ‘Velma. Velma Diamond, pleased to meet you, Miss…’

  ‘Oh, just Maya.’

  ‘Well Miss Oh Just Maya, that skirt is darling, you look like a movie star from my era! I just know we are going to have fun!’ Velma Diamond clasps her veiny liver-spotted hands together.

  Maya blushes and smooths down the enormous bulk of her voluminous minty green skirt. ‘Pleased to meet you Velma, find a seat, it’s going to be great.’

  Nerves fizzle and fly out of the classroom door and Maya has a hunch that Velma Diamond makes people feel upbeat and at ease in every room she shuffles into.

  A photographic scene of an Italian harbour fills much of one wall in this high-ceilinged Georgian classroom that has been ruined by eighties decor. On the opposite wall a poster in bold black capitals on light blue paper reads:

  POLISH

  SWEDISH

  FOR BEGINNERS.

  When Maya was learning cake decorating she marvelled at that poster on the wall, black and blue, lit by strip lighting that gives everything a yellow tinge. She envisaged an old white-haired carpenter like Geppetto taking his yellow duster in hand and teaching a group of amateurs how to polish miniature models of Bergman, Blix, Benny and Bjorn, buffed and brushed in a most proficient way.

  More students file in, trying to look as if they’ve done this before.

  ‘Hi, I’m Gareth,’ says a fifty-something in guyliner, a checked shirt and DMs over rolled-up jeans as he extends a cold hand. ‘This is my daughter, Cecily.’

  ‘Ahh, I did see we have a few students with the same surname on the list. You must be the Taylors. It’s great when people come to class together because then they can spur each other on with homework.’ A serious face softens and smiles.

  ‘Homework?’ says Gareth. ‘You didn’t tell me I was signing up for homework!’ he laughs as he nudges an adoring daughter, who rolls limp eyes lovingly, adorned with the same eyeliner as her dad’s.

  When everyone has settled, Maya welcomes the class and asks them to introduce themselves and say why they want to learn conversational Spanish.

  There is Gareth and Cecily – an A Level student who joined because she couldn’t fit Spanish into her timetable at school, and she’s brought her dad along in the hope of him meeting a nice woman. Everyone laughs, except for the two women nearest his age bracket who look nervous and explain they are both happily married with two adorable children each thankyouverymuch. Housewife Esther Patterson has two boys who are eight and five, Doctor Helen Cruikshank’s girls are twelve and nine.

  ‘I don’t fancy either of them anyway,’ Gareth whispers to Cecily.

  Jan and Doug Kinsella hope to open a B&B in Andalucía; Glyn Davies – a six foot seven inch giant wearing head to toe beige – just wants to get out of the house because his wife is addicted to soap operas. This is the fifth course he’ll have done at Hazelworth Collective College. He also took the cake decorating course last year, despite not knowing how to bake a cake let alone cover it, so Maya recognises Glyn and it explains why he does look like he’s done this before. There’s Nathaniel Francis who is ludicrously handsome and looks about twenty years older than he probably is, wearing a cravat and a blazer. He’s there because he thought learning Spanish would be ‘jolly’; there’s Ed Noy, in his early twenties, whose girlfriend Valeria lives in Argentina. Ed wants to impress Valeria and her family by learning to speak their language. And of course there’s Velma Diamond, tiny but indomitable, who decided to learn Spanish because she wants to retire to Florida like a Golden Girl. ‘And if I’m gonna go partying in Miami Beach, I gotta speak the lingo,’ she smiles.

  Maya is fascinated, and wants to know how a seventy-something New Yorker with plans to retire to Miami Beach ended up in Hazelwo
rth. But right now she has a class to teach.

  ‘OK I think we’ve covered everyone apart from… you,’ she says, looking from a man in the doorway to her list. ‘You must be… James Miller?’ A heavy skirt turns to the gormless-looking man with long hair hanging lankly over an undercut.

  ‘No, I’m Keith Smith,’ says a voice devoid of any character.

  ‘Oh I don’t have a Keith on the list, sorry Keith, hello – why do you want to learn Spanish?’

