if it’s a job interview?’
‘Give me strength. Then it would be a job interview. Is he interviewing you for a job?’
‘I don’t think so.’ I explained the episode in more detail: his mother’s book. His intriguing clothes. His return twenty minutes later to ask me for the coffee.
‘There we go,’ said Jaz, folding her arms. ‘It’s a date. A coffee can be a date. They do it in America all the time. What’s he called?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know?’ she replied, so loudly that it attracted Stephen’s attention.
‘Jasmine and Florence, are we OK?’
‘Yeah, all good,’ said Jaz. ‘And top story, Mary. Really compelling. Carry on.’ Jaz stuck her thumbs up at the front.
Mary, who’d turned her head to look towards us, glanced back at Stephen. ‘Er…’ she faltered.
‘Go on, Mary,’ said Stephen, staring at Jaz with a pointed expression. ‘You were telling us how you feel on the sad anniversary of Humphrey’s death.’
‘Oh no,’ whispered Jaz, slumping forward on her desk. Humphrey was Mary’s parrot. Late parrot. He’d died last year and been the main topic of discussion at these sessions for months afterwards.
We sat in respectful silence for a few minutes while Mary continued, but I knew Jaz wouldn’t be able to zip it for long.
‘So when you going to see him?’
‘Not sure,’ I said, between my teeth.
‘So you don’t know his name, you don’t know anything about him and he dresses like a Victorian undertaker.’ She paused. ‘I dunno about this.’
‘What do you mean?’ I said. I felt as if she’d pricked the bubble in my stomach with a pin.
‘Just be careful. Could be a weirdo.’
‘OK, but there’s one more thing I need to tell you about.’
‘What?’ she hissed.
As quietly and succinctly as I could, I explained about Gwendolyn and the list. ‘Is that weird?’ I whispered when I’d finished. ‘I don’t believe in that stuff but it seems a weird coincidence, no?’
‘You got this list?’ she said. I nodded and reached under my chair to pull the piece of paper from my rucksack.
Jaz smoothed it across her thigh with the side of her hand and read it.
I counted them off on my fingers. ‘One, he dressed well. Two, he was into books. Three, his mother collects cats. And he made me laugh, so he’s funny too.’
‘What was his bum like?’
‘I didn’t see. He looked like he was in pretty good shape. But what if it’s like that Tom Hanks film?’
Jaz snapped her head up and frowned. ‘Which one?’
‘The one where he makes a wish and it comes true, and he’s an adult when he wakes up in the morning. What if this is like that?’
‘You think you’ve written a list describing your perfect man and now it’s come true?’ Jaz looked at me sideways. It was the sort of look you’d give an adult who’d just announced they’d believed in fairies. ‘Girl, you need to get laid.’
‘Yes, all right, so everyone keeps telling me,’ I said, remembering Eugene’s joke about his mum as I snatched the piece of paper back. I felt a flash of bad temper. Yes, I was unpractised when it came to dating, but it wasn’t as if Jaz was the relationship oracle. After Leon, there’d been a succession of boyfriends and the last one, who she insisted was ‘the one’, turned out to have a wife and kids in Solihull.
‘Just be careful, babe,’ she went on, making me feel guilty for such mean thoughts. ‘Listen, why don’t you tell me where you have this coffee, and I’ll come along too? I can sit at a different table like a bodyguard? You won’t even notice me. I’ll be totally incoherent.’
‘Incognito.’
‘Exactly.’
Luckily, Stephen called out Jaz’s name and asked if there was anything she wanted to share, to show Paul how it was done ‘as a valued and long-standing member of the group’. Jaz, inflated with pride, stood up and started explaining her story, beginning with how she knew she had to get help when she was eating Bird’s Eye chicken jalfrezi for breakfast. I sat in my small chair thinking. Should I be worried? He didn’t seem like a psychopath. But maybe that’s what psychopaths wanted you to think? I folded the list before shifting in my tiny chair. Jaz was just being overprotective. I’d meet him in a public place and all would be fine. I just had to remember not to wear my work shoes.
The shop was already unlocked when I arrived the next day. I dropped the keys in my bag and pushed open the door.
‘Hello?’
I expected to hear Norris’s voice from downstairs but no reply. Then I noticed the counter. Usually it was tidy. Order book in place, the previous day’s Post-it notes thrown away, pens in the pot, any paperwork that needed to be looked at by Norris in the in-tray. But the till drawer was open and loose papers covered the counter, held down by a motorbike helmet.
I glanced at the rest of the shop. Books had been moved, too. The biography table was a mess and a pile of hardbacks had cascaded to the floor. I stepped towards it and noticed a mug rolled on its side, its contents making a dark pool on the floorboards. ‘Oh my God,’ I murmured. A burglary! This was a crime scene!
I froze as I heard steps behind me.
‘Hello,’ said a male voice.
I spun round to see a stranger looming over me, a mop in one hand and a bucket in the other.
‘Are you a burglar or a new cleaner?’ I asked, confused. He was huge and, in my defence, dressed like someone who operated mostly at night: black T-shirt that stretched across his broad shoulders, black jeans and black Doc Martens boots. He also had wild, curly black hair and black tattoos that snaked down both arms.
‘Neither, as it happens,’ he went on, brushing past me with his cleaning equipment and stepping down into the non-fiction section. ‘But I dropped my coffee while checking this place out so thought I’d better clean it up before Norris gets in.’
How did this giant know Norris?
‘I’m Zach, by the way, nice to meet you.’ He put down the bucket and held out a large hand, forcing me to step towards him and shake it. I felt annoyed at his casual manner. What was this man doing in here throwing coffee?
‘How do you know Norris?’
He started mopping but he was an inefficient mop wringer who transported more water from the bucket to the floor than vice versa, moving it around
