The Christmas Café (15 page)

‘It sounds like a wonderful opportunity. I’d like her home before she goes, though. I think we need to lay a few foundations and talk things through...’ Sarah sounded undecided.

‘Of course,’ Bea agreed. ‘It might be just what she needs – a chance to get away and think about things in a neutral place.’

‘It might, you’re right. Rather than have her moping around the house longing for her horrible mates,’ Sarah said. ‘The more distance between her and that bloody crowd, the better.’

‘Absolutely.’ Bea nodded.

‘Actually, I’m glad I’ve got you on the phone, Bea. I wanted to ask, is there anything in particular I can get you for Christmas?’

‘Good God, no! I’ve got far too much stuff as it is. Just a card would be lovely.’ Bea wanted to spare her daughter-in-law the bother.

The call was ended cordially. She remembered her first Christmas in Sydney, alone, pregnant and pining. The pain in her heart had been so real, she’d thought she might die. Her ache for him was physical. Every couple she saw sent a stab of grief straight through her; every smiling girl reminded her of how happy she’d been. It seemed better to stay inside and figure out a way to let the sadness wash over her. She could only think about their last morning together, holding his head as he sobbed, begging him to stay and feeling like she couldn’t carry on without him.

Flora skipped to the bathroom, from where Bea soon heard the sound of water splashing on the shower floor.

She looked at the photograph of Peter smiling from the wall and adjusted the silver bangles that he had collected for her over the years. ‘Well, my love, looks like I’m going on a little trip.’

She swallowed the flash of guilt, shaking her head to rid her mind of the image of the man whose whereabouts she knew little of and who for all she knew might have died a long time ago.

She flipped open her laptop and perused hotels before continuing to read the rest of Alex’s email.

The Christmas lights have been switched on along the Royal Mile and the whole city looks absolutely beautiful, bringing some much needed cheer and sparkle to these cold, dark nights.

Hoping tomorrow is less eventful for you.

Ax

From: BeaG

Subject: Re: Hello Again

I don’t know about tomorrow, but my evening is proving quite eventful. I have big news. I AM COMING TO SCOTLAND! Can you believe it? Even writing that sounds crazy. Flora and I have decided quite last minute to take a trip and so that’s where we’re heading. We shall stay at The Balmoral, which looks lovely and will be such a treat. I know this is a busy time of year for you, Alex, so please don’t worry about showing us round, but if you have time for a cup of coffee amid the merry mayhem, that would be good.

VBW! Bx

From: Christmas Café

Subject: Re: Hello Again

Well, that is quite a surprise, a great surprise! I can’t believe it! I shall very much look forward to putting a face to the name and yes, a cup of coffee, hopefully a few cups of coffee, will be in order! That has warmed my spirit, more than I can say.

Ax

Bea smiled as she closed her laptop; she was filled with a sense of hope and excitement that she hadn’t felt in quite some time. Maybe she should follow her own advice and feel happy about not knowing what was around the corner. As she’d said to Flora, it might just be great things. She picked up the green cushion and let her palm rest on its silky surface. It would be wonderful to see Scotland at Christmas time, to see the lights along the Royal Mile and to meet the lovely lady with the cat who was her e-penfriend.

She was returning to the UK after all this time, returning to the strange land that she had once called home.

A fortnight later and Bea was pottering in the Kitchen, reluctant to leave and feeling more and more anxious as the time to go approached. ‘I’ve told you about paying the fish man, and the Wednesday delivery, haven’t I?’

‘Yes, boss.’ Tait smiled. ‘Twice.’

‘Sorry! I’m a bit nervous.’ Bea twisted her bangles.

‘You don’t say?’ Tait laughed as she paced in front of the sink.

‘You’re going to have the best time!’ Kim interjected from inside the fridge.

‘I know.’ Bea nodded. ‘I got a lovely email from Alex, saying how it will be nice to put a face to the name. Must admit, we have really clicked! Despite her love of cats.’

‘Well, we don’t have to wait till you get there, we can google her if you like,’ Kim offered, opening the laptop on the sideboard. ‘Miss Alex McKay, Christmas Café.’ She sounded out the words as she typed.

Bea smiled at her in the seconds they waited for the results.

Kim leant forward, twisting her body slightly and manoeuvring the screen, making it hard for Bea to see.

‘Oh. My. God.’ Kim slammed the lid shut and turned to her boss. ‘On second thoughts, I think you should just turn up and be surprised!’ She gave an awkward smile.

