The Grand Reopening of Dandelion Café (2 page)

From where she stood she could see, as her mother had said, that in patches here and there, from the big footballs of buds had burst candy floss blossom, iridescent, and so beautiful it was easy to see why some of the trees were just too eager to wait.

Chapter Two

‘You take our milk?’

Annie turned to see a man pull up on a moped. He’d pulled off his helmet and gave his hair a quick ruffle before reaching in his pocket for a packet of Camel Lights. She guessed he was Italian, maybe Spanish, dark skin, broken nose, and a long face that looked like it never smiled.

‘Yes,’ she said, looking down at the crate of milk and then at him with an expression that said,
Why would anyone want to steal this much milk
.

He shrugged. ‘
Si
. As long as we are clear,’ he said, before getting off the bike and strolling over to the door of the cafe and unlocking it.

Annie looked back at the milk, then at the wonky cafe sign, then at the open door. It hadn’t actually occurred to her that the place was still trading.

She followed the guy in, looking around as he switched on the lights, the tea urn, the radio. Fluorescent strip lights flickered as Magic FM boomed to life.

‘You work here?’ she called out as she saw him flick his cigarette out the back window and hang his denim jacket up on the hook in the kitchen.

‘No. I am just breaking in,’ he returned the expression she’d given him earlier about the milk. ‘With the key.’

‘I’m Annie,’ she said, sliding the milk onto the cracked Formica countertop and holding her hand out.

‘Good for you,’ he replied, tying a black and white bandana round his head. ‘You’re too early for breakfast. We don’t open for ten minutes.’

Annie had to stifle a smile, backing up and taking a seat in one of the booths with four plastic chairs bolted to the floor. Yesterday’s paper was on the table. She turned to the back and started the crossword while she waited for the time to tick away.

At two minutes to nine a scruffy-looking boy cycled up, threw his bike against the window and loped inside bringing a cool breeze with him. He must have been about sixteen. Awkward-looking and gawky, like he couldn’t quite handle the fact he might be quite attractive. Not chocolate box, but a combination of thick, floppy hair, big wide eyes and heavy eyebrows that worked to give him a handsome moodiness and baby-faced innocence that teenage girls found irresistible. Underneath his denim shirt he wore a Kinks T-shirt. His jeans were ripped everywhere, not artfully, but because he looked like he couldn’t be bothered to buy a new pair. And his trainers were like Marty McFly’s in
Back to the Future
. He made Annie smile just looking at him.

Chucking his rucksack in the corner he pulled an apron off the hook, swiped the unwashed mugs from the countertop and started to fill the sink with water. It was a second before he noticed Annie and the sight of her made him glance nervously at the guy in the kitchen. When he didn’t seem to pay any attention to either of them, the boy took his lead and blanked her completely.

Annie kept on doing her crossword.

Five past nine she sat back in her seat and said, ‘Any chance I could have a cup of coffee?’

The boy looked terrified. The guy in the back shrugged.

‘Black. One sugar.’

‘There’s sugar on the table,’ the boy said.

‘OK, just a black coffee then,’ Annie replied.

He scuffed about banging the coffee machine and grinding some beans.

It was maybe quarter past when he set the chipped mug down in front of her and said, again, ‘Sugar’s on the table.’

The door opened and slammed. A woman in her late sixties strode in. Apron already tied under her bosom. Hair like an electric shock. Face like a Bassett Hound; droopy and eyes sliding away. ‘Well, well, well. I wondered when you’d show up.’

‘Hi, Martha,’ Annie folded the paper up and stood up from her chair, awkward because it didn’t push back so her knees had to stay slightly bent. She decided to step out from the table completely.

‘We’re doing just fine,’ Martha said, walking straight past her. ‘Just fine. We don’t need anything. Ludo. Aren’t we doing just fine?’

The guy in the back, who was sizzling bacon in a pan, a cigarette smoking in an ashtray on the windowsill, gave a thumbs-up.

Annie licked her lips. She walked over to the counter and folded her arms so she could lean against it. The boy looked nervously between her and Martha. ‘Who’s running the place?’ Annie asked.

