The Way It Never Was (12 page)

CHAPTER 14 -
ORANGE-MOCHA-FRAPPUCINO

The Globe café is particularly cold this morning, not helped by the lack of customers, just a few dedicated regulars needing their early morning coffee. Having ordered my usual, I keep my coat on and take my favourite seat facing the ocean. Every few days, I’ve been going into one of those moods where the whole world feels bleak and nothing will ever change, so I figure I might as well come here and whip out my laptop in order to hide behind the safety of my screen.

Despite maintaining this confident air, I’m running scared in the virtual world, preferring to live through my laptop so I don’t have to feel the full force of rejection. Unfortunately, when you’re in the business of not taking any risks you don’t make much in the way of progress. The usual pattern of events is that having ascertained the nature of the job from a hundred word advert, I then hide behind a generic ‘cut and paste’ email so I never have to feel my heart quicken in nervousness, not even when reading their automated rejection response back. Worse still, when I do get a confirmed interview, my first reaction is one of feeling really quite put out.

This lack of real activity is fast extending to all corners of my life, because, apart from coming into the café and an odd glass of wine at the pub, my social life mainly consists of happening to be there at the flat when Claire is conducting one of her ‘evenings’ – that or sending out emoticons in vague texts – ‘must catch up, loads to tell you,’ being my most popular phrase. In contrast to the girl who would chat to anybody in that Australian hostel, I am now that girl who hopes that an email or a text download will provide me with the genuine rush that comes from living an active life. Instead of facing the outside world head on, I am fast morphing into a person who can no longer operate in person but only through a technology prism.

Just as I’m halfway through surfing the Internet to find out what happened to the cast of
LA
Law
, I become aware of a presence standing over me rubbing her hands together.

It’s Liv. ‘Fuck me, it’s cold today. Paolo set the timer wrong,’ she groans.

With Paolo out for the day, his second-in-command Paula is behind the counter looking ridiculously immaculate and, unless I’m totally imagining it, a little too fancy for waitressing work. Sporting a silk black dress with bolero jacket finished off with a glittery Alice Band, she’s made it practically impossible for a waiting customer to ask her to do anything resembling servitude, because somehow it feels faintly impertinent. I know this as I myself have been known to do the same in temp jobs, where the role was so beneath me that the only way to handle it was to dress in my Sunday best and act like I own the place.

Apparently unaware of a Sue Sylvester from
Glee
lookalike standing there in a tracksuit tapping her fingers on the counter, Paula is checking her teeth in the reflection of the espresso machine as Sam walks over to where I’m sat. ‘I’m tired. Too many negative vibes,’ is all she’ll say, pausing momentarily, before plodding off, the stuffing taken out of her.

I nod towards the kitchen. ‘What’s up with her?’ I ask Liv, who then points towards Paula.

‘I think she’s had enough of the wife already,’ she says, before pausing and taking a deep breath, automatically making me nervous about what is going to come out of her mouth. ‘Listen I wonder if you could do me a favour’, she hesitates, and I feel myself stiffen, knowing she is going to ask me for something big. ‘I wonder if you could look after the café for me while I go get my bikini line done at Divine Beauty. As you can see, Lady Muck is not exactly working hard and I need Sam in the kitchen. Would you be able to help out?’

Although I’m the one responsible for booking her this appointment with Claire to de-fuzz in preparation for childbirth – prompted by her confessing that she was ‘working a hippy vibe’ down below – I’m thinking this appointment is probably a bad move. With Claire in charge, Liv might end up with no eyebrows and a half finished Brazilian as a form of payback for screwing her ex. This is hardly a life or death emergency, but this is the first time Liv’s asked me this sort of favour and I’m sort of obliged to do it.

‘Sure,’ I say automatically, even though inside I really mean the opposite.

Liv then hugs me. ‘Thanks Katie Kate! I was a bit stuck. Paolo has gone on some management course.’ I look at her puzzled.

‘I thought he only went on one recently?’ I say.

‘No, that was accounting focused,’ comes the reply. ‘This one is about customer service.’

