by Amy Bratley
I let my words trail off, while the woman flagged a cab down for me. I turned to thank her again before I climbed in and sank back on the cool leather seat and asked the driver to take me to East Dulwich. I didn’t know where else to go. I needed to think rationally. I needed to feel calm. With the air con blowing cold air into my face, I forced myself to focus on the cafe, just for a moment. I did not allow myself to think about Ethan and Daisy. I muttered my plans for the cafe under my breath. The figures jumbled in my mind’s eye, making my brain ache. I strained to focus, but I couldn’t help it. Daisy and Ethan were in my thoughts. I looked out the window and they were everywhere. Each child I saw was Benji, half Ethan, half Daisy. I felt sickened. What should I do? Should I tell Ethan? Did he know? The impossible questions seemed to hang and solidify all around me. I searched my bag and found my phone, then, with shaking hands, I texted Isabel.
Meet me in the cafe? Something bad has happened.
Soon I wouldn’t be able to call on Isabel because she’d be thousands of miles away. I shuddered. With my phone resting on my knee, I stared out of the window at the world passing by, not really seeing anything. When Ethan found out about Benji he would want to be in Benji’s life. He would want be in Daisy’s life. I chewed my cheek, hating the thought, but at the same time hating myself for being so selfish. This wasn’t about me any more. This wasn’t about my nostalgic longing for true love. This was about a little boy who didn’t know his dad, an incomplete family. How could Daisy lie like that?
‘Stupid bitch!’ I hissed to myself, suddenly hating her.
I banged my forehead with the palm of my hand. Daisy had Ethan’s child and I felt jealous of that. Madly jealous. How dare Daisy play with people’s lives like that? Mine, Ethan’s, Benji’s. Or, was I to blame, really? Had I not listened to Daisy enough? Not paid enough attention to the detail? Had I missed something at that winter picnic in Greenwich Park?
I thought you’d be able to see that I loved him, Daisy had said to me. You only see what you want to.
When the cabbie dropped me off he wished me good luck and I smiled vaguely, not even remembering whether I’d picked up the change. Unlocking the door to the cafe, the whitewashed windows glaring in the sunlight, I breathed in the familiar dank smell. If I was going to turn this place around in time for the date I’d set for opening, I was going to have to work like crazy. But, I thought, I didn’t even care any more. Part of me felt like running away to the other side of the world. Maybe I would go to Dubai with Isabel. Just go. Like Ethan had done three years ago. Up and go. Leave him and Daisy to it. But even as I formed an image of myself packing a suitcase and standing at Heathrow airport, determined to begin a new life, in a new world, I knew I’d never do it. Wherever in the world I was, my heart and mind would be here, stuck in this moment. I pulled a chair down from one of the tables, rested it on the floor, sat down and put my head in my hands. I closed my eyes.
‘Eve,’ Isabel said moments later, bursting through the door and slamming it shut. ‘I got your text. What’s going on?’
Glamorous in a white dress, cinched in at the waist with a red belt, she came over to my chair, kneeled down next to me and put her arms around me. In a flood of tears, I told her everything.
‘Daisy is unbelievable,’ she said into my hair. ‘How could she do that? How could she sleep with Ethan? And as for Ethan, well, I think he’s . . .’
‘It gets worse,’ I said, pulling away from her. ‘Much worse.’
Isabel listened open-mouthed as I told her that Ethan was Benji’s father.
‘I’ve worked out the dates,’ I said listlessly.
‘But she still was sleeping with Iain, wasn’t she, before he left?’ Isabel said, frowning. ‘It doesn’t necessarily mean that Ethan is the father, does it?’
‘But Iain would never have reacted like Daisy pretended he did,’ I asked. ‘She pretended to me that he told her he didn’t want anything to do with her, that he wasn’t going to pay Child Support or even talk to his son, because it was all a massive mistake and she should have had an abortion. I couldn’t believe he’d ever be like that, but at the time I didn’t question it. God, the sympathy I gave her about it all and there she was, all the time, lying.’
‘Have you asked her, though?’ Isabel said. ‘Have you asked her if that’s definitely the case?’
I shook my head and sighed, getting up to pace the cafe floor.
