‘Waterfalls or No Scrubs?’
‘Oh, ha ha,’ I say, even though it does make me want to laugh. There’s never a bad time for a Nineties music reference.
‘Hot shower, warm pyjamas, drink of water, bed, book, tea and biscuits. The Great British cure for everything.’ I can hear that he’s smiling as he repeats my instructions. ‘I wish I knew your name so I could thank you properly, but at the same time, I kind of like not knowing it. So thank you, mysterious stranger, for saving my life. And for the interesting mental images of mannequins wrestling naked in chocolate. Or something. That is what you were doing when I called, right?’
I giggle. ‘Thank you for a night I’ll never forget.’
‘Even the rain’s stopping,’ he says. I can hear him walking now, the wet flop of something against his phone. Maybe his hair? ‘What a wonderful night.’
I smile because, in a weird way, it was.
I’ve never spoken to someone who understands me the way he seems to. It feels kind of magical to speak to someone who you can never speak to again; a connection with a stranger I’ll never meet, on a night I’ll always remember.
‘Thank you for everything,’ he whispers, his voice catching again. It makes me want to hug him even more than I wanted to hug him anyway which was already immeasurable on the wanting-to-hug-someone scale. ‘Goodnight, lovely.’
The phone clicks off and I sit back on my knees, staring at the handset in shock.
Lovely. That’s what Leo from It’s A Wonderful Latte up the road calls me. I mean, I’m sure it’s what he calls every customer but it still makes my heart beat faster every time he says it.
The thought that it could’ve been him flits across my mind but I dismiss it instantly. There must be millions of guys who use endearments like that…
It couldn’t be, could it?
No way.
No way could someone be suffering so much on the inside and hide it so well on the outside. Leo is the happiest person I know. He’s the one bright spot on a dull winter day. He’s the reason I buy a coffee every morning on the way to work. His smile makes every overpriced cup worthwhile. He’s the brightest, happiest, smiliest, most cheerful guy in town.
No way in a million years would he be considering taking his own life.
No way was the guy on the other end of that phone Leo.
Chapter 2
‘Puss puss puss puss,’ I call, standing in the front garden and shaking a box of cat biscuits.
A black cat immediately appears on the gatepost and starts rubbing around my hand, a tabby cat peers cautiously out of the hedge, a ginger cat jumps onto the fence from the other side, and there’s a meow from up the street.
‘Good morning, kitties.’ I pour cat biscuits into a row of dishes and stroke the cats brave enough to come over. I put a handful of biscuits down in the hedgerow for the little tabby cat who’s too scared to come out.
‘Morning, George!’
My dad makes me jump, peering around the side of the house from the top of a ladder and giving me a wave. I thought he was still in bed. He deserved a lie in after he waited up for me to come home last night. When I eventually got in, he had dropped off in front of the TV with a blanket over him and a cold cup of tea beside him. A cold cup of tea is enough to ruin anyone’s night.
‘What are you doing up there? You’re nearly eighty!’ I try not to cringe at the sight of him up the ladder, merrily waving with one hand while stapling his Christmas lights up with the other. He’s not even holding on. ‘Please will you get down? I can do that after work!’
‘It’ll be dark by then and you won’t be able to see what you’re doing. Besides, I like doing it, and I’m being careful. Reminds me of being a young lad again and you wouldn’t deny an old man the pleasure of remembering his youth, would you?’
‘You’re not young anymore,’ I mumble to myself. I often feel like I’m the only one who notices my dad’s age. He’s had a couple of scares with his heart, and some nights his arthritis means he needs help getting out of his chair, and then other days, he’ll be outside washing the car, painting the shed, and stapling Christmas lights up from the top of a very high ladder. Possibly all three at the same time. You never know with my dad.
