Chapter 20
That evening was like everything I’d have imagined a fun festive night with four women to be, and yet so far beyond that, I had to question again how on earth I’d had the audacity to allow Winning at Life to call me a life expert.
We decided to watch the sunset from the living-room balcony, hats pulled down tight and blankets piled under and on top of our legs as we settled in on lounge chairs.
Lola tried a few different songs on her playlist, but even Michael Bublé inviting us to have ourselves a merry little Christmas didn’t seem a suitable accompaniment to such grandeur.
As the sun sank below the tops of the distant pine trees, a kaleidoscope of gold, apricot and magenta stretched across the vast expanse of winter sky.
The hovering sense of my comfort zone being overcrowded gradually faded as I embraced the stillness, without the need for solitude.
We noted the barn owl swooping over the country park with a mere inclination of our heads.
Collectively appreciating the invigorating evening air, the silence, meant no one felt the need to comment – either online or to each other, let alone take a selfie.
A rare moment to stop and savour something indescribably beautiful.
While lying on a row of recliners with these women I barely knew, in pyjamas and woolly hats, three of us with splotches of green paint in our hair, I sensed something sacred pass between us. One by one, we reached out and held each other’s hands.
As the last of the orange glow was swallowed by star-speckled indigo, we sat up, took our glasses and raised them in a silent toast, to this incredible view, to a moment of wonder interrupting the humdrum and hustle, the worry and world-weariness. To each other.
Friends wanted.
Friends who were wanted.
I couldn’t believe it had taken thirty-six years to realise this was what winning at life looked like.
For the next two hours, we vocally destroyed all the Christmas karaoke hits, cracked bad and brilliant jokes, drank slightly too much gin and ate far too many snacks.
This was followed by a spontaneous chicken and chips delivery, leading to me telling them I once managed a kebab shop, and everyone else telling stories about their first and worst jobs.
It was inevitable that at some point my smallest piece of glass furniture – a side table – got taken outside for a beating, but it turned out that something this expensive couldn’t be shattered with a meat mallet or a rolling pin (why on earth did I have either of these?
I never cooked, let alone baked). When Lola suggested tossing it over the balcony, we decided things had probably gone far enough and dragged it back inside again.
Merry ended up recounting how she’d fallen for Ray in primary school, and at thirteen he’d proposed with a ring he’d pilfered from his mum’s dressing table. They’d married on Merry’s eighteenth birthday, to all four parents’ chagrin, and had never looked back.
‘The six kids we’d planned weren’t to be, but then one day the social worker at the council where I worked popped in to pick up a folder, with this scrawny baby who couldn’t even cry properly, just mewled like a kitten.
She said his teenage mum had asked for him to be adopted because she couldn’t cope, but the court had ruled he was “unadoptable”.
Some doctor’s report decided he’d never walk or talk properly.
Wouldn’t manage mainstream school, let alone a job, so who would want him?
Hearing that someone could declare whether an eight-month baby was loveable or not – simply because he had a few extra challenges!
– I proper flipped out. The only thing stopping me from grabbing his car seat and doing a runner right then was knowing it’d blacklist me from ever legally becoming his mum.
So, I went home, told Ray I’d met our son, and that was that. ’
‘Do you want kids?’ Lola asked me and Darya.
‘Not especially,’ Darya said. ‘Which is a good job, because the very thought of it makes Mr G restless.’ She pressed one hand to her chest and closed her eyes.
I took her other hand and we went back out on the balcony to breathe and count.
While we did, I thought about Lola’s question.
It would have been an easy, solid ‘no’ to being a mum only a month earlier.
Now, as I thought about the ‘spontaneous’ photo Will had posted of his kids camped out in the living room having a pyjama party of their own, I wasn’t so sure.
The truth was, I was still learning what this new Alex wanted.
For maybe the first time ever, I was okay with not knowing the answers to that, yet.
The next few days were all about Tucker’s. I’d had a brainwave after asking Merry what her non-negotiables for the café were. What she wanted the overall vibe to be like.
