The Cornish Cream Tea Bus

Her ex took a step closer, his hands on his hips. This was classic Stuart: he would rescue her, fix her calamities and errors of judgement like the wonderful, patient human being that he was, and expect her to be eternally grateful. Charlie narrowed her eyes, preparing to do the opposite of whatever he suggested, when there was a flapping sound and the banner, which they had secured so tightly at the beginning of the morning, came free of its restraints and fell towards the ground. Except that Stuart was in the way, so it landed, quite expertly, on top of him, as if he was a fire that needed extinguishing.

‘For fuck’s sake, Charlie!’ came Stuart’s muffled voice from somewhere beneath thebanner. Even though Charlie’s audience seemed less than approving of her, and poor Gertie was clearly wedged quite solidly in the mud, and this probably meant that her time running The Café on the Buswas already at an end – the shortest-lived career in history – Charlie started laughing. Once she’d started, she couldn’t stop, tears of mirth pouring down her cheeks as she surveyed the carnage from the hatch window, trying to keep her footing on the lopsided floor. As Stuart emerged, flustered and fuming, Charlie hid inside her bus, where scones and flapjacks were scattered like autumn leaves, and the coffee machine was beginning to leak.

‘Shit,’ she said. ‘Shitting hell.’ The sight was sobering, and her laughter left her as suddenly as it had started.

She heard footsteps and looked up, prepared to brace herself against her ex-boyfriend’s anger, and found another man standing in the doorway, his movements hesitant as he tried not to succumb to gravity and fall into her.

‘Hello,’ she said, wiping her eyes. ‘How can I help?’ In the circumstances, it was a ridiculous thing to say. She wasn’t in a position to help anyone.

‘Are you all right?’ He had dark blond hair crafted into some sort of quiff, and was wearing a denim jacket over dark cords and a black T-shirt with a green logo on it. His skin looked impossibly smooth above the designer stubble, and his hazel eyes were warm.

‘I’m OK,’ she said, raising her arms hopelessly.

‘I’ve had this happen before.’ He edged forward and held out his hand. ‘Oliver Chase. I run The Marauding Mojito.’He gestured over his left shoulder. ‘I’ve got experience of sinking, leaking, wasp swarms – you think it up, I’ve had it happen. But this is your first time?’

‘First and last, I should think,’ Charlie said, shaking his hand.

He gave her a gentle smile. ‘No need to be so dramatic. First thing we need to do is get her upright. And I’d like to say I can help, but I’m a man, not a god. So … recovery?’

‘I have a number in my phone.’ Charlie walked hesitantly to the cab, holding onto anything she could, and took her phone out of the valuables box. She didn’t know Oliver or The Marauding Mojito,but she was grateful for his calmness. Of course she would have made this decision on her own, but it was as if he’d sucked all her panic away.

He was peering out of the hatch towards the site of the submergence. Some of the crowd was still there, and Stuart was tersely dusting himself down, his ego more bruised than anything else. Charlie took a deep breath. It was a hiccup, nothing more. She could still do this.

And then there were more footsteps. She and Oliver both turned to see who else had come to help, and were met with a face that was very familiar to Charlie, and yet stormier than she had ever seen it.

Bea Fishington gripped onto the walls of the bus as if it was a sinking boat, still rocking violently.

‘Oh Charlie,’ she said, her expression a mixture of pity and distress, ‘what on earth has happened here?’

Chapter Four (#ulink_f865363c-f119-5b20-acef-cea414d5cb96)

‘A sabbatical? But I—’

Bea held a hand up to shush her, picked one of the fallen sausage rolls off a seat, dusted it down and bit into it. Charlie glanced out of the window and was relieved to see that the crowd had mostly dispersed now the action seemed to be over. They were waiting for recovery to come and haul them out of the mud.

‘My niece, Nora, is coming to stay with me over the summer,’ Bea said. ‘I know that’s a way off, but I can train Sally up. She may be timid, but she’s got baking experience and a willing attitude.’

‘But you can’t do without me,’ Charlie replied, failing to keep the shock out of her voice.

‘Charlie,’ Bea sighed and lowered herself into a tilting seat, ‘you’re taking on too much. This would have been a good idea, I think, if you had been able to give more time and thought to its execution, but I’m just not sure you’re capable of that at the moment. Losing Hal, breaking up with Stuart and having the responsibility of the bus, too. You’re trying to run at a hundred miles an hour when, really, you should be slowing down.’

‘I don’t need to slow down,’ Charlie said. ‘I need to keep working, to stay busy and—’

‘Sometimes we have to let other people decide what’s best for us,’ Bea cut in, ‘and I am telling you to take a break. Come back to the café after the summer. Spend time looking for a new place to live, go and see Juliette or go and lie by a pool, somewhere hot. But stop thinking about work. Give yourself time to heal.’

Charlie opened her mouth to respond, but Bea’s warning look said it all. Instead, she slumped into a chair and surveyed the destruction around her.

