Polly Courtney - The Day I Died

There was a lull in customers. Jo distracted herself, wiping the surfaces and rinsing the milk jug, but she wasn’t fooling anyone. Or at least, she wasn’t fooling herself. Her hands were shaking and her eyes kept wandering down to the cupboard under the sink where six dark liqueur bottles sat, teasing her. They were supposed to be for adding to coffees, presumably, but if the crusty, sugary coatings inside the lids were anything to go by, they rarely got used. And there were crusty, sugary coatings inside the lids, because Jo had checked. She had opened them all, sniffed them and put them away again. About fifteen times.

The craving was stronger than ever today, perhaps because it had been nearly a week since her last proper drink. She reached down and extracted the leftmost bottle, unscrewing the lid and preparing to duck behind the counter. Amaretto–not her first choice, but better than the other options, which all smelled rather like petrol and had unrecognisable Italian names. She glanced around, then crouched down.

Her lips made contact with the crystallised sugar and she tilted the bottle, gagging for the sweet, fiery liquid in her throat.

‘Nine o’clock!’

Her head hit the counter.

‘Sorry?’ Jo fumbled around for the lid and replaced the bottle with one hand, holding out the other for the pile of letters. Her body was filled with unfulfilled desire.

‘You hadn’t forgotten, had you?’ Trevor grinned at her stupidly.

Jo flashed a smile and removed her apron. The sense of anticlimax, of getting so close and then pulling away, was exasperating. ‘No, just about to go,’ she said, swallowing a mouthful of saliva. ‘Down the road and on the right?’

‘Down the road,’ he motioned like an obese air steward, ‘and on the right.’

The warm air felt good on her skin, and gradually, with concerted effort, Jo managed to disentangle herself from the yearnings and focus on the things around her. Birds cheeped in the hedgerow, trees rustled in the breeze and somewhere nearby, farm machinery was whirring into action. A cloud skittered across the sky, briefly obscuring the sun and then leaving it to shine, and for a moment, Radley looked like the most beautiful place on earth.

Semi-detached and set back from the road with a pebble-dashed front, the post office looked exactly like somebody’s house except for the rounded red sign on the telegraph pole outside and the billboard announcing the headline, ‘VIOLIN CASE THWARTS ROBBERY’.

Not for the first time, Jo marvelled at how some things seemed so familiar whilst the details of her life remained a mystery. She knew exactly what first-class stamps looked like and how the UK postal system worked. She knew what Facebook was and how to use it. How, then, could she not name a single one of her friends?

She applied the stamps and looked at the swarthy young man behind the counter.

‘I don’t suppose you have an internet connection?’

He nodded over to a large, bulbous monitor in the corner of the store. It looked like a TV from the 1920s.

‘Could I just…?’

‘One pond for fifteen minutes.’

‘But I only—’

‘Three pond an hour.’

‘What about two minutes?’ She smiled virtuously.

Reluctantly, the man smiled. ‘OK, but quickly. Log in as Admin. Password is password .

The internet connection was even more sluggish than the one she’d used before. Jo waited for the Facebook login to appear, wondering whether perhaps, by some sort of administrative error, Radley had been left off the UK broadband rollout map.

She logged in and clicked on the Friends tab. Her face fell.

You have 0 friends .

Then she noticed the message. She clicked on her inbox.

Saskia Dawson

Today at 03.49

Who R U?

Do I know U Jo Simmons?! I don’t accept friends who ain’t got no profile pic…

Jo drummed her fingers against the makeshift desk, frustrated. Of course Saskia hadn’t clicked Accept. The request had come from an anonymous stranger. For all Saskia knew, Jo Simmons was a dirty old pervert looking for cheap online thrills.

‘Time’s up,’ called the guy from behind the counter.

‘I’ve hardly logged on!’ she yelled back, fingers hovering over the keyboard.

Jo Simmons

Today at 09.11

Re: Who R U?

Hi Saskia, sorry for the randomness–I’m using an alias…Long story. Haven’t got round to putting up a photo.

Here’s a clue–long, black hair with a red streak at the front. Know who I am? :-) xx

Jo logged off and ran through the door, the adrenalin still pumping from the brief correspondence. She was so busy devising an excuse for her boss that she slammed straight into somebody on the post office forecourt.

‘I’m so sorry!’

She squatted down to pick up the letters, which had scattered in the breeze.

‘No worries.’

With relief, Jo realised that the man she’d knocked flying had not been one of Radley’s aged inhabitants; in fact, the man seemed quite youthful–early thirties at most. He laughed as she handed over the gritty pile.

‘I’m used to being rugby-tackled.’

She smiled. It wasn’t that she was flirting, exactly, but…well, OK perhaps she was, just a little. The man was handsome: tall, with coiffed light brown hair and a tan. He could well have been a rugby player.

‘Hope they weren’t important.’ She nodded at the letters as he pushed them into the post box.

‘Oh, just replies to my fan mail. Standard responses, you know.’

She laughed uncertainly. Gosh, maybe he was a sportsman, like, maybe the captain of the England rugby team…

He shook his head, smiling and revealing a row of pearly teeth. ‘I’m kidding. It’s bills, mainly. Are you heading for Trev’s Teashop, by any chance? Want a lift?’

Jo was confused again. He must have been a customer at the café. She had probably served him coffee.

‘How did you know where I worked?’

He shook his head and smiled again, motioning for her to get into the passenger seat of a slick little BMW parked on the road. ‘Well I wasn’t deliberately looking at your chest, but…’

Jo groaned at her own stupidity. Of course. The aertex shirt.

She wasn’t sure whether getting into a complete stranger’s car was entirely sensible, but neither, probably, was accepting a job from a complete stranger, or a place to stay. And besides, he had an honest smile.

‘It wasn’t just the shirt, actually,’ he confessed, pulling out and accelerating to quite a speed.

‘No?’

‘No. I’ve seen you in there.’

‘What, you’re a customer?’

‘No. I’ve seen you through the window. I work from home quite a bit so I walk around town. Stops me getting cabin fever.’

‘Oh, right.’ Jo wanted to ask what he did for a living and where in Radley he was based and a whole load of other questions, but they were already at the teashop. ‘Well, thanks for the lift.’

He laughed. ‘Saved you all of thirty seconds.’

‘Well, yeah.’ She released her seatbelt and opened the door. Then, in a moment of boldness, she added, ‘Pop in for a coffee some time. I’ll give you a freebie.’

He raised an eyebrow.

‘Free, er, coffee, I mean.’

‘I look forward to it,’ he said, winking through the passenger window. She slammed the door, feeling the blood rush to her face.

She heard the whirr of his electric window behind her as she re-entered the café.

‘By the way, I’m Stu. What’s your name?’

She turned back and smiled.

‘Jo. See you around.’