‘Don’t be daft, Kim! Show me! What’s wrong? You know me, I don’t judge people, and neither should you.’ She gave her a knowing look. ‘Let me see her!’ Bea made a grab for the laptop.

Kim shook her head. ‘I’m afraid you can’t.’

‘Kim, you’re starting to bug me. Come on, just show me her picture!’ Bea raised her voice, alerting Tait, who came over to investigate.

‘What’s all the racket?’ he asked.

‘I want to see a picture of Alex, my e-penfriend who’s in Scotland, and Kim, for some bizarre reason, won’t let me see her!’

Kim sat tight. ‘I told you. I c-c-can’t!’ The close proximity of Tait had thrown her a little.

Bea folded her arms. ‘Kim! Wyatt will be here any second and I insist you show me her picture, right now!’ The joke was wearing thin.

Kim opened the laptop and pressed a button that made the picture spring back up. ‘I can’t show you a picture of her because she isn’t a she. Alex McKay, proprietor of the Christmas Café, is in fact...’ She turned the laptop so Bea had the best view. ‘A man!’

Bea stared open-mouthed at the image on the screen. It showed a youthful grey-haired man with quite a large nose and a smiling mouth that revealed even teeth. He was wearing a denim shirt and what looked suspiciously like a silver bangle. ‘Well, there must be a mistake!’ Bea bent close to the screen. ‘It must be a different Alex McKay!’

‘Nope.’ Kim scrolled through some other documents. ‘It’s definitely him. Does it matter?’

Bea placed her hand on her chest. ‘Oh shit! Oh no!’ She put her head in her palms and cringed as she bent double.

‘I don’t see what the problem is. Your e-penfriend is a bloke, big deal!’ Tait shrugged. ‘It’s 2014, men and women can be mates without it meaning anything – isn’t that right, Kim?’

‘Yup. Uh-huh.’ Kim swallowed her desire to scream.

‘You don’t understand.’ Bea’s breath came in shallow pants. ‘The way I wrote to him... I would never have been so open had I known he was a bloke. I told him about how I was feeling in quite an intimate way.’ She screwed up her face as if in physical pain. ‘I admitted to him that I have a pouchy stomach!’
And a lot worse besides
, she thought. All that confessing about how lonely she was without a man by her side. ‘Oh no!’ She cringed again.

Kim threw her head back and let out a loud, resonating laugh. ‘That’s hilarious!’

Bea shook her head. ‘No. No, it isn’t! It’s terrible. What must he think of me? Telling him my most personal thoughts. The sort of stuff I only share with my girlfriends. I had no idea!’

Kim laughed into her palm. ‘It’s too funny! Mousy Miss McKay with her cat friends is actually this hunk!’ She clicked on another picture and turned it to face Bea. This time he was in a dinner jacket, raising a glass towards the camera.

‘Oh, stop!’ Bea sighed. ‘We’ve even been putting kisses at the bottom of our emails, which I thought nothing of because she’s a woman! But she’s a man! He’s a man! Oh God! Oh no!’

‘Bea, look on the bright side, if this is a budding relationship, at least you haven’t got to worry about the slow burn of getting to know each other. He already knows so much about you!’ Kim chuckled.

‘Oh, please don’t, Kim. You’re not helping.’

Kim beamed. ‘I’m sorry, but it’s just too funny!’

‘Think of it as speed dating!’ Tait added.

‘Oh, for goodness sake, you two, we are not dating!’ Bea shouted a little louder than she’d intended. ‘I just thought I had made a lovely new friend.’ She ran her hand over her face, wincing with embarrassment. ‘Maybe we won’t see him after all. Maybe it’s best we just don’t make any contact and he will forget we are arriving and that’ll be that.’

‘Good luck with that!’ Tait snorted.

Bea glanced at her watch, willing Wyatt to appear sooner rather than later. ‘God, the waiting is killing me! I just want to get under way.’

Tait swung through the doors into the café, leaving her and Kim alone.

‘I was thinking, this might be very exciting. Are you sure you didn’t know Alex was a bloke? Maybe at some level you were looking for a nice little dalliance?’

Bea stared at her employee in confusion. ‘Kimberley, I think you think too much!’

‘You’re still blushing!’ Kim teased. ‘I was just wondering if maybe you had hooked up on Tinder and the sausage club is just a ruse and you are in fact planning on liaising with your beau in the Highlands!’ She threw her head back and laughed.

