London Calling (5 page)

“She’s not a dyke, honey – she’s a lesbian.”

“The difference being?”

“About 50 grand a year.”

“I’m a dyke right now then,” I said.

“It’s fine – everyone likes a bit of rough every now and again. As for knowing so many, what can I say? Moths to a flame, I’m like a lesbian pied piper. Perhaps they’re all drawn to something they know they can’t have,” she said.

When it came to lesbians Julia certainly did seem to be some sort of siren, towing along a never-ending conga line of ladies all willing and eager. I wasn’t complaining, though – if she considered them a prospect and the timing was right, she set me up with them instead.

Julia had succeeded twice with me. Once with a mind-blowing three-night-stand with a Kiwi named Helen; and once with a two-month fling with Gwen, who claimed to be a Russian princess. Gwen was so tall she kept banging her head on my doorframe every time she left my bed to go to the loo.

On the plus side, mine and Julia’s taste in women was astoundingly similar so I trusted her judgement – looks-wise at least. Personality-wise, she’d got it wrong on a couple of occasions but her batting average was still fairly healthy. After all, I’d never have shagged a princess if it hadn’t been for Julia.

***

Later that day after a slightly boozy lunch, I was once again left to my own devices in the big city. Julia hadn’t left before booking me in to meet up with her new matchmaking prospect who was called Angela. I’d baulked at the name but she’d assured me she wasn’t like Angela from our school who used to stutter and pick her nose in class.

“As far away as can be – open-mindedness is the key,” she told me. Easy for her to say. “Plus, Ange is a lawyer,” Julia added. “So if nothing else, think of the money, honey.”

CHAPTER TEN

After a slightly more prolonged time in the family bosom than intended – nearly two months since I landed – I was finally settled into Kate’s flat. Mum had been a little teary at my parting but had sent me on my way with fresh crockery and a cake – everything a girl needs.

So now I had a room of my own – Virginia Woolf would be proud. The next task was to find a job, which wasn’t proving as easy as I’d imagined. Adam’s offer was lurking in the back of my mind and I was close to calling – two months into my London resurgence and I was growing weary. Still, at least the weather conditions had stopped being quite as arctic and spring was showing signs of coming to life, with our next-door neighbour’s window box housing some stunted mini-Daffodils. Not quite a riot of yellow but a gentle hint at what was to come.

Plus, by my reckoning Lucy should be just about home by now. I decided to give her some space to settle back into life but hoped she’d been looking forward to seeing me as much as I’d been thinking about her. She’d sent me a couple of texts from Sydney telling me about her bar and sunshine-filled exploits. However, when you don’t know someone that well, it’s difficult to strike the perfect text-flirt balance, especially when the texts came through when I was just going to bed and vice versa. I hoped that now we were back in the same time zone things might progress.

I was pondering this while heading home after a walk in the park when I saw an ad in a café round the corner from the flat advertising for staff. It was one of those cool, bright and airy cafés that were springing up all over London, even offering flat whites for all our Aussie friends.

There were around eight wooden tables, an abundance of natural light dancing in through enormous windows and local artists exhibiting on the walls. Chalked specials above the counter announced Thai Salmon and Asian Veg, home-made quiche & salad, mushroom & asparagus frittata, as well as baguettes, cakes and pastries displayed on metal and china cake stands under domed plastic casings. Surely working in a café was better than working in an office all day?

Before I knew what I was doing I was pushing the door open. Five minutes later I was sitting down on a comfortable wooden chair with a cup of tea opposite the owner, Matt. It turned out Matt also used to work in an office until it all got too much for him, so he used his redundancy payout last year to open Porter’s.

“There was nowhere round here that I’d want to go for lunch, so I thought I’d open my own place,” he said. He fiddled with the empty sugar packets that he’d just stirred into his tea.

Tall, fair and almost handsome, Matt was the kind of bloke my mum had had in mind for me since birth. He had a full head of wavy hair which was unusual in men over 30 and I put Matt at around the 35 range.

Rather than being an interview, our chat turned into a counselling session as I poured out my tales of workplace woe and how the thought of going back into an office filled me with dread.

