Another Cup of Coffee (26 page)

‘I suppose so.' Amy's cheeks had developed a pleasing pink glow. She could feel herself slowly letting go, as the unaccustomed level of alcohol in her bloodstream performed its dance of intoxication, muddling her brain, loosening her tongue, and giving her confidence a boost. Amy blinked as she tried to watch all the women in the room at once, ‘Where the hell do these women find time to plaster their faces with all that powder and stuff?'

Kit laughed out loud, ‘God knows. They can't have kids!'

‘Well, I don't have any kids, but I never seem to have time.' Amy paused, ‘Have we had this conversation before?'

Kit laughed again, ‘Probably.' She spoke more seriously, ‘You've really never ever worn it?'

‘Nah. No point. I was a regular tomboy when I was a kid, always up a tree or in a muddy puddle. Then at university, my degree was very hands-on, as you'd imagine. I remember some of my colleagues spending precious time, when they could still be in bed or eating breakfast, painting their nails.' Amy's disbelief at such time wasting dripped incomprehension, ‘For God's sake. Within half an hour of starting to excavate, all our nails were scratched to pieces – that's if they didn't get completely broken off. Whatever was the point?'

Kit giggled in the face of her friend's passionate outburst. ‘I've never seen you so worked up about something!'

Amy's face flushed in embarrassment, ‘Sorry. But I've always thought it so daft. Till now.'

‘Now?'

‘Perhaps I should have made more effort, perhaps I should start to now, I don't …'

Kit put her hand out to her friend. ‘Stop right there, Miss Crane!' She continued. ‘Before you came, before Jack and I had our spat, I had got myself into a real rut worrying about this stuff. I felt I was too wrinkled, too fat, too thin, too … everything. Phil was despairing of me, and I was making myself miserable.'

Amy was surprised, ‘But why? You're just fine.'

‘I know that now, but I'd got sucked into the spiral. Then you came, a sort of kindred anti-fashion comrade, and I managed to escape the loop. Oh, I sometimes wonder, when I look in the mirror and see crow's feet creeping across my face, if I should use foundation or something, and then the kids call out and I forget all about it, until the next time I have two minutes to criticize myself in front of the mirror. Don't get into the habit of doing something that you'll end up resenting having to make time for for the rest of your life.'

‘You're right!' Amy took a glug of wine, ‘Anyway, it's good to be different!'

‘Too damn right it is!'

Amy, emboldened by such solidarity and more than a touch of alcohol, felt she might be brave enough to try a club after all. ‘Perhaps I could face a dance or two, just to see.'

‘Really?' Kit beamed, ‘That would be great, it's been ages since I had a decent bop. Come on, let's strike while the iron's hot and make total prats of ourselves.'

‘OK.' Amy swallowed hard. She could do this. After all, she didn't want to be alone forever, especially now that Jack had someone who wasn't her. She might meet a nice bloke. It'd be fine, especially if she had another glass of wine before they went.

Forty-five

December 18
^th
2006

‘So when are you meeting them?' Kit was stood with her back to the Christmas tree, tastefully adorned in red and gold, which the twins had helped her to decorate the night before. She was helping Amy to wipe the tables before Pickwicks opened, so Peggy and Scott could attend a physio appointment. Kit's anti-bacterialised cloth smelt of school dinner halls, and was making her feel faintly nauseous.

‘Two o'clock.' Amy threw her own cloth violently into the bucket of water and took up a drying towel, rubbing the table so vigorously that it rocked against the floor.

Kit glanced up from her cleaning, ‘You OK?'

‘Not really,' Amy stopped what she was doing and plonked down onto the nearest chair, ‘I'm just so angry.'

‘With Jack?'

‘No.' Conscious that she'd spoken rather more sharply than she intended, Amy started again, ‘No. It's me. I'm so cross with myself.' She sighed, voicing what had been circling her head for some time. ‘You'd have thought I'd have learnt after all this time wouldn't you? It took me thirteen years to get on with my life. Then Jack returns my tape and I think, great, a chance for a new beginning. And I come here, and it's great. A bit daunting, scary, not everything I hoped for on the career front perhaps, but I'm happier than I've been for years. I've even been to a club for heaven's sake, where I actually danced rather than doing my famous wallflower impression. And I even enjoyed it!'

