‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘You don’t have to tell me anything. Like I said you hardly know me.’
‘How about you?’ I ask. ‘Did you stay in York after university? Have our paths crossed and we’ve never realised?’
‘I went to work in London,’ he says. ‘But Mum had moved to York by then so I came back a lot at the weekends. I still do actually and I still have a lot of friends there. We’ve probably been sitting in the same pub on a Saturday night and never known!’
‘Undoubtedly,’ I reply. ‘York is such a small place.’
Once again he’s only mentioned his mother. I want to know about his father but I don’t ask because I recognise something in him, something about that look that passes over his face and it’s only now that I realise what it is.
Loss.
*
‘Did you not want to go back to France?’ he asks after we’ve talked about pubs in York for a few minutes. I lean back in my chair and sigh, because this is the question that everybody asks eventually, the question I never really want to answer.
‘No,’ I say. ‘Not after Mum died.’ I say the words quickly, like ripping off a Band-Aid. It’s the easiest way to tell the story. I see that look, the one that I’m sure is connected to a similar loss, cross Ben’s face again.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he says quietly.
‘It was ten years ago now and I still miss her every day,’ I say. ‘It doesn’t hurt as much as it used to but I feel as though when she died part of me died too, as though I’ll never be the person I used to be when she was alive.’ I stop. I have no idea why I’m unburdening myself to a virtual stranger at midnight in my café. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘You don’t want to hear all this.’
I feel his hand cover mine again, just for a moment. ‘I do,’ he says. ‘If you want to tell me.’
‘I was in my first year at university when she died. It was very sudden and unexpected. I went back to France for a few weeks and got special dispensation in my end-of-year exams. But after that I felt like I was just meant to go back to normal. Go back to York, get my degree and carry on with my life.’
He nods as though he understands and waits for me to carry on.
‘So I did.’ I shrug. ‘What else could I do? I did what my mother wanted and stayed in academia.’
‘Even though you didn’t want to.’
‘Even though I didn’t want to,’ I repeat.
‘Did your dad move back to England?’ he asks.
‘No, Dad’s French. They met when he was doing a year of his postgraduate degree at Oxford and Mum was an undergraduate there. They were both very academic so it was inevitable that I’d end up on that path.’ I pause and look up at him and smile. ‘Even though I didn’t want to.’
‘What about brothers and sisters?’ he asks. ‘Do you have any?’
Another question I hate answering.
‘A half-sister,’ I say. ‘She’s a lot younger than me. After Mum died, Dad moved from Paris back to the small town near Marseilles where he came from. A few years later he married again and they have a daughter, Marie. We don’t see each other very often.’
He doesn’t say anything, but being here with him feels comforting, as though I’ve known him for a lot longer than I have. He doesn’t need to know that I haven’t seen my father since Marie was born four years ago and that we only speak, awkwardly and briefly, on birthdays and at Christmas.
‘I am sorry,’ I say again. ‘You don’t need to hear all this.’
He looks at me for a moment as though he’s about to tell me something, but his eyes dart away and he seems to change his mind.
‘You must have a lot of memories tied up here in Sanderson Bay,’ he says.
I nod briefly, looking away from him again. There are so many memories and a lot of them are so complicated.
‘Same here,’ he says. ‘I think that’s why I’ve not been sleeping.’
‘The tea should help,’ I reply, and suddenly I need to stand up and put some distance between us. Everything feels too intimate, too close. I haven’t spoken to anyone about my mum like this since Marcus and for some reason tonight, in the soft lights with the smell of lavender tea in the air, Ben doesn’t feel like a stranger. He doesn’t feel like somebody I set eyes on for the first time just three days ago. I push my chair away and stand up. I shouldn’t have told him so much.
‘I’ve got some night-time tea gift packs,’ I say. ‘A packet of the tea along with a special cup to brew it in. Let me get you one.’ I go behind the counter again to get the gift pack and when I turn around he’s walked up to me. I decide to stay behind the counter, to keep the solid wood between us as a barrier.
‘How much do I owe you?’ he asks.
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘No, let me pay,’ he says. ‘Please.’
‘Pay me tomorrow,’ I say, passing the tea to him. ‘I’m all cashed up for today.’
He nods and looks down at the package in his hand.
‘I should go,’ he says. I watch him put on his coat and walk towards the door. Then he turns and looks at me.
‘Thank you for telling me about your mum,’ he says.
Before I get a chance to wonder why he thanked me, he’s gone and I realise that I’ve shared so much with him but he hasn’t said anything about himself and that I’ve been so caught up in talking to him and in trying not to notice the undeniable attraction there, that once again I’ve forgotten to ask him how he knew my name.
6
Friday morning is cold and wet with a biting east wind blowing in from the sea. The off-season in British seaside towns can be grim, but this morning Sanderson Bay is buzzing with life. Even when I open up the café at 7am the streets are full of people up ladders and shouting instructions at each other and a cherry picker travels backwards down the High Street, announcing that “this vehicle is reversing”.
Tonight is the great Sanderson Bay Christmas lights switch-on followed by Christmas carols at the Model Village and everyone is up and about making sure all is in order for later on. I hope the weather clears up a bit and it stops raining.
Friday mornings are always busy at The Two Teas. A mum and baby group meet around nine o’clock and a lot of people who have second homes in the Bay start to arrive by mid-morning to get tea and snacks and catch up on any gossip. Most of the gossip this morning seems to revolve around Ben’s arrival although it seems that not many people remember him from when he lived here. Fifteen years is a long time I guess.
‘Tell me everything,’ Sascha says in a stage whisper as she leans across the counter. ‘I want to know what happened with you and Ben last night.’ Sascha might be closest person I’ve had to a best friend in my whole life, but sometimes she is beyond annoying.
‘Nothing happened,’ I reply. ‘And until Abi gets here I’m way too busy to talk to you so go and find a seat if you want to wait.’ Abi is my second-in-command at the café and I couldn’t run the place without her.
‘Sounds like somebody didn’t get enough sleep last night,’ she says, grinning at me.