She’d shrugged, glancing over at Joel. ‘I just want it to be somewhere everyone feels welcome. Nothing fancy, or cool. A safe place where kids can be kids – all kids, not only the ones who find it easy to sit still at a table for an hour – and adults can sit by themselves and read, or join another table and chat with other people if they want. Make a new friend.’
It took me another evening of research and a phone call to a house developer who’d worked with us on Winning at Life, one whose daughter had used a wheelchair since a horse-riding accident.
He had loads of additional ideas and advice about how Tucker’s could welcome everyone, along with a spare couple of days to come and help, and when I presented the plan to Merry, she wept.
By the time we’d finished painting, the developer had installed a fully accessible toilet, including a changing table with adjustable height and a hoist. He’d installed the serving counter I’d salvaged from the recently closed café with a lowered section for wheelchair users, a ramp and plenty of space between tables.
We’d even designated one area of the café the ‘Friend Table’, with a bench and a shelf we would stock with board games, the plan being that people could sit here if they wanted company.
We would also include copies of the menu in braille and with images.
Donovan showed us how to hang a wallpaper mural across the back of the café.
I’d found a forest design, with a lifelike image of leafy trees bathed in sunshine.
It also featured a squirrel scampering up a branch, a deer peeking around an oak trunk and birds dotted all over.
Joel sanded down the old shelves and stained them a light oak to match the sturdy tables we’d collected from the bankrupt café in Merry’s van, along with a dozen chairs which Merry, Darya, Donovan and I painted a mix of cranberry, mustard, teal and rich red.
On Thursday at eleven, the usual Friends Wanted meeting time, I was surprised by Will turning up. He seemed surprised that I would have expected him to be anywhere else.
‘I mean, if I’ll be getting in your way, I can go…’
Will had been getting in my way since the first time I’d met him. In my head, in my plans, in that delicious, dangerous way my stomach tied itself in knots when I was with him.
I pointed out some lampshades formed out of metal oak leaves that needed hanging up and tried to hide how thrilled I was.
Two minutes later, Darya’s word for today, tenth of December, pinged through. LOVING.
I couldn’t help glancing over to where she was clearly waiting for me to look so she could wink and blow me a kiss.
For a moment, I contemplated sending a picture to the advent challenge chat of Will, stretching up in his white T-shirt to screw a light fitting into place.
I was loving him being here even more than I loved the jeans he was wearing.
That made me giggle, and blush, and fumble my screwdriver, and when I made the mistake of catching Darya’s eye again, I knew I couldn’t deny a rip-roaring crush on my new friend.
I had become conscious of his every move, lighting up like a Christmas tree whenever he said something. Blushing and smiling and stumbling over my replies.
He came to sit with me when Samira served lunch, Ernest curled up underneath the new table. Samira squeaked when she came out of the kitchen and saw Will, which was progress from her scream when she’d first met me, and even better she managed not to drop the tray of wraps.
‘Have I done something different with my hair?’ Will asked, leaning close enough to make my breath catch. ‘Is there a mark on my face I don’t know about?’
‘Um, no. You know Samira has social anxiety.’
‘Okay, but what about you?’
‘What?’ My heart screeched to a momentary stop.
‘You’re being jittery. I’d have wondered if it was all this, managing the project, except that it’s obviously going well and you aren’t twitchy when anyone else talks to you.’
I swallowed, hard, and tried to get my brain working so I could find a credible reply.
‘Have I insulted you without realising? Or has Edith’s comment about us kissing made things awkward? I spoke to her afterwards, pointed out how she’d feel if I made a comment like that in front of one of her friends. She got the message.’
‘Um…’
‘We did agree that if one of us was honest, the other wouldn’t get offended.’
We had. I looked down at my halloumi wrap. Scratched my dog’s ear. Ignored Darya and Merry at the next table, whispering behind their hands like schoolgirls.
I dared a lightning-fast peek at Will. His forehead was lined with confusion. Was that a glimmer of nervousness in his grey-brown eyes?
Oh boy. He looked so lovely, I couldn’t not tell him.
‘I just really like you being here,’ I mumbled, braving another glance. He appeared even more confused. ‘I really like you. I mean, I think I like you.’
When I peeked again, his mouth was slightly open, eyes wide. He looked utterly stunned.