Fiction All Grown Up

MY stomach is sputtering in time to the raindrops on my umbrella. I pull my scarf up to my throat and walk past the coffee shop door one more time. Do I go in?

Looking in through the window is like peeping into a cosy glowing capsule populated by contented customers: mothers and daughters; friends; couples. Warmth beckons.

I hesitate, stamp feet that are slowly petrifying in my boots and wonder once again whether I might have been mad to come here.

I’m forty-nine years old. That is not old, but it’s far too long in the tooth to be dithering about like this over whether to meet a man. Where now my hard-won maturity?

Ironically, our first date was in a coffee shop. If you can call it a date . . .

“Hi,” he said, bouncing around the library queue like an eager puppy. “I’m Nick – Engineering. You?”

“Julie. English and Drama.”

It was close enough to university Freshers’ Week to be exchanging that sort of information with everyone you met. Lectures had begun, but still that strange melting pot of lowered barriers persisted. Everything was still new; everyone still a potential friend or lover.

“How about we ditch the queue and go and get a coffee, Julie?”

“What makes you think I’d go for a coffee with you? We’ve just met.”

“Yeah, but you like me. I can tell.”

“You think a lot of yourself.”

“If I don’t, nobody else is going to, are they? I mean, look at me: I’m not exactly George Michael.”

That made me laugh. “Come and have a coffee.”

“Nice try, but I have work to do.” “Work can wait.” “Says who? Don’t tell me: you do.”

The deepest navy eyes I’d ever seen sparkled at me beneath the huge Eighties hair. Caught between head and heart, I hesitated for just a second, then followed my head and turned back to the queue.

“Bye, Nick.”

But there was something about him; I was still smiling to myself as I extracted a text book from the shelves and sat to start making notes.

I had been at the library table only five minutes or so when I was startled by a quiet theatrical cough. I looked up. An owlish girl I’d never seen before blinked down in my direction and proffered a piece of paper.

“For you,” she hissed. “A blond boy near the entrance gave it to me.”

“Ssh!” A sour-faced librarian scowled over at us. “He said to give it to you.” She sat down so that she could whisper more closely. I remember she smelled of Imperial Leather soap.

“You are Julie, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

The girl blinked again and scuttled off, with an anxious sideways glance at the watching librarian. I opened the piece of paper. On it Nick had drawn a sketch of a steaming cup. Please! You know you want to. Nx.

Today’s sophisticated coffee shop is a world away from the student union refectory where we shared that first cup. Because of course I left the library to join him: how could I resist?

Scrubbed Formica tables and broken plastic bucket chairs were the order of the day back then. I don’t recall if the coffee was any good; probably not. This was long before the fashion for the real stuff that has saturated our high streets in relatively recent years.

I had agreed to meet Nick, but the truth is I’m not the same person I was when we were together . . .

I only remember the dark blue eyes full of mischief and the way they made me feel when they were focused on me. Like I was the most amazing person in the world, and more fascinating even than Madonna.

I remember laughing, over and over again, till I was giddy with it; drunk on it.

By the time we finished that first coffee I knew I was well on the way to falling in love.

It’s already getting dark in this gloomy weather. So much for having passed the winter solstice so many weeks ago. I long for any sign at all that spring might be thinking about stirring itself.

I catch sight of my reflection suddenly in the polished coffee shop window: a pinched-looking woman with sleekly bobbed hair (that will soon be unbobbed in this desperate damp) and a smart cinched-in raincoat.

I’m not bad for my age, though I hate that phrase. It’s true I’ve lost weight recently but I’ve always been slim; I’ve got good genes like that. I wonder how Nick is looking.

It was a shock when I got his e-mail and this invitation. We’ve been out of touch for so long.

“Go,” my sister said. “Let him see what he passed up.”

“Maybe he knows.” “How would he? The man clearly had no brains before. My little sister – beautiful, smart and strong. Go and show him how brightly you shine now.”

“Evie, you are so biased but I love you for it.”

“Go,” she insisted. “And show him.”

Buoyed up by my big sister’s faith, I e-mailed back and agreed to meet Nick here today, though I can’t really explain why.

And now that I’m here all my bravado has evaporated. I think I’d better just dive inside before I freeze to death and my hair reverts to a tangled frizz.

I suppose our first proper date was to go and see “Trick Or Treat”, a forgettable but, I thought at the time, frightening film.

