The Grand Reopening of Dandelion Café (7 page)

‘Thank you,’ Annie called and then, looking back at Ludo asked, ‘Do you two get on?’

‘Me and Martha?’

‘No, River?’

‘Ah, yes. He’s good. But struggling with his father.’ Ludo shrugged, popping a cigarette out of the packet. ‘He say he shouldn’t have buggered off. I say—’ he held his hands up. ‘Who knows the story. It is all grey. Me, I’m here because I have a daughter because I was a little wild with the English girls. And now to see my daughter as I would like I cannot go home to Spain. Life is choices, no? But he thinks it is all black and white.’ He put the cigarette between his lips. ‘You know he’s in a band? Maybe you could have it play here. It’s OK, quite loud. But I think they can play some things that aren’t loud. Ask him.’ Then Ludo got up from the seat and headed outside for a fag. ‘I will think on the tapas. Have a menu for you tomorrow.’

‘Thanks, Ludo,’ she said, turning back to look at River. Watched as he heaved the cabinet into place and then stood back to straighten it. When he glanced over his shoulder and saw that she was watching him his cheeks went bright pink. ‘This OK?’ he mumbled.

Annie nodded. He scuttled away like a hermit crab to help Martha with the turquoise paint. Annie looked at the list on her computer that had things like ‒ insurance, new roof cost?, flat upstairs revamp, rotten windows, new kitchen ‒ and ticked off
tapas
and
cupboard
, the most minor items on it. The flat upstairs didn’t even bear thinking about. It was a wreck and the roof was definitely leaking. But for the time being she was going purely cosmetic. She was going to block everything else out and just get some customers through the door.

It felt foolhardy and ill-conceived as plans went, but anything more meant a much bigger commitment.

And that, she just couldn’t give.

But it didn’t stop her from feeling a bit sick when she thought back to the end of her conversation with Martha. Just before they’d walked into the kitchen, Martha had put her hand on Annie’s shoulder and said, ‘I’m proud of you for doing this.’

‘For doing what?’ Annie had asked, then joked, ‘Repainting?’

Martha had sighed, ‘For not walking away, you idiot. For trying. You know what it means, don’t you?’

Annie had swallowed, given a slight shake of her head.

‘It means you have courage.’

Courage.

Sitting at the table, looking at the list on her laptop, at all the mammoth things that needed doing that she was ignoring, she didn’t feel like she had courage at all. Instead she felt a bit like a fraud.

Chapter Eight

As Annie stared at her computer screen, she felt a nudge against her leg and looked down to see Buster the pug shuffling about trying to make himself comfortable, pushing her legs out of the way with his squashed-in face.

‘That was where he used to sit, with Enid.’

Annie looked up to see Matthew standing next to the table, his expression curious, as if he’d caught her in a world of her own.

‘Everything OK?’ he asked.

‘Fine,’ Annie said quickly, shutting the lid of her laptop.

He made a face like he wasn’t quite sure he believed her, but he’d let it go, and asked instead, ‘Can I sit here?’

‘You know we’re closed,’ Annie said, feeling surprisingly pleased for the distraction, and the person distracting her.

He replied with a shrug and a half-smile. ‘I don’t know where else to go for coffee.’

‘The machine’s off.’

‘I don’t know where else to go for breakfast.’

‘There’s no food.’

‘I don’t know where else to go to sit down.’

‘Well in that case…’ She gestured to the vacant seat in front of her and then turned to look back towards the kitchen where Ludo was on his phone and smoking a cigarette out the window. ‘Ludo! What are you doing?’

‘I’m thinking. About the menu.’

Annie rolled her eyes. ‘Can you make coffee while you think?’

‘Can I make coffee while I think…’ He scoffed. ‘This is a technical, difficult thought process.’ The YouTube video he’d been loading suddenly burst out at full volume and he scrabbled around trying to silence his phone.

Finally turning it off he said, ‘Yes, I can make coffee.’

Matt was smirking. ‘I feel honoured.’

‘So you should,’ Annie laughed.

Matt sat back and folded his arms. He’d clearly come straight in from the river again, dressed in sludge-green tracksuit bottoms and a dirty white sweatshirt all misshapen at the neck, his kit bag on the floor between his feet, a battered Evian bottle on the seat next to him.

‘Nice outfit,’ she said, looking him up and down.

