‘At the bank?’ His forehead furrows in confusion. ‘There’s nothing in your windows except mortgage posters and something about ISA accounts advertised by women who belong on dentists’ walls.’
Well, this is going swimmingly. ‘And I’m going to make sure my boss puts tinsel round the windows first thing tomorrow morning. And fairy lights.’
Oh, Jerry’s going to love me for this, isn’t he? There’s a miniature Christmas tree on a side table in the bank and that’s the extent of their festive decorations. There’s never been tinsel around the windows of that building, and now Leo’s going to be a bit suspicious if none goes up in the next couple of days after I’ve said all that.
‘And you did get a few extra customers today,’ I say, barrelling on without letting him get a word in. ‘A few people walked past and stopped to look at it. A couple of them came in, and –’
‘And you just happen to know that, do you?’ he says, but instead of sounding annoyed, he looks like he’s trying to contain a smile.
‘Lucky guess?’ I offer, cringing internally. I am terrible at this. ‘Bernard said he’d heard people talking about it, and you said yourself that your mum got a few likes on Instagram.’
‘So what are you doing back here tonight? Why have you washed it off and started again?’
‘I thought if a couple of people were talking about it today then a few more people would talk about it tomorrow if it mysteriously changed overnight, and maybe a couple more would come in and buy a coffee, and –’
‘But why? Why are you trying to help me?’
Because I like you. Because I know what your beautiful smile hides. ‘Because you make a wonderful latte?’ I say, cringing again at my terrible attempt to lighten the mood.
He bursts out laughing and it makes me smile just to see him not looking like he’s got the weight of the world on his shoulders for a moment. Pun coffee shop names will always have their uses.
‘I think we all need a bit of help sometimes,’ I say carefully. ‘And it’s okay to admit if we’re feeling a little out of our depth.’
I almost squirm under the intensity of his gaze. Even in the low light of the coffee shop, it feels like he’s studying me, trying to work me out, and I wonder if I’ve finally said too much, if that was too close to what I said on the phone, and this time he’s going to know.
‘George …’ he says eventually, ‘I’m assuming it’s okay to call you George given the It’s a Wonderful Life connection. I appreciate that you’re trying to help but you’re wasting your time. It’s the middle of the night and I know how early you have to get up for work and you should be in bed right now, not outside freezing to paint me a window that’s not going to help.’
‘How do you know it’s not going to help? Just because your business rates have gone up?’
‘How’d you know that? I know I rambled too much about my father this morning but I didn’t start going on about my business worries too, did I?’
‘Well, everyone’s have gone up, haven’t they?’ I say smoothly, quite pleased with myself for covering that so quickly.
‘You work for a national corporation and you don’t own your building. You’re telling me that you have any involvement in the bank’s business rates?’
‘Er, no, I just … um … it’s a bank. You hear people talking in there. About money. Obviously.’
He doesn’t look convinced.
‘My boss mentioned it,’ I try again and then growl in frustration to try to distract him. ‘Look, it doesn’t matter about that, but what it boils down to is that you need more customers and your windows aren’t exactly reaching out and dragging people in.’
‘I know.’ I expect him to elaborate but he doesn’t say anything else. Both his hands are still wrapped around his mug and he holds it up against his chin as if he’s trying to absorb warmth from the tea. He leans back and snuggles into the sofa and turns towards me, letting his head drop against the backrest. He lets out a long sigh like he’s trying to relax, but none of the tension drains from his body.
‘You look tired,’ I say, fighting the urge to reach up and tuck his curls back from where they’ve flopped over. ‘Were you asleep when you heard us outside?’
He snorts. ‘Asleep would be too kind a word for it. I was staring at the ceiling wondering if a swift hammer to the forehead might help.’
I put my hand on his arm without thinking. ‘No. No hurting yourself.’
‘I was joking.’ He gives me a tired smile. ‘I’m too much of a wuss to actually do it.’