“I got back from Australia two months ago and I’ve been applying for tons of office jobs, but if I actually got one I think I might feel a bit sick,” I said, screwing up my face.

“So don’t get one,” Matt said, leaning back in his chair and smiling at me. “Have you ever worked in a café before?”

“No, but I worked in pubs when I was a student and I really enjoyed that.”

Suddenly, all my doubts about getting a job melted away. Taking this, I wouldn’t have to be a commuter, work in an office or call Adam. Even the thought of telling my mum that her graduate daughter was working in a café didn’t put me off.

“Well you seem sane and I need someone who can start straight away – how about a trial tomorrow?” Matt said, crossing his strong arms across his chest.

“Sounds great.”

Matt beamed.

“Triffic. I should get back.” He flicked his head towards the counter before standing up and we shook hands.

“Glad you came in,” he said. “See you tomorrow – 7 o’clock?”

I gulped down the shock of the early start time.

“See you then.”

***

Working with Matt turned out to be better than I could have ever imagined – even the early mornings didn’t deter me, plus they were balanced by finishing mid-afternoon. It helped that I only had to get out of bed at 6.45am, being able to walk to the café in two minutes, and also that I could eat breakfast when I was there.

Matt and I clicked from the first day and doing something practical was a welcome change from staring at a computer screen all day long. This was real life and seeing people come in for their morning coffee and gearing themselves up for the day ahead made me glad I wasn’t doing the same.

The only caveat was that I wasn’t making the salary I was used to – in fact, I wasn’t making a salary at all, instead getting paid weekly in a brown envelope in a similar manner to when I was 15. But with some savings still intact this job was perfect for now, and the fact I wasn’t dreading getting up for work more than made up for the shortfall of cash. Well, almost.

On the plus side, my cooking skills were coming on a treat and my customer service was second to none. Kate was astounded when I told her, but also slightly envious that I’d stepped off the treadmill.

“So I could come in and you could make me a bacon sandwich?” she said. She was leaning on the kitchen doorframe, chewing the inside of her cheek.

“If you paid me £3, absolutely.”

“I might just do that. Do you get to make coffee too?”

“Yep – espresso, Americano, latte, the lot.”

“I’ve always found that strangely alluring – all that banging, refilling, slotting and pouring.” She enacted doing just that with her hands while she stood there. I frowned.

“You’re weird, you know that don’t you?”

“It’s been said before.”

***

The daily routine involved either serving coffee and breakfasts at the counter or preparing the daily lunch menu. Matt got into work every day at 6am to get the breakfasts cooked and assembled – we didn’t offer a full fry-up but rather fruit, porridge, pastries and bacon or sausage baps with or without eggs. But what people wanted most was a coffee to wake themselves up and kick-start their morning. Suddenly, I was the queen of the kick-start – who would have thought it?

For the first week, Matt had me serving customers, making coffees and heating food – not too taxing. He also employed his cousin Beth throughout the week, who rocked up from 8am-2pm to tend the counter too.

While Matt was tall, Beth was short and round but carried her excess weight well. She had brown hair that she tied into a ponytail and never sat still – a constant bustler as my mum would say. My mum liked bustlers. Matt also had an army of part-time non-related hired help who wafted in and out on a rota system that was a mystery to me but it seemed to work. Most were mothers who wanted extra money and café hours suited them perfectly.

The height of the rush was from 12.45pm for an hour, where queues often snaked around the side of the whitewashed building, people coming to eat inside or take out in our New York-style brown cardboard food boxes. Matt had not only done a great job with the food but also with the packaging and, after only a little time working there, I must admit to a strange pride at the loyal customer-base he’d built up.

Porter’s also attracted a clutch of Polish workmen from a nearby building site and seeing them eating their quiche and salad or home-made soup amused me no end, bucking my builders stereotyping with some style. They were also always unfailingly polite, which is more than could be said for some of the office workers.