‘I thought I’d dress up specially,’ he said, eyes glinting.

‘It’s the kind of outfit you could do some decorating in,’ she said.

‘D’you think?’

Annie nodded. ‘Perfect for painting, hanging pictures, lights…’ She gestured towards the flower-covered chandelier.

‘What’s that doing here?’ Matt asked, sitting up and staring over at the light.

Annie shrugged. ‘River said it was in his shed.’

‘I bought that.’

‘You did?’

‘For his mum. For Pamela.’

‘Oh.’ Annie made a face. ‘Sorry.’

Matthew blew out a breath that made his hair flick up at the front. ‘I never thought she liked it.’

Annie looked over at the gold ceramic monstrosity. ‘Well it’s perhaps not to everyone’s taste.’

Matthew laughed. ‘I was only eighteen when I bought it. God, that was all my money at the time.’ He sat back, ran his hands through his hair, pushing it back from where it kept flopping over his eyes.

River came over with the coffees, slid them onto the table without really looking at either of them.

‘Hey,’ said Matt.

River made a noise between a grunt and a hi and walked off.

‘Things haven’t got any better?’ Annie asked, the answer clearly obvious.

Matt sighed. ‘No. I went round last night, asked if he wanted to come away this weekend. No joy.’

‘Where you going?’

‘North Wales. Climbing,’ Matthew said, getting up and reaching across to the table behind him for sugar.

‘That’s really bad for you, you know.’

‘Climbing?’

‘No sugar. That much sugar.’

‘Yeah I know,’ he spooned in another teaspoonful. ‘But I only have it once a day. It’s my little treat.’

‘Wow, you really know how to live,’ she laughed.

Matthew shrugged a smile.

Annie closed her laptop and put it in her bag. Then, crossing her arms on the table, she leant forward and said, ‘So River likes climbing?’

Matt paused, the coffee cup at his lips. ‘No, not massively, but I’m persuading him, gently.’

Annie nodded and then sat back, picking up her cup and cradling it between her palms.

‘What?’ Matt said.

‘Nothing.’

‘What? Why are you looking at me like that?’

Annie took a sip of the thick bitter coffee. ‘Did you know he’s in a band?’

‘Christ yeah, it’s dreadful,’ Matt said under his breath.

‘That’s encouraging.’

‘No sorry, I don’t mean it like that. It’s just not my kind of music.’

Annie put her cup down and moved to stand up. ‘Just like climbing’s not his,’ she said.

Matt drained his espresso and stood up with her, ‘What are you getting at?’

‘Well. Who is it that’s trying to make this relationship work?’

Matt ran his tongue along the bottom of his top teeth.

‘And yet who is it that’s picking the activity?’

His mouth stretched into a you’ve-got-me grin and Annie smirked.

‘Where do you want this light hung then?’ he said with a roll of his eyes.

‘Over there in front of the counter,’ she said, giggling.

‘Got a ladder?’

‘In the back.’

‘Right.’

And Annie watched as the man who the previous weekend she’d seen named on the
Sunday Times
Rich List, sauntered off to go and get her ladder.

They spent the rest of the day working on the cafe. The newly turquoise counter surround had two little pawprints in it, where Buster had tried to stretch up and follow a brush stroke, that they left for posterity. The floor, where he’d subsequently left a trail of tiny footprints, had been scrubbed clean and Ludo was out the back with a bucket washing the furious dog’s paws. Martha, who’d had an about-turn since Annie’s apology, had nipped back to her house and returned with her collection of cake stands. All different types: some glass, some china patterned with trails of ivy, others painted with little birds. One particularly fancy one ‒ an all-over delicate silver filigree ‒ Annie placed in the new cabinet where it sparkled as it caught the sun. The others they arranged on the counter surface and on a shelf that Matt had made out of two old brackets they’d found out the back and a piece of driftwood.

In the afternoon, just as the sun came out, Annie’s mum appeared unexpectedly, carrying two shopping bags that she deposited on the table next to Annie and said, ‘I’ve made you some new curtains.’

‘Really?’ Annie asked, surprised. ‘I thought you were working this week?’

‘I am. I made them this morning. After my shift,’ she said it as if it was nothing to knock up a pair of curtains after working twelve hours at the hospital. That was what her mum did, she showed her affection in practical gestures and hated praise or acknowledgement of the fact.