I made Nick leave before the end; we graduated to the local pub and then, when last orders were called, to the late-night coffee shop on the corner. There was a traditional juke box in the corner. It was playing the latest by Wham: “Last Christmas”.

“Hey, George, listen,” I teased. “You’re on the juke box!”

Nick grinned in a way that made my heart turn over and went to get the first of many coffees. When the song stopped he slotted ten pence into the machine to make it play again. And again.

In my memory we talked all night long, though I suppose the coffee shop must have closed its doors to us at some point.

All through that autumn into Christmas the song became the soundtrack to our falling in love. Of course it became a classic, to be churned out on TV every festive season, and whenever I hear it even now it pricks a poignant place under my skin.

The music video that went with it made me dream of staying in a snow-clad ski chalet in the mountains, just like the one where George Michael got his fictitious broken heart. Except, of course, for me it would be happy-ever-after.

Funnily enough, I did make it to a ski chalet years later. But by then I had two small boys to dress and get ready for ski school each morning, and after an exhausting day it always seemed to be the women in the group who bathed and put children to bed while the men boasted about their sporting achievements in the bar downstairs.

I don’t know why we put up with it. I suppose I was just grateful for the gin and tonic and having someone else to cook dinner.

Back then I was immersed in a trench of domesticity; it would be years before I popped my head above that particular parapet.

Deep breath. Here goes nothing. My gloved hand pushes open the coffee shop door with such force it bangs into a nearby table. Two women clutch cups in alarm.

“Sorry,” I mouth and am reassured by their smiles.

Nick isn’t here. Good. Breathe again. Can I go now?

I hover for a second and then, feeling conspicuous standing, I decide to get a coffee: it might steady my nerves. I sit down and as I do so the paper crinkles in my pocket. My list.

It was Nick’s idea to make it. I feel more than a bit awkward about it, to be honest. It’s all a bit too heart-on-sleeve for me. I’m a least-said-soonestmended kind of person. I wonder what’s on Nick’s list.

I scan tables just in case he is already here and I’ve missed him. My attention is caught by an elderly couple in the corner. They both look well into their eighties.

He pulls out a chair for her to sit; she fusses over putting their coats on the seat and smiles at him. It’s an ordinary everyday scene that speaks of a shared lifetime. How do people stay married for that long?

I didn’t think my marriage was a particularly bad one. At least not in the beginning and not while the boys were growing up. Though we had our moments, of course.

When Euan went to university I missed him, naturally, but I’d been a student myself and it was an opportunity I wanted for him. Besides, there was still Finlay at home. He wasn’t academic so he’d be staying awhile.

But that was when something bizarre happened to my husband. He seemed to become much closer to Finlay, as if one son leaving home had made him cherish the remaining one more.

I didn’t mind; I thought it was a good thing. To begin with.

But my husband wasn’t trying to be a good father: he was trying to be Finlay’s friend.

“Come on, Fin, let’s go and cheer on the reserves – we can have a few pints afterwards.”

I’d never liked football so I didn’t mind.

Then came the fitness classes: a hideous set of boot-camp workouts which required both of them to leave the house at six a.m. five days a week and dump lots of sweaty shirts in the laundry.

“Why don’t you come and try it, Mum?” Finlay suggested one evening as his father was waxing lyrical about the fitness benefits. “Lots of women go.”

“Fin, your mum is far too set in her ways for something like that, aren’t you, love? Not her cup of tea at all.”

It was suddenly clear to me that, in his brain, the two of them were the fit and the forward-looking and I was the person plodding placidly into middle age.

Then I minded. Very much.

I thought Finlay looked embarrassed by his father’s dismissal of me and rushed to reassure him.

“Yes, I’m quite happy with my swimming and my yoga.”

“You see?” His father was triumphant.

I remember clearing the supper plates and feeling sad.

When Finlay brought Lauren home I liked her. His father wasn’t keen.

“Not a very lively lass, is she?”

But I saw the love that shone in her eyes when she looked at my

He was hardly George Michael, but he made my heart turn over

Finlay and I was happy for him.

As time went on I could see Finlay felt conflicted about spending less time with his father and more with Lauren. Eventually the two young people set up home together.

“You do what’s right for you,” I told Finlay. “You father will survive.”

How little I knew.

Nick’s here. From across the coffee shop I see his frame filling the doorway: in many ways he’s not so different from the fun-loving student I fell for all those years ago.

