A Bitter Blend

***TW Mentions of child loss, infertility***

Hat or glasses? Tough decision. Couldn’t wear both. Looked about a hundred years old… Still got it, girl…? Not like this! Outdoor conditions, in spite of the onset of winter, weren’t too adverse yet, so the glasses would have been more practical. But my new white angora slouch beanie… Ah! So soft and gorgeous… It went so well with my white zip-up jacket and snow-boots, those black fleece-lined leggings which lifted and shaped and sculpted and trimmed and controlled.

A backdrop flurry of snow, blonde hair in soft waves cascading all the way down past my shoulders, hot-pink lipstick striking, and there I was, picture-perfect mid-fifties, and surely passing for thirty, forty at most. Had to leave the car at home, though.

At the top of St Gregory’s Street, a man heading in the opposite direction came beaming towards me.

‘Some weather we’re having. Snow’s early this year, and they say it’s going to get worse before long.’

A bit of a paunch, not exactly a snappy dresser, nevertheless I returned his smile.

‘What’s going on there then?’ I asked, pointing down past the ex-serviceman’s hall and frosty looking fountain. ‘All the hazmat suits…Anything I should know about?’

It was only once he’d gone and I’d walked on a bit, saw the folded white parasols jutting up from the centre of the tables outside The Duck and Dimples pub, that I realised why my fellow pedestrian had edged away from me like he had, face contorted in bemusement. Still, the chances of my running into him again, especially if he saw me first (currently a given) were virtually nil, and at least I hadn’t voiced my original thought about an unlikely small-town gathering of the Ku Klux Klan. So, yeah, could have been worse. Could have been fifteen again and completely and utterly mortified.

The lamppost on the corner with the drainpipes on the wall behind it, I’d once mistaken for Denny Watson, my teenage crush. And Veronica, my supposed best friend at the time, had told everyone. All doubled up in fits of exaggerated laughter, poking fun. No use explaining how far away I’d been at the time, and I’d only imagined these steely fixtures to be Denny because he looked such a hunk in his faded grey denims. ‘Got a present for you, Ange,’ they’d told me. ‘Saved the milk bottles just for you. You’ll see great through the bottom of them!’ And as for Veronica…

‘It’s not true what they tell you, you know. Boys do make passes at girls with specs. But if you think Denny Watson would ever go out with you, you’re dreaming. Shoving all that cheap slap on your face and for what? It’s pathetic. Cool guys like him like their girls to look natural, not all tarted up like a slut. They like them curvy too, not all skinny and under-developed. And anyway, you only want him so you can be like Den and Angie on Eastenders, and have everyone talking about you like that. Like they ever would.’

She’d hurt me then, but I’d been told she was only jealous. I attracted the lads and she didn’t; she was just trying to bring me down. ‘You’ll still look good in your specs,’ people said, but they lied. No way was I wearing those horrible free NHS ones, and I wasn’t going to pester my mother for better ones either when I knew that money was tight. She’d only expect me to wear them all the time.

It was different once I’d left school to train as a beautician, for then I could afford my own frames. Didn’t wear them for going out, of course, and never on dates, and Veronica had sneered at this in much the same way as she’d sneered and condemned me for ‘hitting on every lad I happened to rub shoulders with at the disco’. Like I ‘wasn’t content to stick with just one’, like I was ‘just showing off’, and ‘leaving her sitting’. She hadn’t left been on her own – ever. We’d always gone out with a group of friends. I was merely enjoying myself like young folk were supposed to. She could have done the same if she’d just loosened up.

Eyes like ice. Blue as her cocktail of choice; the Blue Lagoon, unshaken, unstirred. That’s how I’d come to see her, and if she hadn’t been so intent on forgoing college and being ‘one of the workers’ she could have well been a judge. Then after I’d met Craig and she’d got together with shop-steward ‘Citizen’ Ben, that was it. First the excuses not to meet up. Then nothing. Nose in the air and friends no more, she’d blanked me in the street as, wishing a heart-to-heart, I’d approached and said ‘hi, fancy a coffee’. No reason whatsoever to ignore me.

They’d moved away, her and Ben. Got married, so I was told. Attended various socialist rallies. Hadn’t seen her in decades, and had no desire to, but you know when they say ‘speak of the devil’? Well, sometimes thoughts have the same effect…

I was sure it was her, at the back of the queue outside Greggs, but after my umbrella faux pas, I wasn’t about to trust my iffy vision. From across the street, while waiting for a break in the traffic, I’d stood for a while peering towards her. And then I’d crossed. No, this time there was no mistake. It was her alright. Hadn’t changed much either. Same drop-shouldered stance, same cushiony, pasty demeanor. Same short wolf-cut haircut; heavily fringed, layered above the ears and tapering back in a rich and deep mahogany. Her hair had always been her most attractive feature, although I couldn’t help but suspect that she’d had a good few root-jobs by now. She wore a sage green gilet, winter-white woolly cowl-neck underneath, but stylish, possibly cashmere. Her trousers were wide-leg beige; a little too long and watermarked, they hid all but the yellowish rubbery tread of her sensible footwear. Her gold love-knot earrings looked too heavy for her miniscule lobes.