Annie pulled out the cute half-curtains that would replace the tatty chequered ones in the window and held them up, delighted. Winifred had managed to find a white cotton that was patterned all over with little yellow dandelions, some with stalks and leaves, others just the feathery flowers. And along the bottom she’d stitched cream vintage lace, like bunting made of spiders’ webs.

‘Thank you,’ Annie said, going over to the window to hold the curtains against the glass, the cotton see-through in the sharp spring sunshine.

‘You can’t leave those marks on the wall,’ Winifred said, waving away Annie’s thanks and focusing instead on the dirty stains left by the missing pictures.

‘We don’t have time to repaint, Mum.’

‘Repaint?’ Her mother looked indignant. ‘Bit of Cif and a J-cloth and they’ll be clean in a jiffy. I’ll do it,’ she said, getting an apron, a bottle of Cif and some rubber gloves out of her bag like Mary Poppins. The whole thing was clearly completely premeditated but unmentionable.

Annie left her mum to it and glanced around for her next job. Martha was scrubbing the floor on her hands and knees with a tea towel wrapped round her hair like Cinderella, Ludo was clearing out the kitchen with a newly clean Buster bashing about with pans and tins and jars making an absolute racket, Holly had arrived an hour previously with a load of picture frames she didn’t need and was working with River to reframe some of the old black and white Cherry Pie Island photographs that had been dotted about on the walls. Buster, to whom Holly was second favourite only to Matthew, came bounding out of the kitchen, moving faster than Annie had ever seen him, and wound his way around and through Holly’s legs until she eventually picked him up and allowed him to snuggle into her neck.

As the dog was making himself comfortable, Annie examined Holly from a distance, tried to see if there was a baby bump underneath her sweatshirt. She decided there was no way she was pregnant. No way at all. Holly didn’t have long-term boyfriends. She had men who fell head over heels in love with her that she occasionally deigned to go for a drink with. She was terrified of commitment and hid it under a veneer of pickiness. Always had. Ever since her mum had left. The closest Holly got to a relationship was picking Buster up off the floor.

‘You OK?’ Annie asked, sidling up next to her, wondering whether to just come right out and ask whether she was with child.

Holly glanced up from where the dog was nuzzling her neck, a bit taken aback by the question, ‘Yes thanks, Annie.’

‘Good, good, just checking. Just checking,’ Annie said, and pretended to be more interested in the photographs on the table. Pictures which, when she did actually look at them properly, turned out to capture beautifully the history of the island.

There were photos of the men up ladders, picking the cherries, eight-piece hats on and braces, big wide grins for the camera. Others were of the women making the pies that used to be sold to visiting boats or boxed up and driven away in Cherry Pie vans to all the bakeries and corner shops. There was one of the cafe, Enid wearing a fifties jumpsuit, grey with cropped trousers, her hair set in black curls with a scarf tied in a bow on the top of her head, baby Martha in her arms, standing outside the gleaming windows of the brand-new cafe. Annie’s grandfather was standing next to her, and her father as a boy pulling a wooden duck on a string. Behind them she could just make out the cherry trees, some tall, craggy and old, some newly planted. The sycamore was barely visible. The area around the cafe was completely undeveloped and the orchard floor sprawled forth onto the rubble path; cowslips, daisies and dandelions scattered among the too-long grass. She took the photo from River as she looked over his shoulder and he waited silently as she stared at it, moved her fingers from each face.

‘That’s my dad,’ she said as she gave it back. ‘There, the little kid. That was my dad.’

River nodded.

‘It would have been cool if he’d seen this,’ she said, looking up at the renovations. ‘God, you really don’t know how much you’re going to miss someone till they’re gone,’ she said, then added, ‘Make the most of them while you have them.’

River looked at her with one brow raised, his expression exactly like his dad’s.

Annie smiled as innocently as she could, knowing she’d laid it on a bit thick, but feeling sentimental.

‘Let me see!’ Her mother called, completely ruining the moment. ‘Bring it over here, let me see him.’

River took the photo over and her mum paused in her wall-scrubbing, held the corner of the picture between the finger and thumb of her rubber glove and said, ‘Oh he was handsome, even then. Such a handsome little boy.’

Annie walked away, without fail a
just like Jonathan, what a perfect baby
statement accompanied one of her mother’s reminiscences.