‘Me. Ludo. Who do you think? The same people who have been running it for the last ten years. Mum couldn’t do it. She sat where you’re sitting. And we’ve been fine. Just fine,’ Martha hung her bag up on one of the hooks and took a pad from the stack by the till. ‘Just fine. I told your mother to just leave us to it,’ she said as she walked away to serve two men who’d trudged in, leant their fishing gear up against the window and were sitting at the booth furthest from the counter, mud dripping off their wellie boots onto the lino, a black labrador flat-out in the aisle.

‘OK,’ Annie said, and pushing off the counter turned and went back to her seat and her surprisingly good cup of coffee. Sitting down she glanced around the place, the sun streaming in through the dusty windows, surreptitiously taking in the cracks in the ceiling, the spiders’ webs, the wonky pictures and dreadful paintings, the dirty path on the lino where years of feet had trudged up to the counter, the fake flowers on every table. She picked hers up and turned it upside down, the flowers stayed where they were, glued into their vase.

She was just examining the plastic menu, the laminated corner coming unstuck and peeled apart by fiddling fingers, when the bell above the door chimed and someone else walked in.

Annie glanced up, expecting another of the motley crew of waiting staff, but paused when she caught sight of the man elbowing the door closed. Tall, serious-looking, he pulled off aviator sunglasses and slid them into the neck of his dark-green T-shirt. It was the colour of seaweed, the sleeves bleached by the sun. He was wearing grey marl tracksuit bottoms, rolled up to reveal tanned, sinewy calves and flip-flopped feet that were still damp. He’d clearly just come off the water, probably been rowing or maybe paddle boarding.

She didn’t realise she’d been holding her breath until he’d strolled past her and then she had to exhale really slowly so that no one realised she’d stopped breathing.

‘Morning,’ he said to the boy when he got to the counter.

When no one replied, Annie glanced over her shoulder, intrigued. She just caught the boy hanging his head and sloping out the back to the kitchen. Martha moved into his place and nodded to the man.

‘Usual, Matthew?’

Matthew… Annie realised she knew exactly who he was. Two years older than her brother at school, he’d been head boy, won loads of sport trophies. She remembered school assembly, when all the first-formers, her included, would sit cross-legged staring up at him in awe as he sauntered on stage to collect his prizes, all cool and terrifyingly grown-up. She couldn’t remember his surname. Watson, maybe. Windsor? She could remember the scandal though, he’d got Pamela Chambers pregnant and she’d gone into labour in the middle of her physics A-level.

Annie watched as he took a seat on one of the faux-leather covered barstools, nodded to Martha and said, ‘Yeah and I’ll have a bacon sandwich. Heard anything from the new boss yet?’

Annie flipped her head back round as quick as she could as she saw Martha raise her eyebrows in her direction.

There was silence behind her. She was just wondering whether to stand up and say something when she realised there was a mirror on the furthest wall from her and she could see Matthew reflected in it.

As Martha bustled back into the kitchen, tearing off the bacon sandwich order for Ludo, she watched as he upended the sugar pourer into his espresso, granules cascading down till it seemed they might overflow. When he stirred it she was reminded of her dad, the teaspoon having trouble through the thickness of the liquid. As he took a sip she watched him watch the boy, his feet tapping against the bars on the stool, his eyes hooded, and narrowed.

When the boy came over to take her cup away she realised the two of them looked almost the same. Same eyebrows, same look like there was a whole world going on behind the slit of eyes that they allowed you to see.

Was this the physics A-level baby? ‘Are you two related?’ she asked as casually as she could while he wiped down the Formica.

The boy looked back at the guy at the counter, shrugged and then walked off back to the kitchen.

‘Wow,’ Annie blew out a breath. She’d forgotten how closed the island could be. The gossip was there, bubbling away beneath the surface, but fiercely guarded, like whispers between leaves. It was her fault for prying. She hated it when people brought up her past, so why had she tried to burrow into his? She sat back, ashamed of herself, and watched as a couple of tourists arrived with a guide book. Sitting down they asked tentatively whether the cafe still served the famous cherry pie.

Cherry pie.

Annie watched as the boy brought out two bowls of it on a tray. Custard in a jug and cups of tea with saucers. She watched as he rested the tray on the side of the table and handed the couple their pie. Watched the steam rise and twine with the sunlight. Watched as they closed their
Lonely Planet
and each took a bite, from a spoon, she noted.

The woman shut her eyes and put her hand on her chest and gave a little moan of delight, and the boy’s lips allowed a hint of a smile. As if even the most bored of waiters couldn’t disguise his pride in this sticky, sour cherry pie.

