The Day I Died

‘Hey,’ he said, rising from his seat and kissing her on each cheek. ‘Fashionably late.’

Jo nodded bashfully. It ruined the aura somewhat, she thought, having someone point it out.

‘What are you drinking?’

‘Er…’ Jo sat down, hoping he couldn’t smell the alcohol on her breath. ‘Wine? Please.’

Stuart made a hand gesture that sent a waiter gliding up to their table as though on runners.

A wine menu appeared between them. Jo made it clear that she wasn’t getting involved in the decision, but that didn’t stop Stuart muttering, ‘Louis Latour Puligny Montrachet? Veuve Clicquot Rosé? Bestue Santa Sabina?’

Jo shrugged.

‘Is red OK? Ooh, that looks good. Bodegas Luis Cañas Reserva Seleccíon de la Familia.’ Stuart looked up at the patient waiter. ‘Yes, we’ll go for that.’

Jo watched him snap shut the menu. She had guessed correctly: he was full of himself. Sexy, but a little bit arrogant.

‘So, everything going well at the teashop then?’

Jo grimaced. ‘Er…well, no. Not exactly.’

‘I didn’t get you in too much trouble, did I?’ He grinned cheekily.

‘Well, I think I was already in trouble,’ Jo replied. ‘But you were the clincher.’

‘Really? The clincher? Me? Oh God. I’m sorry.’ He leaned back as the waiter returned with the wine and poured some with great panache into Stuart’s glass. Swilling it for quite some time, Stuart took a sip and proclaimed it ‘OK’, without looking at the waiter.

‘I had no idea I was the clincher,’ he went on.

The waiter filled Jo’s glass and topped up Stuart’s.

‘Don’t feel bad,’ said Jo, wondering whether he actually did. He seemed to be rather enjoying his guilty act. ‘I had it coming. The boss was just telling me how he was worried about my “unhealthy relationship with some of the customers” when you walked in and asked for a freebie.’

Stuart pulled a look of mock horror. ‘Oops. Oh dear. Cheers, by the way.’ He tapped his glass against Jo’s.

The menu was one of those cryptic ones with phrases like ‘bourride of brill with rouille and Gruyère’ and ‘foie de volaille mousse with Madeira’. Jo decided to go by price and opt for something mid-range for each of the courses.

‘You’re not allergic to shellfish then,’ said Stuart.

Jo laughed frivolously and wondered what she’d asked for. Allergies. That was a point. The thought hadn’t even crossed her mind.

‘So, what will you do now?’ asked Stuart, when Jo finished explaining about the fiasco in Trev’s Teashop.

The wine was slipping down too quickly. Jo tried to reduce the frequency of her sips. ‘I’m looking for something else. Any ideas?’ She was only half joking.

He clicked his teeth. ‘Not really my line of work.’

‘Oh, yeah? And what is your line of work?’

He waited to catch her eye. ‘Have a guess.’

‘Well…you work from home a lot and you drive a nice car…And you dress well…’ She looked him up and down. ‘And you’re good with people…’

‘Am I?’ Stuart smiled back coyly. ‘Jo, it almost sounds as though you’re flirting with me.’ He raised an eyebrow.

Jo looked down at her wine, embarrassed.

‘I’m not always good,’ he went on, unabashed. ‘But then, nobody’s good all the time.’ He fixed her a meaningful stare. ‘So, what am I?’

Jo waited for her cheeks to stop burning. She hadn’t meant to flirt; it had just sort of happened.

‘Jo?’

‘You’re a property developer,’ she said, plucking something out at random that sounded suitably unflattering.

He frowned. ‘Nope.’

‘Um…’ Jo shrugged helplessly, ‘insurance broker.’

He looked offended this time. ‘No. Try again.’

Jo smiled, lightening up again. ‘Helicopter pilot. Fireman. Farmer.’ This was more fun than inventing her own career. ‘Hairdresser. Oh, I know, you’re a stunt double!’

‘OK. Now it’s gonna be a real anticlimax.’ Stuart allowed the waiter to present the starters. Jo looked down and saw a mass of rubber tubing on her plate. ‘I’m retired.’

Jo screwed up her nose. ‘What?’

‘I was a trader until just over a year ago, then I quit while the going was good. Well, goodish.’

‘What…You don’t work at all any more?’ Jo wondered how much money the man had managed to put away. Two million, she reckoned, at least.

Stuart cut into his sliver of salmon. Jo wished she’d been better able to read the menu. ‘I do a bit of consulting to keep myself busy, but other than that I play golf, go to the gym, entertain beautiful ladies…’

Ladies, Jo noted. Plural. She wasn’t sure what to make of that. ‘What sort of consulting?’

‘Well, people consult me to ask where they should put their money. I do a little voodoo dance, throw a few sticks on the ground and give them their answer.’

Jo laughed, pushing the chewy rings around her plate. At least the lettuce was recognisable. Stuart continued to talk, somehow making his vacuous life sound quite interesting. Jo felt like a contestant on some awful life-swap reality TV show: here she was dining with a multimillionaire while only a few nights ago, she had been sleeping on a café floor.

‘Same again?’ asked Stuart, holding up the empty bottle.

