What Matters

by Gracie Leigh

The distraction had, however, gone a little way to sobering her up. With a final, rueful glare at the mirror, she returned to Ian’s fold at the bar.

  He threw his arms around her, drunkenly clutching her to him like she’d been gone for days. “Aren’t you having fun? Isn’t this fun?”

  Eddie looked up at him, wondering how much of her it would take to lie, but one glance at Ian told her that there was no need. His attention was elsewhere—on a tall brunette on the other side of the bar—and Eddie didn’t care. She didn’t care at all.

  And neither, clearly, did Ian. He hadn’t asked her why she’d run out on him yesterday morning, or even acknowledged the reason she’d called him that night in the first place. I’m nothing to him. A trophy, at best. And what kind of trophy was she now? Forty-eight hours ago, she’d been the daughter of financial shark, Michael Dean, and a musical prodigy. Now she was flat broke and hadn’t picked up her violin since she’d found out about her father’s bankruptcy, and it wouldn’t be long before Ian dropped her like a stone.

  Unless you drop him first…

  But the anarchist in her head wasn’t loud enough, not today, and perhaps not ever. Ian was a symbol of everything she’d lost—privilege and status—and the sight of him, his clammy hand on her shoulder, the scent of his cologne, was choking, suffocating, but she couldn’t give it up.

  Not yet.

  Chapter Five

  “Eddie…Eddie. Wake up. Your alarm’s been going off for ages.”

  “Wha—?” Eddie cracked open a heavy eye and peeled her face from Ian’s silk pillowcase. “What time is it?”

  “Ten past six.”

  “What?” Eddie shot bolt upright and instantly regretted it, her state of apparent undress even more abhorrent than the jackhammer having a party in her head. “Oh God, I’m late.”

  Ian grunted and rolled over, exposing his naked arse.

  Eddie shuddered and turned away, and the renewed blast of her alarm shocked her into action. Shit. She was late—really fucking late—and if she didn’t get moving soon, there’d be no point bothering to show her face at Jimmy’s Café ever again.

  She rolled from the bed and scrambled around Ian’s bedroom, scooping her clothes from the shiny hardwood floor—clothes that couldn’t be less suitable for what was left of her shift at the café if she’d tried. In desperation, she snagged one of Ian’s Fred Perry polo shirts from a nearby chair. Tucked into her long skirt, it looked ridiculous, but the camisole she’d worn the night before was practically underwear.

  Besides, it stank of whisky and Ian’s cigar smoke. Stuff it. On her way to the front door—after swiping a tenner from Ian’s open wallet—she balled the camisole up and dropped it in the bin.

  The bus stop in Greenwich was a five minute dash down the road, but the journey itself took forty-five minutes, and it was gone seven by the time Eddie burst into the café.

  Sam, rushed off his feet manning the grill and serving at the counter, treated her to a withering glare. “What time do you call this? I was just about to call Pops in to help me.”

  “I’m so sorry.” Eddie hurried behind the counter and dumped her bag by the till. “I overslept.”

  “You’re an hour and a half late,” Sam snapped. “That’s not oversleeping, it’s not giving a shit. I’d about given up on you.”

  “I said I was sorry. Look, I woke up at six, but I was in Greenwich and it took me an hour to get back.”

  “You couldn’t have called?”

  “I don’t have your number.”

  “Shame.” Sam cracked three eggs on the grill. “Watch those, will you? I’ve got tables to clear.”

  He thrust a spatula into her hand and stormed past her into the café, leaving her to stare at the fast-cooking eggs with a panic that was close in intensity to how she’d felt when her father had called a few days ago. Watch them do what? Eddie had no clue, and she approached the grill like it was an incendiary device, poking warily at the sizzling eggs. The whites were solidifying fast and crackling around the edges, but the yolks remained liquid and gloopy. Should I turn them over?

  Eddie’s idea of cooking was a Waitrose ping meal, but a jolt of reckless abandon surged through her just as Sam swept past her with a towering tray of dirty plates. She flipped the eggs.

  He nodded curtly. “Good. You can read tickets then.”

