Chapter 18 Jacob
Jacob
Jacob wasn’t totally humiliated. While Charlotte clearly understood a lot more than just where to put the pieces, she told him after the game that she’d picked up most of the names of the moves from watching The Queen’s Gambit on Netflix.
Even so, she beat him with little trouble, helped by a couple of shocking blunders.
Jacob, to his credit, felt that he’d performed pretty well considering how distracting it was to be playing chess with perhaps the loveliest thing he’d ever seen, at least up close.
Charlotte, with her delightful singsong voice, blonde-haired bob, and sparkling blue eyes had him absolutely smitten.
Once he had admitted it to himself, life became a simple case of damage control, to make as few social gaffs as possible.
He already knew that after the milk incident, any chance of being more than just a casual acquaintance was off the table, yet here she was, sitting across from him, chatting amicably while she hammered him at chess.
After the game was over and their coffees were finished, they packed away the chess pieces and went to drum up a little interest among the kids.
At first, enthusiasm was muted, but after Charlotte decided they should demo a game, in which she gave Jacob another sound beating, the kids slowly began to drift over.
Jacob got out the other sets, and an hour later, most of the kids had got the basic moves down, and a couple were even happily engaged in a game.
Leaving Charlotte to explain the intricacies of a knight fork, Jacob went to help Lisa prepare vegetables for the children’s dinner.
‘You’re surviving?’ Lisa said with a grin.
Jacob could only let out a sigh. ‘Do you think she’ll come back again?’
‘She seems to be enjoying herself. She might.’
‘Good because we really need all the volunteers we can get—’
‘You weren’t this enthusiastic when old Stan Rogers came down to teach the children how to weave wicker baskets. It wouldn’t have anything to do with her being young and attractive and you being a career single?’
‘I’m not a career single. I’m just … busy.’
‘Come on, Jacob. I know you. I used to babysit you, remember?’
‘The clearest memory being the classic occasion when you let me eat a whole packet of Digestive biscuits which I promptly threw up in the hall.’
‘That stuff looked like clay, didn’t it? It was only the once. I didn’t know you were going to eat the entire packet.’
‘I’ve still not told Mum.’
‘It’s been twenty years. I think you’re good to take that one to the grave. Look, just go and ask her out. See if she wants to get fish ’n’ chips on the way home.’
‘We usually eat with the kids.’
‘I can lie and say there’s a curfew. Don’t worry, I’ll tell her it was a fib once you and her are an item.’
‘We will never be an item. There’s no way she’d be interested in me.’
‘There you go again. Your mum always said you had no confidence in yourself.’ Lisa leaned close and elbowed him in the ribs. ‘Just be like, “Oi, we’re walking the same way. You wanna get chips?”’
‘You sound more like me than me.’
‘Just take a chance. Roll the dice, Jacob. You know, just for once.’
‘There’s no way she’d be interested in me—’
There was a knock on the kitchen door. Aghast, Jacob looked up to see Charlotte leaning in through the doorway. She looked so pretty he could have fainted. How much had she overheard?
‘One of the kids spilt some orange juice,’ she said. ‘Do you have a cloth?’
‘Yes, dear,’ Lisa said, grabbing one from the counter and handing it to Charlotte, giving Jacob a sideways glance at the same time.
Charlotte thanked her, then smiled at Jacob and went out.
Jacob felt sure that she held his gaze a little too long before she turned away, but perhaps she was just being polite.
His heart began to thunder, and he stared at the worktop, too shellshocked to move.
‘Uh, Jacob … those potatoes won’t peel themselves,’ Lisa said.
‘Right. Sure.’
‘Watch your fingers,’ Lisa said with a chuckle. ‘It must be difficult to see with all those stars in your eyes.’
He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to get Charlotte’s face out of his head. When he opened them, he found Lisa had added a few more potatoes to the colander in front of him.
‘The potatoes,’ he muttered. ‘Concentrate on the potatoes.’
