‘I thought that was lust,’ I say with a smirk. ‘I learned very young to be very independent, Gloria, you know that. I don’t know if I’d trust anyone to love me in the way I’d want them to. I’ve been hurt a few times along the way, as well as breaking hearts myself. I can’t do it. I’m just not good at it.’
Gloria’s face changes and she clasps my hand across the table as I stare out the window onto the busy city street.
‘Please don’t be so afraid, Ruth,’ Gloria whispers when I turn back to face her. ‘I’m not being foolish and romantic, but just open your heart to be loved again, please. You deserve it so, so much. You know, I remember when you were very little and you’d come in here and sense that I was having a bad day and you’d always just come out and ask straight up if I was okay. You had always the ability to know when someone was a bit down – and better than that, you knew how to pick them up. You’ve always had so much love to give. You still do.’
I raise a smile. I’m almost thirty-three years old and I don’t even know if I’ve ever been in love before. I’ve never let anyone get even close. How sad is that?
‘I’ll work on it,’ I say and she brightens up again.
‘Tell yourself you deserve it,’ she says. ‘And don’t ever doubt it for one second.’
I would agree wholeheartedly with Gloria that I deserve to love and to be loved, but I know she is just a tad biased when it comes to me and my sister. My dad helped her get her first job in this café and he later helped her get a bank loan to take on the lease by acting as guarantor, then he helped her to promote it by spreading the word amongst his colleagues at the university and his large circle of friends. My father gave Gloria a chance when not many others would, and she has never forgotten it, but she isn’t the only one to have told me I knew how to spot when someone needed some help up if they’re feeling down. I fear I may have lost that a little.
‘I feel like I’m a fake,’ I whisper to Gloria. ‘You know, all this pretending on the outside and feeling so low on the inside. I want to scream and get so much of this feeling of loss and death out of my system and move on. What do I have to do to get to that stage? I really want to just feel like “me” again.’
Gloria leans across to me and I wait for her to come out with some sort of angelic guidance that will help me change my life forever. But her solution for now is a lot simpler.
‘Take one day at a time, don’t put yourself under pressure and it will all come to you,’ she tells me. ‘Now, can I get you one of my new cinnamon lattes with fresh cream to warm you up even more before you go? On the house? My customers who’ve tried it already believe it may just be magic.’
I check the time. I’ve been here almost an hour as it is, but what the heck. It’s snowing outside and I can check my emails on my phone from here, plus, I want to compose myself a little before I venture out into the frosty afternoon to make my way home.
‘A bit of magic would be just lovely please, thanks, Gloria. You’re the kindest.’
‘No, you are my love,’ she says. ‘You’re one of the kindest, most loyal, generous people I know but you’re also a little impatient and you lack in self-belief. Stay true to your own heart and you won’t be feeling like this for much longer. I just know it. People around here need you. Don’t ever forget that.’
Nicholas Taylor
Nicholas Taylor hadn’t played his piano in 242 days.
He knew this because the last day he tinkled the ivories was the day he turned seventy-five which coincided with the day his neighbours reported him to the council for noise pollution, and it was also the day he was issued a summons for harassment for telling the council official in a very non-polite manner where to go.
Nicholas Taylor wasn’t an angry man or a violent man. He was, in fact, a very gentle soul who relied on playing his music as an escape from reality and as a way to get out some of the inner frustrations he felt when he allowed how his life might have turned out differently creep into his weary mind again.
Nicholas had always loved music, as a child growing up in Germany, then Sweden, then England and eventually settling in Ireland where he’d got a job at the Concert Hall which he’d had until his retirement. He had made a fine career out of his music, yet after all that, now he only had his cat to come home to, and as much company as old Boris was these days, Nicholas yearned for someone who would talk back when he shared his stories of music and travel that had taken him all over the world.
‘When you play music, you’ll never feel lonely,’ were the words his late father had told him any time that Nicholas tried to back out of his piano lessons in childhood. As an only child to Dutch parents who both worked in banking and moved around a lot, he often relied on his music for company, and even though it still filled his heart and soul when he sat down and tinkled out a tune, it wasn’t worth it when the walls were like paper and there was a young baby next door who didn’t seem to appreciate his mighty fine talent.
Without music, and without Rosemary, his ex-wife, Nicholas didn’t really know how to spend his days any more. It was too cold at this time of year to even busk outside and if he was being really honest with himself, his health wouldn’t allow it no matter what time of year it was, but the long evenings were suffocating and the radio and Boris were growing a bit tired now when it came to occupying his wandering mind.
He read a lot, which sometimes helped. He read everything he could get his hands on – novels, autobiographies, magazines on art and literature and music of course, newspapers from front to back, both local and national and one of his favourite things to read every week was the column from the Italian Irish lady, Ruth Ryans, who was an intelligent bright spark and who Nicholas followed eagerly, thoroughly enjoying her words of wisdom and her sometimes quick-witted responses.
Nicholas had met Ruth’s father once and he automatically realised where she got her talent and wisdom from. Anthony Ryans was a fine-spoken, highly regarded and well-respected university lecturer who Nicholas had performed for at one of the Concert Hall’s most prestigious events. The Concert Hall days had been the best days of his life, but he wasn’t needed there any more. Everyone he knew had moved on, happy to spend their days in the garden or travelling with their families as they enjoyed their winter years in life.
Nicholas would have loved a garden, but Rosemary had cleaned him out in the divorce proceedings and the most he could afford since then was this tiny, fourth-floor apartment that looked out onto the City Tower and from where he could hear three sets of church bells ring at the same time every hour, on the hour. The baby next door didn’t like that sound either, but Nicholas loved it and he also loved to visit all three churches, keen to watch how each denomination celebrated their different elements of faith. It was his favourite thing to do at Christmas, but after the services he’d have to come back to Boris and the radio and he’d eat a turkey breast fillet, wear a Christmas paper hat and wonder how the hell he’d ended up, after such a colourful, vibrant and wonderful life, in this darn apartment with no one to talk to.
He caught sight of Ruth Ryans’ smiling profile picture from the newspaper that sat beside him on the sofa. Then he made his way to the piano and hovered his fingers over the keys, pretending to play ‘O Holy Night’, his favourite Christmas tune, but only hearing it in his fuzzy old mind that he feared someday soon would let him down too.
Nicholas felt familiar tears roll down his cheeks as his fingers lightly tipped the keys, just enough to let him feel the ivory but not enough to make a sound.
The church bells rang in the distance and the baby cried next door as Nicholas cried too, wondering how he was going to face another Christmas Day with his solitary turkey breast for one, the bleat of the radio and good old boring