Noodle Day

Noodle Day

I ’M WEARING MY

new blue jumper from Dorothy Perkins and taking my lunch in Pigeon Park. I’ve already had two compliments on it – one from Marjie and one from the Big Issue

seller who works outside Superdrug. I would have bought his magazine anyway, but it is nice to know that my jumper looks ‘sick’.

Pigeon Park is not really a park so much as a large graveyard around the cathedral with a path cutting through the centre that connects the offices of Snow Hill with the much more fun shops and restaurants in the city centre.

It’s nice that the pigeons have a park for themselves. There are certainly more of them than there are people, but it is the people that I like to watch the most. I like seeing the smartly dressed office workers at ease, even if only for an hour, top buttons undone, ties loosened, faces turned to the sun. Eating their lunches and scrolling on their phones to see what the world has been up to in the three hours since they sat down at their desks.

It’s Noodle Day, and I’m spinning a wooden fork in my ginger chicken udon when I hear a small voice.

‘Thank you.’

I look up and she half smiles, but it’s not a real smile; it can’t be.

‘It’s yourself!’

She’s wearing a Sainsbury’s uniform that looks all wrong on her, pink hair catching fire in the sun. ‘Thank you for the hug,’ she says. Her badge tells me that her name, as I suspected, is Bella.

‘Would you like to sit?’ I ask.

And sit she does. We are both quiet for a brief moment.

‘You came back,’ I observe.

‘You’re a very good dancer,’ she says. I can’t tell if she’s teasing me or not, but I enjoy the compliment either way.

‘I do love a bit of salsa music. It always feels like a party whenever it comes on.’

‘Was that your wife you were dancing with?’

‘Good lord, no. Marjie is my boss. Well, she’s my friend now too. I think. I’ve never been very good at telling when someone becomes a friend.’

‘Me neither,’ Bella says.

‘Oh, I’m sure a young thing like yourself has plenty of friends.’

She looks as though she is about to say something, but she closes her mouth.

‘But you returned, to the shop …’

She breathes in. ‘I thought I wanted something back.’

‘I assumed as much.’

‘But then I realized it’s probably too late.’

Oh, how I love to tell her. ‘It is not too late at all, my dear. His clothes are still in our back room.’

‘It wasn’t the clothes I wanted, it was …’ She looks out across the park as a group of office workers in suits walks past, shouting over each other to be heard, and laughing. ‘Well, it doesn’t matter any more.’

‘You don’t want his shoes back?’

‘You didn’t throw them away?’ she asks cautiously, seeming unsure of whether to allow herself to feel hope or not.

I place the lid on my noodle bowl and turn to her. ‘Would you be so kind as to indulge me if I told you a little secret?’

She lights up at this and says, ‘Try me.’

Bella is the first person I have told about the Eddie Shelf. I certainly couldn’t tell Marjie – she might be forced to sack me, or report me to the police. I’ve never really known whether I am rescuing or stealing the items I take from the shop. Whether I am an archivist or a thief.

‘So, there you have it,’ I finish.

‘You kept them,’ she says.

‘I’ve never seen shoes quite like them.’

‘But you kept them,’ she says again. ‘Why?’

‘In case you changed your mind.’

On a bench on the other side of the path, a young couple sits down, their legs criss-crossed over each other, tangled up together. Look at me

, their love whispers. They talk for a moment, though we can’t hear what they’re saying, and then she puts her hand on his cheek and kisses him.

I turn and spot that Bella is watching the young couple too. She looks so sad.

‘I wish I had something wise to say,’ I tell her.

‘You don’t?’ she asks.

‘I haven’t had a lot of experience with love.’

She glances down at my unclaimed left hand.

‘Intriguing.’

The couple on the bench untangle themselves from each other and stand. The young man stretches his arms up and then puts one around the young woman’s shoulders, as though they are in a cinema. She laughs and they walk in step together towards the Jewellery Quarter, and I wonder if they are off to buy a ring.

‘You can keep his clothes,’ Bella says quietly, ‘But his shoes, the notebook, I … I don’t know what to do.’

‘There’s really no rush.’

‘Isn’t there?’

‘I’ll keep them safe,’ I promise her.

‘For how long?’

‘Until you’re ready.’