‘There’s the mantra,’ Lisa said. ‘Find inner peace while getting the peeling done at the same time.’
A few minutes later, once the potatoes were safely peeled and bobbing in a saucepan of cold water, Lisa told Jacob to fetch a couple of the kids to set the table.
He went down the corridor to the common room, worried about seeing Charlotte, wondering how much of their conversation she might have overheard.
Would she hate him? Would she look at him with pity?
He couldn’t imagine that he would see anything else in her eyes.
In the common room, however, she was nowhere to be seen. The chess sets had been packed away and the children were tidying up their toys and books. For the first time that Jacob could remember, the television was off.
No sign of Charlotte. He looked around in desperation. Eventually, he had to ask.
‘Michaella … uh … where did Char … Ms. Harding go?’
‘Oh, she had to go home. She said she could see you were busy so didn’t want to get in the way.’
‘Really?’ he croaked.
‘She said she’ll see you next time.’
‘Oh.’
‘See you again,’ a little boy said with an innocent smile. ‘Not “see you next time”, but “see you again.”’
Jacob stared at him a moment, then nodded. The subtle difference meant so much. The first meant she would be back; everything was fine; she hadn’t overheard anything, or even if she had, it hadn’t upset her or made her feel awkward.
The second, however, was a whole other game.
It meant she would never, ever, ever see him again; she would never, ever, ever come back to the children’s home, or go within a hundred paces of anywhere she might have to see him, and if she happened to pass him on the street, she would cross to the other side.
It meant she had overheard everything, didn’t like him, didn’t like that he liked her, and wanted to escape the situation as quickly as possible.
His life—at least the version of it that might have involved Charlotte, even to a minuscule degree—was over.
Had he not been leaning against a table when Lisa clapped him on the shoulder, he would have fallen to the ground.
‘She’ll be back,’ Lisa said. ‘Don’t worry.’
Jacob could only give a brief nod, his throat too dry to respond.
The briefly euphoric notion of sharing fish ’n’ chips with Charlotte left him so shattered that he couldn’t face going back to his flat and eating alone, so he stayed and ate dinner with the kids and Lisa.
To his dismay, most of the table conversation centred around Charlotte, how nice she was, how kind, how they hoped she would come back.
Luckily, none of the kids seemed to have picked up on his awkwardness around her, but by the time he headed for home, he felt more deflated than ever.
It had begun to snow again, and Brentwell, with its strings of Christmas lights around windows and in front gardens, looked magical. Jacob, struggling to get into the spirit of things, stared at each line of tracks in the fresh snow, wondering if one of them belonged to Charlotte.
She had to have overheard him, and it had ruined her night. She would most likely never talk to him again.
By the time he got back to his flat, it was nearly nine o’clock.
Inside, it was freezing, so he stood around shivering while he waited for the heating to work its own form of magic.
He sat down in an armchair and put on the television, but it was all wars and murders and disasters, golf, or comedy shows aimed at teenagers, so he switched it off and opted for a book instead.
About eleven o’clock he decided to head to bed. Glancing out through the curtains, he watched the snow steadily falling for a few minutes, its gentle calm relaxing him. Everything would be all right. Even if Charlotte never spoke to him again, everything would be—
His phone buzzed, startling him so much he headbutted the window glass. Rubbing his forehead, he retrieved his phone from the table, desperately hoping it was Charlotte, even though she didn’t have his number.
It wasn’t one he recognised. Perhaps some dodgy bot or junk mail, he was nevertheless intrigued when it didn’t ring off straight away.
‘Hello?’ he said.
‘I’m sorry to call so late,’ came a woman’s voice on the other end. Jacob was immediately crestfallen because it wasn’t Charlotte. The woman sounded older, and had an accent he didn’t at first recognise. ‘I’m afraid I’m not sure what time it is over there right now. Is that Jacob?’
‘Yes. Yes, it is.’
‘Oh, great. This is Rita Crennick. I’m Nora Shapton’s daughter.’