‘You’re an idiot,’ berated Tara.
Monday morning in the shop and Charley had arrived to open up, weary and puffy-eyed, after another sleepless night, much of it spent crying. She told Tara about splitting up with Ricky almost as soon as her friend had got in. Tara’s response was predictable.
‘Go down to the bike shop right now and tell him you’ve changed your mind. Tell him you want to try again.’
‘But I don’t,’ replied Charley, shaking her head.
‘Well you should! You’re good together.’
‘Yes well, being “good together” isn’t enough, is it?’
‘It is for most people!’ claimed Tara, then added with her typical, yet astonishing, lack of tact, ‘The problem with you, Charley, is that you and Josh never got past that honeymoon phase of marriage.’
Charley bit her tongue. She knew where Tara was going with this. Her mate had long held, and frequently expressed, the theory that Charley’s brief marriage to Josh had given her unrealistic expectations about what married life was really like. For her part, although she’d never said it, and never would, Charley sometimes wondered if Tara and Baz had ever truly been in love. Having known what it was like to fall head over heels for someone, Charley wasn’t prepared to settle for less. She couldn’t. Turning away, Charley engrossed herself with needlessly tidying the nearest display. A tense silence filled the shop for a few minutes. When Tara broke it, she seemed to have decided to change tack.
Coming over to join Charley at the dresser, she said quietly and earnestly, ‘You haven’t given the relationship anywhere near long enough. Give it more time. You’ll regret it if you don’t. Trust me, you will.’
‘That’s what Angie said,’ replied Charley, moving back to the till.
There was an awkward beat before Tara said, ‘You told Angie, but you didn’t tell me? Why didn’t you call me?’
‘I thought you’d be busy with Monnie,’ lied Charley.
The truth was that Charley had been dreading telling Tara. She hadn’t phoned her over the weekend, knowing only too well that her mate would barge straight round to her flat and try to bully her into changing her mind, and she simply hadn’t had the energy to cope with Tara in full flow. At least in the shop she’d thought there’d be a chance that the presence of customers, or at least the working environment, would put a brake on Tara. But at nine thirty in the morning the shop was, perhaps not surprisingly, empty. Charley gazed out of the window, half in the desperate hope a punter would pitch up, but also to avoid having to look Tara in the eye.
‘Well, whatever. But Angie’s right,’ said Tara. ‘I didn’t fall in love with Baz straight away. I didn’t even really fancy him to start with. It was mum who encouraged me to stick with him. She fell for him at the get-go.’
‘Kim loved him because he loved you,’ Charley commented wisely.
‘Possibly… probably,’ Tara conceded. ‘But my point is that sometimes other people see things that you don’t. They see when someone is good for you, right for you. And I did fall in love with Baz, eventually. He sort of… grew on me.’
Unwanted body hair ‘grows on you’, thought Charley unkindly, so do warts. Tara and Baz’s marriage had always appeared to her to be a muddling-along kind of marriage. Convenient, rather than romantic. Baz was a lovely bloke, but she couldn’t have settled for him. After Josh, she could never accept a marriage as mundane, as run-of-the-mill as that, and she didn’t see why Ricky should, either. Josh had been her world, her reason to live. She couldn’t ever imagine Tara describing Baz in that way, and certainly not since she’d had Monnie, but more importantly, Charley doubted she would ever see Ricky that way either.
Suddenly wearied by having to defend herself, Charley sought to draw a line under the conversation, and the whole subject. ‘I know you think I’m making a mistake—’
‘Because you are!’
Ignoring her, Charley carried on, ‘But I’ve spent a long time thinking this through. Weeks, in fact. Ever since we came back from Tuscany. And I’ve made up my mind and there really isn’t anything you can say that will change it. So can we just drop it? Please.’
Tara visibly deflated and then said curtly, ‘Okay, fine.’ And to Charley’s astonishment she left it at that. She didn’t even try to have the last word.
When Charley broke the news to Pam that afternoon, her mother-in-law’s response was in stark contrast to Tara’s. She didn’t tell Charley she was making a mistake, or try to encourage her to change her mind. Tellingly, nor did she tell Charley that she was doing the right thing and, since the older woman was usually such a vocal cheerleader for everything Charley did, her lack of approval was deafening. Pam’s only concern seemed to be making sure Charley was all right. Wordlessly, she pulled Charley into a warm embrace and just held her.
‘Don’t be nice to me,’ begged Charley. ‘I’ll fall apart.’
‘Okay, sweetheart,’ said Pam, reluctantly letting her go. Then, giving her a supportive little pat on the arm she said, ‘You know where I am if you need me.’
Charley nodded tightly and turned away, fighting hard to get her emotions under control.
Business in the afternoon was depressingly slow, which didn’t help boost Charley’s mood and, worse, allowed her thoughts to stray to Ricky. She didn’t seem to be able to stop images of him floating into her mind. Ricky bringing her a morning coffee in bed. The two of them laughing over a shared joke, or at some daft antic of Carlo’s. Him cooking supper for them in his flat, holding out a wooden spoon for her to taste the sauce. And then Ricky undressing her, slowly, and sweetly making love to her. Enough! she told herself, and forced her mind to concentrate on drawing up the list of stock she needed to order. The afternoon dragged. Pam made small talk, telling her about a walk she’d had with her friend Zee the day before but Charley found it hard to focus on what the older woman was saying. She kept looking at the clock, hoping the afternoon would end and she could go home and… and do what, precisely? It wasn’t the shop she wanted to avoid, she realised, but herself, and the dark, leaden dead weight squatting inside her. The sound of the shop door opening cut into her brooding. She looked up, grateful for the distraction, only for her stomach to knot. It was Ricky.
