“Just two minutes, please,” Mr. Morgan said. “I’m waiting for someone.”
Mr. Morgan perched on the aluminium stool by the window, watching people streaming past in the rain. He wiggled his big toe and it squirmed through the cap of his shoe like a white mouse. If only he’d worn darker socks today. He checked his watch again, having already forgotten the time from a few minutes earlier, and twisted the ring around his finger. She was never late.
After ordering tea from the hovering waiter, he saw her coming across the road. Rain splattered hair to wet dregs, dressed in black, her figure shimmying in the rivulets running down the window. Mr. Morgan slid from his stool and opened the door, the jingle of its bell sending the waiter scurrying with tea.
“Harry, what shit-pit is this?” Eleanor stood in the rain, crossing her arms as she refused to step inside. She wore a triangle stud in her eyebrow.
He hated casual swearing but he did not reprove her. “Sorry, Eleanor. We can find somewhere else if you like?”
“Yep, let’s go to Merrows,” she said. “They have standards.”
Although the journey only took them around the corner, Mr. Morgan arrived in Merrows soaked to the core. They squeaked in wet shoes towards the glowing counter of pastries and cakes. Mr. Morgan paid for two coffees and vegan brownies.
“Is she a mermaid?” he asked, peering at the logo when the staff handed his mug over.
“A Siren,” corrected Eleanor, drawing her fingers through her long, wet hair, and leading the way to a corner table.
“This is nice,” said Mr. Morgan, and he swallowed, despite having nothing in his mouth. Eleanor ignored him and broke into her brownie. He waited, but she continued chewing and looking around the coffee house, perhaps searching for someone she knew.
“Much nicer here,” he said, as she began drinking her flavoured coffee. Mr. Morgan picked up his brown rectangle and nibbled the end. It was cakey, a little dry.
“Harry, you’re really very boring,” said Eleanor. Mr. Morgan laughed; glad she was speaking to him again. “You better not start ranting about sedimentary rocks.”
Mr. Morgan gave a sheepish grin and tucked his upper lip inside the coffee mug. Eleanor’s stare blazed across the table. She had always been his most vibrant pupil; loud and careless, throwing herself over two chairs in the back row, her slender legs bobbing with attitude, and a frond of fluorescent pink hair dancing over one eye. He shrugged the memory away. He wasn’t her geography teacher anymore.
“How are you finding your course?” he asked.
“Dropped out,” she said. “Mam doesn’t want me back home either. Up to her elbows in Stevie the love machine.” Eleanor stroked Mr. Morgan’s leg with her heel. He flinched.
“Frigid.” She rolled her eyes. “Let’s get a move on. I want to wash this rain from my hair.”
Mr. Morgan reached into his pocket for the blank envelope. That morning, he had almost written ‘To Eleanor’ but stopped himself, in case she showed anyone his handwriting. He slid it over the table.
“You slay me,” she said, peering inside.
“It’s all there,” he added, hoping she wouldn’t start counting at the table, but too late, she tipped the contents on the table and one by one held each note up to the light before shuffling them back inside the envelope; she glanced to check if he was annoyed. He was.
Mr. Morgan considered his situation. He couldn’t keep paying this much to Eleanor, not without finding another job, not while he struggled to feed himself with cheap cereal and canned garbage; he’d lost wi-fi and every day he went to the local library to browse job opportunities. Online tutoring wasn’t an option without an internet connection at home. And face to face teaching… he’d lost all taste for that. But he delayed applying for the bottom-dweller jobs. He perused zero qualification entry positions that made his soul quiver with fear. It seemed there remained a part of himself to lose.
Eleanor smirked and swung her legs around to leave their table.
“Pleasure doing business with you, Harry,” she said. He dared not turn around to watch her depart, and sat stiffly for another few minutes, beside his cold coffee and unfinished brownie. He picked up a teaspoon and his upside-down reflection stared back from the concave mirror. Worry lines bridged his forehead. What a sad sack.
Mr. Morgan frowned. He stood up and weaved through the jumbled chairs and the throng of queuing customers, pushing outside, where the relentless rain pelted him harder than ever, though he scarcely noticed as he spotted Eleanor and barged past umbrella-clad pedestrians towards her slight, swaying frame.
He grabbed her shoulder.
“No more, Eleanor. We’re done,” he said.
She laughed. “Are we? You’ve decided? So, I can tell now?”
“I left the school! There’s no-one to tell anymore!” he shouted.
She leaned in. “I bet the police would love to know.”
For the first time, he felt frightened. Mr. Morgan never imagined she would go that far. Surely the police wouldn’t get involved?
“I barely touched you,” he said, keeping his voice low, as passers-by skirted around the drenched couple in the middle of the pavement, throwing irritated looks back over their shoulders. “And it was an accident.”
“That’s what you say. Want to find out what I’ll say?”
Mr. Morgan’s eyes flashed and a hot surge of rage ran through him. Pressure grew inside his temples, a hot pounding power, much like the moment of heat after class that day, after she’d been crying; when she raised her tear-stained face and they shared a salty kiss. His rage dissolved in the rain, slipping away down the miserable street.
He said nothing and Eleanor left him standing there, with nowhere to go, and no one to see, the socks slick inside his wet leather shoes.
*****
