The Second Chance Café in Carlton Square Read online

  When Emerald and Garnet sit beside each other they look like someone has taken the same drawing and just coloured them in differently. Their eyes are almond shaped and they have identical long slender noses, angular faces and full lips. But Garnet’s got nearly black eyes and her thick straight shoulder-length hair is cut in a heavy blunt fringe and coloured a russet red. Emerald has the same haircut but her colour is even darker than mine – almost a true black – and her eyes are nearly black too. It’s very striking against her pale skin.

  ‘Poor Michael has even had to cancel holidays,’ says Garnet.

  Melody covers her daughter’s ears when she catches the look on Samantha’s face. Samantha doesn’t disappoint. ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, at least they get holidays,’ she replies. ‘Not to mention sick days and bonuses and at least some bloody idea about all the hours they’ll have to work. I’d trade places in a heartbeat. They’re not sitting around with their friends feeling sorry for us, are they?’

  When I first met Samantha in antenatal class I mistook her abruptness for rudeness, but she’s just very honest and efficient. She used to be a high-powered consultant before having her first child and she never really lost the drive. It was her job to go into companies and restructure them (efficiently, of course). Now she hasn’t got anywhere for all that energy to go so she channels it into everyday life and her marathon yoga sessions. The rest of us might dress to camouflage the baby tummies we haven’t quite lost yet. Samantha’s got thighs that could crack walnuts.

  Naturally, it gets Samantha’s back up when Garnet and Emerald try excusing their husbands, which happens a lot.

  It’s not just Samantha’s lack of employment that frustrates her. It doesn’t sound like her husband appreciates her thighs, walnut-cracking or not, any more than all the work she does. Like I said, she channels a lot into yoga.

  And Garnet and Emerald are very nice women once you get used to their rivalry. They only ever turn it on each other and have a long-running disagreement over which precious stone their parents think is more precious. That sums them up, really.

  Not only were their first babies due within days of each other, but their husbands work for the same bank and their houses are one road away from one another. Both think theirs is the better neighbourhood. And the better husband.

  Garnet was over-the-top smug about getting to the finishing line first in the maternity ward, pushing out her ten-pound daughter a day and a half before Emerald. But Emerald had the better time when her son was born in under six hours, and they’ve been competitively parenting ever since.

  The sisters are closest in age to me, twenty-seven and twenty-eight, and both think they’re the perfect age. Samantha is in her mid-thirties and Melody’s age is anyone’s guess, so of course we all do. I think she’s well over forty because of her long frizzy brown and grey hair, but since I’ve got a few greys too (thanks to Mum for pointing those out), maybe she is younger.

  ‘It will be all right, you know,’ Melody says, fixing me with her pale blue, wide-set eyes. Combined with a longish face and big-toothed smile, they make her look a bit like a goat. I don’t mean that in an insulting way. It’s just so you can picture her. Because her hair is salt-and-pepper, though, instead of goat-coloured, the resemblance ends there.

  Melody is even more of a tree-hugging yogurt-knitter than I thought when we first met, the kind of person who makes her own baby food and sews up holes in socks even though there’s usually an uncomfortable lump in your shoe after, instead of just buying another pack of twenty for a fiver.

  You won’t be surprised to know that she gave birth to her daughter in an inflatable paddling pool in her lounge, with the sound of wind chimes and whale noises for pain relief. All her friends were there to see it and it sounds like it was a bit of a party between contractions. She claims it was the most magical three days of her life, especially when her then four-year-old cut the umbilical cord and her husband made an afterbirth smoothie for Melody. I imagine the other guests stuck to the hummus and kale chips.

  I wouldn’t have been much of a hostess at my own birth party. I cried through most of my labour because, holy hell, it hurt. Daniel did too, come to think of it, in solidarity and helplessness at seeing me. We were basically that nightmare couple in labour for the first time. But anyone who tells you it’s not that bad is either lying or has had their memory erased by those post-birth hormones.

  ‘I hate to be the one to break this up,’ Samantha says, ‘but I’ve got to pick up Dougie. It’s been fun as always. Same time next week at my house?’