Is that what he thinks about the other night too? That he was being a wuss by not going through with it? I should let go of his arm but I give it a squeeze, the soft dressing gown creasing between my palm and his skin, and I suddenly don’t care about saying the same thing. Leo being okay is more important than him not figuring out who I am. ‘It’s okay not to be okay, Leo,’ I whisper. ‘You don’t have to be the bubbly, happy, smiley guy all the time. It’s okay to struggle sometimes. No one has it completely together all the time. We all have days when it seems nothing will ever be right again, but it will, just as long as you don’t give up.’
‘You’re the second person to say that to me this week,’ he murmurs, not giving any outward sign that he recognizes the person saying those words.
‘Well, she was right too.’
‘How do –’
‘Your mum, right?’ I cover quickly. I’ve got to start thinking before I speak.
‘Er, yeah,’ he mutters, closing his eyes.
I still haven’t taken my hand off his arm so I give it another gentle squeeze. The urge to shift nearer and hug him is so strong that my other hand tightens around my empty tea mug hard enough that the ceramic might break. I want to sit here and stroke his hair until he falls asleep, to rub his shoulders, to hold his hand, to do anything just to make him know he’s loved. I can’t just sit here and pretend I don’t know what’s happening.
I let my fingers rub his arm gently, wishing the dressing gown would disappear and I could touch his skin. ‘Are you going to tell me why you’re sleeping here?’
‘I told you, I’m not going to unburden my private life onto a customer.’
‘You’ve made me this tea for free. Technically, I don’t count as a customer tonight.’
‘Nice try.’
I sigh and sit forward, reluctantly taking my hand off his arm and putting my empty mug down on the table in front of us. ‘Let me guess then. Not as a customer, as someone else who works on this street.’
‘Be my guest,’ he says, nonchalantly gesturing towards the empty shop without opening his eyes.
I get up and walk to the window and peer out into the blackness of the street. ‘We’re dying on our arses.’
He lets out a burst of laughter. ‘That’s a very blunt way of putting it.’
‘It’s true though, isn’t it?’ I gesture through the glass. ‘Look at this street. The only thing for sale on it are the shops, and even the bookies and e-cigarette places don’t want them. Every other high street in the country is overrun with bookies and e-cigarette shops, so that goes some way to showing how bad it is out there. I work here too, Leo. I know how hard it is to get customers.’
‘It’s not the same for you though. You’re not selling a product. You will always have people coming through your doors because people will always need somewhere to keep their money. A high street could close down shop by shop and the bank would still be there because locals will still need it. Coffee is a luxury that people don’t need anymore.’
I keep forgetting I’m supposed to work in the bank. I’m talking like the manager of a charity shop that’s likely to have our branch shut too. ‘If that was true, Starbucks would be out of business, and they’re not, they’re thriving.’
He grunts.
I take a deep breath, hoping that I’m right on this one because it isn’t something he revealed on the phone, and also hoping that if I am right, he might start to open up t
o me. ‘I don’t know where you were living before but I think you’ve given up everything to plunge every bit of money into keeping the shop afloat, and you’ve done everything right, and this place is amazing, but you’re still not winning, and it’s not because of your amazing coffee, it’s because of Oakbarrow High Street.’
His gaze is holding mine across the shop when I turn back to face him, and again, I can’t read him. I’m not sure if he’s going to cry or throw me out. Eventually, he lets out a long breath and leans forward, dropping his head into his hands and pushing his fingers through his hair. ‘Why do I feel like you’d see right through me if I lied to you?’
I turn around and sit on the window ledge next to the gingerbread house, facing him.
‘I sold my house, okay?’ He says it so quietly that I can barely hear him, his voice muffled behind his hands. ‘I sold my house so I’d have some money to invest in the business. It was a last-ditch attempt. I bought a bigger, better coffee machine, I bought a load of new varieties and flavours, I got the outside repaired and painted. I thought if I made it look nice, people would come, and I’d earn enough to rent a flat, and I just … haven’t. So yeah, you got me. I live here. I sleep on the floor in the staffroom, I shower in the bathroom, I eat my supermarket value range instant noodles in the kitchen and I have a lot of boxes of coffee that no one wants.’
