‘No worries,’ I said, regaining my balance, copying what seemed to be his favourite WhatsApp reply to anything I said. I moved closer to the coffee machine, secretly watching the woman move slowly to the next gift display stand, the one nearest the counter. I’m sure she’d looked through that display before. ‘How come you know how to work a beast like this?’ I asked, standing in front of the chrome expanse of the Astoria. ‘I’ve never been able to make anything other than weak brown water and under-frothed milk come out of it.’
‘Told you I was in hotel school at Granger Bay last year? I wanted to make some money while I was studying, so I did a quick professional barista and bar-tending training at Shakers. Did better at that than I did at hotel school,’ he said as he switched on the machine. ‘I worked at some places in town for a bit. Didn’t waste my mother’s money completely.’
‘Ah, okay,’ I said, watching as he made water gush out the little steel spouts that the coffee usually comes out of. You’d think I’d have learned all the right words from having Di try a million times to teach me.
‘You gotta get the tamping part into the portafilter perfect. The grounds can’t be too loose or too tightly packed,’ he said over the noise of the coffee grinder as it filled the round silver coffee thing that he’d untwisted from the Astoria. He leaned over, pressing the coffee into the silver round with what looked like a metal stamp. His right arm muscles, the side I was on, flexed under the short exertion, making his tattoo flowers ripple. As he went about clicking the silver thing back into the machine, making coffee come out of the spouts, filling the air with the smell of arabica beans, I noticed the browser woman on the other side of the counter.
‘Hi!’ I said, my best big hope-you-spend-a-lot smile on my face. ‘Is there anything I can help you with?’ I’d seen her shake her head when Beauty offered her help earlier.
‘Yes.’ She smiled, red lipstick seeping into the fine cracks above her top lip where she had coloured over the line. ‘When it’s ready, could I have that coffee please?’ Her blue eye-shadowed gaze was on Wayde, as if he were the one offering to help her.
Wayde smiled at her.
‘This is just the first sample cup that Wayde’s tried,’ I said. ‘If it’s good, you can definitely have the next one – order it exactly as you like.’
‘I’m sure whatever Wayde makes will be absolutely perfect for me.’ She almost licked her lips. Gawd. I cringed. Women of a certain age – my age – we can embarrass ourselves. I hoped I hadn’t behaved like that in the surf shop.
‘If the young lady wants my first cup,’ Wayde first looked at me, then smiled at her again with the tiniest little wink of his right eye, ‘she can have my first cup.’
The woman laughed as if he had made the funniest joke. I laughed inside, recognising myself at his age, remembering how many times I’d flirted with a customer. We watched Wayde stick the steam wand into the steel jug, froth the milk up, then stamp the base of the jug lightly onto the counter. He poured the milk over the espresso so that a loose heart formed in the foam. Small fine milk bubbles. I knew at least that meant he had done a good job with the milk.
After some one-finger poking of her phone, two more ladies with Poetry shopping bags arrived to join browser woman. They stayed for another two lattes and a piece of chocolate cake each. And like coffee shops everywhere, there is nothing that draws people in like seeing other people inside. Coffee & Cream was busy for the first time since the January sales.
Wayde, the genius, made the coffee and chatted to them all, Beauty and me hopping to answer the questions about the gifts they pointed to on the shelves. One woman asked me for a tip jar. They all bought rose-gold soy candles. But even with the candles sold out, my Coffee & Cream cage was getting lit. It had needed a Wayde to do it.
6
Friday, 16 February
Time to tell Di what I had done.
‘I found us a barista. One who will also help out in the shop and,’ I pre-empted the question from her as I bounced into the shop at nine-fifteen, ‘his coffee is good and … he’s great with customers,’ I finished to the shocked Di. Well, I bounced as much as someone can bounce who hates mornings, but I needed to distract Di any way I could. I knew she was going to moan about my barista hiring.
‘What?’ She crumpled her face. She really should go and see Lily. ‘What barista? And why are you so happy? Why are you even here? It’s early and not your morning.’ She stared into me with the laser stare of a mother with teenage daughters. ‘I thought Theresa was only coming in the afternoons now?’
‘Still no Theresa in the mornings, but the world is full of unicorns and rainbows when Stacey doesn’t fight me about her clothes before school. I have no choice but to be happy, even though I should be murderous since they both think it’s perfectly normal to wake up at five every day.’
‘Uh-hmph,’ was the only sound from Di as I let her process the barista news while she checked the coffee machine. I know that other mothers, even my friends, judge me for having had full-time au pairs from the start, even before I had the shop as a reason they could accept. I used to feel the weight of guilt about it. But hell, the judgment was worth it. Having help doesn’t make me less of a mother in my books. Plus, having twins is like having two shops next to each other in the Table Bay Mall, except they are open twenty-four seven. I couldn’t cope with the reality of having babies. Hell, let alone cope, I barely functioned. I put on a show when I left home because it felt wrong to say I was struggling when I’d done so much to have them. ABS never knew there were days I could hardly get myself out of bed, never mind care for two little helpless lumps of human. I thought a twin pregnancy was hard, all that worry to keep them in until they were big enough, but it was harder once they were out. When I am alone with them, even now that they are good at keeping each other company, it feels like I’m always turning from the one to the other, never giving either exactly what he or she wants. It’s not just about the time; it’s life with children. I love them, but I lost control of my body and my mind the minute Jerry and I decided to have kids. From not wanting children, to having the epiphany of wanting them and then finding out how hard it was to get them. All that fertility bullshit to make them happen, and all the drama to keep them in my body for long enough. I was a human incubator. Seriously. All that, and they still came a little early. I was petrified.
I couldn’t talk to Jerry about it – we’d struggled together to have these children and I thought he would be the first one to say I was ungrateful for the luck. I was Shelley, wasn’t I? He liked me tough, laughing, jolly; saying inappropriate things that made him laugh. I wasn’t the kind of person others would guess to feel overwhelmed by two tiny babies who came home after a week in NICU. But I was. And I dealt with it by getting a night nurse from seven in the evening to seven in the morning for the first two years. Theresa arrived at nine in the morning and, no lies, those two in-between hours were hell. Last September, I eased the twins into a playgroup in Blouberg. I drop them around eight-thirty, eight forty-five (or nine-thirty if Stacey has a tantrum about her clothes). Theresa fetches them at one and she works until seven-thirty so she can help with the chaos that is bedtime. I’m dreading the day she leaves me, even if her stomach is so flat and she is so young and beautiful that at first it used to form a lump of jealousy in my own stomach.
Di doesn’t get it. She thinks I don’t want to look after my own kids. It started to get easier when they turned three. I felt like I was