  She doesn’t need to ask because I wouldn’t miss these get-togethers even if I ended up in hospital with appendicitis. I’d crawl on all fours with tubes hanging off me and a packet of biscuits clenched in my teeth. And to think that when I first had the babies I thought I didn’t need the mums I’d met in antenatal class. Naïve, deluded Emma.

  ‘Thanks for coming,’ I say. ‘Sorry we were out of milk.’

  Everyone starts to shift as Samantha perfects her lipstick without looking and pulls out her hairbrush to give her chestnut tresses a swipe. Which reminds me that I forgot to brush mine this morning. At least I cleaned my teeth. I’m a winner.

  ‘We should be going too,’ Garnet says to her sister.

  Their toddlers are already in day care, though that’s not what they call it. ‘It’s pre-Montessori, like Eton is a feeder for Oxbridge,’ they explain.

  ‘I bet you’ll be excited to start school in the autumn, Eva,’ I tell Melody’s five-year-old, who is busy drawing orange trees on her sketch pad. She’s got her mum’s clear blue eyes and long face.

  ‘I can’t wait for school!’ Eva says, but Melody looks troubled. I’m not sure what she’ll do then. Will she turn up at snack time in her nursing bra?

  Chapter 3

  Talk about putting the cart before the horse. Or the staff before the café, in this case. My glance falls on the stack of boxes leaning precariously beside the bar. One more thing to put away. It looks messy, unfinished and unprofessional. Ditto the half-painted walls, filthy window glass and stripped but yet-to-be refinished tables and chairs. It looks like a building site.

  It is a building site. But in four weeks it needs to be a welcoming café. With staff.

  So far none of this has seemed altogether real, despite the loan from Daniel’s parents or the official two-year extendable lease from the council. Just paperwork, I’ve convinced myself. If it all goes pear-shaped for some reason, I can always find a way to pay my in-laws back and cancel the lease. No real harm done to anyone but me.

  Until now. As soon as I put teenagers into the training positions they’ll be depending on me for the job. And they deserve the chance to do something that could give them a leg-up in life. Lots of charities do after-school programmes and run youth centres and activity groups, not to mention everyone campaigning to get more funding. But training programmes are harder to come by.

  I never imagined I’d set one up myself, yet here I am fidgeting over a stack of CVs and notes from Social Services, checking the door every two seconds for my first interviewee.

  The lady at the council who has been helping me was uncomfortably vague about the applicants’ details. I know they’ve all had reason to catch the attention of the authorities, which is why they’re being put forward as potential trainees. But when I asked her what they’d done – just to know whether I’d be dealing with someone who’s run red lights or run drugs – she went tight-lipped. And she wasn’t exactly chatting like my BFF to begin with.

  ‘We can’t disclose any details about the cases,’ she’d said, rapidly clicking the top of her pen. ‘I’m sure you understand.’

  I nodded like I did. ‘When you say cases, do you mean their Social Services cases? Or their court cases?’

  ‘Both,’ she said. ‘Either.’

  ‘Uh-huh, I see. Would those be criminal cases or civil ones?’

  She just stared at me over her reading glasses. ‘Everyone we’r
e referring has needed intervention by Social Services, and in each situation we feel that the opportunity to work, to get training, will benefit them.’

  I felt like such a dick then. Here was this lady, working with troubled kids every day, probably for little pay and little thanks, and I was swanning in sounding like I only wanted the cream off the top of the barrel. ‘Yes, of course, of course, that’s why I’m here,’ I said as my face reddened. ‘To offer them that chance.’ I took home every one of the files she’d prepared for me to consider.

  Just the bare bones information I’ve got is enough to break your heart. A catalogue of foster care, school disruption and instability. I wanted to hire them all, so how was I supposed to choose between them to make a shortlist? I’m not exactly opening Starbucks nationwide. I’ve only got room, and money, for two trainees at a time.

  I’m not looking for the best candidates, per se, like you would for a regular job. I’m looking for the ones who most need the help, and the ones who most want it. It’s like going into a bakery and asking which cakes taste okay. No, no fancy decoration or mouth-watering icing. Someone else will gladly have those. I’ll take the ones that are irregularly shaped or might have fallen on the floor, please. They’re still perfectly good, just not as obviously appealing as the perfect ones.

