I See You(15)

‘Just support her.’

‘I am supporting her! I took a couple of hours off work so I could travel in with her.’

‘Does she know that?’

I fall silent. I’d been planning to meet her afterwards to see how the audition had gone, but Katie had made it quite clear she didn’t want me hanging around.

‘You should encourage her. When she becomes a Hollywood sensation you don’t want her telling Hello! magazine her mum told her she was no good.’

I laugh. ‘Not you, too. Simon’s convinced she’s going to make it.’

‘Well, then,’ Melissa says, as though that settles it. Her blue hairnet is coming loose, and I tug it forward for her, so she doesn’t have to wash her hands again. Melissa has long, thick glossy dark hair, which she wears in a seemingly complicated knot I’ve seen her create in a matter of seconds. When she’s working she’ll tuck a pen into it, which gives a misleadingly bohemian impression of her. Like most days she’s wearing jeans and ankle boots, with a crisp white shirt, the sleeves rolled to the elbows to expose skin as pale as her husband’s is dark.

‘Thanks.’

‘But then he’s also convinced he’s going to be a bestselling author.’ I grin, but even though I’m joking I feel instantly disloyal.

‘Doesn’t that involve actually writing something?’

‘He is writing,’ I say, redressing the balance by leaping to Simon’s defence. ‘He’s had masses of research to do first, and it’s hard finding the time around a full-time job.’

‘What’s it about?’

‘Some sort of espionage thriller, I think. You know me, it’s not really my sort of book. Give me a Maeve Binchy any day.’ I haven’t read any of Simon’s novel. He wants to wait until it’s finished before I see it, and I’m fine with that, because the truth is, I’m nervous. I worry I won’t know what to say about it; that I’m not qualified even to know if it’s good or not. I’m sure it’ll be good. Simon writes beautifully. He’s one of the most senior journalists at the Telegraph, and he’s been working on his book ever since I met him.

The door opens and a man in a suit comes in. He greets Melissa by name and they chat about the weather as she makes his coffee, adding milk and sugar without needing to ask.

There’s a copy of Friday’s Metro in the rack on the wall, and I pull it out while Melissa rings up the sale. Whoever was reading it has left it folded on a page headed ‘Underground Crime Soars’, and even though there’s no one near me I instinctively move my arm over my handbag, the strap worn across my chest in a habit years old. There’s a photo of a lad around Justin’s age, his face badly beaten, and a woman with a rucksack open on her lap, looking like she’s about to cry. I scan the article but it’s nothing new; advice about keeping your belongings close to you, travelling in pairs late at night. Nothing I haven’t told Katie, time and time again.

‘Justin said your manager went home sick yesterday,’ I say, when we’re on our own again.

‘She’s off today, as well, hence …’ She gestures to the blue hairnet. ‘I bet Richard Branson didn’t have these problems when he was building his empire.’

‘I bet he did. I’m not sure you can call two cafés,’ I catch Melissa’s glower, ‘two brilliant cafés an empire, though.’

Melissa looks shifty. ‘Three.’

I raise an eyebrow and wait for more.

‘Clerkenwell. Don’t look at me like that. You have to speculate to accumulate.’

‘But—’ I stop before I cross a line I can’t return from. Taking on a third café when my second was foundering would terrify me, but I guess that’s why Melissa’s in business, and I’m not. When I moved in next door to Melissa and Neil I was doing a bookkeeping course through the Adult Education programme. I’d been rubbish at maths at school, but Matt only had the kids on Wednesday evenings, which meant it was that or upholstery, and I couldn’t see me making a living from re-covering chairs. Melissa was my first client.

‘I’ve done the business accounts myself up till now,’ she said, when I told her I’d signed up for the course, ‘but I’ve taken on new premises in Covent Garden, and I could do with freeing up some time. It’ll be payroll and receipts – nothing too complicated.’ I jumped at the chance. And although it was only a year before another client – Graham Hallow – offered me a permanent job, I’ve carried on doing the books for Melissa’s and Melissa’s Too.

‘Melissa’s Three?’ I ask now. She laughs.

‘And four, and five … the sky’s the limit!’

I’m not due into work until lunchtime, but when I arrive at eleven Graham makes a show of looking at his watch.

‘Good of you to come in today, Zoe.’ As always, he’s wearing a three-piece suit, with an actual pocket watch tucked into his waistcoat. ‘Professionalism breeds confidence,’ he explained to me once, perhaps in an attempt to encourage me out of my M&S trousers and into something similarly old-fashioned.

I don’t rise to it. My two hours’ leave was authorised and signed off by Graham himself before I left on Friday. ‘Would you like me to make you a coffee?’ I say, having learned a long time ago that the best way to extinguish Graham is by being unfailingly polite.