Chapter 63: Feeling Useful
The restlessness began as a faint, physical itch between Victoria’s shoulder blades two days after the call with Hastings.It was a Tuesday. The sky was a flat, pale grey, and the air held the metallic promise of rain. She had run with Hans in the morning, their breaths pluming in the cool air, her legs burning with a familiar, satisfying exertion. She had read ninety pages of a novel in the quiet back room, the words a pleasant stream. She had helped Vita polish the enormous old espresso machine until it gleamed like a locomotive from a dream.And still, the itch persisted.It wasn’t boredom. Boredom was a hollow, passive thing.This was an active, buzzing absence. Her mind, so long conditioned to solve, optimize, and forecast, was idling in neutral, and the engine was starting to grind.She watched Yvonne move through the afternoon rush—a study in efficient, grounded chaos. Yvonne remembered that the man in the green jacket liked his cappuccino extra hot, that the woman with the baby needed a chair with arms, that the delivery of oat milk was late and the backup carton was in the bottom cupboard. She solved a hundred tiny crises with a calm smile.But Victoria, leaning against the back counter and watching the till, saw the other things. The slight frown that pinched Yvonne’s forehead when Joost slid the tablet towards her with the weekly numbers. The way her fingers, so sure with a pastry brush, would flutter uncertainly over the screen before pushing her glasses up and handing it back with a mumbled, “Looks fine, Joost. Danke.” The tense set of her shoulders when the tax advisor’s reminder email chimed on her phone.It was a vulnerability Yvonne tried to mask with practicality. She could unclog a drain, repot a root-bound fiddle-leaf fig, calibrate the coffee grinder with a mechanic’s ear. But columns of numbers scattered her focus, made her physically recoil.Victoria had seen it before, in flashes. Now, with the luxury of uninterrupted observation, she saw it as the central, silent stress fracture in Yvonne’s otherwise capable world.
That evening, the apartment was filled with the scent of roasting vegetables and Yvonne’s quiet contentment. She was at the stove, humming something tuneless, a wooden spoon in hand. Hans was a warm weight across Victoria’s feet under the small table. The rain had finally arrived, a soft, steady patter against the windows.
“Joost mentioned the new outdoor heaters arrived,” Victoria said, swirling the dark red wine in her glass.“Mm-hm.They’re in boxes downstairs. I’ll assemble them tomorrow before opening.” Yvonne didn’t turn around.
“He also said the supplier invoice was higher than the quote. Something about a fuel surcharge.”
Yvonne’s humming stopped.Her shoulders lifted a fraction.“Oh.Probably. It’s… it’s fine. It’s the cost of doing business.” The spoon clinked against the pot with a little more force.“Did you approve the surcharge?”
A pause. “It was on the invoice.So I paid it.”
“You could have challenged it. Or negotiated it against the next order.”
Yvonne turned now, her face flushed from the heat of the stove, her glasses slightly steamed.“Victoria, I don’t… I just want to make coffee and cake. I don’t want to have arguments about fuel surcharges. Joost puts the numbers in the app, I pay what it says. That’s the system.” She said it with a defensive finality, but her eyes held a plea.Don’t make me look at this.
Victoria held her gaze, her voice softening.“What if the system could be better? What if it didn’t have to be an argument?”
Yvonne turned back to the vegetables, giving them a vigorous stir.“It’s my system. It works well enough.”
“Does it?” Victoria asked, not unkindly.She took a sip of wine. “You flinch every time that tablet comes near you.You’re running a successful business, Yvonne. You’ve won an award. But you’re letting a piece of software—and a nineteen-year-old’s interpretation of it—dictate your peace of mind.”
The wooden spoon clattered into the pot.Yvonne stood perfectly still, her back rigid.The only sounds were the sizzle of zucchini collapsing into itself and the relentless whisper of rain on glass. Her breath hitched, a short, sharp intake.Victoria’s words had landed like a stone in still water, and the ripples were tremors in the quiet kitchen.
“It’s not Joost’s fault,” Yvonne finally said, her voice tight.“He tries. The numbers… they just swim in front of my eyes. They mean nothing and everything all at once.”
“I know.” Victoria’s tone was bare, stripped of any consultancy polish.“I’m not blaming him. Or you.” She unfolded herself from the chair, her socks silent on the floorboards.She came to stand beside Yvonne, not touching her, just sharing the space of the warm, fragrant stove.“Do you remember what Nicole Schröder said after the award ceremony?”
