Charlotte Butterfield - Me, You and Tiramisu

Soaking from the rain outside, Abi and Jayne both stood in the doorway of the pub, shaking themselves like wet Labradors, when Abi looked up and whispered, ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Jayne, three o’clock.’

Jayne was bent over the welcome mat scrunching her hair up, ‘What?’ she shouted.

Abi started talking out of the corner of her mouth. ‘Look at your three o’clock, he’s like Colin Farrell mixed with David Gandy, and oh Jesus, he’s waving. Jayne, I love you with all my heart, I do, but if he asks to buy me a drink, you have to bugger off quickly.’

Jayne straightened up and looked to where Abi was staring. ‘Stop perving, you moron, that’s Will.’

There was already an opened bottle of wine and three glasses on the table and he stood up as they walked over, ‘Hey baby,’ he leant over and kissed Jayne on the lips, then turned and put out his hand and said with his eyes twinkling mischievously, ‘You must be Abi. I was starting to think that you were pretend. Either that, or Jayne was having an affair every time she said she was going out with you.’

Abi pumped his hand up and down and grinned, ‘It was the latter, I’m afraid, but I managed to persuade her to give the other fella up and to give you a chance.’

The women started to regale Will with the highlights of the evening, and one bottle turned into two, which turned into three. And then he excused himself and headed to the loos. As soon as he was barely out of earshot, Abi spun round, ‘You’re kidding me? Now I know why you’ve hidden him away. Jeez, Jayne, I’m speechless, what an awesome guy. Marry him. Marry him now, and have babies that look like supermodels, but healthier versions. Oh my God, he’s amazing, and so funny, and lovely, and he’s totally besotted with you, he can’t take his eyes off you.’ She shook her head, ‘Wow, I’m speechless.’

‘So you keep saying, which is odd considering the amount you’re talking. Oi, enough with the hitting!’

‘Girls, girls, take it outside,’ Will said with a smile as he moved the table a bit so he could squeeze back onto his bench. ‘You’re meant to be respectable members of society, moulding our young, inspiring youthful minds.’

‘That is exactly what we’re supposed to do, Will, you’re right,’ Abi nodded, ‘but instead I spend most of my time washing paint off walls and placating tearful life models because my very immature A-level class think it’s okay to laugh and point and shout out, ‘you’ve got a tiny wiener.’ Little bastards. Anyway, Jayne tells me you run your own deli? That’s got to be fun?’

‘Yeah, I really love it,’ he replied, picking up a Budweiser beer mat and flipping it idly between his fingers, ‘I was a chef and didn’t really get much of a chance to experiment much and make what I wanted to make, so this way I can potter around in our kitchen and thankfully people seem to like it and want to buy it, although I don’t know if I’ll ever get rich selling five-quid pots of chutney.’

Even though most people would think that his devastating dimples were reason enough for Jayne’s infatuation, this was the side of Will that she loved – his modesty and complete lack of arrogance. He even seemed completely oblivious to the second-takes he commanded wherever he went, but she always spotted them and then basked in the envious staring that happened every time he kissed her or held her hand.

Rachel had asked her quite a few times if it bothered her, the reaction he got from women. The first time Rachel had seen it for herself was in a dry-cleaners, of all places – not that they were in the habit of accompanying him to do his laundry, that would be weird – but they were walking down Richmond High Street to get a coffee and he popped into the dry-cleaners to pick up a few shirts and came out all chuffed when the fawning woman behind the counter waived his bill. He couldn’t understand why, thinking that it must be ‘free-cleaning Friday’ or something ridiculous like that, and then Rachel, ever the diplomat, said, ‘it’s because she thinks you’re smoking.’

‘Smoking what?’ he’d even asked naively, before he had realised what she meant and blushed furiously. He’d ironed his shirts himself ever since.

‘Do you do catering as well?’ Abi leant in, her chin on her palm, pretending to be interested in the finer points of deli-management.

‘Nah, I did think about it, but it’s just me at the moment and that would mean taking someone else on, and I can’t do that until it makes more money, which ironically, I can’t do until I take someone else on, so I’m a little bit buggered either way. Jayne suggested hosting a couple of book clubs a week, and that’s become really popular, so I do the catering for those, but that’s just plates of nibbles really.’

‘We also put a little stand in the deli recently with second- hand books on, where you leave one and take one, so it’s sort of like an informal lending library,’ Jayne added, ‘It just encourages people to spend a bit longer in the shop and have something to eat with their coffee.’

‘Except the only people to really use it are us and that homeless bloke that sits outside the station who comes in every week to get a book for free.’

‘Richard?’ Jayne replied, ‘He does love his science fiction. Bless him.’

‘But in answer to your question, I do sell hampers and stuff for Christmas, you know with some handmade biscuits, cheeses and chutneys, they’re always a nice little earner, and I was thinking about doing Valentine’s hampers, so you can pick up a little basket of stuff, with maybe a bottle of bubbly in it too and go straight to the river or the park for a picnic.’

‘Awww, that’s lovely – is that what you’re going to do for me?’ Jayne asked.

‘No, darling, that’s what you’re going to do for me.’

‘Dammit,’ Jayne thumped the table sighing melodramatically, ‘I’ve just put a deposit on a troop of singing dwarves who paint themselves blue and pretend to be smurfs. Do you not want that? I wish you’d said, it cost me a fortune.’

‘No, that sounds much better than a crappy romantic picnic, champagne is so last year anyway, whereas dwarves never go out of fashion.’ He put his arm around Jayne’s neck and pulled her close to him before planting a kiss on her forehead.

Jayne grinned as Abi gave a low whistle and said, ‘Wow, you two really are made for each other. You’re both bonkers.’

Rachel held her hair-straighteners in mid-air, steam curling softly upwards. ‘He wants us to move in with him?’ She paused. ‘Both of us?’

‘Yes, as lodgers. Sort of. He’s got two spare rooms and is a bit short of cash, and thought we might prefer to live in Richmond rather than Twickenham – the commute’s shorter for both of us and the deli’s downstairs so we’d always have food, and he can cook for us, so no more nasty kebabs, and I stay round there most of the time anyway, and I don’t want you to be lonely here by yourself, and … and … I sort of love him. Sort of.’

Rachel started running her GHDs through the length of her bob again, and then smiled at their reflections in the mirror. ‘That sounds bloody lovely. Say yes.’

Two weeks later the sisters sat in the middle of their living room with a screw-top bottle of wine, surveying the emptiness that surrounded them. They’d spent most of the day painstakingly peeling blu-tac off the walls where a map of the world and some Jack Vetriano prints had once been. Their drawers and cupboards had been squashed into brown boxes labelled STUFF R and STUFF J and yet neither of them was in any hurry to lock the door for the last time.