He’s retired now but he used to work for the council. He was solely responsible for the Oakbarrow Christmas tree that stood outside the churchyard every December. He’s fearless when it comes to decorating. The other workers used to stand back and let him get on with it. I remember many an enchanting walk to school with my mum when we’d stop for a few minutes and watch him putting the first decorations up, and then we’d be late so we’d have to rush, but it wouldn’t matter because everyone who walked to school down the high street would’ve stopped to watch too. And then, like magic, on the way home, we’d stop and admire the newly decorated tree. His retirement was the beginning of the end for the Oakbarrow Christmas tree. No one else on the council cared about it as much as he did. Now the only thing he decorates is our house, and he manages to put the same amount of magic into it as he always used to with the Christmas tree.
I give the ladder a wary glance, trying to assess it for rickety-ness, and Dad gives me another reassuring grin from the top of it, like he can tell exactly what I’m doing. I could try to argue with him about getting down, but I know that even if he gets down to appease me, he’ll be back up there as soon as I’ve turned the corner at the end of the street when I leave for work.
After the phone call last night, I tried to go back to doing our first Christmas window of the season –
showcasing our brightest, sparkliest eveningwear ready for Christmas party season – but I couldn’t concentrate on a thing, and it was about half past one when I finally gave up and went home, leaving the windows unfinished. If Head Office pop down for a surprise spot check today, I will be in serious trouble. Thankfully surprise spot checks are few and far between now. Things have been so quiet that there’s not much to spot check on.
I grab my bag from beside the door and tell Dad again to be careful as I go out the gate in the bright December sunshine. It’s a beautiful morning, surprising after the downpour of last night, and I’m earlier than usual because Head Office consider it unprofessional to dress windows when customers are around, so I need to get them finished before we open at nine.
There’s something niggling me about Leo from It’s A Wonderful Latte too. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about him all night. All right, he’s so gorgeous that I tend to think about him quite a bit anyway, but there’s definitely been an abnormal amount of thinking about him since that ‘lovely’ last night. It couldn’t have been him on the phone, and yet the thought won’t leave my head.
My pace quickens as I walk through the residential streets towards the upper end of the high street. I don’t even know why I’m going so fast. I tell myself it’s just because I really shouldn’t have left naked mannequins on display in the window and sequinned backing paper only halfway up, and I’ve actually got quite a lot to do before the shop opens – not least because if Head Office do find out about the windows and question why they aren’t done, I will be in huge trouble. Taking that phone call last night goes against every rule the charity has. It was a call meant for the trained counsellors on the helpline. By taking it, I could have been responsible for making the situation worse. I should have immediately redirected him to the correct number, and the fact that I didn’t is probably a firing offence. If anyone notices the windows, it will open a can of worms about why I clocked a few hours of overtime last night but apparently didn’t get anything done.
My chest is tight and I’m walking so fast that sweat is beading on my forehead even though the morning air is so chilly. I pause outside what used to be a toy shop next door to It’s A Wonderful Latte and try to mop it up with my sleeve and calm my heart rate. I take a deep breath, count to five, and carry on, glad all the surrounding shops are shut so there are no shopkeepers to watch me trying to remember how to br
eathe outside the old Hawthorne Toys building. Even I don’t understand what I’m getting so worked up about. I love coming here every morning. Leo’s mum works in the kitchen, baking sweet treats to tempt customers, and Leo makes the best coffee I’ve ever had. The shop has a real homely, family feel, with a big open fire in one corner surrounded by cosy sofas, mismatched tables and chairs that make it easy for customers to take a liking to and always sit in the same place. There are lots of natural wood fittings and fixtures, the lighting is soft and warm rather than blindingly bright, and it always smells of roasting coffee and cakes baking.
‘Ah, my favourite Georgia.’ Leo looks up and gives me a wide smile when the bell above the door tinkles as I go in. His curly hair flops across his forehead and he shakes it back. ‘You’re early today. Morning, lovely.’
And I just know. No one says ‘lovely’ in quite the same way he does. No wonder I thought his voice sounded familiar. I speak to him every day.
My mind is suddenly reeling. How can he have been the person on the other end of that phone? How can he have been thinking of taking his own life? How can things be so bad for him underneath the happy face he shows to customers?