Kit chuckled as she remembered Amy's mad, jumpy, immensely uncoordinated, wine-fuelled uncaring dancing. ‘How is the head today?'

‘Let's just say that I was glad yesterday was my day off and I could suffer in peace.'

‘Ah.' Kit, seeing the serious glaze to Amy's eyes, returned to the point, ‘So, you were saying?'

‘When I met Jack again, apart from the physical stuff, it felt the same.'

Kit, silently remembering how Jack had said the same thing about Amy, spoke gently. ‘Except it isn't the same, is it? Not now.'

Amy groaned, ‘I'm a fool. He was here; a friend to watch a film with, share a pizza, have a laugh, but for him that was it. But for me? I honestly didn't even realise I was doing it, falling for him all over again. Relying on him and being let down, all over again.'

‘Oh Amy! What are we like?' Kit spoke without an ounce of malice, ‘that bloody man.' She put down her cloth, wiped her hands on the back of her jeans and hugged Amy. ‘You'll go to see them though, won't you?'

‘Of course. Call me contrary, but I am glad for him. I'm just not so happy for me.'

Amy picked the towel back up. ‘Come on, we have to open in a minute, I'll have to wallow in self-pity later, I haven't …'

Both women jumped as the kitchen door banged shut.

‘We're the only ones in the building … aren't we?' Kit breathed out the words, her heart pounding as they tiptoed towards the till.

‘Scott!' Kit and Amy shouted in surprise and relief as, unaided, Scott took a few slow tentative steps from the kitchen door to the counter. Peggy stood behind him, her face a picture of love and pride.

‘You did it!'

Scott rested against the counter bar and held his arms out for Peggy, who flew over to him, hiding her tears of delight in the safety of his once snug jumper, which now sagged baggily after all the weight he'd lost in hospital.

‘So,' Kit sniffed back her own burst of emotion, ‘you back with us properly then?'

Scott flashed his brilliantly white teeth in her direction, ‘I sure am. I have to go slowly, and only do a couple of steps every now and then to start with, but according to my physiotherapist, the corner has been turned.'

‘I'm so glad.'

‘Me too.' Amy picked a cup up in each hand, ‘Come on, let's celebrate before those customer types start coming in. Hobble over there, you three. I'm taking charge and bringing over coffee and cake. Let's put some meat back on those bones of yours, Scott.'

Producing his wheelchair, Peggy guided Scott sedately across to Kit's corner table, and allowed their friends to fuss over them.

Once their drinks had been poured, Scott raised his cup. ‘I want to propose a toast, and in the absence of champagne, Peggy's finest coffee seems most appropriate.' His wife nodded encouragingly. ‘To Amy and Kit, thank you. Without you, we might have gone under, or at best, had to win our clients back from the rival cesspit of coffee commercialism.'

Amy and Kit blushed as they accepted his kind words.

‘Jack should be here too really,' Amy said fairly, ‘he helped too.'

‘Indeed he did,' Scott adjusted his position on the chair to get more comfortable, ‘but it's to you and Kit; you in particular, Amy, that we owe the most.' He turned to his waitress. ‘You've put up with the full weight of my bad-tempered frustration.'

‘So has Peggy!' Kit and Amy spoke in unison.

‘Ah, yes.' Peggy agreed, ‘but on the other hand, I love him.'

Forty-six

December 18
^th
2006

Kit glanced at the kitchen clock. Amy was late. She'd promised to come straight to Kit's house once her introduction to Toby was over, and had given four o'clock as a rough arrival time. It was now gone five. Kit was torn between worrying that Amy had thrown herself under a bus in the face of the boys' mutual happiness, or relief at the idea that it might be going really well, and Amy had simply lost track of time.

The sound of the twins moving around overhead echoed through the ceiling. Why did they have to bang so much? Kit couldn't be bothered to shout up the stairs to tell them off. There was never any point. After ten minutes of creeping around like mice, they always turned into mini-elephants again.

Perhaps she should text Amy? But if it was going well she didn't want to interrupt. She'd give it another hour.

Amy needed solitude, and space to think. She should be calling Kit, telling her she was fine, but tiredness had invaded every bone, and she didn't feel up to an action replay of the last few hours.

