The Saturday Supper Club Page 7

  ‘Oh, Joe,’ I said. ‘I’m tired and I’ve drunk too much. How was your night? How was my dad?’

  Joe lay down next to me on the mattress and leaned on the pillow with his hands linked behind his head. I snuggled in closer to him and felt his warmth.

  ‘Yeah, he was good,’ he said. ‘He was talking about your mum a lot.’

  I pulled a face. Mum had been dead for seventeen years, but he still talked about her like she died yesterday.

  ‘He was talking about a cake she used to cook for him when they’d had a row,’ he said. ‘He said just the taste of it made him fall in love with her all over again, and that I should try it out on you.’

  ‘What?’ I said, pulling his arm towards me. ‘You can’t cook!’

  He sat up, moved off the bed and pulled off his jumper, without looking at me. Banjo pulled at the carpet with his claws.

  ‘That’s what I told him,’ he said stiffly. ‘That I can’t cook. For God’s sake, Eve.’

  I immediately felt guilty, knowing I’d responded in the wrong way.

  ‘Oh, Joe,’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean that I’m not in love with you. You know I didn’t mean that.’

  ‘You sure?’ he said.

  ‘Course I’m sure,’ I replied. ‘You know I love you.’

  Joe visibly relaxed. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘’Cos I want you to be sure. Really sure.’

  I nodded energetically, my eyebrows raised, and watched him take off his T-shirt, jeans and pants, and laughed as he did his normal joke of standing near the bed and pretending to dive into the bed as if it were a swimming pool. When he was next to me, he rolled onto his stomach, pushed a pillow under his chest and looked at me questioningly.

  ‘I’m sure,’ I said. ‘You don’t need to ask.’

  ‘Good,’ he said, rolling onto his back. ‘Anyway, your dad was saying he had something important to tell you, but he wouldn’t say what it was. Highly suspicious if you ask me.’

  ‘That’s weird,’ I said, frowning. ‘I hope he’s not ill. Do you think it’s something bad? I keep worrying that he’s ill. Daisy says he’s always at the GP getting results for tests he won’t tell her about.’

  ‘I don’t think he’s ill,’ Joe said. ‘He looks in better shape than me. Anyway, come here. Those Primark pyjamas are turning me on.’

  ‘Marks and Spencer, actually,’ I quipped. ‘Get it right.’

  Joe kissed me then moved his hand down onto my breast, but I tensed. He moved his hand away, the tiniest of movements deterring him.

  ‘What?’ he said. ‘What’s wrong?’

  Joe began to bite his thumbnail.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said in a small voice. ‘I’m just exhausted and, you know, it feels a bit weird with Andrew in the bath out there—’

  ‘Fine,’ he said, trying not to sound hurt. I sighed. He snapped out the lights and turned away from me. I lay in the dark with my eyes wide open, feeling guilty, listening to Joe’s breathing. Occasionally a car would drive past the house and headlights would sweep through the slits in the shutters and light up the room. Joe’s breathing became heavier and I knew he would soon be asleep, but my head was still whirring. Before I could stop myself, I was speaking.

  ‘Joe,’ I said. ‘Do you believe in fate?’

  Joe’s eyes sprung open. He turned his face to me.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ he said. ‘I thought you were asleep. But no, not really. Why?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘I have been thinking tonight about whether our lives are predestined, or whether it’s all completely random and a matter of chance.’

  Joe was quiet for a few moments, then he held my hand under the covers.

  ‘It’s comforting to believe in fate,’ Joe said. ‘Because then you don’t have to take responsibility for the decisions you make, do you? But really, I think it’s all down to chance.’

  ‘I read this story,’ I said. ‘About a girl who threw a message in a bottle into the sea when she was seven. That summer she got a reply from a little boy who had picked it up. They never met and she didn’t write to him again. But, thirty years later, they met by chance, or fate, and got married. It wasn’t until they were married that they found the bottle and postcard and made the connection. Isn’t that amazing? Surely that’s fate?’

  ‘Maybe,’ he said, yawning. ‘Maybe there are exceptions to the rule. Good story, anyway. Is it true?’

  ‘Yes, it’s true,’ I said.

