Nate with. Wife? She was quite young. Nanny? There were certainly plenty of those in this postcode.
‘Can I ride the donkey this year?’ asked Grace, looking between me and her father with a guileless expression.
I lifted my shoulder. Did she mean a real donkey? I wouldn’t have been at all surprised. Whatever happened to having Mary, Joseph, an angel or two, three kings and a couple of shepherds?
‘Last year I was a sheep and I didn’t like the cotton wool.’ Grace pulled a face and wiped her eyes, clearly re-enacting the problems she’d had last year. ‘And Mummy was cross –’ she said this with childish delight, the sort inspired by having overheard something she shouldn’t ‘– because where do you expect to find white leggings this time of year?’
‘Right,’ I said, stalling for time. ‘No cotton wool sheep.’ And here I was, already worrying about sodding armadillo scales or whatever they had.
‘And Joseph was Joseph,’ said Grace conversationally now. ‘We don’t have no one called Mary but my friend Cassie would be a good mummy for Jesus. She’s got white hair and it’s really, really long but she was an angel last year, except she wasn’t allowed to bring her sparkly wand. If I was an angel I’d have wings with fairy lights and a wand with sparkles that glows in the dark.’
I tilted my head to one side. ‘I think if I were an angel I’d want wings too, although I’m not sure they had wands then.’
‘Oh, they did,’ said Grace, nodding with great confidence. ‘God gave them to them.’
Nate raised a discreet eyebrow my way, as if to say, And now get out of that!
Good old God. Him and his sparkly wands. Another thing for me to contend with. Wings and wands. All of a sudden there was an awful lot to think about. Kitting out all those animals was going to be a huge ask. If only we could stick to flocks of shepherds like every other nativity I’d ever seen. Tea towels and toy sheep everywhere.
‘I’ll see you later,’ said Nate, tapping her nose. ‘After I’ve met with Miss Smith.’
‘I could come with you,’ suggested Grace with a decided tilt of her chin, putting her hand into his. ‘I know all about the tivity.’ Then she added with a sudden random tangent, ‘Do you think Mummy can buy me a crocodile costume?’
The Daily Grind was a smallish independent coffee shop that had opened not long after I’d moved to the area and had once been a regular haunt. This was the first time I’d been in here in months.
I was grateful that Nate had stopped outside to take a call as I ignored the small elastic ping in the vicinity of my heart when I looked over at the small table in the corner. Instead I hurried towards a table on the opposite side of the room, unwrapping myself from my layers as I went to hang my coat up at one of a bank of fancy cast iron coat hooks on the rustic panelled walls. This was posh Borrowers territory. The walls and floors were made from reclaimed scaffolding planks, the furniture had been upcycled and given a stylish, polished gleam, shining under the new hipster bare lightbulb lighting. A distinct retro feel had been achieved with the wooden tables and chairs, all of which were slightly different Ercol designs from over the years, so bore enough similarity to create a cohesive, homogenous overall look.
‘Viola! Haven’t seen you for a long time,’ Sally called, wiping her hands on her barista apron. I approached the counter with a little skip in my step, feeling more than welcome.
‘Hello you. What are you doing in this neck of the woods? Back for a visit?’
I bit my lip, a little ashamed. When Paul had left, I couldn’t bear to come back but I should have done because Sally was lovely and I should have told her what had happened. Did I confess now I’d never left or lie and say I’d moved back? Now I’d walked in, I remembered how much I’d loved the place. Time to make new memories here. The ones with Paul had scabbed over a long time ago and the scars were almost gone.
‘I still live here. Sorry, Paul and I split up and …’ I lifted my shoulders in a helpless shrug.
Paul had been gone for eight months. We’d lived together for the grand total of sixteen months; it struck me, under Sally’s sympathetic gaze, there seemed some symmetry in that. The short story, he had an affair with someone else; the long story, more complicated, picked over too many times during gin-fuelled evenings of rage and despair until one day I woke up, not so very long ago, and it didn’t hurt any more.
‘Oh, hon, I’m so sorry to hear that. Well, I’m glad to see you today,’ said Sally. ‘What can I get you? Flat Americano? Or a cappuccino?’
‘You still remember.’
‘Of course I do; you were one of our favourite customers. I still have that little book of poetry you gave me, the Carol Ann Duffy one about the wives. Gosh, how many Christmases ago? Two? Three?’
‘At least three, but I do know I’ve missed your cappuccinos. I’ll have one of those.’
‘And anything to eat? We’ve got the most gorgeous lime and courgette cake.’ Despite her cheery words, there was a mournful twist to her mouth.
‘Sounds interesting,’ I said. ‘And very healthy.’ I narrowed my eyes. ‘Should cake be healthy? Don’t you have any of that delicious coffee and walnut cake you used to make?’
‘A girl after my own heart,’ she said, immediately straightening up. ‘And yes, we do … bloody fat-free muffins. Get yourself a table and I’ll bring it over.’ Sally’s eyes slid to the old table.
‘I’ll go over there,’ I said, pointing to where I’d already hung my coat up. ‘And someone’s coming to join me.’
Nate ambled in ten minutes later, after I’d exhausted reading my Facebook feed, just ahead of the scrum of mums that trailed in behind him. I tried to look at his handsome features dispassionately. Married and with a child. I needed to quash those silly fluttery feelings hard and fast. Difficult when some stubborn part of me insisted on taking surreptitious peeps at those warm brown eyes and the wide, generous mouth with the slight twist of one lip.
‘Hey, Nate,’ said Sally, as soon as he stepped over the threshold as she passed by him on her way to my table with my order. ‘Your usual?’
‘Yes, please.’ He spotted me in the corner.
‘In or out?’
He tilted his head my way, indicating my table. ‘In, today.’
Sally’s eyes widened with sudden smiling interest. ‘You two know each other?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘Not really.’
We both spoke at the same time in quick denial.
‘But we keep bumping into each other,’ said Nate cheerfully. ‘Viola’s just been handed the dubious honour of doing this year’s nativity play.’
‘Er … shouldn’t that be the dubious honour of helping you do the nativity play?’ I was determined to keep it businesslike. No flirty banter.
‘Well, there’s—’
‘Holy fuck,’ breathed Sally, looking horrified.
‘What the hell’s that supposed to mean?’ I asked. Surely it couldn’t be any worse than it already was?
‘Nothing. Nothing,’ she said, pulling a ‘God help you’ face.
‘Thanks, Sally,’ said Nate dryly.
‘Good luck,’ said Sally. ‘It’s a wonderful school and Mrs Roberts is an amazing head. She’s transformed the place. She has very … high standards.’
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