Beth and Matt knew them all by name and Beth had taken a particular shine to Artur the site foreman, who was all muscles and sandy hair with a twinkly smile. Every time he came in she scuttled out the back looking for some important item, which Matt and I teased her endlessly about.

Beth was stern in her defence that she had no idea what we were talking about and that it was a good job somebody round here handled the job with some professionalism and didn’t behave like schoolchildren all the time. We weren’t fooled, though.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

After a week of working at Porter’s I was surprised to find I was getting to know the customers – those who came in before 7.30am, those who rushed in late at 8.45am, those who came for lunch early at 12.20pm or breathless at 2pm. By Friday of the first full week I was also dead on my feet – another thing about working in a café is that it keeps you moving constantly. I had been pondering joining a gym when I could afford it but now it felt like I might not need to.

Beth didn’t head off at 2pm on Friday, instead popping into the kitchen to whip up a batch of her banana and carrot cakes for the beginning of the following week. Matt and I ate together, shutting the café doors slightly early at 3pm and discarding our aprons for coffee, minestrone soup and wedges of bread.

“So how’s your first full week been?” Matt said. He dipped his bread and licked the drips from the side.

“Exhausting,” I said. I mirrored his bread movements, eating quickly as I was famished.

“Being on your feet all day does that to you. But I still prefer it to sitting all day.” He paused. “Do you fancy a pint after we shut up here? My treat – staff morale and all that. It’s normally just me and Beth, but now we’re expanding…”

“Sounds great,” I said. “And you have to give me the recipe for this soup.”

“Trade secret,” he winked.

We decamped to the local pub at around 4.30pm but it was already filled with swathes of office workers glugging back pints of lager and glasses of wine, their volume getting louder as the afternoon wore on. We managed to get a seat in the corner and Matt got the beers in, proposing a toast when he was back sitting with us.

“To our new team – welcome, Jess!”

We all chinked pint glasses but, instead of drinking, Beth put hers down, feeling in her pocket for a tissue.

“Drink!” I said. “If you cheers and then don’t drink, it’s seven years’ bad sex.”

Beth immediately grabbed her pint and gulped down a mouthful.

“Even bad sex would be preferable to no sex so I don’t want to jeopardise my chances of either,” she said. “And where are the crisps, Matt?”

“We just ate lunch,” he said. A sigh.

“An hour ago,” Beth said. She tapped her watch and tutted. “God, you’re a rubbish boss,” she added over her shoulder as she got up, her grin wide. “No no, you stay there, I’ll get them...”

“My mum warned me to never work with family,” Matt said. He flicked some imaginary dirt from his jeans. “So are you out tonight?”

“Not sure – I might tag along with my flatmate somewhere. You?”

“Nah – I have to get up early tomorrow to get the food order for next week and then I’ve got my son overnight.”

“Son?” I repeated.

“Yeah, Charlie – he’s six.”

Matt fished out his iPhone from his jeans, tapped the photo icon and up popped an image of his son.

“This is his school photo from last year – he’s a bit bigger now.”

“He’s lovely,” I said. I leant in to see a gap-toothed Charlie grinning back at me, his brown hair cut slightly wonky at the front.

“Is that my little Charlie?” asked Beth. She put two packets of crisps on the table, one salt and vinegar, one cheese and onion.

“I wasn’t sure what you liked so I got a mix,” she told me. “Are you seeing him this weekend?” she said, turning her attention to Matt.

Beth sat astride a stool and ripped opened the salt and vinegar, carefully tearing the packet down its spine to open it out flat on the table so the crisps were easily accessible.

“Tomorrow,” Matt said.

“Do you want me in then?”

He shook his head. “Nope – he wants to do some baking so I’m going to take him in and do a bit myself.”

“Okey doke,” Beth said, putting another handful of crisps into her mouth and not waiting for them all to evaporate before addressing me.

“So is this one of your locals?” she said. A crisp part whizzed past my left ear and I pretended not to notice.

“Not really – I haven’t lived here long enough for a local. Could be a contender, though.”

“Serves beer and crisps but it could do without quite so many of the city idiots,” she said.

“Don’t knock them, without them we’d be out of business,” Matt said.