The fact that Paolo has come to the conclusion that he needs some help in this department all by himself is a very positive sign, but that still doesn’t change the current situation.

‘Oh,’ I say looking around me nervously. ‘What do you need me to do?’

I’m trying to quash the panic that is fast rising, as it’s been a while since I did anything spontaneous that didn’t involve attaching a C.V. and pressing ‘send’.

‘Can you just make coffees? You remember how to do it don’t you?’ I nod. ‘I think so. I am a little rusty though. It has been a while.’
Try
two
years
Kate
!

As though she is reading my mind, Liv puts her hand on my arm. ‘From what I remember, you were really good. And you loved it too. I have every faith in you.’ Liv is right, I was okay at this café malarkey once upon a time.

There I was, a twenty-four year old backpacker in Australia. In Sydney, I had discovered a parallel universe where people sat in cafes and ordered coffee and interesting snacks. I loved it. In fact, I had adopted this café lifestyle so much, doing it with such gusto that I spent all my savings on cappuccinos and had to find a job, fast. At first, I tried out for endless sandwich jobs down in Sydney’s central business district with absolutely no joy. Going for an ‘interview’ normally consisted of doing a morning’s free labour for a three generational family-run business, only to be told by some grumpy granny you couldn’t butter bread properly as though she had a PHD in it. Just as I was contemplating being a (rather slow) data entry assistant in an office on the North Shore, I passed the Sun of a Beach Bar café in Coogee, the one I had visited when I first arrived.

I’m never normally in the right place at the right time kind of girl, but I had heard there was a job going so I went in and rather by chance, I actually got it. For the next year, while many of my hostel roommates were getting two buses and a train to work into the city centre, I was lying in until the last possible moment and then, having seen the boss park up from my dormitory window, getting to work with about two seconds to spare.

I started off with good intentions at Sun of a Beach Bar, with a small black apron that made me feel like I was in a cool movie. However, after the second day I was banned from waiting tables, the reason being I was ‘crap’ for want of a better word. Perhaps it was the part of me that literally forgot to finish off the order, as I’d start thinking about the thing I had to do next, but before I knew it, I had about ten tables with no food. Whatever it was, I was not a talent at waitressing, so I was consigned to standing in the small kiosk to make coffees, smoothies, juices and toasted sandwiches. When I wasn’t doing that, I was making up generous drinks for my hostel friends – smoothies that were so crammed with fruit and ice cream that the straws would literally stand to attention – either that, or a smoking smell would come from the blender.

For the time I worked at the café I was really happy – the kind of happy that you stumble upon by mistake, where everything feels really simple and nothing is troubling you as you are just earning your weekly pay packet and spending it. My daily life slowed down to a blissful rhythm and I took every second in, feeling a sense of possibility and complete clarity, in that anything I wanted to do, I could. Despite the chaos of the environment, I knew that from then on in I would never be this happy again. It turns out that for all the searching for happiness it had come to this – blending smoothies in an outdoor café. And because I loved it, I was actually incredibly efficient and good at dealing with the nice (and not so nice) customers. I hadn’t anticipated that something very simple, like serving someone food and drink, could make a massive contribution to someone’s wellbeing for the day – and your own in-turn. Those instant exchanges were not only loaded with purpose, I was never ever bored. The fact I didn’t have to think beyond three tasks enabled me to put my energy and enthusiasm into the present moment. I also developed respectable cooking skills and I learnt how to add up in my head. I was in café heaven.

The one downside to this little bubble of utopia was that while Joe was a big lover of getting food on the house, he wasn’t the most supportive of my newly discovered vocation. Drinking yet another free milkshake, he would just go on about how amazing his new job was going to be, and how it had proper prospects that didn’t involve waiting on the general public.
Okay
Joe
,
I
get
the
message
, I would think. Soon, this persistently negative attitude started to chip away at my contentment and unfortunately found its way through to my subconscious. My mind then started working overtime looking for fault in enjoying this way of life. Perhaps Joe was right: Life had to be a little more complicated than making coffee didn’t it? The doubting voice in my head started to think that surely there had to be a catch. How could I justify doing this when I’d worked so hard at university? Then Joe kissed that girl and I quit my lovely café job, banishing all fanciful notions in order to do important things in the UK – like getting that typing up to speed.