‘How did that happen?’ asked Jo, pretending to be shocked by their rate of consumption. She really had to slow down.

The main courses arrived, in Jo’s case, giant prawns and some unidentifiable sea-dwelling creatures with shells, and Stuart steered the conversation back round to her.

‘So, what are your prospects like?’

‘Prospects?’

‘Prospects of finding another job.’

‘Oh. Well, I was thinking of going into financial consulting. What d’you reckon?’

He smiled, filling her glass from the new bottle. ‘I think I’d have to assess your tribal dancing skills. There’s more to it than meets the eye, you know.’

Jo laughed. ‘Maybe later. No, actually, I’m not sure I’ll find another waitressing job. There doesn’t seem to be much demand for them in Abingdon.’

‘Abingdon?’

‘Well, Abingdon or Radley I moved to Abingdon last weekend. My other place…didn’t work out.’

Stuart shook his head. ‘Radley’s loss. So what will you do? I mean, what happens in waitressing circles? Are there agencies, that sort of thing?’

Jo knew she was being patronised. ‘You know, waitressing isn’t my career’

‘Oh?’ Stuart looked intrigued. Clearly he’d taken her for a dumb, tea-serving bimbo–which, in a way, she was.

This time, Jo was prepared. ‘I work in cafés to fill in the gaps. My real job is working with kids. I’m a…a mentor.’

At least this one she thought she could pull off without coming unstuck. It wasn’t like saying she was an astronaut or a vet. You couldn’t ask tricky questions about working with kids.

‘Where did you train? My mate’s girlfriend is a child psychologist.’

Bollocks. ‘London, um…University…’

‘Oh. She went to Manchester.’

Jo managed to mumble something and had another go at dissecting the creatures on her plate. They seemed to be all shell and no flesh, and the strange twisted utensil she’d been given didn’t seem to help in the slightest.

‘Is that where you were before, then? Try pulling the head off first.’

Jo couldn’t see anything that looked like a head. She yanked the animal in half and tried to work out which was edible. ‘Sorry, what?’

‘London. Were you in London before you came here?’

‘Oh. Yes.’ Result. There seemed to be a tiny piece of soft grey tissue amongst the debris.

‘So, you moved from a mentoring job in London to a teashop in Radley?’

Jesus. The meat was disgusting. Jo washed it down with some wine and tried to straighten her thinking. Her behaviour did seem a bit odd, when he put it like that.

‘I thought I’d got this job sorted in Radley, so I found a place to live. Then the job fell through and I was already settled, so I thought, well, why don’t I find another job?’

A piece of fishy gristle flew across the restaurant.

Stuart nodded, politely ignoring her ineptness. ‘Right. And then you moved again.’

‘Right.’ Oh dear. This wasn’t sounding at all plausible. Jo gave up on her main course and had one last go at explaining.

‘I moved to Radley for one job, which fell through, but once I’d moved I thought I’d find another job nearby, so I moved again, but then that fell through.’

‘The job or the place?’

‘The place. No, the job.’ Jo was utterly confused. ‘Um, can we talk about something else?’

Stuart laughed. He speared his last mouthful of steak and offered it across to Jo. She bit into it gratefully. It tasted delicious.

‘So, whereabouts did you live in London?’

Jo made the steak last as long as she could, hoping desperately that a vivid memory of some part of London might leap into her head. ‘West,’ she said, when it didn’t.

‘Anywhere near Ealing? I used to live in South Ealing.’

Jo puffed out her cheeks as though trying to remember the local geography. ‘Not far, I guess. I was a bit further out–a place called…’ Shit. ‘West Ham.’

‘West Ham? That’s East.’ Stuart frowned.

‘West Ham-ly’, she corrected, quite credibly she thought. What was the logic behind West Ham being in East London?

‘Never heard of it. Dessert?’

Jo didn’t want to take any more risks with the indecipherable menu so she shook her head and finished off the wine. Stuart asked for the bill and seemed to forget all about the West Hamly thing, conveniently for Jo, who was rapidly losing track of her lies.

The waiter swooped back with the bill, then swooped off again with Stuart’s card tucked neatly inside. Jo wondered how much it had come to. She probably would have got a more substantial meal in the Burger King down the road, but this had been an experience. A good experience, she thought as she set off for the bathroom. Tonight had been enlightening.

‘Bit of a worry,’ said Stuart, when she returned. ‘They’ve still got my card.’ He gave a look of mock concern. ‘I might go and hunt down our man.’

He darted off, heading for the cluster of waiters who were doing just that–waiting.

Stuart was still complaining to the head honcho when their original waiter appeared at the table with the little machine in his hand. Jo leaned over and took a peek. She guessed it would have come to over a hundred pounds, probably nearer two hundred. But it was something else that caught her eye.

Even though her vision was blurry, Jo was fairly sure she wasn’t mistaken. Embossed on the gold card sticking out of the reader were the characters, ‘MR & MRS S. THO—’

Stuart returned to the table, glanced crossly at the waiter and punched in his PIN. Jo watched him through suspicious, drunken eyes. Surely he wasn’t married? There must be some other explanation. Maybe he was separated and using an old card. Maybe it wasn’t his card. Although, strictly speaking, that would make him a thief, which wasn’t particularly reassuring either.