‘Hey, ’scuse me?’ Annie caught him as he loped past her.

‘Yeah?’ he said, the tray hanging empty by his side, his eyes narrowed at her.

‘Can I have a slice of pie?’

He shrugged. ‘Yeah.’

Annie smiled. ‘OK then, thanks.’ He began to walk away. ‘Oh, hang on, no custard. Do you have cream?’

‘Dunno, I’ll check.’

As he disappeared into the back she heard Ludo call from the kitchen. ‘Turn it up. Turn it up. This is my favourite.’

The yelling startled her and she twisted round to see Matthew leaning over the counter and twisting the knob on the radio so that Shirley Bassey’s ‘Goldfinger’ belted out into the room.

‘Ahh.’ Ludo stood with the spatula clasped to his chest. ‘I love it. I love her. River, do you love Shirley yet? Stop. Listen. Listen to that. Ahhhh. You must appreciate that volume. That depth. Your band, they could benefit from listening to Shirley.’

The boy blushed and sniggered from behind his fringe. Ludo whacked him with a tea towel and made him laugh.

Annie rested her chin in her hands and took it all in via the big mirror. The fact the poor kid was called River and then the way Matthew was watching, lips closed, muscles in his cheeks taut like he was clenching his teeth, feet no longer tapping on the base of the stool, hand stilled on the page he was about to turn on his book.

Was he jealous, she wondered. But then he glanced up and caught her eye in the mirror and she dropped her eyes to her phone as quick as she could. She could feel him still watching her. He kept his head turned her way, kept his eyes on her in the mirror, almost like a punishment for her snooping. His moody, dark gaze fixed on her blushing, embarrassed face.

‘One cherry pie.’ It landed in front of her with a slap. ‘We haven’t got any cream.’ River put down a jug of milk instead and walked away.

Annie stared down at the bowl. The same off-white china with brown flower trim round the edge. The familiarity of the sight made her breath catch in her throat. The wobbly lattice across the top, the cherries glistening, dark like velvet, sticky and squished. The thinnest layer of frangipane just coating the base, enough to sweeten with a hint of almond, Enid would say, but not so much that you would know it was there.
Everything you’re doing is to bring out the best in the cherries. Let them do the work. And then sit back and watch.

Nabbing her teaspoon from her coffee cup, Annie was just about to take a bite when the bell above the door went again and her mother sat down in the seat opposite.

She was accompanied by Valtar, her lovely Latvian husband, an accountant and occasional Elvis impersonator. He’d come to the island a couple of years ago to perform at the pub and heroically taken on the job of wooing Annie’s mother. She often wondered if he knew what he was getting himself into, but he still gazed at her with adoring eyes and, for Annie, there was nothing more important than that. It was what her dad would have wanted. That her mum would be loved and looked after. He hadn’t let her mother so much as touch a bill or take any part in the business and in doing so had left her floundering when he passed away.

‘Sweetheart, you’re here. Why didn’t you phone me? I had to hear it from the bloody milkman, and you can imagine how delighted he was to pass on news that I didn’t know.’ Winifred Birzgalis (née White) huffed as she glanced at Annie over the shabby laminated menu.

Before she could reply, her brother Jonathan and his wife Suzi, their twin nine year olds, Gertrude and Wilbur, and their dog Flash, a tiny fluffy thing that was some expensive hybrid and terrified of everything appeared as well.

‘Shove over, Sis.’ Jonathan jabbed her between the ribs so she’d move chairs and then sat down with Wilbur on his lap. ‘Wil’s starving, can he have your pie?’

Chapter Three

Annie pushed the bowl of cherry pie over to Wilbur and he started scooping it into his mouth like he’d never eaten before in his life.

‘He’s always hungry,’ sighed Suzi as she pulled up a chair and sat at the end of the table. Immaculate as always, she was dressed in diamanté jeans, a jumper with a zebra sequinned on the front and a jacket with a huge fur collar. ‘Have you said thanks, Wil?’

‘Thanks, Aunty Annie,’ Wilbur said, voice muffled with pie.

Annie nodded, feeling herself shrink back into the corner of her seat. Overwhelmed by so much family. She blamed the pie. If she hadn’t ordered it then she’d have left fifteen minutes ago.