After politely greeting Pam, he came over to Charley and held out a plastic supermarket carrier. ‘You left some things at my place,’ he said quietly.
Tactfully, Pam slipped out of the shop, leaving them to it.
Charley took the bag.
‘I thought I’d bring them here, rather than coming round to yours.’
‘Yes, thank you. That was considerate,’ said Charley, stashing the bag behind the till. Then the two of them stood looking at each other for what seemed to Charley to be an excruciatingly long time.
Eventually, Ricky said, ‘I don’t think I’ve left anything at yours.’
‘No. I don’t think you have, either.’
After a flat silence Ricky said, ‘Well, I’d better get back to the bike shop, then.’
Charley nodded. ‘Yes, you better had.’ Instinctively she wanted to say sorry but she bit the word back, fearing it would only invite a painful conversation.
She watched him go, through the door, and back to the bike shop. He didn’t turn round. As soon as he was out of sight, Charley sank onto her haunches behind the till, and made a tremendous effort not to disintegrate.
Nisha called her later that evening, Tara having taken it upon herself to break Charley’s news to her, a breach of confidence that initially peeved Charley but which, after thinking about it, she decided she was grateful for. It was one less difficult task to have to face up to doing. Nisha offered to come round to Charley’s with a bottle of pinot.
‘I thought you might need some company.’
‘Thanks, but I’m not good company this evening,’ replied Charley, so Nisha didn’t push it.
About half an hour later, Angie called to invite her round to her place. ‘Come and have a bite of supper. It’s only spag bol, but it’ll save you having to cook anything if you’re feeling rubbish.’
Charley was indeed feeling rubbish but she made the same excuse as she had with Nisha.
‘Well, come another night, yes?’ persisted Angie and Charley promised she would.
So Charley was left alone to contemplate her sorrows, the silence of the empty flat bouncing off the walls.
The next few days were emotionally gruelling for Charley, not helped by the fact that the other shopkeepers were initially unaware she and Ricky had split up. When they both inadvertently pitched up at the deli at the same time to get their morning coffee, Rita greeted them cheerfully from behind the counter.
‘What can I get you two?’
There was an awkward moment until Charley indicated Ricky should order first. ‘You were before me.’
‘No, please, you go ahead,’ he replied, stepping to one side.
You could have cut the atmosphere with a cheese knife and poor Rita clearly didn’t know where to put herself. She brewed Charley’s cappuccino in a stilted silence, with the three of them avoiding each other’s gaze. Charley couldn’t grab her coffee and get away quickly enough.
It didn’t get any easier once word of their separation got out, either. People didn’t seem to know what to say, and the easy camaraderie Charley had so loved about the place appeared to evaporate. In her imagination, she felt everyone was disappointed, and especially in her, as if it were common knowledge that she had been the one to end things. She knew she was being irrational, Ricky simply wouldn’t have been that indiscreet, but that didn’t stop her paranoia. Soon she was avoiding everyone, giving up going to the deli completely, bringing in a flask of coffee and a packed lunch from home, but that only served to isolate her further, and even though her seclusion was self-imposed, she began to feel like a pariah. And every day, every single bloody day, she’d catch herself missing him. Something funny would happen in the shop and she’d think, ‘I must tell Ricky’, or she’d hear the shop door open and look up, momentarily wondering if it were him, bringing her a coffee or some Cargo gossip.
Then, one morning, with appalling timing, the gears jammed on her bike as she was cycling into work. Bloody, bloody hell! Why? Why now! she raged, resisting the childish urge the kick the damn thing. You could have done that anytime over the last effing year! Briefly, she toyed with idea of chaining the bike up to the nearest lamp-post and getting a mobile bike repair company to sort it out, but rejected the notion, accusing herself of being a wimp. She gritted her teeth, and wheeled the bike down to Ricky. You’re just another customer, with a broken bike, she reminded herself as she pushed open the door to the bike shop.
Carlo rushed up to greet her like an old friend, snuffling at her hand excitedly and wagging his tail furiously. When Ricky came over to hold the door for her to wheel the bike in, she could barely bring herself to look into his eyes, not trusting herself to be able to hold it together.
‘You can leave it with me, if that’s easier,’ he said, having given the bike a quick once-over.
Unsure whether he meant practically easier or emotionally, she merely nodded and thanked him. ‘How much will it be?’
‘Nothing,’ he replied with a shrug. ‘There’s no parts and it’ll only take me five minutes.’
Not wanting to be beholden to him she said, ‘Let me just give you a fiver.’
A look of such deep hurt darkened his face she instantly wanted to bite her tongue off. ‘I don’t charge labour for mates, Charley, you know that,’ he replied tensely.
She flushed, and swallowing the lump in her throat muttered, ‘Yes of course. Thank you.’