  Joe curled his body around mine and I closed my eyes and started to fall asleep. My skin melted into Joe’s and our breathing fell in step, and I thought about all the other couples lying in bed together in London, one of them unable to sleep because they were thinking about something or someone the other knew nothing about. I felt suddenly aware of how fragile relationships are and how I should do everything I could to protect my relationship with Joe because, lying there next to him, I realized that this was all that mattered, his body against mine, his beating heart close to mine. We had to look after each other. Joe had saved me when I was down. My whole life, since the age of ten, he’d been there for me. I wanted to be there for him. Just as I was falling asleep, images of the bizarre evening fading in my mind, I heard my phone bleep. Unwrapping myself from Joe’s arms, I pulled on my silk dressing gown and padded across the room to check my text. It was a number I didn’t recognize.

  You should never have let me in. I can’t stop thinking about you. I’m sorry for everything. Is this destiny? E x

  Is this destiny? I thought of the girl and boy with the message in the bottle. My cheeks flushed red and I bit my lip. I looked over at Joe, still cradling the phone, its light glowing in the dark. There was no way I could reply to that. I would just have to ignore it. Ethan was messing with my head. He had no right. I was not going to answer. I would not give him the satisfaction.

  ‘Put the phone down and go to bed,’ I instructed myself. But, before I knew it, my inner devil clicked on REPLY and I started tapping out an answer.

  ‘You make your own luck,’ I tapped, pressed send, then stuffed my fist into my mouth. What was I doing? I longed to retract it.

  ‘Who was that?’ Joe asked, making me jump in the dark.

  ‘Maggie,’ I lied, amazingly quickly. ‘Asking about Andrew. I said he was still in the bath.’

  I climbed back into bed and snuggled into Joe’s back. I stared at the ceiling, my stomach churning. Why hadn’t I been honest with Joe the moment he walked in the door? What was I doing lying to him? I couldn’t understand my own actions. I lay awake, worrying, as more cars passed by, their headlights flashing into the room, like torchlight seeking out a runaway. I hid my face in the pillows, to block out light and sound. However hard I tried, sleep would not come.

  Chapter Five

  Glancing at the handwritten poster I’d stuck in the window, claiming that we would be ‘opening soon’, I shook my head and unlocked the rickety door of the cafe premises, the early morning sun bouncing off the whitewashed windows. Isabel followed behind, holding a carrier bag of paintbrushes and white spirit. Despite it being early Sunday morning, Lordship Lane, the through road in East Dulwich, half a mwe from where I lived, was already buzzing. Right outside the shop a group of teenage girls left over from the night before were sitting on the kerb drinking water from Evian bottles. A father was grumbling at his toddling son to toddle faster, while having a crafty ogle at the girls. I rolled my eyes.

  ‘Did you see that bloke?’ I said, turning quickly to face Isabel while pushing open the door. ‘He’s old enough to be their granddad.’

  ‘Gross,’ Isabel said, her dark eyes shining with amusement. She shut the door behind her. ‘Oh my God, look at this.’

  We stood together and stared at the scene of devastation before us. Though the builders had finished their work, they hadn’t cleaned up after themselves, because we’d run out of money to pay for any more of their time. The shop floor was covered in planks of wood, buckets, empty paper cups, broken-up old furnishi
ngs and electrical cables sticking menacingly out of walls. In a stack near the counter was boxed new shop equipment that we’d ordered but hadn’t yet unpacked, paint tins, and several rolls of wallpaper were untouched. On the walls were splodges of different coloured paints, a horrible bubble-gum pink and a pea green that I had tried out and quickly rejected.

  ‘Oh fuck,’ Isabel said, pulling her long platinum-blonde hair into a bun on top of her head and removing her gold hoop earrings. ‘What are we going to do? There’s so much to do. I’m taking these hoops out so I don’t rip my ears off in here.’

  I’d been there almost every day of the last month, to receive equipment, deal with builders, navigate my way around the tiny kitchen and try to make decisions about crockery, storage and stock, so seeing the state of the place was no surprise. Even so, Isabel’s reaction made me panic. We were desperately behind. Scrap that. I was desperately behind.

