The Grand Reopening of Dandelion Café (4 page)

She heard her brother sigh as he walked away from the door and it reminded her so much of when they were kids that she wanted to run back in and shake him. Suzi left with him, the two of them speaking just low enough so Annie couldn’t hear.

‘Aunty Annie, are you going?’ Gerty came running out the door and down the path. Wearing lemon-yellow jeans and a fluffy pink jumper, she looked as sweet as the frosting on a cupcake.

‘Yeah, honey, I have to go back.’

‘I thought you were staying for ever now?’ Gerty said, big blue eyes staring up at her like a guppy.

‘I’m not sure the island could handle me,’ Annie laughed, pushing Gerty’s fringe back so it stuck up at crazy, curly angles and then walking away down the path and through the gate.

‘I’d like you to stay,’ she heard Gerty call from where she stood, and Annie turned so she was walking backwards and waved at the sweet little face.

Then, as she was still walking the wrong way, her attention focused on Gerty, watching as she bounded back into the house, she felt herself collide with a solid wall of person. Felt strong hands steady her as she stumbled.

‘God, sorry,’ she said, turning and trying to get her balance. She found herself staring at the bobbles of an old black woollen jumper. Glancing up, the guy’s face was obscured by the shadow of a baseball cap pulled low, and it took a moment for her to realise it was the man from the cafe, Matthew.

When she’d got her bearings, Annie stood back from his grip, smoothed down her top and said with a half-smile, ‘You following me?’

‘No,’ he replied, deadpan. ‘Buster had to take a pee,’ he said, reaching up to break off a sprig of blossom.

Annie glanced down and saw an ancient-looking pug dog cocking its leg against one of the colourful wooden planters packed full of evergreen shrubs that were dotted along the path between the cherry trees.

‘Nice,’ she said.

‘Well, when you’ve gotta go…’

The evening was just tipping into twilight. Objects had a hazy edge and the streetlights had come on over the path. Old Victorian ones that flickered with moths, their bulbs laced with spiders’ webs.

‘Well I’m walking this way,’ Annie pointed to the path ahead of her that led past the cottages to a patch of parkland that opened out onto the cafe road.

‘Us too,’ Matthew replied, twirling the sprig of blossom between his fingers and clicking for the pug to follow.

‘OK then.’

‘OK.’

In her whole life Annie had never been quite so aware of her breathing. It was like, with every step, that she forgot how to do it. And it seemed so loud. Matthew didn’t seem to be breathing loudly. If anything he was silent. Silent footsteps, silent breathing. Just a presence next to her that she was finding really difficult to ignore. Every couple of steps she glanced his way, but didn’t want to look too obvious so just caught the swing of his arm or the flick of his flip-flops. In the end she looked down at the dog, lumbering along between them, wheezing like it might drop dead any second. Looking at the dog gave her an excuse to look at Matthew’s calves. Tanned the colour of honeycomb, he had a tattoo up the inside of his leg. It looked like waves. No not waves, mountains. Maybe. Annie didn’t have any tattoos, she’d almost had one many times but never had the nerve and worried that she wouldn’t be able to pull it off, but he was managing to pull his off. Like it was part of his skin, like he was born with it.

‘You don’t strike me as a pug dog man,’ she said for something to say, instantly regretting it for its inanity.

Matthew looked down at the floor, clearly holding in a smile. ‘No?’

‘No.’

‘What does a pug dog man look like?’

‘I don’t know. Just not like you,’ Annie rolled her eyes inwardly at the conversation.

‘He’s not mine. He was Enid’s. I seem to have ended up with him.’

‘That’s nice of you.’

‘Not that nice. I couldn’t get rid of him. I tried to convince your mother to have him but he kept escaping and ending up on my doorstep. But it’s OK, I don’t think he has long left to live.’

‘You can’t say that?’

‘Why not?’

‘Because he’s just there,’ Annie pointed to the dog.

‘He’s a dog.’

‘So?’

Matthew didn’t reply, just raised his eyebrows and looked away with a smirk. Annie couldn’t quite tell if he’d been being serious or not.

‘I didn’t know you’d wanted to buy the wasteland off my brother,’ she said after a while of silence.

‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘There’s probably a lot of things you don’t know about me.’

‘That is such an unhelpful answer,’ Annie said, stopping abruptly.