‘Not yet,’ I said. ‘But I’m going to. I think I might just phone her and ask her. I don’t want to see her again yet. I don’t think I could be in the same room as her, fucking stupid cow.’
‘Does your dad know, too?’ Isabel asked.
‘I don’t know,’ I said haplessly.
‘Right,’ she said. ‘You need to phone one of them now. They need to start telling you the truth. Call now and ask them straight out, cut the crap.’
Isabel picked my phone up off the table and handed it to me. One of the things I’d always liked about Isabel was that she was unafraid. She didn’t spend hours debating what to do, in fear of offending or causing trouble like me. Isabel was decisive, direct and a woman of her word. She didn’t bow down to other people without putting her opinion forward first. Whereas I would have a good cry when life was spiralling out of control, in a pathetic tantrum, which didn’t get me anywhere, Isabel would take a practical approach to the problem. Like now.
‘Why is this all happening?’ I asked her, resisting the temptation to ask, ‘Why me?’
Isabel pulled out a bottle of Pimm’s from her bag and put it on the table.
‘I have no idea,’ she said. ‘But there’s no point in anguishing over that, is there? What you need to do is leave the dead wood behind and move forward. You can’t do anything about the way Daisy or Ethan behave, but you can change your own behaviour. If I were you, I would throw myself into getting this place open and then you will have something to be proud of, something that is all yours.’
‘I know you’re right,’ I said. ‘But half of me wants to give up on this place altogether. It’s all too much without you.’
Isabel shook her head energetically.
‘Speak to Daisy about Benji,’ she said, gesturing at my phone. ‘Then you’ll have all the cards on the table and you can work out how to play your hand.’
‘Nice analogy,’ I said with a quick smile, the first genuine one of the day. ‘But I’m hopeless at games.’
‘I know,’ she said, giving me another hug. ‘But you have to phone.’
It was lunchtime now and I stood outside in the shade at the back of the cafe in the small courtyard that I envisaged being a sunspot for customers to drink their coffees in peace and quiet, away from the merciless bustle of the main road. At the moment it was a cracked concrete slab, cluttered with plastic chairs from the previous owner’s careless attempt at closing down and clearing out. I squinted in the sun at my phone and opened a text message from Ethan, asking me to call him. I quickly deleted it, then, with a beating heart, I phoned Daisy. After a few rings, it went to voicemail. Of course she wouldn’t answer, I should’ve realized that. I hung up and dialled the reception of her office. My hands were clammy with nerves.
‘Daisy Thompson, please,’ I said.
‘I’ll put you through,’ the receptionist said. ‘Who’s speaking, please?’
‘Ethan,’ I muttered suddenly, my mouth dry.
‘Okaaay,’ the receptionist said, doubtfully. ‘I’ll put you through.’
‘Hello?’ Daisy said, almost immediately. ‘Ethan?’
In her voice, the way she said Ethan like it was a question, I heard something that struck a chord deep in my heart. I heard hopefulness so raw and delicate that for a second I was speechless. My eyes rested upon a sparrow landing on an upturned orange chair and balancing there.
‘Ethan?’ she said again, softly, her voice catching. ‘Is that you?
‘It’s not him,’ I said quietly. ‘It’s me. Daisy, listen, I want you to tell me the truth. Jus
t say yes or no. Please stop the lies now. Tell me, is Benji Ethan’s son?’
There was a long pause, where I could hear the background noise of Daisy’s office; a woman laughing, phones ringing, a fax machine buzzing, Daisy’s breathing.
‘Daisy?’ I said. ‘I’m your sister. You can tell me, really.’
Daisy’s breathing was shallow. I heard tears in her voice when she told me what I’d suspected was true.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But he doesn’t know. I don’t want him to know.’
I hung up the phone. I walked inside and gave Isabel a nod.
‘Benji is Ethan’s son,’ I said, sitting heavily on a hard-backed chair opposite her. ‘I’m so shocked I don’t know what to say.’
‘Fucking hell,’ Isabel said, raising her eyebrows. ‘Does Ethan know?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Then someone has to tell him,’ she said. ‘He might be a shit, but he has a right to know he has a son, for fuck’s sake.’
I could feel her eyes burning into me.
‘Yes,’ I said half-heartedly. ‘I guess he does.’