  A hulking form suddenly blocks most of the light from the open doorway. ‘Yo. This for the interview?’ his deep voice booms.

  ‘Yes, in here. You must be Martin. Hi.’

  He doesn’t look like a Martin. He walks in with a sort of half-skip, half-lumber, as if he’s got a bad limp on one side. ‘Yo, I’m Ice,’ he says, putting his fist in front of me for a bump. I must not do it right because he sucks his teeth at me. The kids are always doing this to me – when I don’t get out of the way fast enough at the Tube station, or dither over the bowls of fruit at the market or hold up the queue in the local Tesco. Basically, whenever they judge me hopeless, which is a lot. ‘Wagwan?’ he asks.

  He means what’s going on. ‘Well, we’re renovating the café to get it ready for the opening, as you can see!’

  He looks around as I look at him. His file says he’s fifteen, and his face looks babyish, but he’s huge, man-size. There’s a thick metal chain snaking into the front pocket of his jeans, which are so low they’re nearly around his knees, and his mini Afro looks too old for his spot-prone brown face.

  I know he’s trying to be intimidating, but it’s so clearly bravado that I just want to say ‘Aww!’ and pinch his babyish cheeks. Though he might break my arm if I did.

  He keeps looking around as I explain about the six-month training scheme and what would be expected of him. Eventually he says, ‘Why you making it a café, not a pub? It’d be banging working in a pub.’

  ‘Aren’t you a minor? You can’t work in a pub.’

  He sucks his teeth again. ‘True dat.’

  ‘Maybe you could tell me why you’d like to work here?’ He shrugs his answer. ‘Can you think of any reason you’d like to work here?’

  ‘It pays, yeah?’

  ‘Right, yes. Any reason beyond the money?’ Though at trainee rates he wouldn’t really need that chain on his wallet.

  ‘Nah, man, my social worker say I got to come.’ He pulls a crumpled paper from his non-chained pocket. ‘She said sign this.’

  I take the short, photocopied statement from him and add my signature to the bottom.

  Ice snatches it off the table and leaves without a backward glance.

  By mid-morning my hand is starting to cramp from signing so many attendance forms. Some of the kids bother to sit down and a few even humour me by answering a question or two. Others turn up with their paper already in hand, waving it for a signature.

  I’m in so far over my head that I should be in a submersible. I may have grown up in a tough part of London and be on first-name terms with PC Billy Bramble. I may have seen the fights break out down the market when the gangs kick off. But I’ve never lived that life myself. I like to think I’m street. I’m really just street-light.

  Take the kid who rumbled me for gawping at the purplish blood droplet tattooed on his arm. It had a triangle above it, like a gang symbol. ‘You starin’ at my tatt?’ he’d said.

  I could feel my face go red. ‘Erm, sorry, I was just interested. Is it supposed to be blood, or a gang sign of some kind?’ I couldn’t sound more lame.

  ‘Teletubby,’ he said.

  I’d never heard of them. The Teletubby Massive? I didn’t want any gang members in my crew.

  He pointed to the red blotch beside the drop. ‘Tinky Winky.’

  ‘You mean it’s an actual Teletubby?!’ I tried to bite down my smile.

  ‘Joker blud did it to me.’ He shrugged. ‘I wanted a stopwatch.’

  Just as I was starting to wonder if this boy with a children’s character on his arm might be worth another look, I asked him why he wanted to do the training programme.

  ‘Everybody likes coffee, yeah? I can drink that shit all day.’

  ‘Well, yes, but you’d actually be working, not drinking coffee. And hopefully it won’t be shit.’

  ‘I can slip it to my bluds though, yeah?’

  He really thought I’d pay him to hand out free coffee to his mates all day.

  ‘I can let you know by next week, okay?’ I said, scribbling my signature on his form.