  Can I? Eddie searched for the source of his backhanded compliment and discovered it in the vein of the order tickets Sam had pinned above the grill. Oh. She hadn’t taken much notice of what he’d done with the tickets she’d handed him the day before.

  She read the first one: full x 2, bubble, easy eggs.

  Easy eggs. She scanned her brain for where she’d heard the phrase before and found herself in New York, ordering breakfast in an upmarket diner with her father on the last business trip she’d tagged along on before she’d gone to Italy. Eggs easy…over easy. Flipped. Genius, Eddie. Bloody genius.

  With considerable effort, she silenced the sardonic devil on her shoulder, and focussed on the rest of the ticket. A full English comprised of every meat product on the menu, as well as mushrooms, tomatoes, baked beans, and fried potatoes. Eddie had no idea where to start, but thankfully Sam reclaimed his spatula just as panic began to set in for real.

  “Go and put your stuff away. I’ve left something for you by your locker.”

  “What is it?” Eddie’s lateness had put her in the wrong, and clearly cemented her place in Sam’s bad books, so she didn’t imagine it was anything nice.

  In answer, Sam showed her his back. “You’ll see, but don’t go pissing around in there, yeah? We’re behind as it is.”

  Fair enough. Eddie grabbed her bag and hurried to the staff room. By her locker was a pristine white apron, starched and crisp, with a note in the scrawl she recognised from the order tickets: to keep your jeans clean.

  An odd warmth filled Eddie’s belly, and she found herself suddenly and irrationally cross. Why couldn’t Sam have just told her what it was? And why had he given it to her when he quite clearly couldn’t care less about the state of her designer jeans?

  Perhaps he doesn’t want you roaming his café in filthy clothes? But as sensible as that logic was, it didn’t seem right. Didn’t feel right. And Eddie had no idea why.

  And as she stood dazed in the staffroom, her hangover kicking in with blistering force, she came no closer to figuring it out.

  She folded the apron a few times so it wouldn’t drag on the floor, and tied it around her waist. Back in the café, Sam was serving at the counter. He spared her a brief once-over that did nothing to calm her spinning head, and gave her a curt nod.

  “Nice shoes.”

  Eddie glanced down at her feet. Oops. She’d neglected to account for the sandals she’d worn the night before. “You can hardly see them under my skirt.”

  “I ain’t worried what you look like, woman. It’s your feet that concern me.”

  Woman? Is he serious? “What’s wrong with my feet?”

  “Nothing…yet. Just don’t drop anything on them. Wearing those strappy things, you might as well be barefoot.”

  “Didn’t know you cared.”

  “Don’t start.”

  “Start what?” In spite of her splitting head, Eddie couldn’t resist an innocent grin. “Working?”

  Sam rolled his eyes and turned his attention—not that Eddie had ever truly had it—back to the grill. “Throw some plates through the dishwasher, then get out on the floor and clean up.”

  And so that’s what she did, though she quickly learned that the steamy, soap-scented dishwasher was the last place she wanted to put her face while she was hanging. Shame the customers that kept arriving didn’t care. And neither, it seemed, did Sam, if his amusement when he found Eddie at the back door some time later, hot and clammy, was anything to go by.

  “Don’t tell me you’re still half pissed?”

  “It’s hot in there,” Eddie snapped, fanning her face with her hand. “I’m not d
runk.”

  “Not anymore, at least. Good night, was it?”

  “Can’t remember,” Eddie admitted before she remembered who she was talking to. She couldn’t suppress a shudder, either. She’d left Ian’s place in such a hurry that she hadn’t had time to shower, and the reality that she’d likely slept with him made her feel even more ill.

  So ill, in fact, the world around her tilted slightly. Dizzy, she leaned heavily on the doorframe, sure she would fall, but strong hands suddenly seized her shoulders and lifted her off her feet and deposited her on the back step.

  “Sit down,” a distant voice said. “Fuck’s sake.”

  The voice was exasperated enough to slowly bring Eddie round. She blinked and found Sam up in her face, glaring at her with an odd mixture of annoyance and concern, and neither emotion sat well with her.

