The Grand Reopening Of Dandelion Cafe

‘Mum.’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m not coming home to run a cafe. You know that, don’t you?’

‘Of course, darling. Of course.’ There was a pause. ‘But I’m assuming you’re going to come and just take a quick peek?’

Annie glanced back to her computer. Ten new emails. Three about the current project. The rest about the others that she’d taken on concurrently. She rubbed her eyes.

‘I have to go, I have to work. I’ve kind of over-promised myself.’

‘Well when will we see you?’

‘I don’t know. I have so much to do.’

‘Well it would be useful to know, sweetheart, because we’re doing a Come Dine With Me on Saturday and I’ll need to know whether to set another place. I lost last time to the bloody Senior Sister at work so I’m all out to win this one.’

Formed by a tributary off the Thames, in leafy West London, accessed only by a wooden footbridge, was the island Annie once called home. Quirky, odd, damp, secluded, Cherry Pie Island was a haven of artists’ shacks, houseboats, narrow lanes with ramshackle gardens overflowing with hollyhocks, a recording studio, boathouse, pub, a smattering of shops, a much-contested new-build development, and, of course, the Dandelion Cafe, where she now stood, a week too late for her mum’s Come Dine With Me evening.

Annie’s sleep patterns had been so disturbed by the now-complete work deadline that when she’d woken up at six she’d just got in the car. It was a half-hour drive from her Hampstead flat at this time in the morning, with no other cars on the road and now, as she yawned, she wished that she’d rolled over in bed and tried for a little more sleep.

At the end of the road she could see the sun ripple off the river in rings; swans gliding, brilliant white in the early-light; the pub garden twinkling with dew on the vine leaves; butter-yellow crocuses dotted along the path like goblets; the sounds in the still air of dogs barking, rowing blades on the water, a motorboat engine, the milk van. She took a step back to let it pass, and as it pulled in just past the cafe the same old milkman, Mr Lewis, jumped out and heaved up a crate of silver-topped bottles. She could barely believe he was still alive. He’d looked about eighty when she’d been little. The most miserable man on the island.

‘This place yours now I hear,’ he muttered as he laboriously hauled a crate of rattling milk bottles from the back of the van. ‘Make yourself useful. Thank you,’ he said as he thrust them at her. ‘Poisoned chalice,’ he added with a nod up towards the cafe.

‘Erm.’ Annie frowned, struggling under the weight of the unexpected milk crate, and feeling she should defend the cafe against his notoriously depressing point of view. ‘It could have potential,’ she said.

He laughed. ‘There’ll be a board on it by the end of the month I don’t doubt. You’ll have run a mile.’

He drove off at the two miles per hour that milk vans can drive while Annie was still trying to formulate a reply. The irritating point was he was probably right.

As she adjusted the milk crate in her arms she glanced to her left and paused for a second, catching sight of her very favourite view.

The cherry trees.

Planted on a slight hill at the back of the cafe, the ancient trees stood skew whiff and higgledy-piggledy. Branches like nets catching clouds from the sky, buds poised to pop in white bunches, a carpet of lush grass and wild flowers, snowdrops and crocuses, and little blue tits and chaffinches dancing from one perch to the next. The trees closest to her were so old and set now at such precarious angles, it was like their tired old branches were taking a rest on whatever they could find – their boughs propped up on the crumbling stone wall that hemmed them in, some tangled together like arms linked for support, one leaning on a huge sycamore that shaded the back yard of her cafe. This was the view on all the postcards they sold at The Cherry Pie General Store. And Annie adored it. It was the view that made her tilt her head to the side and wish she was ten years old and dressed in the new summer outfit her mum would buy her every year on a trip to London. Or maybe be seventeen and walking tipsily from one of the parties at the rowing club with the strokeman of the 1st VIII, feeling the back of his hand as it grazed against hers as the sun came up, or just lying in her bikini drinking 7Up and getting pissed off with her brother for spraying the hose at her.

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 (#ulink_58eafa30-25ea-5a9a-8981-4c2e3c4e80c7)

‘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.