‘Yeah. Er, couldn’t sleep. Thought I’d get an early start,’ I stutter. I’d be less shocked if I’d just walked smack bang into the back end of a hippopotamus. It’s like I’m having an out of body experience. My brain can’t comprehend that the man on the phone was Leo. That he’s the guy I felt such a connection with. That his bright smile is hiding so much pain.
Maybe I’m wrong. I must be wrong, and at the same time, I know I’m not. I have absolutely no doubt that it was him. Everything suddenly adds up. Leo named his shop after It’s a Wonderful Life, so he obviously knows the film we talked about last night. He’s definitely in his late thirties. The man on the phone even said his mum works with him and Leo’s mum does. Leo often talks about funny words and the man last night said that honking was a good one. Which it undeniably is. And I get the feeling it’s one Leo would appreciate too.
‘Me too, on both fronts,’ he says. ‘What can I get you? You’re just in time for the start of the Christmas menu. The festive coffees I’ve been teasing you with for weeks are finally available if you want to try something different?’
His smile doesn’t falter and the expression on his face doesn’t change. He looks at me exactly the same way he looks at me every other morning. He doesn’t realize it was me.
And I can’t tell him.
How can I say that the ‘stranger’ he opened up to is someone he sees every morning? I can’t tell him that I work on the same street, that if I walk to the bend in the road just past the bank, I can see the duck-egg-blue and mocha-brown frontage of his coffee shop. I can’t tell him that he’s the sole reason for my caffeine addiction, or that seeing his smile brightens my day, or that he shared his deepest feelings, something he obviously works hard to keep hidden, with someone he actually knows. He’ll be embarrassed. He might be scared that I’m going to tell someone. People can be more open with a stranger. They can tell them things they wouldn’t tell a friend. Not that I’m exactly a friend of Leo’s, but we share two minutes of conversation every day. He wouldn’t have said half the things he said last night if he knew I’d be buying a coffee from him in the morning.
It was a private conversation between two strangers. It was a magical connection on a wonderful night. It’s not my place to drag it into the real world. It will change everything, and it would certainly breach even more anonymity rules than I’ve already broken. If he’d phoned the helpline like he intended to, if I’d given him the right number and made him phone there like I should have done, we wouldn’t be in this situation.
If he doesn’t know, which he clearly doesn’t, I can’t tell him.
‘Go on then, what have you got?’ I suddenly realize that if I recognized his voice then he could recognize mine. He did say he thought I sounded familiar too. I clear my throat and put on a lower voice to disguise my own. I’m going for low and sultry but probably sound more along the lines of flu-ridden moose. ‘I still think you could’ve given me an early preview. You’ve had that countdown to Christmas coffees on the counter since mid-October, and everyone knows your Christmas coffees are the best thing about this time of year,’ I say, referring to a joke we’ve had every morning lately. He’s had a hand-drawn chalkboard by the till counting down the days to Christmas coffees for weeks, and knowing I love all things festive, he’s been teasing me about them every morning.
It’s a shred of normality in what has otherwise been a completely abnormal morning.
I search his face for some hint of what happened last night, but I don’t know what I expect to find. He’s wearing his usual plain black T-shirt and baby blue apron with ‘It’s A Wonderful Latte’ embroidered on the chest in brown thread. There’s no hint of how cold he got. His denim-blue eyes aren’t bloodshot from crying, his face isn’t red or puffy, and his mop of curly hair is styled and quiffed at the front. If I think the man in the shop this morning will show some hint of the truth revealed by the man on the phone last night, then I’m sorely mistaken. His mask is firmly back in place.
‘So …’ he says, sounding like he’s waiting for an answer.
‘Oh, I’m sorry, I was miles away. Can you tell me again?’ My face flushes bright red. I must’ve been staring at him without listening to a word he was saying.
‘You okay?’ he asks in such a genuine way that it makes me feel like I really could tell him if I wasn’t.
‘Absolutely fine, thanks. Sorry, the early start clearly doesn’t agree with me. Better add an extra shot of espresso to today’s drink. What have you got again?’