There was very little to say anyway. They'd done all the usual stuff, had coffee and eaten pastries, talked about waiting jobs, the bookshop, their families, and life in general. It was just now there were three of them, not two. It was a question of sharing him. Put like that, Amy thought, as she sat in the closing quiet of Kew Gardens watching a pair of squirrels bury its nuts, it sounds so simple.

A song shot into her head. Jack's influence? Or her own imagination? Amy wasn't sure who to blame as KT Tunstall's ‘Other Side of the World' ran through her head, each line of the lyrics increasingly more relevant. When it came to the feelings she couldn't quite put into words, it felt like Jack and her really were on opposite sides of the world.

Amy shook herself, trying to knock the music from her head, before doing up the buttons around the neck of her coat. She wasn't sure what time the grounds closed. It was five o'clock already, perhaps she should move, but the image of Jack's happily flushed face as he fluttered his eyelashes across the table at Toby filled every recess of her soul, and she couldn't force her body to move.

And Toby was lovely. He was funny, kind and obviously adored Jack. In fact, the more they'd talked, the more Amy recognised that she and Toby had a great deal in common, and could quite easily become friends in their own right. She had no problem understanding why Jack liked him.

Her hands were frozen. Amy rubbed them together, but even with her thermal gloves firmly in place, she failed to spark any warmth. Plunging her palms into her overcoat pockets, Amy couldn't remember feeling this cold since she'd lived in that damp orange tent in Wales for a while, all those years ago.

It didn't seem real now. Had that really been her life? Chatty, outgoing, meeting new student archaeologists on an almost daily basis as fresh diggers came and went, on the constantly expanding excavation. Slowly she had revealed hidden Roman treasures with Paul and Rob. Together they'd been quite a team, quite a different group of three altogether.

A rush of shame consumed Amy. Apart from the occasional trip to the cinema, she'd hardly seen Rob since her arrival in London. She'd sidelined him for Jack, in a repeat of the crime of neglect she'd committed over a decade ago. Ignoring the uncomfortable feeling for a moment, Amy turned her attention to her other past cohort, and tried to fix on an image of Paul, as he might be now.

He'd been much taller than the rest of them, chunkier too, a fact that had frequently meant he'd got all the heavy jobs. Paul had always joked that he did so much site clearance he should buy his own pickaxe. So, when he'd moved from student archaeologist to proper archaeologist, she and Rob had presented him with one, complete with a blue ribbon tied around the handle.

Paul had never had much hair, more due to his habit of shaving it off to virtual stubble than premature baldness. Perhaps he was bald for real now. A twinge of regret touched with envy rippled through Amy as she thought about him still living the life she used to have. Still meeting new people all the time and seeing the world. Still twinkling his deep blue eyes at the sophisticated petite blondes that had always been his preference.

Amy caught sight of a green-clad gardener heading her way. It must be closing time. Inclining her head in his direction to indicate she understood the intention to evict her, Amy got up and walked stiffly towards the exit.

Rob had said that Paul would come over. All she had to do was let him know when she was ready. But what with Jack, Scott's accident, more Jack, work, her own paranoia, and then Jack again, time seemed to have dissolved since she'd come south.

Not just time. Her financial status was getting shakier, and she knew that her days at Pickwicks were sadly numbered. It was no good feeling guilty about abandoning Peggy anymore; she needed to earn a wage that covered all of the rent and not just a fraction of it. She was fairly sure that Kit would always help Peggy out if she was desperate.

Kit! Amy fished out her mobile. It was getting late, she'd be worried.

Sorry. Needed time to think. Toby nice. Jack happy. So that's good. See u tomo. Sorry. Ax

Kit's reply came back almost instantly.

Glad you OK. Was bit worried. Tell me all tomo. Kx

As Amy walked up the road from the gardens, she came upon Reading Nature. Something within her seemed to click into place. She had to act. Without pausing to think, she knocked on the locked shop door, and shouted out, ‘Rob! Rob, are you in there?'

‘Amy? Whatever is it?' Rob was startled at the sight of her. She had the pallor of a ghost, and her teeth were chattering. ‘Come in, come on.' He ushered her straight through the shop and into the kitchen, pushing her down onto the single pine chair. ‘What are you doing here? I was about to leave. Where have you been?'