Chapter 4 #2
Ally realised that, in her enthusiasm to help out, she’d abandoned Love Links on the table in full view. She might as well have had a tattoo on her forehead saying ‘desperate loveless female’.
Just then she heard a deep voice behind her. ‘Fair play . . .’
‘Sorry?’
‘That could’ve been a total shitshow without you. He’d have had to close.’
She turned to find Mr T-shirt meticulously packing his tools into a purpose-built box.
‘I’m back in tomorrow morning,’ she said, wiping the last few tables and feeling quite proud. Somewhere over the course of a lunchtime she’d gone from being Nobody to being Somebody and it felt, well . . . warm.
‘Oh yeah?’ He glanced up at her with a smile but was focused on disassembling his drill and packing the pieces away, each in their perfect place, so she had a chance to examine him in safety.
He had a tanned complexion with fine creases round the eyes and a scattering of masonry dust in his hair.
As he stood up to go, she felt him focus on the side of her cheek. ‘You’ve got a bit of . . .’
Pete gestured at her and for a second, she thought he was going to reach out and touch her face but he stopped himself just in time.
She realised it was a sizeable blob of mayonnaise that must have flipped in the chaos and could’ve been there for hours. Suddenly, she felt self-conscious.
‘I must look a total shambles, I didn’t even have time to go to the loo . . .’
Could you have any less of a filter? her inner voice despaired. You’ve now just succeeded in making what Grandma would have called ‘an exhibition of yourself’.
‘Are you grabbing lunch?’ he suggested, which was a perfectly normal question.
However, she was feeling totally overextended.
In her old life at Celtic Concrete, she wouldn’t have exchanged as many words in a week with colleagues as she’d done in the past few hours and, honestly, the energy it would have taken for another conversation with a stranger, attractive or not, was beyond her.
‘No, I’ve got to go home,’ she heard herself blathering. ‘I’ve to . . .’ come on, think of something, ‘clean out my fish tank.’
He looked amused. ‘That’s a new one.’
Having started down this ludicrous path, she needed to commit to it. ‘They’re overdue, the weekend ran away with me. If I don’t do them today it could be toxic . . . In fact, it could be deadly.’
He nodded with a smile. ‘Well, I wouldn’t want to be responsible for a tragedy.’
She gave a quick smile and beat it out into the October sun, rolling her eyes at herself. She was heading for home when her phone rang – Rosemarie’s name flashed up.
‘Hi, I’m on my tea break. If I don’t talk, I’ll only eat a muffin. What are you up to?’
‘Not much. Going to buy fish.’
‘Oh good, healthy option. High protein.’
‘Not to eat . . . In a tank.’
‘What? Why?’
Ally explained everything about the café, her new job and finally her excuse to Pete. ‘He’ll probably be in tomorrow so if I don’t do it, it’ll be a lie.’
‘That’s ridiculous, Ally, he’s not going to come round to your apartment and make an inspection now, is he?’
‘Obviously not, but maybe it’s time I got some fish anyway. I need to slow down.’
‘Ally, are you OK?’
‘’Course I am. Except, I’ve just noticed my new runners are covered in melted cheese and Béarnaise sauce. So, tell me about William, did you see him today?’
The truth was that, throughout her shift, at the back of her mind she was thinking of William. How she’d describe it to him, the laugh they’d have, how he’d be impressed. In fact, her inner dialogue with William was the saving grace that kept her from panicking.
‘He dropped by on some lame excuse about checking a connection, but I think he might have secretly been pining for you.’
Really? Then why hadn’t he just texted her.
He could have got in touch any time over the weekend.
She secretly knew that Rosemarie was trying to be kind to her.
Truth was, there was an inner version of William that was largely her own creation and the outside William, with his own plans – and right now, the two seemed to be pretty separate.
‘Gotta go, guess who’s only eaten two squares of chocolate and no muffin? Yaay, result, see you in Los Banditos tomorrow at six thirty.’
And she was gone, leaving Ally to find her way to the pet shop.
* * *
She squeezed her way into the musky atmosphere of the cramped, dimly lit shop, full of scuffling and cheeping from rows of cages filled with hyper-anxious hamsters, sleeping snakes and brightly coloured birds.
There was something sad and yet compulsive about the atmosphere of pet shops; she’d been fascinated ever since her grandfather had brought her to one when she was six to buy her a goldfish.