PART FOUR
Ethan’s Supper Club
Chapter Twenty-Four
‘But I’m really not feeling well at all,’ I lied to Dominique on the phone. ‘I think I have serious gastric flu. I’d better pull out of Saturday’s dinner party. I don’t want to make the others ill.’
Clasping the phone to my ear, standing in the kitchen of the cafe, two days before Ethan’s dinner party, I tried to sound pathetically ill, though in reality I had just helped Isabel put up shelves in the kitchen’s storeroom.
‘But you can’t just pull out,’ Dominique snapped. ‘Seriously, you can’t. The first feature is coming out on Sunday and if you don’t go to Ethan’s party, the whole thing will be screwed. We won’t be able to run it and the editor will be left with a big hole in her paper. My life won’t be worth living and Joe probably won’t get shifts again because he put your name forward, plus that amazing free publicity for your cafe we promised you will not hap—’
Dominique’s voice was getting higher and higher, faster and faster.
‘OK, OK,’ I said, interrupting her. The mention of Joe’s career at the paper he desperately wanted to work on made me feel guilty, plus the publicity I would get on the cafe was too good an opportunity to turn down.
‘Can you just go for the photos?’ Dominique said, more gently now. ‘Then make your excuses and leave? I don’t mind if you make up your scores for the food Ethan cooks. I just need you to go and be in the pictures so we can run the piece.’
I’d picked up the phone to speak to Ethan one hundred times since the weekend, but I couldn’t go through with the call. Neither had I spoken to Daisy. She had sent me an email, asking me not to tell Ethan about Benji, but, though I had drafted various replies, I hadn’t sent one. I didn’t know what to say, I felt too confused. My dad, beside himself about my stand-off with Daisy, had called me every day, worried sick, but I convinced him I was fine and just wanted to concentrate on the cafe. In truth I was a wreck. The only person I really wanted to see was Joe – he’d always made me feel better in the past – but how could I? Now, instead of sleeping too much, I couldn’t sleep at all. I wasn’t eating either, and had already lost weight. I knew I should face Daisy and Ethan, but the thought of actually seeing Ethan again turned my stomach.
‘Yeah,’ I said, deflated. ‘I guess I can do that, if it’s only for the photos. But I won’t be able to stay long, I’ll be too weak.’
Dominique breathed a sigh of relief.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I’ll make sure your cafe gets a really good plug. Email me the details over again and I’ll make sure it goes in.’
I remembered that conversation with Dominique now, as I walked with Maggie – beautiful in a bright green dress – to Ethan’s cousin’s flat, in Hackney, where he was staying. I didn’t want to go to his place – at all – but I felt trapped. If I didn’t go, at least for half an hour, I’d be letting everyone down and doing myself out of publicity. Ethan had messed up my life in so many other ways, I didn’t want him to ruin my chances of making the cafe a success, too. I had to go.
‘How are you feeling?’ Maggie asked warily.
I hadn’t told Maggie about Benji – it wasn’t fair to Benji or Ethan – but I’d confided in her about Daisy when she’d come over to my flat for a drink earlier in the week. Maggie had been really lovely to me, promising that she would do all the talking at Ethan’s and that she’d go along with my story of feeling ill, so I could escape.
‘Not too bad,’ I said, giving her a sideways glance. ‘Actually, I feel awful.’
We were standing just outside The Dove, a high-ceilinged, dark-wood pub in the too-cool-for-school Broadway Market. Ethan and I had been to The Dove several times together that first winter we’d got together, holding hands in the candlelight, sipping golden pints of Belgian beer, smiling in that glowing way people in love smile.
‘Shall we have a glass of Dutch courage?’ she said. ‘Doesn’t matter if we’re late. Ethan can wait. You waited long enough.’
Desperate for a drink to calm my nerves, I nodded and pushed open the pub’s door, immediately submerged in other people’s noisy conversation. I remembered the feeling of excitement I’d felt on meeting Ethan in there, seeking him out amidst tables of young people who seemed so hip and confident and full of promise, feeling a thrill that I, with my carefully chosen outfit and slash of bright red lipstick and fabulous boyfriend who would make friends with complete strangers so effortlessly, could, perhaps, belong. Now, though, I felt none of that energy. Instead I felt restless and jumpy and desolate. In my heart I carried a secret that seemed so fragile, so life-changing, the importance of it made me feel dizzy. As we walked in, I felt everyone’s eyes move to Maggie – she really was gorgeous.