  Eddie took a deep breath. Sam raised an eyebrow. “Back with me? Or are you going to chunder on my shoes?”

  “Ew. That’s hideous.” Eddie shoved halfheartedly at Sam’s chest. Her hands met warm, solid muscle—leaner and meaner than Ian’s—and Sam didn’t budge an inch. “Seriously. I’m fine.”

  “Don’t look it,” Sam retorted. “Have you eaten today?”

  “No. Have you?”

  “’Course I have. I’d be on my arse too if I hadn’t had my Shreddies.”

  “Don’t make fun of me.”

  “I’m not.” Sam abruptly released Eddie’s shoulders and stood. “Not eating is stupid, even without a hangover. Stay there. I’ll bring you something.”

  Eddie opened her mouth to protest, but Sam had already gone. Mourning the loss of his touch, Eddie scrubbed a hand down her face and fished her phone from her pocket. Shit. It was gone eleven o’clock and she had a seminar after lunch. Had she told Mr. Nowak Senior that she couldn’t work all morning on Thursdays?

  Shamefully, she couldn’t remember that either.

  And it didn’t even matter because she hadn’t seen Mr. Nowak since he’d hired her, and she very much doubted that Sam would let her leave without a fight, especially as she’d turned up late and hungover on her second ever shift. Which meant she had to steady herself to argue her case, because she couldn’t miss this seminar. Her end of year marks depended on it.

  Like magic, Sam appeared, a small plate of scrambled eggs and dark toast in hand.

  “I can’t eat that,” Eddie said.

  “Try,” he countered. “You’ll feel better.”

  “I believe you.” Eddie stood carefully. “I meant that I don’t have time. I’ve got to go to uni for a seminar. I think I told your grandfather about it.”

  Sam frowned, and Eddie steeled herself for a dose of obstinate arsehole, but Sam merely thrust the plate into her hands. “Do what you like, but you ain’t leaving this building till you’ve eaten that.”

  Eddie made it to her lecture in the nick of time, slipping into the back just as the professor dimmed the lights for his slide show. The presentation should’ve been fascinating, and the guest lecturer was one she’d looked forward to all year, but as he talked the packed auditorium through the history of contemporary chamber music, Eddie’s eyes grew heavy and her neck weak.

  Her chin hit her chest and she jumped awake with a gasp, covering her mouth with her hand and darting her gaze around, horrified and embarrassed—two emotions that had been her constant companions for days now. But no one was looking her way, and as hard as she tried to fight it, fatigue overcame her again, helped along by the steadying, nourishing plate of food that Sam had forced on her before he’d let her leave.

  Eddie fought sleep, her brain alive with the reality that it was the last thing she was supposed to be doing. Her head bobbed and jerked, and her heart beat too fast, and it seemed like no time at all had passed when Martha slid into the seat beside her.

  “Eddie!” she hissed. “What on earth are you doing? Are you all right?”

  “Huh?” Eddie jumped, the breakfast Sam had so chivalrously cooked her suddenly in her throat. “What?”

  “You fell asleep,” Martha said. “The boy beside you was looking at you all funny.”

  “Oh God.” Eddie covered her face with her hands. “Did anyone else see?”

  “I’d imagine so. You didn’t move when the lights came up.”

  Brilliant. Kill me now. Eddie sighed noisily. “I’m such a disaster. I needed this lecture to finish my end of year essay, but I’ve got no notes. What am I going to do?”

  “Use mine,” Martha said. “Just be careful that you don’t copy my words.”

  Eddie had flat shared with Martha long enough to know how selfless her offer was. Martha was a stickler for fairness, dignity, and rules, and though she was hiding it well, the disapproval of Eddie’s current state of chaos had to be killing her. “Thank you. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  “Starve, probably, but I have more. I did some research on grants and bursaries. I think you’ll be able to get most of your tuition covered if you apply before the end of this term. You’ll probably have to top it up with a student loan, and you’ll definitely have to pay your own rent, unless we move to a two-bed place—”

  “We’re not doing that.”

  “Let me finish,” Martha said. “You’re going to have to find the rent, which means you’ll either have to work forty hours a week all of next term—and every term, until your dad sorts himself out—or you’re going to have to work the whole summer and save up some serious dosh.”

