The Christmas Café Read Free Page B

shouted to the assembled, ‘Do you know what? I’d really rather be alone, and Peter didn’t like half of you anyway. Please, make your way home via the nearest exit and when you have gone, I shall drink wine and dance in my bare feet until I fall asleep!’ But this wasn’t the Bea of her youth; she was in her fifties and had learnt that sometimes it was best to observe the ‘least said, soonest mended’ rule. That was precisely how she got through the following hour of further platitudes about how time would heal all of her wounds. She knew from bitter experience that this was a lie. Thirty-five years on and her pulse still quickened as she remembered clinging to her beloved with her bare hands, begging, pleading not to be left alone. Time had not healed her wounds; it had merely placed a thin veneer of anaesthesia over them that dulled the pain, making them easier to live with.
    Bea shook her head to clear the memory and lifted the cup of lemony tea to her lips as she wandered over to the sofa. Her wrist gave a familiar jangle. Twelve slim silver bracelets sat haphazardly on her left arm, each one bought by Peter for a particular birthday or anniversary; each one engraved on the inside with a declaration of love or a funny insight. The one he’d given her on her fiftieth birthday read: ‘You are now officially old! Welcome to the club!’
    She smiled at the memory of his wonderful humour and wished once again that she could have returned to him the same love that he’d given her. She had been happy with him, he had been a good father to Wyatt, and of course he’d helped her set up the Reservoir Street Kitchen, the café that was her pride and joy. But no matter how much she wished otherwise, her feelings for him were measured, a pale simulacrum of the way she had felt about her first love, her hand inside his as they glided over the wooden deck, the full moon providing the most perfect backdrop as her heart jumped and her foot tapped in time to the music, that night she’d wished would never end. Bea lightly stroked the dark green silk cushion, letting the fingers of her free hand linger on the fabric.
    After showering and blow-drying her thick grey hair into its voluminous waves and fastening it into a haphazard knot with a barrette, she applied her scarlet lip stain and brushed a couple of coats of mascara onto her long lashes. As she accessorised her olive pedal pushers with a sleeveless tunic and chunky bone-coloured beads that hung around her neck in three strands, she reminded herself how very lucky she had been. If it hadn’t been for Peter, life could have turned out very differently indeed. She then slipped her feet into her trademark petrol-blue Converse and pushed the memory of her dream to the very back of her mind.
    Before going downstairs to open up the café, she glanced at the photo on the wall and spoke the same words out into the bright blue morning that she had for the past 364 days.
    ‘I’m sorry, Peter. I’m sorry.’

Two
    ‘Ah, Mr Giraldi. How are you today?’ She waved from in front of the grand reclaimed bookshelf, where she was adjusting a miniature wooden rocking horse to sit just so, framed by battered copies of Little Women and Moby Dick , among others. She groomed the little horse with her fingertips, trying to make the most of his sparse mane and worn paintwork.
    ‘Good, thank you, Bea, apart from the fact there is someone sitting at my table!’ He removed the straw trilby that offered shade from the hot Sydney sun and lifted his walking cane, aiming it at the two tourists sitting beneath the bi-fold window. On sunny days the window was opened so that you were effectively dining al fresco, free to watch the goings-on of Surry Hills, one of the most vibrant of Sydney’s inner-city suburbs. The couple, oblivious to their blunder, chattered and sipped at iced spiced chai latte. ‘How long will they be? Have they asked for the bill yet?’ he shouted in their