‘Not speaking, then, Ange?’

Well, she could talk!

‘Veronica… Long time and all that. What brings you back here?’

Eye to eye, still those shards of ice, and no breaking into a smile. I felt the chill on my face, smelt the steam from within the café wafting out, Arabica-sweet, greasy-meaty, a cloying peppered aroma. And people, all sweat and shiver, crowding the doorway and swerving between the odd flake of snow.

‘My dad died. Just down for the funeral.’

‘Ah. I heard about that, I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be. He was eighty-six a couple of months back. Old enough.’

Wow! So, her feelings there hadn’t altered. Veronica had never been close to her parents, and had made no secret of how she despised the elderly. ‘Come retirement they should all be locked away. Let them fester together in their prehistoric uselessness’. She’d barely been in her teens when she’d said it, but her callousness had unnerved me even then. Almost as much as when she’d predicted the order in which our parents would die. Got that one right, old chum, have a cuppa on me…

‘Still as vain as ever, I see,’ she’d scoffed when I opted for the straight black Americano as opposed to the vanilla mocha latte. ‘And you’re just as rude’, I’d thought, although I didn’t say it. It was only later I began to wonder if maybe she’d been referring to my lack of specs rather than my avoidance of cream and syrup. I had been straining to read the menu on the wall-mounted screen after all.

We took the table nearest the door, sat on opposite sides, me facing away from it. A little cramped, but no choice. It was the only one left. Good view of the street though. Christmassy almost, in a sparky-hazy kind of way. Festive in grey.

‘So, you still with Ben, then?’

‘Yep. Married twenty-eight years.’

‘That’s good. Kids?’ I knew she’d always wanted them. Loved them almost as much as she’d hated the old folks. Didn’t care for them myself, not at the time. Babysat with her once. Twin boys stinking the house out with their oppressively loud and deliberate flatulence. Wrestling mad. And then the third child, the little one, ate the goldfish, bit right into it, chomped off its head. ‘Jammy,’ his brother had said. ‘Face all jammy’.

‘No. No kids.’ She answered eventually. ‘Think I’ll get myself a cake.’ She flicked open a paper napkin, dabbed the cream from her lips and scraped back her chair to rejoin the queue. I got out my phone and checked my lipstick. Once I’d finished up here, I decided, I’d nip to the opticians, order a pair of prescription ‘sunnies’. The Alpine ski-mountain vibe never went out of fashion and the snow was set to lie.

I watched her return to the table with her doughnut, watched her peel it from the bag in which it came; sticky-pink on white paper and tissue to wipe swiftly torn. Eyes like ice, and the snow falling harder, faster, melting against the window. I held my cup in both hands, waiting for her to ask. Was I still with Craig, and did we have any family? Was I still working? Still doing beauty therapy? She could even have questioned why I’d never thought about contact lenses. Laser surgery. And then I could have told her that I had, in fact, tried lenses, but (when does anyone in the know take their own advice?) I had done what I shouldn’t have and kept them in overnight which had caused some retinal damage so I couldn’t wear them anymore. As for surgery, I just didn’t relish the idea of having slits cut into my eyes. But, no. Seemed it was up to me to make the small talk.

‘What are you up to then, these days? Still in retail?

Veronica had been with Haid’s the frozen food shop before she’d left and had been transferred. She’d said she’d liked it there. 'A good honest, down-to-earth, people’s occupation.'

‘No, changed careers long ago.’

‘And…?’

Again, the delayed response. Well, I thought, bet her dentist had less trouble extracting her teeth, for as seldom as she opened her mouth - even while munching - I could still detect the bridge work and lower partial. (The upside to being short-sighted; my eyes were pretty good close-up.) But perhaps, I was being unfair. Bitchier in my thinking than I ought to have been. Maybe her father dying had affected Veronica more than she was letting on. Maybe she was in mourning, but also in denial. Or maybe, like the song which was currently on the radio, she was just Comfortably (or rather uncomfortably) Numb. And maybe I should take all this into account, stop shifting my bum around in my chair like I had a case of threadworms, stop lifting the cup to my lips quite so often, taking sip after sip, barely wetting my lips.

