Page 12 of Will You Stay Another Day?
‘I can’t possibly accept that,’ said Glenda, but her eyes lit up. ‘Although it certainly would be good between the sheets with that length.’
They looked at each other and burst out laughing.
‘Is it true what I’ve heard about your Sunday afternoons? That you’re a dominatrix? Wouldn’t this long bottle come in handy?’
‘Glenda!’ Lili started laughing.
‘Only teasing, but I am intrigued. Could it be Tupperware parties, séances, or a new militant political party?’
Lili pushed the water bottle into Glenda’s hands. ‘If you could ever benefit from attending, I’m sure fate will lead you to my cottage.’
Glenda gave her a hug and walked off.
Lili locked up and stared at the Closed sign with a sigh. Saturday 25 October – only six days to Halloween. Normally, she and Em would have already carved pumpkins. Lili had bought one a few days ago but it still sat on the unit without a toothy smile. Perhaps she’d try her hand at baking pumpkin pie instead.
Right. Off home to ring Em’s number, to find out the truth once and for all. With a fast pace she started to walk, but wait… Was that Callum, the regular customer they’d not seen for ages? She caught his eye and went over.
‘Callum… how are you? How’s the little one? Jack running you ragged as always? You’ve been missed in the shop. Tommo’s got no one to talk football with.’ She pulled a face. ‘He tries with me, convinced anyone who grew up in Manchester must live and breathe the Premier League.’
‘Cheers, Lili, I’ve missed those chats too.’ His cheeks flushed.
‘I… I hope I’m not being nosy, but is everything all right? We’ve become used to seeing your face in the shop, what with all the clothes and toys you buy for Jack.’
Callum looked sheepish and hesitated. ‘It’s… going to sound stupid.’
Lili thought about the texts, and Tommo and Meg’s faces when she spoke about them. Colin and Shirl’s as well. ‘Stupid might just be my speciality at the moment. Do share. It will make me feel better.’
Callum smiled. ‘My place is only small, a tiny two-bedroom flat – all I could afford after the divorce from my wife Alice. We share custody but I still need space for when Jack’s with me and… it’s cluttered. All my stuff is piled up in my room and now spilling into the lounge. He’s forever growing, forever changing, but I’ve avoided coming into the shop because, to be honest, I don’t know where I’ll put anything new.’
‘Is there nothing amongst all the clutter that you can get rid of?’
‘I should but… it’s hard. You get attached…’
She tilted her head. Perhaps it would do him good to come to one of her special Sunday afternoon events. The rain began to pelt down. Now wasn’t the time to mention it.
‘Well, if you change your mind, we’ve had an influx of toys. I know Jack loves board games and one’s come in to do with building dinosaurs. Maybe a visit will inspire you to declutter a bit.’
Callum gave a non-committal shrug, smiled again, and they said goodbye as a group of early Saturday night drinkers jostled past. Head down, coat collar up, she went to pass Crystoffees where Em used to work, breathing in the smell of joss sticks as the door opened.
‘Hey! Lili!’
It was as if fate was trying to intervene, to stop her continuing her investigations. She looked up. It was Paul, Em’s old manager.
‘Hold up,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a spare pasty that needs eating up tonight.’ He disappeared and came back with a bulging paper bag. ‘Right, better go and close up. I’m off to the cinema tonight.’
‘Thanks so much, Paul.’ But he’d already gone.
Back at the cottage, Lili hung up her coat, put on her slippers and poured out a glass of cold water. A clear head was needed. She settled on the sofa and took out her phone.
Autumn pot pourri filled the room with the aroma of pumpkin spice. Smooth Radio played gently in the background. She’d never lived alone until this year, moving straight from a life with her parents to one with Em, so she’d worked hard at filling the emptiness of the cottage with fragrances and sounds. Lili had taken up crocheting, bought jigsaws and invested in a tin of coloured pencils and big drawing pad. None of the hobbies had lasted. None of them had got rid of the void Em had left. Not even the occasional date. Meg encouraged her to go through dating app profiles on their lunchbreak, but the idea of a romantic distraction didn’t work. It was so not what Lili was about. One positive from her parents’ divorce was that each of them, in their own way, afterwards, showed their daughter the foundations of inner confidence.
‘If you ever have to compromise yourself to fit into a relationship then it’s not good, even if that partner is a good person,’ said Mum.
‘Pretending I was something I wasn’t slowly killed me,’ said Dad. ‘I should have spoken up earlier, stood up for who I was. It wasn’t your mum’s fault.’
Both those comments stuck with a young Lili and made her realise that the most important thing in life was honesty, through and through.
Right. No more procrastinating. Lili ran a finger over the phone’s screen and was about to go into Contacts when the corner cabinet caught her eye. She and Em had laid out souvenirs from their trips. They each collected something different. For Em it was boxes of matches. She smoked back then, until her dad had a lung cancer scare and she wanted to support him stopping his forty-a-day habit. Lili herself also stopped vaping, even though she enjoyed the faces Em would pull every time she tried a new flavour that her friend would deem sickly sweet. Lili’s souvenirs were small ornaments to hang on the Christmas tree once a year, like the pair of clogs from Holland, and castanets from La Manga.
