19th November 2019
Evening
With the last customer gone I locked the shop door and closed the blinds, and felt exhausted. My hangover had faded by lunchtime, thankfully, but it had been replaced with an emptiness that had lasted the rest of the day, and with Esther leaving early, the final few hours of serving people, smiling politely and cleaning up the mess created by toddlers had been a slog. I hoped people didn’t think I was being rude. I tried my best to be upbeat, but really, I bet it came across as just beat. And now that the day was done, I wanted nothing more than to step under a hot shower before falling into bed. But I couldn’t go home, not just yet – Esther had left me a list of chores. I should have been a little annoyed she didn’t trust me to undertake the jobs needed for our business. But then again, these past few weeks, I’ve hardly been a paragon of trust. Sometimes it felt like she was actually my boss rather than my business partner. I guess that said more about me than her.
Grabbing the list, I walked over to the speakers and connected my phone. Opening my music app, I loaded my ‘classics playlist’ and turned up the volume. Then, I set about cleaning the last remaining tables and loading the dishwasher. Tina Turner’s ‘Nutbush City Limits’ came on, a song that always made me feel better. It reminded me of a time long before business and broken hearts. A time before 1998. Before that night. Before Chloe.
That song, like all the others in my playlist, took me back to being young, perhaps nine or ten. Mum and Dad were still together, still happy, and my memories were of endless summer days, the smell of rain on hot tarmac, of Refresher sweets in paper tubes, of bike rides, noisy clackers in the wheels and beads on the spokes that created an almighty din as we rode. This song reminded me of my friends. All of them.
With the tables cleaned and the cups and plates in the dishwasher, I disinfected the counters and cashed up the till. Despite how I was feeling, it hadn’t been a bad day. Maybe the best mid-week takings we’ve had in a while. With the takings in hand, I was down to my last job. Double-checking the front door was locked, I went out back to the safe and opened it, removing the cash from Sunday and yesterday. Esther and I probably should bank every day, but it cost to deposit money, so we opted for twice a week instead. And whoever was last on Friday and Tuesday had to prepare for the bank run for the following morning. As I inputted the numbers and double-checked the amount in each denomination, I could feel a fresh headache begin to form behind my eyes. I knew I didn’t have any painkillers left, so instead I grabbed a miniature bottle of Shiraz from the wine shelf and opened it. I told myself a glass of wine whilst doing the books was a normal thing to do, that I was just like everyone else. It wasn’t true, of course – drinking while battling the hangover from the day before wasn’t normal at all. But I pretended and doing assuaged some of the guilt.
I sat at the table nearest the till and took off my glasses. I pinched the bridge of my nose, relieving a little of the pressure, and I let myself enjoy a few sips of the wine. Over the music, which had moved on from Tina Turner to an early Kylie Minogue, I could hear rain hitting the glass of the shop front. I used to love the sound of rain once, but not now. Outside in the street, the shapeless silhouette of a person came into view. They stopped outside the window. I couldn’t see their features through the blinds, and I couldn’t work out if they were looking directly towards me, or directly into the rainstorm. Regardless, I held my breath for a moment longer than I should have. My mind took me back to somewhere I didn’t want to visit. Just to be safe, I reached over and put the bag of cash behind the bin. When I looked up, whoever was there had gone. And then I thought, what if it was Oliver? What if he had come back to see me, to offer an explanation as to why he took off without offering so much as an apology for his inability to do it face to face?
Jumping up, I knocked my wine over and dashed to the door. I unlocked it and stepped outside. The rain was falling so hard it hurt the top of my head. I looked left and right, but I couldn’t see anyone. As I locked the door again, a shiver ran up my spine. I reasoned it was the cold rain, and nothing else, but still, I turned the music down before cleaning up the mess I made, the hairs on the back of my neck standing up on end.
When I’d finished preparing the morning bank run, I returned all of the money to the safe, grabbed my coat and locked the shop before walking as quickly as I could to the Underground. Despite it only being just after seven, it felt later, the darkness complete and all-consuming. The footpaths were littered with fallen leaves that only this morning looked beautiful; now they glistened like slugs under the streetlamps and were slippery underfoot. I walked fast, my head down, trying to see behind me until I reached the newsagent where I’d bought the water earlier today. I picked up a bottle of wine, paid, and feeling a little less uneasy I headed down the stairs into the warmer, stale air of the Underground.