  ‘Well, you could say I’m partial to an Ibero-Romance language, heavily influenced by Basque, Arabic, French and Italian,’ he says in a monotone as his eyes dart under heavy, furious blinks.

  Everybody stays silent.

  ‘Ah, great. Do you speak other languages then, Keith?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Wonderful, let’s get started!’

  Maya crosses out James Miller with her black felt-tip pen, not knowing that it will be a name she will soon yearn for, and writes Keith Smith on a new line below it.

  Chapter Eighteen

  December 2013

  Simon’s legs widen as the doors beep rapidly ten times and close. Catherine hasn’t got on. Catherine hasn’t not got on the 6.18 train since Simon first offered her a Polo mint and they started talking, travelling together, exchanging texts… and for a moment, a rare thing happens and Simon starts to doubt himself. He looks at his phone and scrolls through their most recent flirtation. Simon always ends the conversation on a text from Catherine. In business, he’ll respond, look keen, be last to send a friendly note, but with women, he ensures he isn’t the last to reply. That’s how he works and it’s never failed him before. Keep ’em hanging. Last night, Simon made one simple suggestion as he arched his phone screen towards the radiator, away from his wife Laura sitting next to him on the sofa doing online banking, while Gracie, Monty and Esmée slept upstairs, dreaming feverishly of Christmas to come: ‘Meet for an after-party of our own?’

  Catherine didn’t answer. The conversation ended with him texting her. That made Simon feel more uncomfortable than the risk he had taken, putting the idea out there, of he and Catherine meeting after their works’ Christmas parties. Now Catherine isn’t on the train and Simon’s face feels hot with embarrassment and rejection and he’s worried he might have blown it when it felt so obvious they were going to fuck.

  He looks out of the window as the train gathers speed. Over the bridge. Past the house with the two iron butterflies nailed to the render. Towards bare brown fields, ploughed into orderly lines that are gently kissed by the first frost of the season.

  A phone vibrates in Simon’s tight raspberry red trouser pocket. Party trousers. A little jazzier than his usual work attire. He runs a hand to push his grey hair back from forehead to crown and it perches obediently in place, as if on tenterhooks to see what communication awaits its master.

  Stuck in back half so found a seat here. But I like your style. I’ll see you at the Hotel du Vin you Naughty Boy.’

  He replies with a wink,

  Happy fucking Christmas.

  Oh, and I’m not wearing any knickers.

  Simon laughs audibly and northbound commuters look at him witheringly.

  Slut. She deliberately got on the back half of the train, the tease.

  Simon wonders what Catherine’s beautiful pixie face will look like when they’re having sex. And doesn’t reply.

  *

  Jacob and Florian lift the last of the boxes over the threshold and into the hallway of Maya’s new home. As with all the other boxes, trunks and suitcases they moved five streets from Jacob’s terraced house to this airy Victorian maisonette, they carried them at an incline of fifteen degrees as Florian’s formidable height made the contents of, well, everything, slide to Jacob’s end, and stockier shoulders had to bear extra weight.

  Jacob leans his back against the hallway wall and slides down it until his bottom hits the black and white checked tiles of the floor. Florian looks at him with brotherly disdain and a dry mouth.

  ‘Jesus Christ any chance of a tea?’ Florian shouts up the flight of stairs.

  ‘Kettle’s boiling!’ Maya hollers back.

  Maya stands in the small kitchen at the top of the stairs with Jacob’s girlfriend Amelia, who is rummaging for mugs in a crate marked ‘crockery’. Maya opens a box of tea bags she just picked up from the corner shop on the next street. The boys regroup.

  ‘Watch it bellend!’ snaps Jacob as Florian nearly lets go of the last box and sends it down the stairs, flattening Jacob in its wake.

  ‘Sorry, my bad.’

  As brothers with tired arms leave the box at the top and walk into the kitchen, both are hit by the glimmering light of winter sunshine bouncing through an undressed window and onto the stainless-steel kettle. Both make a visor with their right hand to protect their eyes. Both have the same pistachio green eyes of their father, the same light brown hair, and the same acerbic wit. Clara and Maya got their mother’s darker eyes, although only Maya’s flash with shards of orange.