He smiles and steps aside to let through a young mother with a pushchair. He looks up, then stops.

Still the same navy eyes but with a lot more crinkles around them. When he sees me he starts to smile, but then I watch him remembering and his features are flooded with fear and trepidation.

He shuffles forward between tables. I stand. I don’t know why. “Hello,” he says. My heartbeat seems to have migrated to my stomach. I swallow hard, leaning on the bistro table for balance.

“I see you’ve already got yours.” He nods at my cup. “Yes.”

“I’d best get mine, then.” As he approaches the counter I realise he’s more stooped than he used to be, or is it my imagination? His hair could do with a trim, but he’s still a handsome figure as he files forward in the counter queue.

“Thank you for coming, Julie,” he says with odd formality as he returns and sits.

“That’s OK.” I fake a nonchalance I’m far from feeling.

There is a pause.

“Did you – did you make a list?” he asks, looking like my boys used to years ago when they knew a punishment was coming.

“Nick, this is just so strange. It feels silly.”

He sighs, spreads his fingers and looks down at them.

“I know, but I thought it might, you know, focus the mind.”

“On what?”

When my husband e-mailed me the link to an online marriage guidance website I couldn’t have been more astonished.

We’ve been apart six months now and, well, we’re neither of us soulbaring types.

It’s one of the things I thought we still had in common: set the past aside, however sad, and move forward.

The website’s first suggestion was that each partner write a list of the good and the bad things about the relationship and show it to the other.

To my immense discomfort Nick draws a piece of paper from his pocket and places it on the table. It feels like every inch of my body’s surface is fizzing with nerves.

“This is all a bit daft, don’t you think?” My fingers close over the paper in my own pocket. “The thing is, Nick, all the bad stuff on my list – it’s, well, it’s everything that’s happened in the past two years. And that’s now, isn’t it? That’s the way things are now.”

He winces, then blows a breath out of puckered lips and pushes his piece of paper towards me.

“Just read mine, then.”

I fish in my bag for my reading glasses.

I read how he loves the way I wait up for him when he works late; how I know when he needs coffee without having to ask.

He loves the way I look in the morning when I get out of the shower with my face covered in water droplets; how I fall asleep on the sofa after “News At Ten”. And so much more.

On the negative side he has written one comment. I’m an idiot.

“I’m so sorry, Julie.” He scours my face. “I’ve been a stupid, clichéd, middle-aged fool.”

“You realise,” I stammer, stalling for time, “clichés only become that because they’re true for so many people.”

He nods as if I’ve said something really profound.

“I know.” He takes a steadying breath. “I behaved so badly. I know I must have hurt you, but I was so lost when the boys left home, I think I went into some weird kind of depression. I –”

“You think I wasn’t lost?” To my horror my voice cracks.

“I know. I’m sorry, I don’t know what to say, Julie. Could we –?” His eyes are huge with unshed tears. “Could we find our way together, do you think? It’s not too late.”

He reaches for my hand, but I snatch it off the table and then am so sorry for the hurt that suffuses his face. But I need the space.

“It’s not that simple, Nick. I don’t know. The thing is, these last few months I’ve had a glimpse of who I might be without you. I never thought I would want that, but – I quite like who I am now.”

“There’s no-one else for me, Julie. Never has been, no matter how much of a fool I’ve been. I don’t want a life without you in it.”

“I’m not the same person any more. These six months have changed me.”

“They’ve changed us both.”

His fingers fold around his cup and as I stare into those intense eyes I see, as they say a drowning person sees scenes from their life, a lifetime of coffees we have shared.

Those student all-nighters at the beginning of our relationship; early-morning ones when the boys were babies; late-night ones when Nick was working to make a deadline; harrowing hospital ones when Euan had his bike accident and we didn’t know yet how bad it would be.

I sigh as if all the breath is leaving my body.

“I need . . . I can’t just tell you now, not here, not like this. I’ll have to think about it.”

He nods, resigned, as I reach for my coat and bag. “Can I text you?” he says. “Sure.”

As my hand pushes the door to the street my mobile pings. A picture message from Nick.

It’s an image of a cup of coffee and under it he has written: Please! You know you want to. Nx

I shake my head at the bittersweet memory and feel my lips curve up into a smile.

I look back. There is a flicker of mischief in those eyes still.

But mostly what I see when I look at my husband of so many years is love and a huge amount of hope. And in that moment I know for certain that this is a very long way from being our last coffee together. n