Maybe that’s why she was there now: the wish to re-create that long-lost safe time.
‘Fish?’ she enquired of the elderly man in glasses, bundled up behind the counter in a puffa coat and scarf.
In truth, he looked more like part of the ecosystem than a salesperson.
He raised his arm slowly, using the absolute minimum energy, and pointed towards the back of the shop.
Obediently, she made her way down through what proved to be deceptively large premises.
There was something magical about tropical fish tanks .
. . They glowed with an exotic warmth, as though they were a tiny cube of some balmy ocean far away.
‘What were you looking for?’
Ally practically jumped out of her skin as the owner had apparently dislodged himself from his burrow and was now filling up most of the aisle behind her.
‘Something small, it’s just for my apartment.’
‘Haruuuummm,’ he intoned, like Treebeard the Ent.
‘Starter set-up, then. Although, I’d advise getting a decent-sized tank.
You don’t want your fish to end up too crowded.
Fish need their space. Just like people.
Some breeds of fish are fussy, fighty; some will get on with anyone. But you have to let them settle in.’
She chose a pair of fish called guppies. They were beautiful, with silvery sides and flowy fins that reminded her of a breeze blowing through the net curtains in her old bedroom.
Soon the counter was piled with heaters and filters, sand and decorations, adding up to almost €500.
Was she mad? Her fifty-euro wages from that morning wouldn’t knock much of a dent in this lot.
But perhaps it was the unforeseen way today had unfolded that had prompted the crazy, unfamiliar impulse.
Follow your heart.
‘I’ll take them, thanks,’ she said with a rush of euphoria. Oh Lord, now she was going to need a taxi to drag this lot home. Oh well, in for a penny . . .
And this wasn’t like her at all.
By nine o’clock that evening, having bumbled through a YouTube video on assembling aquariums, she sat on a cushion gazing at the soft glow as the fish darted through a cloud of bubbles rising from a little treasure chest. And she realised she was feeling .
. . better. In fact, for the first time since she’d moved to this little flat, after moving out from Grand Canal Dock, where she’d lived with Francis, she was feeling less lonely.
Who would’ve thought fish could be company, but they were.
* * *
By eight thirty the next morning, she was swinging past the retirees outside The Owl’s Nest. ‘Morning Christie, hi Noel,’ she called as they waved back a greeting. You wouldn’t get that in Celtic Concrete, which was very hierarchical, she was just realising.
The café was buzzing: a queue of tech workers, who reminded her of a row of Williams, were in for their pre-work flat white; Dave was working tirelessly at the coffee machine.
Beside him was the birdlike older lady in the crochet cardigan she’d seen last Friday, who introduced herself as Evelyn and was busy making a mountain of scrumptious baguettes filled with goat’s cheese and Serrano ham; Reuben sandwiches, with pastrami and mozzarella, pickles and multiple dressings; and the speciality sandwich of the day: Brie and truffle butter with fig.
‘I worked for a good spell in New York,’ she explained, ‘in a diner in Manhattan that served . . . ah, you wouldn’t believe it, twenty different types of omelettes, fresh fruits you’ve never heard of, sandwiches from all over the world that’d make your head swim.
I always wanted to come back here and open a place like that near where I grew up, that was my dream.
But sure, I never had the money. Probably just as well,’ she confided.
‘Can you imagine the crowd around here with a hundred different options? Sure, they’d be standing there all morning with their mouths open. But this is the next best thing.’
‘And how did you end up working for Dave?’
‘I worked as a nanny for Dave’s family. Then, years later, when I came home from America, I saw this job advertised and applied, and it was only then I realised I’d looked after him as a lad.’
‘That’s amazing.’
‘It is. I always think there’s a pattern to everything if only you can spot it.’
Ally instinctively warmed to her – the unexpected passion, her wild, unlikely dreams.
‘I heard about you yesterday, jumping up and offering to help out, and I said to myself, that’s what I’d have done as a young one. Not everyone would.’
Warmed by the compliment, she felt instinctively that Evelyn wasn’t someone who would flatter for the sake of it.
‘Right, we’ve a few minutes, Ally,’ said Dave. ‘I’m going to take you through the coffee machine so you can manage if I’m not here.’
It was clear that Dave was a great guy, but his café was running on a knife-edge, and the events of the previous day mightn’t be that unusual after all.