‘Austin!’ she called tentatively, waving her newspaper. He turned round then, seeing her, and looked at first very pleased, then anxious for a second. Issy felt cross. He didn’t have to look like she was some kind of scary stalker person.
He crossed the road. Inside, he was annoyed with himself about how pleased he was to see her. It would be a business proposition, for sure.
‘Don’t look so frightened, it’s just a business proposition,’ said Issy. She’d meant it to sound light-hearted, but now she felt it had come out terribly weird-sounding.
‘Hooray,’ he said, sitting down. Issy felt disappointed. ‘OK then. Can we have coffee and I’ll call it a business meeting?’
Issy watched as Austin called Janet. ‘Yes, I forgot to mention … really? I’m double-booked? Oh, please tell them I’m terribly sorry …’
Issy shook her head. ‘How does Janet cope with you?’
‘She makes a face like this,’ said Austin, giving a stern scary look. ‘I’ve told her the wind will change, but she won’t listen. Nobody listens to me.’
Austin’s coffee arrived.
‘This place has got better,’ he noted.
‘Really?’ said Issy, sipping the bitter dregs of the catering-jar ‘beverage’.
‘Oh God yes, this is luxury compared to what you used to get.’
‘I’ll take your word for it,’ said Issy. She was glad to feel that at least there wasn’t any residual awkwardness. Even though there probably ought to be; he didn’t really deserve her being nice to him, she thought. She didn’t ask about Darny. Too personal. ‘Now, I need to know … do I have any money?’
‘Well, that depends,’ said Austin, stirring in four sugars. When he spotted Issy staring at this, he poked his tongue out at her and put another one in. Sometimes, with Issy, he just couldn’t help himself.
‘You are such a peculiar banking adviser,’ sighed Issy.
‘No I’m not. The other ones play golf, can you imagine? How weird is that? Golf!’
‘Depends on what?’ said Issy.
‘The money? It depends what you want to do with it. Are you planning on packing it all in and retiring to South America?’
‘Can I?’
‘No. So I was just pointing out, you know. Not that.’
‘OK,’ said Issy. ‘Actually, I was wondering … can I go shopping?’
Issy had moved her personal accounts to Austin’s branch shortly after the shop opened; as she was funding so much of the café herself, it seemed to make sense to have everything under the same roof. It felt odd that Austin should know so many personal things about the state of her bank account, when they’d seemed to somehow agree that they weren’t going to get any more personal with one another.
‘For what?’
Issy felt a bit embarrassed suddenly.
‘Well … the thing is … it’s my birthday.’
Austin looked half surprised, half guilty. ‘Cheers! What a surprise!’ he said. ‘Oh no, hang on, that sounded a bit phoney. I knew that. It’s on all your application forms,’ he said, feeling himself getting a bit flustered. ‘Um, I happened to be filing them away just recently. So. Kind of. I know. But I didn’t want to make a big thing of it in case you were ignoring it. You know. Except you wouldn’t of course, so: happy birthday.’
He smiled weakly and not entirely successfully.
‘I should have ignored it,’ admitted Issy. ‘Honestly. It’s a bit of a shit one. Well, apart from work. Work’s been nice. But that means,’ she said fervently, ‘that just shows that I’ve based my entire life around my job rather than finding my work/life balance! It means I get all my emotional sustenance from work and I’ll never be able to move on …’
‘I think that means you’ve been reading too many self-help books,’ said Austin.
‘Oh yes,’ said Issy, calming down a bit. ‘That’s possible too.’
‘You should be so proud of yourself at this stage of your life,’ said Austin. ‘Look at you, businesswoman all afloat.’
‘I know,’ said Issy.
‘What were you doing last birthday?’
‘Well, I just went out with the people from my office …’
Austin rolled his eyes. ‘See?’
‘Well, what did you do for your last birthday?’ asked Issy.
‘Well, Darny and I went to a hot-dog festival,’ said Austin.
‘Whose idea was that?’
‘Well, maybe it was Darny’s.’
‘Uh-huh. And how did that turn out?’
Austin winced at the memory.
‘Well, OK, I would say we saw some of the hot dogs again. Splashed on the pavement.’ Then he smiled. ‘But Darny insisted it was all worth it. And I still have the card he gave me, look.’
Austin slipped his hand into his suit pocket and rooted around. Then he pulled out some dry-cleaning receipts, a small plastic cowboy and a voter registration form.
‘That’s where that went,’ he said to himself. ‘Well, I did have it. And it was brilliant. Darny drew a picture of me and him fighting off a giant poo monster. And we had a lovely day, apart from the spew. We got over the spew with ice cream.’
‘Was that wise?’ said Issy, smiling.
‘Holds things down better than you’d think,’ said Austin. ‘You learn a thing or two in this substitute-parenting lark.’
Suddenly, Issy decided something. OK, so she’d been rebuffed before. She’d sworn she wouldn’t do this. Yet somehow her feet had taken her here … She could easily have rung Janet for the balance on her accounts. But she hadn’t, had she? She was going to do it. She was going to ask him. She swallowed.
‘Um,’ she said, ‘would you … and Darny I suppose, or maybe you can get a babysitter? Or maybe no, obviously no, it would be a stupid idea, forget I mentioned it.’
‘What?’ said Austin, suddenly feeling a little prickly round the ears and nervous.
‘Um, it doesn’t matter,’ said Issy, conscious that her deep blush was back, and as she felt it, realizing how long it was since she’d done so. Was that progress?
‘What?’ Austin needed to know what she was going to say. This dancing around was agonizing. But did she mean it? And what was she really after? Issy was now staring at the floor, looking absolutely tortured.