‘How long?’
‘Few months. Give or take.’
I remember him getting the outside revamped. I remember builders up on scaffolding. I remember him saying they’d been rained off a few times and wondering if he should’ve waited until the weather improved in the spring. That’s more than a few months. That’s nearly a year.
‘What about your mum?’
‘Yeah. If you see her, could you not mention it? She doesn’t need the worry.’
‘I mean, couldn’t you stay with her?’
He’s quiet for a while. ‘I don’t want her to know how bad this is. If I tell her I need a place to stay, she’ll know. I mean, she knows I left my house, but I told her a friend needed some extra rent and I was staying with him as a lodger to help him out. I don’t want her to know how badly I’ve failed at this shop that was so important to my father.’
‘What about heating? It’s freezing in here.’
‘Heating costs money. More money than I can afford.’
‘But you have to look after yourself. You have to be well. This can’t be healthy.’
‘I have to heat it during the day for the customers, but at night… Even the wood for the fire costs money, and I’d rather not attract attention with smoke pouring out the chimney at all hours and let everyone know I’m living here.’
I think about him coming back here the other night. Wet and cold. I thought he was going home to a warm house, making something warm to eat, and snuggling down in a nice warm bed. Instead, he must’ve come back here, to a dark and freezing shop. I made him promise he’d have a hot shower, but the only place he could possibly shower in that miniscule bathroom is leaning over the toilet with a hosepipe from the sink. When I pictured him going home and cuddling into bed, he was actually getting into a sleeping bag on the floor. No wonder he groans every time he moves. It’s wrong on so many levels, and what’s worse is that he’s been living like this for nearly a year and I’ve never noticed. I’ve always thought he must get here by eight o’clock in the mornings to be open for people on their way to work, and the shop’s shut by the time I walk home in the early evening, but he’s usually still in there, scrubbing the counters and sweeping the floors, because I wave as I go past. Even the nights I work late to do the windows, I had no clue he was still here. All the lights would be out, the fire dead, and no hint whatsoever that someone was inside.
‘I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t tell anyone,’ Leo says, bringing me out of my thoughts. ‘Bernard’s the only person who knows and I’d like it to stay that way.’
‘I promise.’
He looks up at me, curls flopping forward with the movement. ‘And I’m sorry I overreacted a bit earlier. I get that you’re trying to help, I just don’t like being lied to.’
I gulp. I’ve done nothing but lie to him since the day after the phone call. He’s going to hate me if he ever finds out.
I sigh and slouch against the window, feeling lost and defeated. Things are much worse than I thought for Leo, even worse than he shared on the phone, and a festive scene on the glass isn’t going to make much difference.
‘What’s your outlook?’ I ask, wondering if he’s going to clam up again.
‘My business rates go up in January and I’m already over six months behind. I’m going to have a few weeks after Christmas to clear the arrears, or I’ve got no option but to declare bankruptcy and let this place be repossessed. And it feels a bit pointless to carry on trying. Even if I somehow manage to pay what I owe, I can’t begin to afford the new rates, they’re astronomical.’
I sigh again. Just like every other shop that’s closed down one by one. Hardly any customers, so hardly any income, so no chance whatsoever of paying the fee the council impose for the privilege of trading here. Charity shops are exempt which makes me feel ridiculously guilty and even more guilty for not telling him.
And I’m once again struck by how much of a front he puts on. It’s A Wonderful Latte has obviously been in trouble for many months, and never once has Leo’s smile faltered when I see him. He should be selling everything he can, and yet he still takes Bernard something to eat and drink twice a day, he still brought us a huge amount of coffee and muffins yesterday. He’s just as lovely as I always thought, kind, and generous to a fault, and I hate the idea of him losing this place that obviously means so much to him and his family.