‘Goodness me, do people actually do that? Hook up on Tinder, whatever that is? No, in fact, don’t answer me, I don’t want to know.’ Bea raised her palm. ‘And as if I
would
go all the way to Edinburgh for some sex! The very idea.’

‘Even the way you say “some sex” makes me laugh. It’s like, “Would you like some chips, some advice, some sex?”’ Kim snorted the laughter through her nose.

‘Well, I’m glad you find it funny, although the very thought of heading off anywhere for a Tinder, or whatever it is, I find quite disturbing. If I was looking for a man, that wouldn’t be how I’d do it. I’d rather be introduced by someone that knows me. Not that I’m looking!’ she emphasised.

‘I thought it seemed logical. Wanting to make an illicit trip but not wanting to go alone. Taking Flora as your decoy.’

‘Logical to you, maybe, but I can think of places a darn sight closer to Surry Hills to go for sex!’

‘Really? Where? Do tell!’

Bea tutted and adjusted her bangles. ‘I was speaking figuratively.’

‘Oh, how disappointing. Although, as you’ve hinted, maybe your days of illicit sex are behind you...’

‘Is that right? What do you think happens, Kim? It’s not that my body and mind aren’t willing; of course they are! What holds me back is more an acute sense of embarrassment at the thought of stripping off in front of someone. That, and I think I’ve actually forgotten what to do!’ She leant on Kim, laughing, trying to imagine conducting a similar conversation with her boss, however many moons ago. ‘But that’s the point, darling. No matter how past it my age might seem to you now, it really isn’t. And you will one day discover that there isn’t a switch that gets flicked at forty-seven that stops you thinking about, indulging in or desiring sex! It’s not as though we all stop fancying each other and turn our attention to doing crosswords and growing tomatoes!’

‘Well, no, not at forty-seven, obviously. But at forty-eight, surely!’ Kim smirked.

Bea pushed her hair behind her eyes. ‘I live in the same world as you, where sex sells products, where every advertisement and every magazine article is illustrated with the perfect body of some unfeasibly gorgeous twenty-year-old. The world sells its objects and services using sex and I am part of that world, no matter how removed I might feel from it or how unpalatable that might be to you and your peers. Just because I have the slightly crumpled body of a woman in her fifties does not mean I don’t still have the mind and desires of a woman much, much younger. Sadly.’

‘I guess.’ Kim looked a bit nonplussed. ‘But it can’t be like it is for me and my friends, can it? On a quest for sex half the time. It must all calm down, surely?’

Bea smiled at Kim’s expression, could see that she was desperately hoping the answer would be no.

‘No. It’s not like that. Granted.’

Kim exhaled, looking relieved.

‘But that doesn’t mean I don’t find people attractive or that I don’t want companionship or comfort from another human, a man. I still want that, but as you hit middle age, it’s difficult, different.’

‘Why, because there aren’t nightclubs and bars that you can drop into and pull?’

Bea rolled her eyes. ‘No, because everyone my age is slightly bruised by experience and many of us either can’t be bothered or life has put us off trying. It can feel like too much effort, too disrupting.’

‘That sounds depressing! And I thought it was tough being my age.’

‘I guess it
is
slightly depressing. We certainly can’t be taken in by the sort of rhetoric that used to work when we were young. We’re far too cynical. Plus we all carry a large amount of guilt.’

‘Ooh, what, like skeletons in the cupboard and dodgy dealings that you don’t want discovered?’ Kim raised her eyebrows but kept her eyes fixed on the counter in front of her.

‘No, not that!’ Bea chuckled. ‘But old age does leave you feeling a little exposed; it’s difficult to hide anything. We tend to carry the guilt of things we should or shouldn’t have done. Our successes and failures aren’t hypothetical any more – they’re visible right there on our faces, in our histories. We can’t invent a future or hook people in with our marvellous potential.’

‘I thought you might have less to worry about as you get older, making you a bit more jolly about life, more optimistic.’

Bea liked her rationale. ‘It’s not that you worry less but that your worries evolve. Like when you have babies, you worry are they too hot, too cold, are they going to die in their sleep? And then when they start school, will they run out in front of a car? Then suddenly they are
driving
a car and you worry that they might crash! And then we worry that they’ll get their hearts broken or take drugs... On and on it goes. You never stop worrying, it’s just that the worries change.’