  Dosh. The word didn’t sound right in Martha’s Berkshire accent, and Eddie smiled wanly, even though Martha’s verdict effectively put an end to the summer of sun, sea, and concerts she’d had planned. “Thank you for researching all that for me. I didn’t know where to start.”

  “I know, and it seemed like you didn’t have time, especially with the hours you’re working. Honestly, Eddie. You look exhausted.”

  Eddie bit her lip and looked away, unwilling to admit that most of her fatigue stemmed from the night she’d spent on the chablis. Because, honestly? Martha had been the sole sympathetic voice she’d heard all week, and she wasn’t quite ready to give it up. “I’m okay, Ma. Really. I’ve just been a bit…overwhelmed, I guess, not knowing how I was going to stay at uni, but your help has changed all that. I feel so much better now.”

  And it was true. Eddie’s hangover was still alive and kicking—with the added bonus of a healthy dose of humiliation at nearly fainting at Sam Nowak’s feet—but her pounding head really did feel clearer, like the light at the end of the tunnel was a blessing, and not a train coming to mow her down and obliterate what was left of her life.

  All she had to do now was make it home without falling asleep anywhere else untoward—a task that would have to wait until she’d picked up her replacement sheet music from the library.

  After a brief freshen up in the ladies, Eddie trudged to the library. Replacing the music that had been ruined the last time she’d done the walk of shame from Ian’s place cost seven pounds that she scraped together from the tips Sam had given her before she’d left the café. And for the first time she could recall, handing over her cash felt like the worst thing in the world, especially as she had no idea when she’d next have some more. Mr. Nowak hadn’t told her when he paid the wages, and Sam rarely told her anything, aside from what she was doing wrong, of course.

  Luckily for Eddie, Martha had thought of everything, and she arrived home an hour later to a stocked fridge and a note instructing her to help herself for as long as she needed to.

  A crunchy green apple called her name. She took it, and her precious new music, to the room she and Martha used as a practice studio and set eyes on her treasured Stradivarius for the first time in a week. In an instant, her troubles faded away and she shut the door on the outside world.

  The Stradivarius fit under her chin like it had been made for her, like a fifth limb, and with her sheet music set out in front of her, she closed her eyes and began to play, only opening them when she came to a par
t in the movement that she didn’t know as well as she wanted. The piece was tricky, with lots of sautillé, and she lost herself to it until she came to a section she couldn’t seem to get right. Frustrated, she played it over and over, but her fingers and bow seemed suddenly disconnected, and she knew from past meltdowns that any attempt at force would end in tears. Hers. And lots of them.

  Sighing, she admitted defeat and packed the precious instrument away, tucking it under the silk scarf she’d carried since her twelfth birthday when her grandmother—long since dead—had given it to her. The sight of it made her heart ache. The Dean family was cold and distant, too caught up in making money and flaunting it, but Grandma Dean had bucked the trend, giving most of her wealth away whenever Eddie’s grandfather wasn’t around to stop her. And she’d had no time for snobbery, either—a trait that Eddie found herself admiring more and more.

  Out of nowhere, Eddie giggled, imagining Sam’s reaction if she put that particular notion to him. “Hey, guess what? I’m not a snob or a spoiled little rich girl. My grandmother’s friend, the Duchess of Bedford, says so.”

  The idea was so laughable Eddie could hardly contain herself, though the fact that she hadn’t nailed her practice session worried her more than she cared to admit. The final university orchestra line-up for the summer proms was due to be announced in a matter of weeks, and she just wasn’t ready, dammit.

  I have to make the first section, even if it kills me. And it likely would, given the added pressure of working, and taking time out to apply for the financial help she’d need to complete her degree—something she needed to get started as soon as possible.

  But it could all wait for now. More than anything, Eddie craved a shower and a good night’s sleep—a sleep that came as easy as breathing when her head hit her pillow.

  Chapter Six

  A week later, after days and days of early shifts, lectures, and orchestra practice, Eddie found herself looking forward to her first late shift at the café. So much so, in fact, that she showed up an hour early.