  ‘What am I going to do, you mean?’ I said, picking up a discarded crust of a bacon buttie a builder had left. I threw it into the bin. ‘You’ll be thousands of miles away in two weeks sunning yourself on the beach. Joe’s going to help me this afternoon, so that’ll be a start, if he can tear himself away from his laptop. God knows what he’s doing on there this morning, but whenever I go near, he closes all the windows down. Very suspicious behaviour.’

  Isabel pulled a face and tucked her earrings into her pocket.

  ‘Do you think he’s looking at naked ladies?’ she said, half a smile on her lips. ‘I remember when I found Robert looking at this website of women with the most enormous bums, I was gobsmacked. Honestly, they were the size of VW Beetle car bonnets. If I’d known he had a preference, I would have eaten more cake. I went ballistic, of course. Poor Robert.’

  ‘Ha!’ I said. ‘Joe’s probably planning something romantic. You know what Joe’s like. You should have seen the flowers he bought me yesterday. I think he’s having an affair with the florist. She’s very pretty. I shouldn’t joke. Maybe he is.’

  I looked at the reflection of me and Isabel in a broken mirror resting up against an upturned chair we needed to throw out, as she shook her head.

  ‘He’d probably relax a bit if you committed to him properly,’ Isabel said seriously. ‘You know that’s what he wants. He probably feels like he’s still trying to win you. You know how determined Joe is. He never gives up. How did he get his first job again?’

  I smiled at the memory of Joe’s campaign to get noticed by a newspaper editor.

  ‘He wrote to the editor every day for a month,’ I said. ‘He doesn’t give up. I do love that about him. Well, I love everything about him.’

  ‘I’ve never heard you say you love him so much,’ said Isabel, grinning. ‘What’s got into you? You’re either feeling very loved up, or guilty. Which is it?’

  I frowned and shrugged, and stepped over a box, looking at the floor, an image of Ethan bursting into my mind.

  ‘Anyway, back to the cafe,’ I said. ‘Once all this rubbish is out the way, it’ll look less like a fly tip and more like a cafe floor. I hope.’

  I felt vaguely annoyed with Isabel for making me feel bad, though she was completely unaware, and stood with my hands on my hips, looking around the shop, previously a greasy spoon cafe that was stuck in 1982. It had been in serious need of total refurbishment and modernization. I sighed. Though having my own cafe had been a dream for years, I was terrified I wouldn’t be able to do it alone now that Isabel was leaving. More worryingly, I had to find £15,000 from somewhere, to cover the cost of a complete new kitchen, furnishings and some unpaid bills. No mean feat, considering I had used up almost every last penny we had and pretty much exhausted business loan opportunities from the bank. I could ask Robert to increase his investment, but I really didn’t want to. I had all this to worry about and so much to do, but there was only one thing on my mind today: Ethan Miller. Is it destiny? I exhaled heavily.

  ‘Anyway, I wish I wasn’t going away,’ Isabel said, peeling a banana and taking a bite. ‘I never planned all this to happen with Dubai. I don’t even want to go, but I can’t let Robert turn down that job opportunity and we can’t exactly have a long-distance relationship, can we? Well, I wouldn’t mind, but he might complain. You know Robert, he’s so unreasonable, loaning us all that money. What a git.’

  I laughed and hugged Isabel, who looked gorgeous in a blue sundress and green cardigan, her skin peaches-and-cream perfect, her platinum hair velvet-soft.

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘I don’t blame you, Isabel, at all. I know it was a tough decision for you both, and without Robert’s investment, this would not be happening. Just a shame I underestimated our costs. Anyway, you’ll come back a lot, won’t you?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, smiling sadly. She threw away her banana skin and picked up a bundle of decorating sheets, ripping off the cellophane. I watched her, opening and closing my mouth, trying to think of a way to tell her about Ethan turning up. On the car journey here, I’d promised myself I wouldn’t make a big deal out of it, but it was literally all I could think about and I was bursting to tell her. I knew Isabel would be horrified if I seemed even a tiny bit glad to have seen him again. She’d witnessed the full horror of our break-up and pretty much hated Ethan, but I was desperate to tell her. Isabel walked over to the counter, where we planned to display our fabulous homemade cakes and biscuits that I was going to bake every morning, though that fun part felt like a long way off. She knelt down to pick a cloth up from the floor.