‘Why?’

‘Because I was making conversation. You’re meant to say something like, yes, I’d wanted to preserve it for the next generation and I would have said, me too. Annoying that they built ugly yellow brick houses on it, isn’t it? See, conversation. Now we have to carry on in silence.’

Matthew frowned at her for a moment, then his lips twitched with the hint of a smile. He clicked for the dog and they walked on in silence.

Where the path joined the main road on the island there was a big wooden gate that creaked on its hinges like a horror film. She remembered swinging off it as a kid, her dad pushing it like a swing. Her brother once running up behind her, stopping too late and thwacking her head against it. Both her front baby teeth were left behind in the wood. She was pretty sure the marks were still there, two little indentations, but she certainly wasn’t going to point them out as Matthew stepped forward to open the gate for her. Instead she looked at the width of his shoulders. So broad that his jumper seemed to stretch at the seams. And she looked at the way his hair curled at the nape of his neck, blond flicks that brushed the collar of his jumper.

‘After you,’ he said, a wry smile on his lips like he’d caught her staring.

‘Thanks.’

He tilted his head to one side and said, ‘My pleasure.’

Annie rolled her lips together, tried to think of something clever to say but drew a blank.

‘Well have a good evening,’ Matthew said as he leant over and flicked the lock on the gate.

‘You’re not walking any further?’ Annie frowned. There was nothing else around except the cafe, a couple of shops and the massive new state-of-the-art eco house that was bolted and gated like Fort Knox.

‘Nah, this is me,’ he said, gesturing to the huge oak doors that secured the mansion.

‘You live here?’ She said it before she could stop herself. It was the type of place that featured on
Grand Designs
or Who Lives In This Amazing Jealous-Worthy Property And How The Hell Do They Afford It?

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Wow.’ Annie was dumbstruck. The front gates loomed almost as high as the sycamore in the orchard next door. The floor-to-ceiling windows of the top part of the house were just visible above the wall and, if she was lucky enough to ever peek through the slatted blinds, it wasn’t hard to imagine what the view would be like. Panoramic. Sky stretching out to infinity. A blanket of blossom from the orchard, fluffy white petals that frothed like ice cream soda, then across to the boat club with its alpine fretwork and pointy roof, then the cusp of the landing stages watching the rowers in their boats, and then out across the river, wide and sparkling, the water just cruising along, taking a break from a hectic winter of storm waves, eddies and floods. Then the big church in town, the high street with the massive green Poundland sign, Starbucks, Carpetright and the McDonald’s golden arches, the patch of park and the lido with its rows of coloured changing huts. He could probably see right the way to London on a clear day; The Shard, The Walkie Talkie, St Paul’s.

‘Well it was nice to meet you…’ he paused with his key in the lock.

‘Annie…Annie White.’ She found herself stumbling over her own name.

‘Matthew. Matt Walker,’ he said, pushing the door open and leaving her with a quick nod of the head.

Chapter Five

‘As in
the
Matt Walker?’

It was a week later. Annie had spent her evenings at home getting more and more annoyed with emails from her brother urging her to ditch the cafe. Annoyed at the childish reactions he brought out in her. Annoyed with the phone calls from her mum telling her that Jonathan only had her best interests at heart, and in turn annoyed with her father, furious that he wasn’t still here to sort it all out.

It was like they’d all become caricatures. Their actions and reactions stacking up like a pyramid until they’d peaked, setting in stone traits that they’d never be able to grow up or move on from.

At night though, just before she went to bed, she’d have a sneaky Google on her phone of pictures of Matt Walker. There were pages and pages of images. Articles, websites, fan clubs. Someone had put a selection of clips together on YouTube to a Céline Dion song. She giggled into her camomile tea as she watched, snuggled down in her duvet, her threadbare pyjamas frayed at the cuffs and her hair all flat from a quick post-shower blow-dry. The pictures of him looped round and round to ‘My Heart Will Go On’, starting with the action adventure ‒ abseiling from a sheer cliff face in Thailand, ice-picking his way up a vertical glacier, dangling off a boulder that jutted out over a rainforest ‒ and then settling to calmer shots of him on the beach looking moody with his baby son or leaning against his car, cap pulled low. The last picture made her snort into her tea, he was cross-legged on the beach doing yoga with a bandana tied round his head. Annie had done yoga once and had thought about what she was going to have for dinner for most of the class.