A visceral flinch.Yvonne’s hands gripped the edge of the counter, her knuckles paling beneath the freckles.She had buried that comment under a mountain of pride for the award itself. “She said congratulations,” Yvonne muttered, evading.
“She said,” Victoria repeated gently, “that for a ‘women-led’ business to be truly sustainable, the woman leading it should take more than a passing interest in the ledgers.” The words, recalled with perfect, painful clarity, hung in the steam between them. “You drank your Sekt and smiled. I saw it cut you.”
Yvonne closed her eyes.Her glasses were slightly fogged.“It felt like a reprimand. Like I was a child playing shop who’d been given a real cash register by mistake.”
“You are not a child.” Victoria’s hand came up, hesitated, then settled on the tense curve of Yvonne’s shoulder.The muscle was taut as cable under her thin cotton shirt.“You built this. Every brick, every regular, every perfect sourdough loaf.Delegating the tedious bits is smart. Letting Joost manage the tablet is efficient.” She turned Yvonne slowly, until they faced each other in the dim kitchen light.“But surrendering the decisions? That’s different.”
“I don’t know how to decide!” The burst of frustration was raw, startling Hans from his sleep.His head lifted, ears cocked.“I know coffee.I know people. I know this neighborhood. I don’t know fuel surcharges or liquidity ratios or what a good profit margin even looks like for a place like mine.” She pulled off her glasses, rubbing the bridge of her nose where the red frames had left their indent.“It’s another language. One that gives me a headache.”
Victoria watched her, this brilliant, capable woman rendered small by columns of hypothetical numbers. She saw not incompetence, but a deep, instinctual rebellion against a system that felt alien to her ethos.“You don’t need to speak it fluently,” Victoria said, leaning back against the counter.“You just need to understand enough to ask the right questions. To know when a number is telling you a story you don’t like.”
Yvonne slid her glasses back on, her world coming back into sharp focus.“And how do I learn that?Evening classes? Some dry textbook?”
“No.” Victoria shook her head, a faint smile touching her lips. “Textbooks are useless for this.You learn by doing. With someone translating.” She paused, choosing her next words with the care of someone assembling a delicate mechanism.“Let me help you.Not take over. Coach you.”
“Coach me?” Yvonne’s eyebrow arched, skepticism cutting through her distress.
“On the economics of your cafe. Not a generic one.” Victoria’s voice gained a soft, persuasive momentum.“We use your real numbers.Your real suppliers.Your real goals. You teach me about the cost of single-origin beans versus the ethical import collective you like. I’ll show you what those choices look like on a P&L statement. You’ll see it’s not magic. It’s just another kind of recipe.”
Yvonne was silent, absorbing the offer. The rain tapped a steady rhythm against the window.A car whispered by on the glistening street below.She thought of the unopened box from the heater supplier downstairs, the silent judgment of the tax advisor’s email, the quiet shame of Nicole Schröder’s barb.
“You’d do that?” Yvonne asked, her voice small.
“I have nothing but time,” Victoria said, her smile widening, “and a deep, vested interest in the boss of Café Klee not having a nervous breakdown over a fuel surcharge.” She reached out and took Yvonne’s hand, the one stained with spice and oil.“The decisions stay yours. Always. But you’ll make them with your eyes open, not looking away.”
Yvonne looked down at their joined hands, at her own strong, practical fingers woven with Victoria’s sleek, confident ones. The itch of helplessness began to fade, replaced by a tentative, unfamiliar feeling: the prospect of empowered understanding.It was a scaffold, not a takeover.
“Okay,” Yvonne breathed, the word a plume of steam in the cool kitchen air.“One lesson. We see how it goes.” She squeezed Victoria’s hand, her grip firming. “But we start with the heater invoice. I want to know exactly how much that ‘fuel surcharge’ should have cost me.”
The rain had softened to a drizzle by the time they heard the front door lock click, Joost and Vita’s cheerful goodbye echoing up the stairs. The café below was a cathedral of quiet, the day’s warmth lingering in the wood and the faint, ghostly aroma of roasted coffee. They took the corner table by the dormant fireplace, the one with the wobbly leg Yvonne kept meaning to fix.
Yvonne placed the supplier’s invoice for the outdoor heaters in the center of the table like a suspect piece of evidence. She set her thick-framed glasses beside it, wiped the lenses on her shirt, and put them back on with a resigned exhale.Victoria had a fresh notebook and two pens. The tablet, dark and silent, sat off to the side as a last resort.
