All That She Can See(2)

‘You there!’ called a voice above the gush of the sea.

‘Me?’ whimpered Margie, pointing to herself with a red raw hand.

‘Come in!’ The young lady in the doorway reached inside and pulled up the blind in the front window, revealing a warmly lit coffee shop with a bakery counter and lovely wooden furniture. Margie looked towards her journey home, grey and miserable, much like the evening she’d find when she got there, and hesitated.

‘Quickly!’ the woman shouted, looking over Margie’s shoulder as though she had seen something in the darkness. Margie undeniably felt danger somewhere in the shadows and before she, and Loneliness, knew it, her feet were moving her towards the light.

Once Margie was safely inside, the young lady quickly closed the door and offered to take her coat. Margie guessed that she couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, almost half her own age, and she seemed to be wearing pyjamas under an oversized knitted burgundy jumper with grey slippers on her feet. She had a kind, heart-shaped face and her Afro hair was secured in bunches on the top of her head. The lady helped Margie out of her dripping coat and as she did Margie noticed how grey and blotched her own skin looked next to the lady’s warm, dark arm. The young lady shook the worst of the rain from the coat and hung it on the coat stand next to the counter.

‘Now,’ said the lady, smiling. ‘What can I get you? On the house.’

Margie didn’t know what to say. She was sure she didn’t know this young woman and yet she was talking to Margie like they were old friends.

‘Erm…’

‘Wait, don’t tell me.’ The woman held up a finger and scrunched her eyes closed. Margie looked down at her sodden shoes and the wet footprints she’d left on the wooden floor and wondered if maybe she should take them off but when she looked up, the woman had disappeared. Margie could hear the clattering of plates and the tinkle of cutlery towards the back of the shop.

‘You… you really don’t need to go to any trouble,’ Margie called weakly towards the noise. She had found her voice but it was too feeble to be heard from wherever the woman had gone to.

Margie looked around and realised that the shop was only half finished. Cans of paint sat on the floor next to stripped skirting boards and the wires for the lighting were exposed. Margie felt awkward and out of place so before she made an even bigger fool of herself she dashed to the coat stand and grabbed her coat – putting her right arm through the left hole in a mad panic, but it didn’t matter. She just needed to leave. She opened the door quickly, not noticing the old-fashioned bell above it, which rang out loudly.

‘WAIT!’ called the lady, reappearing with a small plate in one hand and a steaming mug in the other. ‘Please don’t go. I just… I want to help.’

Loneliness was sitting outside the shop – with its back against the wall, it was poised, ready to latch itself back onto Margie like a barnacle on the bottom of a ship the minute she walked outside. Standing on the threshold, Margie thought again of her pokey, cold flat and wondered what exactly it was she was running back to. The door swung shut.

‘Sorry,’ Margie said. ‘I’m not very good with… people.’ She shrugged off her coat again, which the lady hung back on the coat stand. She gently manoeuvred Margie by the shoulders to the table where she’d placed the plate and the mug. There was a large chunk of cake on the plate. Marble, by the looks of it, Margie thought.

‘I wasn’t very good with people either until recently,’ said the lady, taking a seat across from Margie and handing her a fork. Margie took it and separated a delicate sliver of the cake. ‘Turns out I just wasn’t very good with myself.’

That sentence bounced around the pit of Margie’s stomach and settled with a rumble. She looked down at the fluffy morsel on her fork and took a bite. The cake was moist but dense, and chocolate and vanilla flavours burst in her mouth. When Margie swallowed she could feel it warm her from the inside out, the kind of warm you feel when you snuggle into bed on a cold night with a hot water bottle tucked between the sheets. Margie took another bite. And another. And another. It wasn’t until she went to have yet another mouthful that she saw there were just crumbs left and she’d eaten the whole slice.

‘That may be the best cake I’ve ever had,’ Margie sighed. Then she chuckled and, remembering how good it felt, chuckled at the feeling of chuckling until Margie was laughing so hard she thought she’d never stop. The lady sat and laughed with her, seemingly enjoying the feeling of making someone happy. Eventually Margie wiped tears from her eyes and said tentatively, unsure of how to make conversation, ‘Are you new here?’

The lady nodded. ‘I am.’

‘Are you staying?’ Margie asked, gesturing to the shop that was clearly midway through renovation.

‘I am. I thought this town could do with a bakery.’

‘Oh… we already have one,’ said Margie quietly, torn between not wanting this lady to leave town but also not wanting the bakery in the village to lose business. The townspeople were very fond of their spectacular Belgian buns.

‘Not one like mine,’ the lady said, smiling as she took the plate and placed it on the shop counter.

‘No, I suppose not,’ Margie said, still feeling warm.

A silence fell over them, one that didn’t feel awkward or that needed filling. It was a content silence that friends often share.