Goodnight, Beautiful: A Novel (18 page)

I sat at the back of a café with Leo.

“Incy wincy spider climbed up the waterspout,” I sang. Leo’s big, dark russet-brown eyes stared up at me, fascinated, agog, as I leaned over him, tapping my fingers together while twisting my wrists. His mouth opened into a smile.

He was only three months old and I wasn’t sure if he really understood that much, but he seemed to love this song and “Round and round the garden like a teddy bear” more than the others I sang to him. His mouth would curl up at the corners and he would gurgle out the kind of laugh that made a mother’s stomach flip. I was lucky, I knew. My son was an angel, a newborn miracle. He slept when he was put down, he drank his milk, he responded when I played with him. I saw so many mothers struggling, cowed and broken by exhaustion and lack of support, that I knew I had been blessed. I also knew that it might not last. He might at any moment decide that I’d had it too easy for far too long and I needed to learn about motherhood by being baptized in fire. I sometimes wondered if it was because on some level he understood that there could only be one unruly newborn in our relationship, and that role was currently being filled by me. I lay awake at night fretting about our future,
crying because I felt so alone. I found it hard to eat because I was so unhappy, and I literally had to force food down my throat because I was breastfeeding and needed to give Leo the right nutrition. I longed more than anything to be hugged and cared for and pampered. I longed for someone to lift me up out of the crib of this life and rock me better.

The table we’d chosen was at the back of the café, not far from our house in an area of Hove called Poets Corner—the names of the roads were of the great poets; I lived on Rossetti Road, which was a ten-minute stroll from the seafront. For someone as young as me, I had been incredibly lucky with property so far. The flat in Forest Hill that I’d scraped all my cash together to buy when I was in my early twenties, when people wouldn’t even think about traveling through that area of London to get somewhere else, had made me an obscene amount of money when I sold it two months before Leo was born. Forest Hill had suddenly become the place to be for those who couldn’t afford to live in über-expensive Dulwich. I’d been able to buy a three-bedroom house with a garden on Rossetti Road for the money I got for my flat, and had some left over.

As I sat in the café, playing with Leo, I was thinking that I needed a job. I hadn’t worked in many months and my savings were running dangerously low. We’d be able to live comfortably for at least another year, but after that, we’d have nothing. And nothing put away for the future. I’d been thinking about updating my training and going back to my original career plan to be a clinical psychologist. Although I would probably feel like a fraud. How could I listen to other people, help them, advise them where necessary, when my life was such a mess? I was the prime example for how
not
to do things. Having said that, wasn’t it someone who messed up who could see where you were
heading and maybe stop you? Wasn’t it someone who knew of pain that could help you heal it?

The thought, though, of having to be supervised, having to reveal my secrets to someone else, was not one that appealed.

The only other thing I was qualified to do was be a waitress or restaurant manager. Which meant working odd hours that I would have to fit around Leo.
Maybe Mum won’t mind coming to stay with him a few days a week
, I thought. Then I realized what a stupid thought that was: she’d be down on the next train, ready to move in permanently. She, Dad, Cordy and Aunt Mer had all been unsubtly trying to get me to move back to London.

“I don’t suppose you want a job?” the tall woman with dead-straight black hair to her waist, who had served me coffee, asked.

I blinked at her. Had I been thinking aloud? She towered above me, a giant, beautiful goddess. She had clear, creamy skin, dark brown, slightly slanted eyes and a small, perfect mouth. She wore a tank top that exposed her flat stomach, and skin-tight, faded blue jeans with a big belt buckle that read “Diva,” the same name as the café. Around her belly button was an intricate tattoo that had gothic elements but also looked like kanji-origin Japanese script.

“Do you?” she asked. “Want a job?” She tucked her hair behind her ear, revealing a row of tiny hoop earrings.

“No,” I said. This place was rarely even half full, and the coffee, cake and cookies I’d sampled were nothing to write home about. I only came here because it was close to my house—the only café in Poets Corner—and the goddess always looked pleased to see us and would coo at Leo as though he was the most beautiful baby she had ever seen. If I did work here, there’d be nothing to do and I’d probably be laid off after a few weeks. I needed stability.

“You can bring your baby to work with you,” she said. “He can sit in the back, we’ll have a baby monitor, and when we’re not busy he can be out here.” She looked around the empty café and back at me. “He’ll be out here most of the time.”