Most of her stock had fallen onto the floor, the coffee machine was broken and the fridge was making a strange whirring noise. She could hear people outside, shouting for other stalls to be moved out of the way in anticipation of the rescue truck’s arrival.

She should be grateful that Bea was being so lenient, even if her appearance had made Oliver retreat so hastily that she could only offer a shouted ‘thank you’ as he hurried away. Stuart seemed to have stalked off to nurse his wounded pride, though she wasn’t about to check. She would be happy if she never saw him again.

In the quiet that followed, Charlie thought back to their final argument. She had found out from Andrew, one of Stuart’s friends, that her boyfriend had been cheating on her with Annalise, a sultry, dark-haired analyst who worked at the same bank as him in London. She hadn’t confronted him immediately. She hadn’t wanted to believe he’d been cheating.

She’d gone into Cheltenham and found a beautiful teapot shaped like a narwhal. In the midst of her worries, it had made her smile, so she’d bought it and taken it back to the flat. Stuart had told her it was hideous, and that she couldn’t have it out on display while he was there. She had flipped, and it had all come spilling out. He hadn’t seemed remotely sorry for betraying her, and he certainly hadn’t uttered the ‘s’ word. Stuart Morstein was the definition of unapologetic.

Charlie sighed. She felt weary all of a sudden. Maybe they were all right; Bea and her dad and Juliette. Some time away from it all would do her good. Forget the mistake, Hal had often said to her. Remember the lesson. Could that be what today’s disaster was telling her? Get away from it all, change your perspective. Don’t take on too much all at once.

She heard the beeps of the approaching tow truck, stood up as best she could on Gertie’s off-centre floor, and went to greet the poor person who was going to have to pull them out of the mud.

‘Oh goodness,’ Juliette squeaked down the phone once Charlie had recounted the whole sorry incident to her. ‘Please, please come. Stay for two weeks – four, six – whatever you want. We can go on boat tours and for fish and chips in Padstow, and take Marmite for long, character-building walks on the beach. You won’t regret it – Porthgolow is the perfect place. It’s so picturesque. And,’ she added, laughing, ‘it’s Cornwall, so, you know, full of tourists. You could even do a recce, see if it’s somewhere you think your café bus could work in the future.’

Charlie peered out of her bedroom window. It was her old room in her mum and dad’s house, but it had been turned into a guest bedroom, with yellow-flocked wallpaper and a peacock blue vanity stand. Outside, her dad was walking slowly round the garden, on the phone to someone, a cigarette dangling from his fingers. Marmite trailed behind him, racing back on himself whenever he got too close to the smoke. Vince had only started smoking again since Hal had died, and she wondered if she could use her dog as a reason to guilt him into stopping again.

‘Char?’ Juliette prompted. ‘What do you think?’

‘The café bus was a disaster.’

‘You were bound to have teething problems. Besides, they shouldn’t do any kind of event on that field. It used to flood all the time. Gertie didn’t stand a chance.’

‘But she will in Porth-whatsit?’

‘Porthgolow. We have all sorts of fairs and shows in Cornwall, and the variety of food trucks I’ve seen beats the Cotswolds hands down. But I’ve never seen a bus, so you’d be unique.’

‘Gertie needs a lot of work. The stuff Clive did would have been OK for today if it hadn’t been for the whole sinking issue, but if it’s going to be a proper café bus, with tables and an oven and storage and a serving hatch, then it needs a full makeover.’

Charlie heard a chirrup down the phone and wondered whether it was Ray or Benton. She had only met the cats once – Ray a Siamese, Benton a white Persian – when she’d made the trip down to Juliette’s old house in Newquay the previous year. She wondered if they’d mind a Yorkipoo invading their space.

‘We can talk about Gertie when you’re here,’ Juliette said. ‘How feasible, and expensive, all this conversion business is. Come and have a holiday. You’ve dealt with so much recently, Char. Losing Hal …’

‘Losing my boyfriend and my uncle in quick succession, and being forced into a break by my boss because I’m too calamitous to be trusted?’

‘You’ve also gained a bus,’ Juliette added enthusiastically. ‘But it can’t be easy at the moment, and I’m not sure you’ve taken time to process it all. Come and dip your toes in our beautiful blue waters, soak up the salt and the spray. Rejuvenate, revitalize.’

‘Do a whole load of yoga?’ Charlie asked.

‘The benefits are incredible,’ Juliette pressed. ‘You’ve never given it a chance.’

‘I promise I will. This time.’

She heard Juliette’s sharp breath. ‘So you’re coming, then? Soon?’

Charlie watched a couple of starlings wheeling in the grey sky. ‘Yes,’ she said, her stomach lurching at the suddenness of her decision. ‘I’m coming. How does next week sound?’

She wasn’t sure if the noise was one of the cats, or Juliette squeaking with delight.

‘Next week sounds perfect. God, Charlie. I can’t wait to introduce you to my beautiful village. You’re going to fall in love with it, just like we have.’

Charlie hugged her mum and dad goodbye the following Monday morning. She was expecting an outpouring of emotion, but their smiles were warm and, she thought, a little on the smug side.