CHAPTER 15 -
TRIAL & ERROR

It feels a little strange to be back working in the café environment after so long. I’m more than a little rusty. In fact, I’d go as far to say I’ve forgotten every single thing. Putting on an apron that looks like it’s had ten milkshakes thrown on it, I force myself to objectively survey the scene. I see two regulars clicking their hands for service in that really annoying way, while Hilarious Sam is in the kitchen chuckling as Paula helps herself to a muffin straight out of the oven. Out of nowhere, there is now a semi respectable queue forming for takeaway coffees, which is odd, as this does not happen at the Globe. Ever. Time is now of the essence!

‘Let’s crack on then,’ I say, feeling my heart pound away in shock at something unexpected. For me, this is actually exciting.

‘So here’s the deal, you just take people’s money, ignore Paula’s death stares, give Sam any orders and I’ll take care of the clearing up when I get back.’ says Liv, and I think to myself that she should not be handling too much heavy crockery in her condition. She then pushes me towards the pulsating coffee machine. ‘I’ll give you a practice run.’ We stand there as she demonstrates her mastery of the machine, honed from hours of doing it repetitively. I love watching her at work, but not when it’s only a five-minute handover and I’ve not had a chance to take detailed notes.

‘Okay, I think I’m up to speed. Whenever you’re ready.’ I say, not meaning a word of it as Liv gives me a hug.

‘You are a star. Thank you. I’m majorly excited about getting the growler trimmed. I’ll shout for you to take over in five minutes.’

Sticking my head around the kitchen door to warn Hilarious Sam I’m now working with her, I spy her cutting a watermelon with a knife that is too small. ‘So I wondered how long it would take before Liv got you involved,’ she laughs, waving the fruit with the knife still in it as I look quizzically at her. ‘You love this place. It makes sense you work here.’

Before she says anything more, I interrupt. ‘You do know this is only temporary. I’m just helping out Liv. I have other plans you know.’

Sam just arches her eyebrow and grins like she doesn’t believe me. ‘Sure.’

I’ve said it before but I’ve been to enough cafes in my time to know that this menu is not exactly average, with food such as wood fired bread with oil, three egg omelettes, mozzarella cheese on focaccia with fresh tomato, basil and extra virgin olive oil. Cinnamon twists, vanilla cream Danish pastries, blueberry muffins bigger than your head – you name it, it’s all here. There is sweet toasted muesli too, served with a generous side of mangoes and yoghurt, along with other specialities like smoked salmon with scrambled eggs on sourdough, butternut squash and goat’s cheese paninis, French toast with maple syrup – even strawberries and ice cream. Not a chicken nugget in sight.

As I try to get my bearings as to where the hell everything is from this side of the counter, Sam launches right into telling me all about her love life. Properly over-sharing, she moans how all her dates end up being friends and she doesn’t know why. I’m hardly going to say anything but this to me makes complete sense, as someone who finds everything so hilarious actually laughs any romance away and ends up with a really platonic exchange.

‘You hang on in,’ I say. ‘There’s someone out there for everyone’. Just as I’m fast sounding like someone’s mother, Liv shouts for me and I make my escape. The queue is so firmly established, it puts the café at risk of being busy.

‘I’m off. Good luck!’ Liv gives me a thumbs-up and waddles out the door.