“Thank you for the offer, but no.”

She sighed, chewed on her bottom lip. “All right,” she said.

“Why did you offer me a job?” I asked. A couple of times I’d cleared plates off the tables when she was—rarely—busy and I wanted somewhere to sit. I stacked them and carried them to the side of the counter; maybe that had shown her I’d been a waitress before, but there was a wild leap from that to offering me a job.

“OK,” she said, pulling out the chair opposite my little sofarette. I glanced at Leo in the carrycot beside me; his lips were pursed and his eyes kept fluttering shut. He was about to fall asleep. I pulled his blanket up to his chin, stroked his stomach a few times. “This is going to sound completely crazy, but I had a dream and you were in it. And you were working here.”

She did sound crazy. As crazy as I sounded to people most of the time. Going along with things because of dreams and feelings.

She sat back, folded her arms triumphantly, as if my silence had just confirmed that she sounded completely mad, when in fact, I didn’t say anything because I had a feeling she was going to keep talking.

“I’m always getting these things. Feelings about people. Dreams. You see, from you, I get a really strong connection to Shakespeare.”

“Most of us have a strong connection to Shakespeare,” I replied. I had seen a lot of psychics over the years and none of them had said this to me. “Seeing as we studied at least one of his plays at school.”

“No, it’s not that. With you, it’s so strong. It’s got this endless-love thing about it, but it’s nothing to do with Romeo and Juliet. That’d be too obvious. It’s so strong. There’s a connection to the little one as well.” The goddess stared off into space for a moment. “I’m not very good at putting together the feelings I get, I have to admit. That’s why I couldn’t in good faith take money from people. My friends often tell me to start charging, you know, make a living from it, but what if I don’t get anything from someone? How would I live with myself? Twelve!” She pointed at me. “Twelve. You’ve got some connection to twelve.”

“I was twelve once,” I said. Why I was being so uncharitable I didn’t know. Maybe it was because this woman was the genuine article. I had met many people over the years who weren’t; who charged large sums and told me nothing. And this one had a conscience about her gift and wouldn’t charge people because she was scared of not being able to tell them anything.

“Twelve? Twelfth? Maybe it’s twelfth. Hey, are you an actress?” Her eyes lit up.

And it was going so well. “No,” I said.

“Oh, how come I keep hearing ‘Old Vic’?”

My whole body went cold, the fingers that had been stroking Leo’s stomach froze.

“Old Vic. You’ve got a really strong connection to the Old Vic. So has your Shakespeare thing. Maybe it’s not the place. Maybe it’s a man? Old Vic … He visits you. No, but that’s silly. And you’re all starry. I keep seeing you in the stars. That’s why I thought you might be an actress. Famous. You know, the Old Vic, Shakespeare, stars … Gawd, if I had a brain, I’d be dangerous!” she laughed. Threw her head back and laughed.

“Can you imagine me telling my accountant I hired someone because I had a dream about them? I don’t even know if you can
waitress or make coffee!” She laughed again. “Or telling my dad! ‘Oh, Dad, you know that café you bought me and I’ve run into the ground? I’ve added to my financial worries by hiring some woman from my dream. Never mind the fact I dream about her because she’s my most loyal customer.’ I can just see his face now!” She carried on laughing, clutching her sides, tears rolling down her face.

You can see people, who they truly are, if you try hard enough. You listen to how your body responds to them. It may be a quiet little prod; it might be a huge red flag being waved that lights up the nerves in your body. It might be a look that you see passing across their face. It might be a note you hear in their voice. It might be them laughing at themselves in an unabashed manner.

She was an angel. This goddess was an angel. She was suddenly bathed in white and gold light, right before my eyes. She was so incredibly beautiful, she shone. I would never tell anyone that—not even her—because it did sound crazy. My friends had called me crazy, Cordy called me crazy, Mal said everything like that was bollocks.

“Oh, gawd,” said the laughing angel in front of me, wiping away her tears. “That’s really tickled me. I haven’t been so tickled since I told a customer about how I’d once had a crush on that singer from Dollar and how I knew he lived in the Brighton area but I’d never seen him before. Ten minutes later in he walks. Large as life. He’d never been in before, nor since. The customer actually spat her coffee across the table. And I could hardly serve him because I was laughing so much. Probably why he never came back.”