  ‘Got any biscuits?’ grumbles a disgruntled babygiant. ‘I’m starving.’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ Maya says, rummaging through the red and white stripy plastic bag from the corner shop.

  ‘Custard Creams, Jaffa Cakes or Lindt Santas?’

  ‘Two of each,’ Florian commands.

  Amelia, with her deep auburn mane plaited into a braid, hands mugs of tea out while Maya, dusting her hands down on her running sweatshirt and leggings, opens the biscuits.

  ‘I’m really so so grateful, guys,’ she says, eyebrows rising just in the middle.

  ‘No problem,’ says Jacob, ever accommodating. ‘Flowers & Flowers Removals really ought to go into business.’

  This weekend the brothers will move Amelia from her Nottingham flat into Jacob’s house in time for their first Christmas together.

  ‘No, we shouldn’t,’ Florian says flatly.

  Maya gives him a grateful rub on the back.

  ‘Got any bread?’

  Maya opens a box marked ‘food’ and finds some pumpernickel.

  ‘Any good?’ she shrugs apologetically.

  Maya’s baby brothers, as reliable as ever. Clara’s hands are so full with her three sons that it’s always Jacob and Florian who rise to this kind of occasion. They are young, they are strong and they are around. They helped Maya out of her Finsbury Park flat three years ago, when her hair turned wavy, and brought her back home. At first, home was Flowers Towers, as their father Herbert calls it. The Georgian house at the top of the hill overlooking Hazelworth that has the perfect balance of symmetry for its orderly patriarch. Two chimneys at opposing ends of the long roof. Two long white windows on either side of the threshold, and one more with a small wrought-iron balcony perched above the grand white stone surround of the front door. Inside, pictures adorn every wall in pleasing, if dusty, alignment, and how fortuitous that Herbert and Dolores Flowers filled the house with two girls and two boys. It was healthy for Maya to be home, to be reunited with the bookcase she gazed at as a child, but when Jacob bought the terraced house near the train station, he offered Maya the spare room while she fixed her heart and found her feet. Jacob. NASA StarChild at five, Young Scientist of The Year at thirteen, first-time buyer before his big sister.

  ‘It really is lovely, Maya,’ says Amelia, looking to the high kitchen ceiling. ‘And it doesn’t need all that much work.’

  ‘Oh god it does, look at those frames,’ Maya motions to the kitchen window, sun still beating in. ‘I could break into those windows with a toothpick! Good job my most valuable item is only a KitchenAid.’

  ‘Bingo!’ says Florian, pulling a squashed loaf of bread out of a cardboard box.

  Florian stays for a sandwich while Jacob and Amelia stroll down the road arm in arm, back five streets to his house – their house – and an exciting future ahead of them.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Maya waits nervously in a buzzing reception area as big faces of big TV stars look dow
n on her from digital walls. The Doctor incumbent points at her from the largest, most fanfare-like spot in the lobby.

  She picks up a copy of the staff newspaper and flicks through. A familiar face shines on page three.

  Nena Oliveira is the new face of Children’s…

  ‘Oh put that down!’

  Seemingly the photo can talk.

  ‘Look at you! All grown-up!’ says Maya, turning to the figure standing over her.

  They hug. The smudgings of Nena’s DIY clown make-up are long gone: sleek but heavily applied gold sparkles line her eyes and her red lips have been toned down with a blush beige. The apples of her cheeks look rosier than ever. Nena is a girl who doesn’t need make-up, and with so much on she looks like a cartoon caricature of herself.

  ‘I look ridiculous! Let’s get outta here.’

  ‘Hang on, you have to take a picture of me in front of that, my nephews will go nuts.’ Maya points to the blue telephone box down the hall and gives the man on the wall a quick glance to see if he’s still disapproving.

  ‘You’re such a tourist,’ Nena scoffs as she glides across the shiny reception floor in her Bloch ballerina flats, hair swishing independently behind her. She takes her phone out of her pocket. ‘Come on then!’ she whispers urgently, worried that Maya’s starry eyes might embarrass the new star signing.