He must’ve known – I was wearing wedding rings that afternoon and my wedding rings are hard to miss.
Him: Sorry, couldn’t help it, my bad. Tongue-out emoji. Devil-face emoji.
I could have let that go. Maybe things would have gone differently if I’d stopped it right then.
Me: Oh no, it’s my bad. Tongue-out emoji. Devil-face emoji.
That’s the thing with WhatsApp, how quickly it can get out of hand. We skated close to the line, sometimes just over, stopping short of What are you wearing? In a chat conversation, it’s easy to find out so much about the other person, and at the same time to forget who you are and who it is you’re talking to. I forgot that I am a forty-four-year-old married mother of two with a boob job and tummy tuck under her belt, talking to what I found out was a twenty-two-year-old hotel school dropout turned kids’ surf instructor. One who I am sure doesn’t even own a belt.
We were just words on a screen. He made me laugh. He strung emojis together like new-school hieroglyphics; he asked questions about me. Other than being Totally Good Enough, he said I was Epic – me and my rags-in-Joburg to riches-in-Cape Town. Telling a stranger my story, I managed to impress myself. Only child of a single mother. No daddy to set me up in anything, I’d grafted every shitty waitress job in Joburg when I blew off school at the age of sixteen, worked myself up to have my own shop at the age of twenty-five. My mother signed as surety and it did okay until I lost it all with a loser junkie starter husband. Came to Cape Town to start over with a broken heart after a divorce. And my mother’s death. Talk about a bad year. I’d just been pulling myself together in Cape Town when I met Jerry.
I didn’t tell Wayde everything – that’s the joy of WhatsApp.
I didn’t tell much about Jerry for a start, or how big a part of my success Jerry is. I only told how I morphed myself into an interior decorator after we married. I didn’t tell how I let everything go because I wanted kids so much, how I thought I was going to rock MomLife, but how in truth I was closer to MomFail. I told about starting Coffee & Cream. I told him a version of myself and my life I was proud of.
I think Wayde told me even less about himself because I didn’t find out nearly as much about him as he did about me. That’s not how conversations usually go for me. ABS say nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition, except for when I am there – then they can count on it. I just laugh it off; it’s only because I’m interested, is what I usually say. I know more about the people I’m talking to than they do about me.
I heard shouts from our bedroom.
‘Shell! Come! Come! He’s resigned! Things are going to change now!’
Flowers, he was going to wake the kids, the bloody idiot. How was this the same guy I met working as a manager at Mortons at the Waterfront? He was there for dinner and we chaffed each other so hard we ended up having sex in the disabled toilet. Not classy, no. But sexy as flowers. I lost my job over that. Didn’t matter, I’d lost my mind over a short Jewish guy from Joburg who had chutzpah for days. The crazy thing was that he was equally mad about me. But when your heart is broken like mine was and something comes along that seems to fix it, you go with it, don’t question it at all. From that night, we became Jerry & Shelley, and I didn’t question my luck to find him. I don’t know why, other than it was a new thing having a good guy wanting to look after me. Young, dumb, broke – and motherless. That was me. Jerry made me feel loved and cared for. He said I was the most important person in the world to him, and I believed him.
I didn’t tell Wayde any of that.
Me: Okay, I need to go. Will wait to hear about Friday.
Him: Rad. You’re quite something, you know that schweet Shelley Jacobsen? Happy Valentine’s, I think I might just dream of you. Winky face emoji.
3
Psych.
I dreamed of him.
Hair and abs and puffy Cupid lips and Pina Colada Coconut Vanilla Dessert.
I was Totally Good Enough. And it was Epic – my funny Valentine’s had a happy ending. I wanted to cry when I woke up and realised that it wasn’t true, that instead of Wayde and his ways, it was simply an ordinary five-thirty in the morning with Jerry snoring and two kids in my bed, kicking their feet into my back and my stomach. The dream was over. In the old days, it would’ve been something to tell ABS, for us to laugh about, and everyone would tell me I was mad. But today it was a delicious secret to leave folded up in my head. Just for me.
I could pretend I was whatever I wanted to be.
Coffee & Cream, with a side of Wayde
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
4
Thursday, 15 February
‘Where’ve you been?’ Di hissed, her words escaping through a fake side smile as I slid in behind the marble-topped counter that curved against the back wall of the shop. Our accountant knows, but I still haven’t told Di or Jerry exactly how much it cost – they would freak. When you stand outside the shop, the oversize rose-gold lettering of Coffee & Cream on the glass store front seems to float over the counter in a perfect arch. I think it just about calls women in. It would call me if I were out shopping. The counter shows off the Astoria espresso machine (the one I can’t work) and the three custom rose-gold-and-ceramic cake stands I commissioned from Urchin Art. Deep glass bowls of chocolate balls stand guard at each end. I wanted to display bottles of champagne on the open shop-facing shelves below the counter so that the trifecta of coffee, cake and champagne would be visible from outside the shop, but we don’t have a liquor licence, so that killed that idea. Instead, I filled the shelves with cream-coloured handmade soaps and bath goodies. I hoped the whole scene said, Relax, come in and spoil yourself. That counter is my pride, my own design. I give myself a hundred-and-ten per cent.
‘It’s only been half an hour …’ We didn’t have a clock on any of the walls of the shop; I didn’t want a shopper to be aware of the time, like in the casinos. I think I left at twelve-thirty. I swung my arm up to activate the screen on my Apple Watch. It was five past two. ‘Not that long.’
‘It’s been over an hour. You said you were only going to get a quick half-hour mini-mani at Sorbet. The courier guy’s been – again – and delivered four more boxes. I nearly sent him away – I thought you were done shopping? And you do realise that I can see you in Poetry and in The Pause Room? Just because there is a passage and escalators between us and them doesn’t make you invisible in there. I rang you, but you didn’t answer.’ Di was cross, but this has become normal in the four months since we opened Coffee & Cream. I’d started feeling like her kid. Today, her voice sounded precisely like when she was cross and talking to one of her girls – pitch too high, ready to crack like a thin slab of peanut brittle. I could understand why her girls sometimes roll their eyes at her – she is nearly always right and there is nothing else to do – but I didn’t dare. I don’t have any divorced-child guilt to trade on like they do.
‘Keep your panties on. I couldn’t answer with my nails getting done, could I? It’s not that busy,’ I said, looking around the shop. I hadn’t meant to take so long, but I haven’t had my nails done in yonks, and I ended up choosing Matador Red Gelish at the last minute, which