“Would you sell me your café?” I asked her.

There were decisions I made in my life that I knew without a
doubt were the right ones: not going traveling with Mal; studying for my Ph.D.; moving to Hove; buying a café.

I could see it clearly. How I would change it. How I could turn it around. How this would free the angel from a cage she had never wanted to be in but her inability to say no to her family had kept her hostage. This was my future. I could do it and still be near my son.

The “airy-fairy” side of me might have made this decision, but the business side of me, the one that had realized at a very early point that being the restaurant manager meant not only more pay but less physical grind so I could fit it around my college work, knew this would work. This was my future.

“I’ll have to ask my dad,” she said cautiously.

“I’ll give you a fair price for it. And I want you to stay working here if you could stand it.”

From her trouser pocket she pulled out a tiny mobile phone. How she had got it in there was a mystery. She flipped it open, pressed a couple of buttons. “Hey, Dad,” she said when he answered. “I’m about to make your day. OK, OK …” She grinned at me across the table, rolled her eyes and began talking in Japanese.

Two months later, I owned a café. Leo was impressed when I showed him the keys: he burped and grinned. Cordy thought it was wonderful, until I told her about my plan to convert the upper floors into rooms for people to have tarot readings, horoscope charts done, reiki, crystal healing and massages. Then she said, “I suppose there are as many other crazy people out there as you.” Mum and Dad had been less impressed and suggested I put under the new name of the café
PROPRIETOR: DR. NOVA KUMALISI
so everyone would know that their daughter was a doctor, even if she was throwing away her hard-earned degree.
Aunt Mer thought the same—I could tell when she came to the launch party—but didn’t say anything.

Amy, the angel who used to own the café, was extremely happy that she didn’t have to be in charge of anything anymore.

When I opened the door that first day it became mine officially, and sat alone with Leo in the café, I felt for the first time I was back in control of my life. I was doing something I had chosen to do, not going along with something because it had happened and I was reacting to it. For the first time in a while, I knew I had a future. Obviously I had done the right thing, because that was when Leo decided to start acting like a baby again.

Baking is exactly what I needed. I stand in the middle of the kitchen and survey all my labors. Every surface is covered in unbaked cakes, muffins, banana bread, pies, cookies, biscuits and hot cross buns waiting to rise.

I’ve probably made too much, but once I started, I couldn’t stop. Being able to focus on something I could do well, and do it, had been what I needed to feel a little in control of myself again. I’ll freeze some stuff and leave Amy a note to bake what is in the fridge tomorrow.

I can just imagine her face when she walks in and sees it all in the morning.

She won’t instantly think that I’ve come in and done this—she’ll think it’s angels come to help her in her time of need, or those little pixie creatures from that fairy tale about the shoemaker who woke up each morning to find all his work done.
Then
she’d think it might have possibly been me. She is so gorgeous on the inside and outside, and so very often on a
different plane of existence. I often wonder how her partner, Trudy, who is down to earth and practical—and as regular a proponent of the It’s All Bollocks school of thought as Keith—puts up with her. I’m pretty levelheaded about such things even though I’m a fervent believer, and it still drives Keith round the twist, so imagine having to live with Amy. I threaten Keith with that sometimes. When he’s being annoying or “difficult,” I tell him I’ll either sell him on eBay or get Amy to move in.

I free my hair from its net and untie my apron. What I need now is a hot shower and maybe a couple of hours’ sleep before I go back and take over from Keith. He sent me a text earlier saying all was well and no change and that he loved me.

After locking up Starstruck, I start walking home. It’s only three streets away. The café has been incredibly successful in the past few years. We gave it a complete refit, and took full advantage of being the only café around in the area with home baking and by making it child friendly. The psychic/crystal/tarot/alternative therapy side of things has also been very successful because it’s part of normal everyday things. We haven’t painted anything black or blood red, we haven’t made it a niche thing. I don’t dress in black, I don’t call myself a Wicca (witch) because I’m not, and I don’t believe someone is psychic just because they tell me they are. I’m constantly testing psychics, and if there’s ever any sign that someone is losing their touch, then I terminate their contract. I’ve seen far too many fakes over the years—people who charge the earth but tell you nothing, people who read your reactions to their guesses and tell you what you want to hear—to allow anyone to do that to my customers.