‘Half the time, I think they’re trying to drive this whole street out of business so they can demolish it and build a fancy new companion mall to the soulless retail park,’ he says.
‘Who? The council?’
He nods. ‘Ignore me, I probably sound like a paranoid lunatic trying to blame someone else for my own failure. I’ll be ranting about conspiracy theories next. Did you know people reckon that Paul McCartney died in 1966 and was replaced by a lookalike? Apparently you can hear it if you listen to certain Beatles songs backwards.’
‘And the moon landing?’
‘Oh, fake, obviously. A cover up to hide the gazillions of little green men zipping around up there.’
‘Who all popped down to kill Paul McCartney in 1966?’
‘Of course! We should post this one online, it doesn’t get more nonsensical than Paul McCartney and aliens. And ol’ Macca’s always relevant at Christmastime, isn’t he?’ He hums the chorus of ‘Mull of Kintyre’ under his breath and we both start giggling.
‘I know what it’s like to work here too.’ I say when I can breathe again, refusing to be deterred, no matter how nice it is to see him smile. ‘Another shop shuts every week. It’s not you that’s failing, Leo, it’s the street itself.’
‘It’s nice of you to say, but –’
‘When this was the thriving café that your dad loved so much, the world outside was different. There was no internet shopping. There was no retail park ten minutes’ drive away with everything you could possibly dream of under one roof and free parking. The high street was all we had. It was a bustling hub for the whole of Oakbarrow.’
‘Exactly,’ he says. ‘You hear about high street restoration projects all the time, but our local council have left us to rot. There’s so much they could be doing to improve things. Instead we’ve got dead streetlights, parking restrictions with ridiculous fines, and business rates that are beyond unreasonable. It feels like the sooner they get rid of the few of us who are still here, the better.’
I wonder why I’d never thought about it before. He’s right, there are plenty of things the council should be doing, but they probably don’t have the budget to waste on places that aren’t worthwhile. No one cares about Oakbarrow High Street anymore. N
ot anyone who doesn’t work here, anyway.
I turn around again and peer out into the darkness of the street. ‘Do you remember what Oakbarrow used to look like at this time of year?’
He groans under his breath as he hauls himself off the sofa and comes over to stand next to me, leaning on the low shelf and looking out, pressing his forehead against the window.
‘It used to be amazing, didn’t it?’ he whispers, his breath fogging up the glass. ‘A real winter wonderland. I remember walking along this street with my dad and feeling like magic could happen.’
‘It always felt like everything happened here. Do you remember the carol services in front of the churchyard?’
‘They were amazing, weren’t they? My family have voices that make braying donkeys sound like Pavarotti, but somehow we all sounded like angels singing there. And the tree. It was the biggest one I’d ever seen in my life.’
‘I was thinking about that the other day. My dad used to be in charge of decorating it.’
‘Wow, really?’ he glances at me. ‘I loved that tree. I remember going to school on the days it was put up and by the time we got out of school and walked home, it was beautifully decorated. Dad always told me that elves came down from the North Pole to do it.’
I smile at the thought. ‘I’ll tell my dad that when I get home. He’ll love it. It’s been a long time since we had a tree like that on this street.’
‘It’s been a long time since we had anything on this street,’ he says, turning around and sitting on the little ledge.
He smells good, clean and citrussy, like the shower gel I saw in the bathroom, and he’s too near. Near enough that if I leant my head just a little bit to the side, it would rest on his shoulder, and the temptation is almost too much. ‘It always used to snow then,’ I say to distract myself. ‘It never snows anymore.’
‘Want me to ruin some more of your childhood?’ He looks at me and waggles his eyebrows.
‘You’re not going to tell me the Mickey Mouse you meet at Disneyland is just a man in a costume, are you?’
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