Now she was standing on the landing stage of the Cherry Pie Island boat club with Holly Somers, a girl who she’d mostly got into trouble with at school. Except Holly had been far too clever to ever actually get caught and if she had, had managed to talk her way out of every accusation levied against her. With thick brown hair that was always tied back, freckles that multiplied in the sun, barely any make-up, and a wonky little mouth, Holly shouldn’t have been more than OK-looking. But she had these eyes, luminous green like the weeds in the shallows of the river, that stopped people in their tracks, and as she walked past, left a wake of confusion as to why they’d paused. Those eyes could get her away with murder.

‘Yeah, it’s him.
The
Matt Walker,’ Holly said, half looking up as she washed down her boat with the hose, rinsing away dirty brown river water. She pushed her sunglasses onto her head to follow Annie’s gaze, to where Matthew was just pushing away from his private landing stage, his sleek single scull rowing boat like one of those bugs that skates along the water, all long limbs and perfect balance. Buster the pug dog was yapping in the garden, running up and down the water’s edge barking in Matt’s direction. ‘You must remember him from school? Got Pamela Chambers pregnant?’

‘Yeah, no I did, I just didn’t realise he became Matt Walker.’

‘He moved back here maybe two years ago. Built the house, gave quite a lot of money to the club, but doesn’t say much. His son’s here,’ Holly put the hose down and reached into a bucket for a sponge. As she bent down, she seemed to get dizzy and steady herself on the trestle supporting the boat.

‘You OK?’ Annie asked.

‘Fine. Head rush,’ Holly said, taking a deep breath and rubbing her forehead. ‘Anyway, the son, River. He works at your cafe, doesn’t he?’

‘Don’t I know it.’ Annie glanced back at Holly, one brow raised.

Holly laughed. ‘Moody little thing, isn’t he? Enid loved him.’ She started scrubbing at a tidemark stain on the white fibreglass.

‘Really?’ Annie leant against the trailer of a motorboat parked to the side of the club, keeping one eye on Matthew’s retreating figure as he became just a shape, silhouetted against the sun, puddles from his blades rippling into nothing before they reached them, and said, ‘I can’t understand it. He’s a terrible waiter.’

‘She felt sorry for him. Because of him,’ Holly nodded towards Matthew’s boat, the stern just clipping the leaves of a weeping willow before disappearing round the river bend.

‘What did he do?’

‘Buggered off. I don’t know the whole story, Annie, it’s all just hearsay and rumour but, as far as I know, he stuck around for a bit when River was tiny and then he went, couldn’t hack it. Itchy feet? Didn’t want the responsibility? Who knows. But he went off and became
The
Matt Walker, as you put it.’

‘Then what?’ Annie was picking at the old lettering on the motorboat’s name, peeling off an L that someone had already had a go at, trying to look nonchalant but hoovering up the information like it was gold dust.

Holly laughed. ‘I don’t know. I just have rumours. Can you not pick the name off that boat, please?’

‘Tell me the rumours.’

‘Once he’d climbed every mountain there was to climb, as far as I know he decided that the equipment wasn’t good enough and designed his own. From that, and then that survival programme he did, he built his mega-brand and then couple of years ago sold it and here he is.’ Holly paused, rubbed at a stain on the boat with her fingernail then looked up at Annie. ‘From some chat he had with my dad, and just the fact he’s in that cafe most days, as far as I can gather, he’s ready to be a dad to River.’

‘And what does River think?’

Holly shrugged. Then, pulling on a jumper as the sun disappeared behind a wall of cloud, her voice muffled by the material, she said, ‘River doesn’t want a dad.’

Annie bit her bottom lip, glanced towards the bare horizon then back towards the huge house to her right, imagined him standing there at the window and saw just how lonely it might be.

‘So you got the cafe, huh?’ Holly asked, hoiking the boat up in one fluid movement onto her shoulder and carrying it into the boathouse.

‘Yeah,’ Annie pulled absentmindedly again at the L of the boat name and half of it came away. She looked round to check Holly wasn’t watching and tried to patch it back together, sticking it back on but it fell to the ground. Sheepishly, she scuttled to the other side of the landing stage.

‘Is your dad still boatman here?’ she called into the boathouse, towards where Holly was racking her boat.