  ‘You know I’ll do everything I can before I go,’ she said. ‘We can get a lot done in two weeks, especially if I—’

  ‘Ethan’s back,’ I blurted out, interrupting her.

  ‘Ouch!’ Isabel said, shooting upright so quickly, she bashed her head on the edge of the counter. Her eyes went wide. She stared at me.

  ‘No!’ she said.

  ‘It’s true,’ I said. ‘Ethan’s back.’

  ‘Ethan’s back?’ she said. ‘My God! When? Did he call you?’

  She looked at me intently and her cheeks coloured a little.

  ‘He turned up last night,’ I said. ‘You know I did that Saturday Supper Club thing for the paper, that Joe asked me to do because someone dropped out? I can hardly believe it myself, but Ethan turned up at my door. He was one of the contestants. It was a complete coincidence. Don’t you think that’s really weird? I mean, how often do you hear of that happening?’

  Isabel was very quiet. She raised her hand to her lips and covered her mouth, glancing down at the floor.

  ‘I can’t . . .’ Isabel said. ‘I can’t believe that. Are you sure he didn’t know? Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘He didn’t know,’ I said, throwing my hands up in the air. ‘He couldn’t have known. It’s a total fluke. Isabel, it was so strange to see him again, like he’d never even been away. It’s really confused me. I wasn’t going to admit this because I know you despise him, but I’ve been awake all night thinking about him. I feel awful towards Joe, too, like I’ve cheated on him or something, and literally all I’ve done is spoken to Ethan—’

  ‘I don’t despise him,’ Isabel said quietly. ‘I just think he’s bad news. But why do you feel awful towards Joe? You don’t still like Ethan, do you? Please say no.’

  She put her hands over her face and dragged her fingers down towards her chin despairingly.

  ‘Of course not,’ I said, then, giving Isabel a sideways glance, I nodded slightly. ‘Maybe,’ I muttered. ‘A bit.’

  Isabel walked towards the window and stood with her back to me, watching the traffic rumble past.

  ‘He broke your heart,’ she said. ‘You can’t let him affect your life now. You have Joe, you’ve got this place. Joe’s worth a million Ethans. He’d never just abandon you, without explanation. You know that, don’t you?’

  She turned back to face me, looking, all of a sudden, very tired.

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘But I can’t help it. I’m already thinking about what it’s going to b
e like to see him again at the next Supper Club.’

  ‘When is it?’ she asked.

  ‘Next Saturday,’ I replied. ‘It’s every Saturday.’

  ‘You can’t go,’ she said.

  ‘I know,’ I said.

  ‘You’re going, aren’t you?’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied.

  ‘Have you told Joe?’ she asked. ‘What did he say?’

  I squirmed and began picking up the pile of unopened envelopes from the floor near the door, not really looking at them at all.

  ‘I didn’t know how to put it,’ I said, dumping the envelopes in the bin. ‘But I’m going to have to tell him soon. He knows Ethan. It’s not like I can keep it a secret. It’s going to be in the bloody paper in three weeks’ time, isn’t it? Although, if I don’t go, that’ll probably ruin the whole thing and I won’t get any coverage for this place, which is why I feel I should go, really . . .’

  Isabel gave me a knowing look and shook her head.

  ‘Seriously, this is dangerous ground,’ she said. ‘If you go near Ethan, you’re going to risk everything. Eve, can’t you remember how he dumped you? That note he left? Please, concentrate and remember. He’s an idiot. He hurt you badly.’

  On the back of an electricity bill, hurriedly scrawled in red biro. That’s how Ethan chose to deliver his goodbye note to me after nearly two years together. Not a second thought to the bittersweet romance of fountain-pen ink, quality writing paper or sealing wax. Not a care for the intimacy of the spoken word. He left it on top of the cooker in the kitchen of the flat I shared with Isabel in Clapham North at the time. I was absolutely crushed.

  ‘I know,’ I said, remembering Ethan’s note:

  I’m sorry Eve, but I’m leaving London for Rome. It’s difficult to explain why, but I can’t see a future for us any more. Please don’t contact me. I’m sorry if this is a shock. I’ve loved you, Ethan x ps. I guarantee, this is hard on me too.