Arghh
,
bugger
,
bollocks
,
shit
bollocks
, I think and give a nervous smile to the first customer, who clearly doesn’t want an amateur to be making their precious espresso yet is still twitching away for their caffeine hit. However, as luck would have it, their need is greater than their cynicism. Good! Then something resonates with me again, something scary yet calming all at the same time. Despite technology moving on with fewer buttons to push, it feels like getting back on a horse again – albeit a Shetland pony buckling under the weight of me. With Paula’s eyes boring holes into my back, I concentrate on the things I know, that I continue to pay attention to – the right noise of the coffee being ground up, the grind being pressed down firmly and most important of all, not letting an espresso become an americano. Frothing the milk is the easiest bit and you can’t go wrong really, apart from putting too much air in it and spraying all your customers, or overheating it so it tastes burnt and scolds someone’s tongue. Alongside this, I’m shouting out an occasional order for Sam who has forgotten her love life woes in favour of concentrating on food, which she then turns around quick smart. I’ve forgotten all the codes for the till, so resort to pressing the ‘open till’ button and mentally work out the change. And somehow, as quickly as it appeared the queue then dies down and my baptism of fire is over.

With my back to the counter, I turn around to ask the next customer what they want.

‘Just a vodka please.’

I immediately smile. ‘Wayno!’

My school friend Wayne stands there looking very hair gelled and suited up, clearly on his way to work at Scary Linda’s travel firm no less.

‘What you doing here?’ he asks, looking around him in surprise. ‘No offence Kate, but I didn’t have you down as the catering type.’

I lean forward and say in a low voice, ‘I’m not. I’m actually doing Liv a favour. I’m still looking for
work
work.’ Paula, who up until that point has been sitting at the counter texting as PJ puts his DNA all over the carrot cake, stops what she is doing and gives me a filthy look. Feeling a little sheepish, I kick myself for criticising this café, a place where I’ve just spent a blissful hour doing my thing. I’ve implied that somehow it’s this menial job when in fact it requires all the same skills as an office, namely multi-tasking and polite chitchat, yet here people actually say ‘thanks’. It’s been a while since I had that. With a wobbling hand, I hand Wayne his coffee.

‘Ahem, I wanted it in a takeaway cup mate,’ he says looking embarrassed. ‘Boss will have words if I stay too long.’ I can already picture Linda standing in her wrap dress, tapping her patent pumps with her headset on.

‘Oh sorry!’ I reply and go to change over the cup but he takes my hand by way to silence me.

‘Never mind, I’ll be a bit late. I’ll drink it here,’ he says. As he stands next to Paula who’s helping PJ to his umpteenth snack, I try to sound more generic about my activities.

‘So I’m busy job hunting. Looking for work in London,’ I say, trying to ignore Paula eavesdropping. Granted, it’s ridiculous that I’m acting like this around Wayne of all people, as he would understand. This is the man who told me at a bad pub quiz that it wasn’t his intention to wear a headpiece, but like me and my ‘45 WPM’ rut, he just found himself unqualified to do anything else.

At school, Wayne was known for being a bit of an entrepreneur – in fact, he had a bit of a reputation for it, well that and for fancying Claire. When we left school, he then became obsessed with Cuban cigars, a habit that started at university where he lived in a cloud of smoke, prompting him to attempt to grow tobacco in his back garden. Unfortunately, London didn’t exactly have the sort of climate for growing the stuff, and besides, people might possibly think he was growing an illegal weed, so he made do with smoking and dreaming, until a chance encounter with a mysterious man called Ulrich led to him going into business with a complete stranger to brand beer and cigarettes together.

One night at the pub, when we were all home from university, Wayne told us proudly over a beer what a great idea he had had. ‘Remember this moment,’ he said. ‘You know, before all the madness kicks off.’

And kick off it did. Wayne became a fully-fledged entrepreneur and things seemed to be going swimmingly. Then came the day he tried to ring Ulrich as he had received two letters, one from a tobacco company suing him for stealing part of their name and one from a beer company saying the same. He dialled the mobile number but no answer, so he tried the landline. An elderly sounding lady picked up the phone said could she help at all? Wayne was a little bemused, well, yes she could.

‘Oh, not another one,’ she sighed, explaining that Ulrich had made a habit out of doing this. ‘You’re not the first who’s been sucked in.’ This little old lady with balls of steel then asked Wayne how much he needed to get out of the business, before promising him a cheque in the post.