‘I was saying my Christmas coffee syrups are out today because it’s the first of December. I was thinking about you when I put them out this morning because I know you’ve been waiting. I’ve got warm apple pie, caramel pecan, chestnut praline, gingerbread biscotti, peppermint, orange and cranberry, mince pie, and unlike the big coffee chains, my pumpkin spice will stay available until January.’
‘Mince pie flavoured coffee?’ I pull a face involuntarily. ‘Yuck.’
He grins. ‘I knew you’d say that. It’s really nice though, trust me.’
I’m sure he knows as well as I do that I’ll try one flavour a day until I’ve decided on a favourite. I love seasonal coffee and he always has the best selection. ‘How am I supposed to choose out of all those? They all sound delicious. I’ll try the –’
There’s a clatter from the kitchen and Leo looks panicked for a second. ‘Hold that thought.’
He rushes out the back and I hear him talking. I sidle along the counter to the one spot where, if you squint, you can see through a gap in the sliding door and straight into the kitchen.
‘I’m fine, dear, I just dropped an oven tray.’ Leo’s mum pats his arm. ‘You don’t have to worry, I’m quite capable of managing. It was all vibration and no damage.’
Maggie is a tiny, frail woman who I sometimes see sitting in the kitchen of the coffee shop with her feet up and an oven timer on the unit beside her, always looking so happy to be there. She’s just as cheerful and friendly as Leo is, with the same bright eyes and curly hair, and never without a smile.
Leo comes back looking slightly more het up than before. ‘Sorry, just my mum clattering around with the morning muffins. Have you decided yet?’
To be honest, I’m so distracted that I’ve already forgotten what his new flavours are, but an idea comes to me. ‘What would you have? If you were going to have one, which would you go for?’
‘Mince –’
‘And not mince pie, I’m not brave enough for that this morning.’
His face lights up with his wide grin, the one that makes it impossible not to grin back at him, letting me know he was only saying it to wind me up. ‘I’d go for the peppermint.’
‘Okay, peppermint latte it is. I’ll take two of those, please.’
‘Two?’ He doesn’
t hide the double take. ‘You must be really tired. How many years have you been coming in here and I’ve never made you two coffees before. Rough night?’
Oh, if only you knew. ‘Something like that. How about you?’
‘Me?’ He’s already gone over to the espresso machine but he turns around with a raised eyebrow that makes me wish I’d kept my mouth shut. ‘Nah. I was tucked up in bed with a hot water bottle and a hot chocolate by ten o’clock. Snug as a bug.’
What did I expect him to say? I’m a customer. We might have a few minutes of friendly banter every day, but we’re not friends. I didn’t really think he’d turn around and say, ‘I nearly threw myself off a bridge last night’, did I?
He slides one peppermint latte onto the counter and goes back to the chrome coffee machine to make the other one, the milk frother hissing on the unit beside him. I look at him while his back is turned and wonder when he lost so much weight. I’ve never noticed how loosely his apron is done up at the back, as if to hide his waist that hasn’t always been that narrow. His bare arms are pale, having lost the tan they had in the summer, and although muscular, there isn’t an ounce of fat on them and I’m certain there used to be. His hair is short at the nape of his neck but straggly, like it needs a trim, and the curls on top are light brown with a few natural highlights left from the late autumn sun. He reminds me of a cross between Patrick Swayze in Dirty Dancing and the Hollywood stars of years gone by, a lovechild of Steve McQueen and Paul Newman, with his sharp jawline and bright blue eyes that are always smiling.
He carefully writes my name on the first cup, complete with fancy scrolls underneath and a star above the ‘i’, and it makes me smile like it does every morning. Even though the shop has been gradually getting emptier in the last few months, even when I’m the only customer, he still writes my name on the cup, and I don’t know why it feels as special as it does, or why I try to imagine what he’s like outside the coffee shop as I walk to work sipping my latte. I think about what his life might be like, if he might be single, and how much I wish I had the courage to ask him like my best friend, Casey, would. She’d just march in and say ‘Are you single? Do you want to sleep with me?’ I’m not that brave. I just chat to him while he makes me a latte and think about how much I’d like to run my fingers through his curly hair.
It's a Wonderful Night Page 3