Page 56 of Boy Friends
‘I’m gonna stop buying your coffee if you keep insulting my dog,’ Daniel says. I set Olive back on the floor and obediently wash my hands.
‘You’ve not paid for a single coffee since you started coming here,’ Dad retorts.
‘Because you refuse to let me. Or even to repay you with pizza.’
I perk up. Dad takes the drinks he was making to a couple by the window.
‘He always walks away when he’s losing an argument,’ I tell Daniel, who hides a smirk behind a sip of espresso.
The afternoon passes in a blur, as the town celebrates Christmas Eve and the beginning of the holidays with mince pies and other sweet treats. When the last customers trickle out at around five, we decide to close early. I blast the Sugababes album that I know Dad likes, and the place is tidy and sparkling in less than an hour. Still, wiping down tables and counters isn’t enough to keep Simo off my mind. When I don’t pay attention, I’m back in his arms, on the beach, at midnight, goosebumps covering my entire body.
‘What do you say – shall we get that pizza and watchCarol?’ Dad asks. And because I never pass an opportunity to watch Cate Blanchett play a lesbian with a fantastic wardrobe, I say yes.
It takes Dad longer than seems necessary to pop in and out of Daniel’s place, which leaves me alone on the sofa scrolling through the chat with Simo. Typically we don’t text because we sit shoulder to shoulder. He’s never had to learn proper response-time, which tests my patience. I don’twant him glued to his phone when he should be spending time with his family, but honestly I feel like I might be going through withdrawal. Two days ago we were so damn close, and now I hear from him once or twice a day. If I don’t get my daily dose of Simo, I suffer. Knowing that the number of texts a person sends you has no relation to how much they care for you is one thing, understanding it quite another.
It’s true, I’m the problem, but it’s not all my fault. When Simo pulled me close, it meant something, right? I didn’t imagine the slow dance or the embrace. Then again, I wouldn’t put it past my deluded brain to read far too much into the way he doesn’t break eye contact recently, or the moments where he touches my arm, my thigh. It’s so casual it could mean nothing.
I throw my phone to the other end of the couch and get up. Ten seconds later, I knock on Miss M’s door and let myself into her top-floor flat. Her company is way better than the noise that my own thoughts make.
She doesn’t lift her head from the newspaper she’s reading, but raises a hand, heavy with the many rings she wears, and points to the pot of tea. Once I’ve refilled her cup, she folds up the paper.
‘If you’re hungry,’ she says and grabs my wrists, frowning at my chewed fingernails, ‘have a liquorice stick.’
‘I hate liquorice,’ I say, but I get her point.
She lifts her gaze to my face. Whatever she sees there makes her purse her lips.
‘And if your head is too loud, have a schnapps.’
‘That’s wrong on so many levels,’ I laugh, happy to behere in her presence. That loud head is feeling so much quieter already.
She waves my arguments away with a wrinkled hand.
‘You know, you and your father are cut from the same cloth. When you’re in love, you are helpless. Like a toddler with a scalpel. Couldn’t cut a straight line if held at gunpoint.’
‘Who gave the toddler the scalpel? And who’s holding it at gunpoint?’ I ask, and then, processing her words, ‘Wait, who said I’m in love?’
Miss M points to a spot outside the window, and I follow the line she draws with her finger. I can see the foothills of the mountain range that separates us from the city, and the park with the shell-shaped stage. But to see what Miss M means, I have to shuffle to her side of the table. And there, between the lighthouse and the Christmas tree on the town square, sits the noticeboard.
I fall back on to my chair. ‘That’s just rude,’ I say. ‘And why do you need me to send you pictures of the noticeboard every Monday when you can see it from here?’
‘I can’t, can I? My eyes are old and tired.’
I scowl, not sure I believe her.
She waves her hand again. ‘Do you know how Lombard ended up with the noticeboard?’
I send her a confused look, then mumble something about Celtic calendars and fishermen.
‘Humbug,’ she notes. ‘No, when those fine lords and ladies whose names nobody remembers first decided they needed a mansion by the sea, they planned to build it in the very spot where the town square is today. It was an important place for the common folk in the area. A copseof apple trees grew there, and they believed those trees to be sacred. The lords and ladies agreed to move further up the coast, but the copse soon became a secret meeting point for the young lordling and a farmer’s daughter. The years passed, and the daughter kept waiting for the lordling to ask for her hand in marriage, but for fear of losing his reputation, and his inheritance, the lordling never did. One new-moon night, the farmer’s daughter stopped coming to meet the lordling, and in his despair, he lost his footing in the darkness and tumbled from the path into the sea, where he drowned.’
I gasp. ‘Hedrowned?’
Miss M shushes me. ‘In his grief, the lord of Hidden House had the copse razed to the ground, threw all the apples in the sea, leaving only a single tree standing to remember his son by. The farmer’s daughter visited the lonely apple tree every night until the day she died, and when she did, she took her last breath right beside it. By the morning, her body had disappeared and a second tree grew in its place. To this day, on pitch-black new-moon nights, people say that they see thousands and thousands of apples floating in the bay by the square.’
Miss M folds her hands, as if the story is finished. But that can’t possibly be it.
‘And then?’ I ask.