Wayne was reimbursed but left more than a little wounded in pride. ‘I’m such a tit. I didn’t think it was a scheme, I thought it was a great idea,’ he lamented, banging his head on the table in the pub. He then moved up to London and followed the safe route and became a travel agent. He said it was a respectable job on paper to have, only that having been trained up and dazzled with free lunches and lots of young people to socialise with, he was then put in a basement on the phones all day, dressed in a red tank top with yellow trousers like he was a school boy, and buzzed if he so much as disappeared off for a toilet break. He then moved down to Broadstairs, only to find himself doing exactly the same thing down here minus the compulsory tank top. The rest is history.

‘The upside is that I now know at least fifty airline codes,’ he said. ‘Well that and the fact I get to book people seats by the plane toilets if they are rude to me.’

As Wayne stands here watching me navigate my way round this beast of a machine, he asks after our other school friend. ‘Have you seen Stan recently?’

‘As a matter of fact, I have actually. I got invited over to Anna’s for dinner,’ I say. ‘Unfortunately, I was set up on a blind date. On a Monday.’

He laughs. ‘Monday hey! Lucky you! Talking of demanding girls, how’s that flat mate of yours?’

I wince at the mention of Claire, as it’s usually a bit of a no go with him. ‘Oh, you know, still a joy to behold. Why do you ask?’

He shrugs. ‘I don’t know really, I see her around from time to time. She’s not changed but I don’t think she recognises me.’

‘You used to work in travel didn’t you?’ he asks, changing the subject. ‘They’re always looking for young people.’
Oh
here
we
go
,
not
you
as
well
! Just as I’m finding the right way of saying ‘no thanks, your boss has already mentioned it to me already’, Liv bursts in sporting a big smile, her skin looking glowing.

‘Remember what I said, Kate. Not too much verbal diarrhoea with the customer,’ she reiterates with a smile.

Mimicking Paolo and ignoring Paula, she matter-of-factly removes PJ’s hand from the cookie jar and gives Wayne a hug. ‘Good morning Sir! I hope she’s been looking after you.’ Wayne drains his coffee cup.

‘She has been sweetheart. Good to see you ladies,’ he says, bidding us farewell and heading out the door.

‘Did he just call me sweetheart?’ Liv says with a bewildered expression looking after him. ‘It’s been a while since I was anyone’s sweetheart. Look at the size of me!’

‘How was Claire?’ I ask, looking for signs of physical assault.

Liv appears to wince. ‘Let’s just say she found the whole ripping wax off my fanny very cathartic. In fact, I’ve never seen anyone so enthusiastic about removing pubic hair. But on a positive note, she did give me a free mini-facial.’

With the flurry of activity over, the café is back to normal and is properly quiet. Pumped with excitement and all sorts of emotions I didn’t expect to have, I pop my head round the kitchen door to do some small talk with Sam. I’m feeling buoyed up by a sense of accomplishment in a way I haven’t for a very long time.

‘Sam, have to ask, what’s with the obsession about having a coffee card stamped. It’s not as if we’re talking stocks and shares.’ Predictably, she laughs, and I then think to myself that perhaps that’s the secret to a happy life, you know, talk to someone who laughs at everything you say. On second thoughts, it might wear thin.

I take a look at myself in the reflection of the machine, to check that my hair doesn’t look too much of a state. Alas, it’s too late. It would appear that I am sporting stubble made from coffee grinds, looking like I should be representing Moldavia at the
Eurovision
Song
Contest
. Nice that nobody mentioned it, typical of the general public, where you could be walking with sanitary towel stuck to your backside and they wouldn’t come near you let alone give you a friendly nudge. I then ask Liv if I can make myself a coffee on the house.

‘Of course you can silly!’ she laughs. ‘It would be rude not to.’

Savouring the aroma, I lean against the worktop and drink my amateur efforts as Liv starts waddling around. As I bend down to pick up a teaspoon for her, it dawns on me that for someone that was supposed to be doing a favour to someone, I’m not half feeling it was the other round.