  Mum and Dad would have cuffed him on the side of the head for answers like that. I can hear Dad now. Lazy sod. My parents were working by the time they were teens, and not just making their beds for pocket money, either. Mum cycled all over London to pick up and drop off clothes for my gran’s tailoring customers. ‘Join a Union if you don’t like the deal,’ Gran used to say of the sweatshop wages she paid her daughter, but she bought Mum off by letting her keep any tips. Mum was slightly easier on me, and she’d never let me cycle across the city. She often took me with her to help when she cleaned houses, though. There was less risk to life and limb but the wages were still crap.

  On his way out, my latest applicant passes a boy just coming in. ‘Yo, Tinky Winky, ’sup?’ says the boy.

  ‘Fuck off, dweeb.’

  ‘That’s Professor to you,’ he says.

  I watch this brief exchange with interest. Not because the new boy, with his tall lanky frame, looks as if his brain has no idea what his arms and legs are doing, or that he doesn’t seem frightened by his tattooed rival. His close-cropped wavy black hair and mixed-race complexion don’t differentiate him from most of the other kids.

  It’s his three-piece suit and the fatly knotted blue tie round his skinny neck.

  And his briefcase, which he sets on the table between us.

  ‘I’m Joseph.’ He sticks his hand out for me to shake. His long-lashed brown eyes are the first to look directly at me all morning. ‘It’s your lucky day,’ he says. ‘You can cancel the other punters, because you’ve found your future employee.’

  ‘Well, I hope I have, but I’ll still need to ask you some questions, okay?’ Who told him to be so cocky in an interview? I glance at his file. Lives with his mum and older brother, who seems to be mixed up with one of the local gangs. ‘You’re seventeen?’

  ‘Yeah, but don’t let that fool you. I can do anything you can, and I’m really good.’

  His suggestion is unmistakable.

  That won’t do him any favours and the sooner he realises it, the better. Just to prove the point, I ask him if he can drive. No? What about buying alcohol legally? Are you registered to vote? No again? ‘Then you can’t quite do anything I can,’ I say, ‘so let’s stick to the interview, okay? Why would you like to do this training?’

  There’s a scattering of hairs on his face where he’s been trying to shave, and his suit sleeves cover his knuckles. I bet he’s borrowed it from his big brother. He might have borrowed the razor too.

  Joseph clears his throat. That doesn’t stop his voice from cracking. ‘I see the position as a stepping stone for my future as a CEO.’ />
  ‘A CEO… here?’ We both look around the pub. ‘That’s not really the position I’m recruiting for.’ Unless CEO stands for Chief Egg-on-toast Officer.

  ‘Well, then, what are you going to do for my career progression?’

  ‘It’s a six-month traineeship, so you’ll learn all aspects of working in a café. Working with colleagues, serving customers, making coffee and tea…’ I sort of run out of steam. It’s just a café, not Microsoft.

  He sits forward in his chair. ‘Sales and marketing?’

  I thought I might put up a few posters around the bus stops. ‘Sure.’

  ‘How ’bout customer complaint resolution?’

  ‘I expect so. Tell me, Joseph, what would you like to be a CEO of?’

  ‘A company with good benefits,’ he says right away.

  ‘Any particular kind?’

  ‘Definitely stock options. And a gold-plated pension.’

  ‘No, I mean any particular kind of company?’

  ‘I’d be happy at Apple. Or Xbox.’

  I like that he’s dreaming big. My most ambitious goal at his age was getting a real pair of Dr. Martens. ‘Well, maybe you’ll get there. It would have been easier if you’d stayed in school, you know.’ He finished secondary school but doesn’t want to go on for college.

  ‘I like to think of myself as a student of life,’ he says. ‘Steve Jobs dropped out. So did Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, and they all became CEOs.’

  ‘Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard,’ I point out. ‘If you get into Harvard, then you can feel free to drop out.’

  ‘That’s what my mum said.’

  ‘I think I’d like your mum.’

  Who can blame Joseph for not wanting to be in school? Not everyone is a swot like I was. I only left at sixteen because I needed to help Mum and Dad with the bills. And I went back to graduate from Uni.

  If it hadn’t been for the twins’ unplanned arrival scuppering the job plans I had after university, I’d be the one on the other side of the interview table now, trying to get a charity to hire me and probably sounding as naïve as Joseph does.