‘Everyone looks at you,’ I said, nudging her. ‘How do you manage it?’
Maggie was grinning, obviously loving the attention. I was the opposite, feeling like I wanted to curl up and hide under my duvet.
‘I’m a window dresser, aren’t I?’ she said. ‘So I just imagine I’m a window that hundreds of people walk past. My aim is to turn heads, preferably encourage people to stand and gawp, or at least smile.’
‘Hopefully not graffiti or smash-and-grab,’ I said.
Maggie ordered drinks and we found a table close to two bearded chaps who couldn’t keep their eyes off her. She turned her back to them.
‘Can’t be bothered with them tonight,’ she said. ‘I’ve had some shit news of my own, actually.’
‘What’s that?’ I said in concern.
Sunlight from the early evening shone through the big window near our table, making dust particles dance and spin. I took a deep drink from the Belgian beer Maggie had ordered, feeling the alcohol hit the back of my throat.
‘I just got made redundant,’ she said. ‘So maybe I’m not such a great window dresser after all.’
I looked up, surprised. Maggie raised her eyebrows disconsolately.
‘Oh God,’ I said. ‘What happened?’
I listened as Maggie told me how half the window-dressing team at the store she worked at had been made redundant with only two months’ salary as a pay-off and that now, with a massive rent on her flat, she needed to get a job within weeks to survive. She told me the ins and outs of the store politics and, after a while, though I was concentrating hard on her words and I could hear her perfectly clearly, another voice in my head, shouting out in alarm about Benji being Ethan’s child – and that I was about to see Ethan – was drowning her out. I rubbed my forehead, willing that voice to go away. I’d spent the whole afternoon in a state of nervous panic, picking through bits of broken crockery we planned to use for a mosaic in the cafe courtyard. Already my shoulders were tense and my stomach hollow with dread. I drank more beer.
‘And I just don’t know where to go from here.’ I tuned in to Maggie’s voice for a moment.
‘I mean, I suppose I’ll go freelance to begin with, but—’
I nodded and murmured and thought about Daisy’s emailed plea not to tell Ethan about Benji. There was no way I planned to tell him tonight, but I was torn. Didn’t Ethan have the right to know that he had a child? Of course he did. Hadn’t I always advocated the telling of truth, no matter how hurtful it might be? But I was a hypocrite, wasn’t I, because I hadn’t told Joe the truth about any of this. No. Joe was still in the dark and now, ironically, more than ever before, I wanted to talk to him, ask for his advice. I shifted in my seat as Maggie stopped talking and was staring at me, waiting for me to speak. I plucked at something randomly.
‘If I had the money,’ I said as breezily as I could, ‘you could work at the cafe with me. Now that Isabel is going away, you could come in with me and make everything look amazing and we could both do some cooking. Could be great, what do you think? Maybe Andrew could stump up the investment money. He’s rich enough. It could be a Supper Club joint venture, that’d probably be a first.’
A Saturday Supper Club joint venture, without Ethan, I thought. I was just saying something for the sake of saying something, but Maggie’s face was breaking out into a grin.
‘That’s not a bad idea, you know,’ she said, her eyes sparkling. ‘I could definitely make it look amazing. Despite the redundancy, I am bloody good at my job. Didn’t you say you wanted to recreate the feeling of a kitchen table in your cafe? We could dress the whole place up like an old-fashioned kitchen, even have the cooker and sink as part of the cafe and you could bake there, in front of everyone, at a kitchen table. We could both wear lovely little frocks, and what about food, the food would be—’
‘Cakes, biscuits and bakes,’ I said, feeling a glow of enthusiasm despite my mood. ‘I’ve got an idea about a signature cake that I think could really work. My mum used to cook this amazing chocolate cake called Lovebird cake, and that’s going to be the cafe’s name – Lovebird – and I thought I could have a wall for pictures of things that people loved. Wouldn’t have to be another person – in fact, the mood I’m in, I’d rather it wasn’t. I’d keep a Polaroid camera there and people could take a picture of what they love, then I’d stick them up on the wall.’