“Okay,” Victoria said, her voice lower, softer than its usual daytime pitch. “Don’t look at the total. That’s the last thing we care about right now.” She slid the paper towards herself and smoothed it flat.“We look at the story first. Line by line.”
Yvonne leaned forward, her dreadlocks brushing the tabletop. Her shoulders were hunched, a student braced for a test. Victoria felt a peculiar twist in her chest, a fusion of protectiveness and that distant, professional thrill of dismantling a puzzle.“Here,” Victoria pointed. “Item: Two patio heaters, model Ultima 3000. You checked this against what arrived?”
“Yes.They’re the right ones.”
“Good. That’s your first control point.” She drew a tiny, precise checkmark next to the line.“Price per unit. Did you get a written quote before ordering?”
Yvonne’s eyes flickered.“A verbal one. Over the phone. Herr Braun said it was the same as last year’s price.”
Victoria kept her expression neutral.“Noted.For next time: email. Always.” She didn’t write it down; the lesson was in the air between them. “Now this.” Her fingertip landed on the line below.“Surcharge: Regional Fuel Levy. Thirty-eight euros.”
“That’s the one.”
“Right.” Victoria sat back.“This isn’t your supplier being greedy. It’s probably legitimate. But you never just accept a ‘probably.’” She flipped open the notebook, drew two columns.“You ask: What is the levy rate?Over what distance? Is it calculated on total weight or just the fuel for delivery?” She wrote the questions down in clear, looping script.“You ask for the carrier’s rate sheet. You compare.”
Yvonne was staring at the words as if they were incantations. “I just… pay the invoices when they come.To keep things smooth.”
“I know.” Victoria’s voice was gentle. “But ‘smooth’ is costing you margin. And more importantly, it’s costing you confidence.” She pushed the notebook towards Yvonne.“Your turn. Write down three questions you would ask Herr Braun about this surcharge.”
The silence stretched.Yvonne picked up the pen. It trembled faintly.She stared at the blank page, her brow furrowed in fierce concentration. Victoria watched the struggle play out on her face: the impatience, the shame of not knowing, the stubborn will pushing through. She remembered her own first finance tutorial in a Brighton library, the concepts like slick stones in her hands.The memory was cold, solitary. This was warm, charged.“One,” Yvonne began, her voice rough. “Can you send me the… the carrier’s paper that shows this fee?” She wrote it slowly, her letters large and careful.
“Perfect.”
“Two. Is this for the trip from your warehouse to me, or from… further back?” She wrote again, chewing her lip.“Excellent. That’s called ‘leg of journey.’ You’re a natural.”
A faint blush colored Yvonne’s freckled cheeks.She wasn’t used to praise in this arena.“Three. Can we… fix the price for deliveries for the next six months? So there’s no surprise?”
Victoria couldn’t stop the smile that spread across her face.It felt like pride, but softer, more expansive. “That’s called a price ceiling negotiation. And it’s a brilliant, practical question.” She reached across and placed her hand over Yvonne’s, stilling the pen. “See?You’re not reading numbers.You’re asking for the story behind them. That’s all this is.”
Yvonne looked at their hands, then at the three simple questions on the page.Something in her posture unclenched. The fear didn’t vanish, but it made space for a dawning, pragmatic curiosity. “It still feels like a different language,” she murmured.“It is. But you already speak the most important parts: fairness, value, sustainability.” Victoria withdrew her hand, the ghost of its warmth lingering.“Now, let’s translate. Take the total invoice.” She watched as Yvonne’s eyes reluctantly found the bold number at the bottom. “If you get the surcharge reduced by even fifteen percent, what would you do with that money? Right here.”
Yvonne’s gaze lifted, drifting past Victoria to the café around them.The practical dreamer in her instantly engaged. “The damp patch on the wall in the new room,” she said, the words gaining speed. “Proper damp-proofing, not just another coat of paint.Or… a second-hand but better cake display fridge. The one we have rattles.”
“There you go.” Victoria’s voice was a low, satisfied murmur. “Now it’s not a scary number.It’s a repair.It’s a quieter fridge. It’s a thing you can see.” This was the alchemy she’d performed in boardrooms for years, but never with this visceral, personal result. The nostalgia she felt wasn’t for the corporate jargon, but for the raw, fundamental logic of it—the same clean principles she’d first learned, now laid bare for the woman she loved.
Yvonne looked back at the invoice, then at her three written questions. A new light was in her eyes, not of mastery, but of potential ownership.“Okay,” she said, drawing a deep breath. “What’s next?”