Her face was alight with happiness. This was Caz pretending to be delighted about being a school cook? Caz whose idea of sophisticated cooking was putting a bit of parsley on a ready meal? We needed to talk, away from the office, away from any cameras.
‘That’s brilliant!’ I said, entering into the game, for it had to be a game. ‘Why don’t we celebrate? Look, I’ve got half an hour to spare. Why don’t we go to Silvino’s? My treat? I’ve just been paid.’
This world might be pretend, but at least the coffee would be real. And I guessed Gordon wouldn’t miss me from the office for half an hour. Caz – in true Caz fashion – hesitated for less than a split second.
‘Oh yes, if you’ve got time,’ she said and turned to the little girl. ‘Well Libby, isn’t this turning out to be a good day?’
She sounded so like Caz, my Caz, that my heart sang. With Libby holding firmly on to Caz’s hand, we went across the Market Place to Silvino’s, squeezing past the women in their damp macs with bags of shopping and dripping umbrellas. The menu was strong on teacakes and buns and buttered toast, but the smell and the steam was of coffee, proper Italian coffee. And in among the noise of the steam, and the black-and-white-clad waitresses bustling back and forth between the crowded tables, was Silvino himself, I guessed, a tiny round beaming Italian in a long apron and a wide smile. Part of me just wanted to sit back and savour the normality of it, but there was something far more important to deal with …
‘Right,’ I said, once we’d ordered, and Caz was undoing Libby’s coat buttons for her. ‘Come on Caz, tell me what this is all about.’
‘What? The job? Well, it—’
‘No, not the job, you daft bat, this reality TV thing. Where are the cameras? What are the rules? Who else is in it? Who’s running it? Were you just dropped in it too? How do we get out when we want to?’
The smile faltered on Caz’s face for a moment. She sat back from the table, put a hand on Libby’s arm as if to protect her and looked at me, baffled and wary.
Then I noticed that just as Will didn’t look exactly the same as Will in this place, that Caz, or Carol, didn’t look quite like Caz either. Her hair was a different colour. Well that’s no surprise. Caz has been colouring hers for so long that not even she can remember what colour it was originally. But Caz’s hair is always glossy and shiny, this Carol’s hair looked a bit dull. To be honest, it looked as though it needed washing. Caz’s never looked like that. Even when she was ill, the first thing she did was wash her hair because she said it made her feel better.
Then her teeth. Caz has neat, straight, white teeth. This Carol had slightly crooked teeth. And this Carol had lines … the beginning of wrinkles around her eyes and on her forehead. And now she too was looking at me as if I were a stranger – and a slightly mad stranger at that.
Suddenly, I wasn’t so sure …
I put my head down. I felt utterly defeated.
‘I’m sorry. It’s just that you and Will, Billy, look exactly like my closest friends back home. And it’s such a shock to discover that maybe you’re not them after all.’
‘Oh you poor thing!’ said Carol, in such a Caz-like way that I was sure it must be her. ‘How awful, especially if you’re feeling homesick. It’s such a long way from America. Are they nice, these friends?’
‘The best, the absolute best.’
‘Well, let’s just hope Billy and I will do instead,’ she said in a wonderfully cheering, normal sort of a way. ‘Now come on, drink your coffee and have a bit of this teacake.’
She was treating me as though I were the same age as Libby, and for some reason, I suddenly began to feel better, especially when I noticed her eyeing my jacket. Very Caz that. Always keen on clothes. Whether she was Caz or Carol, I needed her company, a friend. I began to relax a little, though I wanted to ply her with a hundred questions – like Why are you married to Will? What’s he like as a husband? Do you really love him? Weren’t you young to have children? And please move along now, because I’m here and he’s mine …
The thought of Caz being married to Will was too huge and horrible to consider. They were good friends, of course they were, had been since they were in school. But married! If the two people closest to me in the whole world were married to each other, then where did that leave me? Squeezed out in the cold and very much alone.
Even if this were pretend, I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it one bit. At the very least the pair of them must have ganged up to play this trick on me. Thinking that about your two best friends is not a cheering thought.
Yet here was Caz, sipping her coffee, her eyes huge over the rim of the cup, looking just like she had so many times I’d sat with her before. No longer looking worried, she now seemed only concerned for me. Just as if it were me and Caz as we had always been. Maybe there were cameras in here too, and she knew. Maybe this time it was she who was waiting for a quiet opportunity to talk to me and hatch a plot. In the meantime, we would just enjoy the coffee.
It was so what I wanted – to pretend it was just me and Caz having a coffee, like normal. I wanted to forget all this strange stuff that was happening, if only for a moment. So I relaxed and pretended. It was surprisingly easy.
‘Oh look,’ I said, with a mouthful of teacake, ‘they’ve got music here tomorrow night.’
‘Music?’
On the wall was a handwritten notice. ‘Saturday night at Silvino’s. The Skiffle Cats!’
‘I’d heard he was opening up in the evenings to give it a go.’
‘Give what a go?’
‘The skiffle groups. Have you been in the back room?’
‘No, what back room?’
‘There’s another room that you get to from the side alley. Silvino’s got a juke box in there. All the kids go in there to listen to records in the evenings at weekends.’
‘Will you go and see The Skiffle Cats?’
Carol laughed.
‘No, that’s for kids, not people like me. They haven’t even got proper instruments. Just a washboard and a bit of string on a broom handle. No, I tell a lie, I think one of them might have a guitar. I spend enough time with my washboard as it is, without going out at night to watch someone else scrubbing away. But I like to hear a bit of decent music sometimes.’ She looked wistful. ‘I like the juke box. Tell you what’ – and again she sounded just like Caz – ‘I’ll be in town for the market on Saturday. Will you be in town too? I could meet you, say at the cross at eleven-ish and we could get what we want and then go in the back with the kids for a coffee and some music. What do you say?’
‘Yes, great. Why not?’
‘Well that’s settled!’ said Caz/Carol, then she turned to Libby and said, ‘Now we’d better go and do some shopping, otherwise none of us will eat tonight. See you Saturday, Rosie.’
She did up Libby’s coat buttons again, took her hand and manoeuvred through the crowded tables. As they went, Libby turned around and gave a quick smile. She was the image of her mother.
I paid the bill (leaving 3d tip, how confident is that?) and dashed back to the office, teetering between utter gloom and a strange almost-happiness. The thought of shopping with Caz/Carol made me feel more cheerful than I’d done ever since I’d got here. The thought that she was married to Will just seemed so bizarre that I could hardly accept it. It had to be a joke or a trick. Hadn’t it? Maybe I’d find out more on Saturday. That was obviously what she was thinking. And even though she was making out that she didn’t know me, she was still like my friend Caz. At least she was friendly and chatty, not like Will. But I wasn’t