Sophia Money-Coutts - The Wish List

The meeting started as soon as Jaz had poured the right number of teas into the right number of mugs and handed them out. To the background noise of slurping, Stephen introduced the newcomer, a man called Paul, before asking how everyone was.

Lenka immediately jumped in. She was often suffering from something new she’d read about on the Internet.

‘Not so good today, Stephen,’ she said. ‘I am not sleeping so well at the moment.’

Stephen tutted. ‘Oh, Lenka, I am sorry. Would you like one of these while you tell us about it?’ He held out the plate of custard creams.

‘I am not sure why all of a sudden I am having these troubles,’ she went on, taking a biscuit. ‘I think perhaps it is my bad neck, and then I wondered if it was maybe too much coffee when I am at work, so I have stopped drinking the coffee. But then I read on my mobile that if you cannot sleep it might be a sign that you maybe have that disease where you forget things, what is it called, it is named after that man who used to be on the telly?’ She bit into her custard cream and looked around at the rest of us.

‘Alzheimer’s?’ volunteered Mary.

Lenka shook her head. ‘No, no, the other one. You see? I am forgetting these things already.’ She had another mouthful of biscuit.

‘Parkinson’s?’ said Stephen.

Lenka’s eyes widened and her head went up and down like a nodding dog.

‘All right, Lenka,’ said Stephen, who was careful never to rubbish any suggestion in this classroom. ‘I think what we should perhaps do is look at other factors which might be preventing you from sleep. For instance, are yo—’

‘You mustn’t use your phone so much, Lenka,’ interrupted Elijah. ‘The government can see everything you can, they know what you’re searching for, they know what you’re rea—’

‘Yes, thank you, Elijah,’ said Stephen, wrestling back control. He had to do this quite often. In a session last month, Elijah insisted that Prince Philip had ordered Princess Diana’s death, which made Seamus, a staunch monarchist, threaten to leave the room. The situation was only resolved when Stephen changed the subject by asking me how I was getting on with my Curtis the counting caterpillar story, a project which had been his idea in the first place. Knowing I loved books, he’d suggested that I give story-writing a go. He’d been right. With the encouragement of the other NOMAD members, I’d come up with the idea and slowly – very slowly – started writing it. I found the process soothing. On bad days my brain would play Consequences with everything I saw (if the next car is red, today will be bad. If there are an uneven number of biscuits in the tin, today will be bad. Three pigeons in the square not four? Bad). Finding a spare hour to write helped calm my mind down, but I guess Stephen had known that.

‘How did this date come about then?’ Jaz asked from the corner of her mouth.

‘Came into the shop,’ I whispered. ‘Although he suggested a coffee. Is a coffee definitely a date?’

‘A coffee with a man you don’t know is a date.’

‘What if it’s a job interview?’

‘Give me strength. Then it would be a job interview. Is he interviewing you for a job?’

‘I don’t think so.’ I explained the episode in more detail: his mother’s book. His intriguing clothes. His return twenty minutes later to ask me for the coffee.

‘There we go,’ said Jaz, folding her arms. ‘It’s a date. A coffee can be a date. They do it in America all the time. What’s he called?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know ?’ she replied, so loudly that it attracted Stephen’s attention.

‘Jasmine and Florence, are we OK?’

‘Yeah, all good,’ said Jaz. ‘And top story, Mary. Really compelling. Carry on.’ Jaz stuck her thumbs up at the front.

Mary, who’d turned her head to look towards us, glanced back at Stephen. ‘Er…’ she faltered.

‘Go on, Mary,’ said Stephen, staring at Jaz with a pointed expression. ‘You were telling us how you feel on the sad anniversary of Humphrey’s death.’

‘Oh no,’ whispered Jaz, slumping forward on her desk. Humphrey was Mary’s parrot. Late parrot. He’d died last year and been the main topic of discussion at these sessions for months afterwards.

We sat in respectful silence for a few minutes while Mary continued, but I knew Jaz wouldn’t be able to zip it for long.

‘So when you going to see him?’

‘Not sure,’ I said, between my teeth.

‘So you don’t know his name, you don’t know anything about him and he dresses like a Victorian undertaker.’ She paused. ‘I dunno about this.’

‘What do you mean?’ I said. I felt as if she’d pricked the bubble in my stomach with a pin.

‘Just be careful. Could be a weirdo.’

‘OK, but there’s one more thing I need to tell you about.’

‘What?’ she hissed.

As quietly and succinctly as I could, I explained about Gwendolyn and the list. ‘Is that weird?’ I whispered when I’d finished. ‘I don’t believe in that stuff but it seems a weird coincidence, no?’

‘You got this list?’ she said. I nodded and reached under my chair to pull the piece of paper from my rucksack.

Jaz smoothed it across her thigh with the side of her hand and read it.

I counted them off on my fingers. ‘One, he dressed well. Two, he was into books. Three, his mother collects cats. And he made me laugh, so he’s funny too.’

‘What was his bum like?’

‘I didn’t see. He looked like he was in pretty good shape. But what if it’s like that Tom Hanks film?’

Jaz snapped her head up and frowned. ‘Which one?’

‘The one where he makes a wish and it comes true, and he’s an adult when he wakes up in the morning. What if this is like that?’

‘You think you’ve written a list describing your perfect man and now it’s come true?’ Jaz looked at me sideways. It was the sort of look you’d give an adult who’d just announced they’d believed in fairies. ‘Girl, you need to get laid.’

‘Yes, all right, so everyone keeps telling me,’ I said, remembering Eugene’s joke about his mum as I snatched the piece of paper back. I felt a flash of bad temper. Yes, I was unpractised when it came to dating, but it wasn’t as if Jaz was the relationship oracle. After Leon, there’d been a succession of boyfriends and the last one, who she insisted was ‘the one’, turned out to have a wife and kids in Solihull.

‘Just be careful, babe,’ she went on, making me feel guilty for such mean thoughts. ‘Listen, why don’t you tell me where you have this coffee, and I’ll come along too? I can sit at a different table like a bodyguard? You won’t even notice me. I’ll be totally incoherent.’

‘Incognito.’

‘Exactly.’

Luckily, Stephen called out Jaz’s name and asked if there was anything she wanted to share, to show Paul how it was done ‘as a valued and long-standing member of the group’. Jaz, inflated with pride, stood up and started explaining her story, beginning with how she knew she had to get help when she was eating Bird’s Eye chicken jalfrezi for breakfast. I sat in my small chair thinking. Should I be worried? He didn’t seem like a psychopath. But maybe that’s what psychopaths wanted you to think? I folded the list before shifting in my tiny chair. Jaz was just being overprotective. I’d meet him in a public place and all would be fine. I just had to remember not to wear my work shoes.

The shop was already unlocked when I arrived the next day. I dropped the keys in my bag and pushed open the door.