‘If you must know, I’m a qualified nurse now. Private sector. Elderly clients mainly, home and residential care.’

‘Good God!’ I practically screeched the words. ‘Well, holy airborne guacamole, that’s the last thing I ---’

‘Well, got to go where the money is. You should know that.’

‘Er… Money never really came into ---'

But Veronica wasn’t listening. She was looking past me – through me even. And as I turned to see what had caught her attention, for the first time I saw her grinning. A great wide cheesy smile, a sunshine glint on the fractured glacier.

‘Well, they’re all coming out of the woodwork today,’ she said.

I looked towards the door, and, no, it couldn’t be – the man I’d encountered on St Gregory’s Street, and here he was coming over.

I looked down into what remained of my coffee, hugging the mug even tighter than before, pushed my butt down into my chair as hard as it would go… Hazmat suits… Parasols… Oh God…

‘And there’s a blast from the past I didn’t expect. Veronica Daly and – Angela, isn’t it? Sorry I forget your last name. Was trying to remember when I saw you before. Anyway… Veronica, goodness me… Veronica Daly…’ A slow shake of the head, an elongated grin. Clownish, he pushed out his paunch. Bigger than it looked before. Like a bird puffing out its chest prior to mating. And I was way too close.

‘Ah well now, I’ve not been a Daly for years, as you well know, Den.’

Ooh, flirty, smiley still, but not to the same extent. A twitch of the lips and the ice wasn’t far from the surface. Hit a nerve with that… Daly. Who with the surname Daly would saddle their child with a name beginning with V? Those initials had been the bane of Veronica’s life all through Secondary School. And she’d despised her parents for it. Her maternal grandmother more so, for it had been her name as well… But wait… Den? Denny? Denny Watson? My hand jerked against the cup… How could I not have known him? And how – how on earth – could I have ever fancied him so much? Maybe it was ‘Dirty’ Den Watts from Eastenders I’d had the hots for all along. Or maybe I had just been seeking a bit of ‘celebrity’ Angie and Den.

‘So, what brings you back here then…?’

I listened as Veronica explained, and I listened as the conversation progressed – and flowed…

Ben not with you then…? Ah, while the cat’s away… Only staying a couple of days, but could stay longer… Want my number…? A drink…? Sure, for old times’ sake… What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him… Hey, we should go back where we went as kids. The Hideaway we called it, remember…?

‘Got something you want to say to me, Ange?’

Ice in her eyes and a smirk. That’s what I saw once Denny had trundled off with his takeaway cup and paper bag in hand. And sure, she said, they’d been involved. Wasn’t duty-bound to tell me everything, now, was she? And if she wanted to have a bit of fun on the side, well that was up to her. ‘Don’t tell me you never cheated on Craig?’

Never, I thought. Never in my life.

‘No, Vee, I just couldn’t.’

She scoffed. ‘Guilt I suppose. Trying to make up for what you did. Getting rid of his kid like you did. And all because you didn’t want to spoil your figure, saw yourself as this big-shot beauty bitch, making loads-a-money…’ She growled the once familiar yuppie catchphrase.

I stared. What the hell…? And I tried to explain, I really did, that she’d got it all wrong. That what those who didn’t really know us had assumed at the time, that (as ‘flighty’ and ‘vain’, and ‘ambitious over-and-above-my-station’ as I was) I’d had an eleventh-hour abortion, when, in fact, losing the baby at nineteen weeks had been devastating to us both - and not just Craig, as even those who believed us made out. I simply hadn't wished to discuss it. Couldn’t bring myself to talk, to relive the whole heart-wrenching experience. I would have done with Veronica, but she never gave me the chance, and even now she eyed me with suspicion, convinced I was lying.

‘Sure, I went back to work. Didn’t try again for years, but we’ve got four now. The youngest are still in High School.’

‘Hmph. Got a nanny as well, I bet. I mean, look at you. You don't even look like a mum…’

No point in telling her I’d given up work when my first child was born. Had to be there. Had to keep her safe. Same with the others. I’d thought about returning, updating my qualifications, but somehow never did. Couldn’t 'let myself go' though, couldn’t crumble, couldn’t flake. Appearances. They mattered. All part of self-care.

‘No, Ange, I never had kids, but Ben did. Just my luck, eh? While the cat’s away…’

I watched her go, all mixed up in that icy, wintery swirl undefined, and stared down into my cup at the dregs. Too bitter when you got to the end, this Arabica-Robusta blend, and besides it had long since grown cold. I stood up and poured it away, binned the cup and readjusted my hat. The right choice, I thought, in this kind of weather.