Page 8 of One Snowy Day
He had a feeling deep in his gut that today was the day he would find out that breaking that vow was a mistake.
10 A.M. – NOON
5
JESSIE
Jessie watched as her pal, Val Murray, crossed the threshold of the café and shook her head like a golden retriever, shedding little flakes of snow off her red furry hat onto the black rubber mat underneath her feet, before bursting into a chorus of ‘Happy Birthday’. Thankfully, they were the only people daft enough to venture out in this weather, so the café was empty of other patrons.
‘Happy birthday dear, Jessie… Happy birthday to yoooooooooooo.’ As she threw her arms wide, Val held the last note for so long, Jessie could only admire her lung power. Song over, Val gave herself another shake, then made her way to the only occupied table in the room and greeted Jessie with a hug.
‘Happy birthday, ma love. There’s only one woman that I would leave the house for on a day like this, Jessie McLean, and you’d better be rewarding me with cake for breakfast.’
Jessie pointed to the Victoria sponge in front of her, elaborately iced with ‘Happy 65thBirthday Jessie!’
‘Ready and waiting, lovely. Although, a tinfoil jacket and a ski mask would probably come in a bit handier today. Our Cathycame in looking like a double duvet in her new coat. She’s just nipped to the loo.’
Val shrugged off her familiar bright red ski jacket. ‘I always know it’s nearly Christmas when that jacket comes out,’ Jessie told her fondly, already knowing what the reply would be. Val reminded them every year that she’d bought it for a ski trip to the Highlands thirty years ago.
‘Glenshee, 1995, and still going strong. Never made it to the slopes, because I twisted my ankle at Stirling services when I ran in for a cup of tea and a hot pie. And then my Don put his back out carrying me back to the bus.’ As always, there was a softness in Val’s voice when she mentioned her late husband, who’d had Alzheimer’s disease and passed away a few years before. She changed the subject as she draped her jacket over a chair at the next table. ‘Anyway, I was just thinking that the last time it snowed like this was last year, when I hit a pothole outside your house and had to seek refuge in your kitchen.’
Jessie pursed her lips. ‘The council still haven’t fixed it. Bloody thing is the size of a paddling pool now. Took out two transit vans last week. It’s keeping Kwik Fit in business.’
Val plonked down on a chair, her gaze flitting round the room. ‘Ooh, it’s gorgeous in here today,’ she said, taking in the twinkling green tree, bedecked in white and gold balls and ornaments, as Jessie nodded.
‘I was just saying the same thing to Alyssa. The lass put all the Christmas decorations and lights up early for my party tonight. It’s lovely, so it is, and it’s going to be beautiful when everything is lit up tonight.’ Jessie tried really hard to stop her voice from quivering. The café was like a pretty winter wonderland today. Candles on all the wall shelves, white tinsel draped along the tops of the bookcases and the display cabinets that held today’s cakes. On the tables, there was an assortment of little reindeerand snowmen and penguins. And in the background, Bing Crosby was crooning his very apt tribute to today’s weather.
Val’s gaze met hers, and her pal’s perfectly pencilled eyebrows narrowed. ‘Oh no…’
‘What?’ Jessie wasn’t sure where this was going.
‘Yer chin is wobbling. Don’t deny it. Are you okay, love?’
Jessie knew she could admit anything to Val and it would never be judged or repeated, but she wasn’t going to spoil her last day here by crumbling into a heap and confessing that she was stressed up to her elf earrings about leaving tomorrow, dreading saying goodbye to everyone, anxious about a life with only her husband for company, and panicking now that the reality of this moment was here. So instead she played it down with, ‘Och, I’m just going to miss our cuppas.’
Thankfully, the arrival of Alyssa saved her from further scrutiny.
‘Good morning, Val. Usual?’ Alyssa welcomed Val like an old friend, which, Jessie knew, wasn’t too far from the truth. Val and Jessie had both lived in the village of Weirbridge their whole lives, and there was barely a person, scandal, story or piece of gossip that didn’t reach one of them. Alyssa was village-born too, and when she’d opened the Once Upon A Time Café on Main Street, almost directly across the road from Jessie’s hair salon, the women had quickly made it their regular coffee spot.
Val pulled off her hat, to reveal a blonde bob that barely quivered, thanks to enough Elnett hairspray to give a Highland cow a ten-inch high beehive hairdo. ‘Yes, please, love. And if you could throw in a blowtorch to warm up ma feet, that would be grand. There are parts that even a Victoria sponge can’t reach.’
As Alyssa got busy making Val a beverage to defrost her toes, Jessie’s cousin-by-marriage, Cathy, bustled back from the loo, her hair a helmet of perfection now that she’d also discarded her hatand given her curls a quick fluff up with the hand drier. ‘Morning, Val. Did I hear singing?’
‘Aye, I think it was Mariah Carey. She popped her head in the door on the way to Aldi.’ As Cathy took a seat, Val leant over to kiss her on the cheek. ‘Do the posh folk know you’re here, Cathy? They might not let you back in.’
Cathy picked up the mug of steaming tea she’d ordered before she went to the loo. ‘I got a special visa. As long as I’m back by sundown, they’ll forgive me for mingling with riff-raff.’
Jessie chuckled at the banter between her relative and her pal. Both of them could dish it out and take it in equal measure, so this was their idea of a friendly exchange. Especially as they both knew that none of the teasing was actually grounded in reality. Yes, Cathy had lived most of her seventy-seven years in the upmarket West End of Glasgow, and now lived in a lovely retirement flat there, but she was born and bred near the shipyards and had worked her bunions off for most of her life in her hairdressing salon in Partick.
Val got to work, slicing up the cake in the centre of the table. ‘Well, I hope you’ve got skis to get you back there because that big handsome weather bloke on the telly was saying we’re in for a belter of a snow day today. Anyway, Jessie, how’s the first day of retirement going? I’m surprised you’re not doing a Joan Collins, luxuriating in your bed until lunchtime, wrapped in white fake fur, with thirty-year-old oiled-up bodybuilders feeding you grapes. Actually, I don’t know that Joan Collins does that, but I like to imagine it that way.’
‘I’m not having oiled-up bodybuilders anywhere near my bed, thank you.’ Jessie countered. ‘I’d need to boil wash my sheets and it would take the pattern right off my duvet cover.’ A duvet cover that, like all her other bedding and linens, would be discarded or donated as soon as their house here was sold. They only usedcotton sheets in Tenerife because it was too warm, even in winter. Her earlier resolve not to think about it crumbled as the reality slammed into her chest again. And the very thought made Jessie want to cry.
‘Jessie, are you welling up or has someone let a cat in here and triggered your allergies?’ Cathy asked her, genuinely concerned about either possibility. Her pals knew she wasn’t a crier, except when she watchedLong Lost FamilyorCall The Midwife, which inevitably got her in such a state she could lose a full set of false lashes by the end of the episode.
Jessie answered by letting a big fat tear drop down her face. So much for her earlier resolve not to give in to sadness today.
Cathy was the first to put her hand on hers. ‘Oh Jessie, what is it?’
