The Grand Reopening Of Dandelion Cafe

Annie sucked in a breath. He could make her feel tiny. Like a snail on the doorstep looking up at his looming figure.

‘Anyway, look, Annie, before you go, you need to sort that business out. It’s just haemorrhaging money.’

‘Jonathan, I’ll deal with it.’

‘You can’t just ignore it, Annie. Get it sold. Better yet, tear it down.’ He crossed his arms in front of him and leant against the door jamb, talking as if there was no other possible opinion than his. ‘It’s not listed, it’s not a conservation area, they’d let you knock it down. If anything it’d be a blessing ‒ give a better view of the cherry trees. I mean, that’s why people come here, isn’t it? There’s better food at the pub, better views of the river. Flog them the cherry pie recipe and your hands are clean. I can do it for you if you want.’

‘Oh yeah, right,’ Annie laughed. ‘You must be joking.’

‘Annie,’ her mum warned.

She watched Jonathan’s nostrils flare as he breathed in through his nose. ‘I got a good price for that land, Annie.’

Annie scoffed. ‘You succumbed to a developer’s charm and you know it.’

The reminder of the land her dad had owned made Annie mad and she had to look away for a moment. Take in the rows of neatly planted mini daffodils that lined the front path and the foxgloves and delphiniums standing tall by the front gate. A lot of people moaned about the gardening conditions on Cherry Pie, too damp to grow anything. But her mother had never had any trouble. Her allotment was the same, competition-worthy vegetables every year without fail. And the Cherry Pie Veg-Off trophy on her mantelpiece year after year.

Jonathan was covering his back, waffling on about bringing the island into the twenty-first century, while Winifred tried to placate the situation. ‘Maybe you should talk to Valtar about the accounts?’ she suggested, waving away Jonathan’s snort of derision that implied the place wasn’t worth a penny.

Annie remembered the reading of the will, where it was revealed that the bulk of her father’s property portfolio had been left to her brother. Most of it she was happy for him to have; the shops in Soho, the restaurant in Vauxhall, the townhouses in Southampton. But the wasteland on the far side of the island, that her dad had been umming and ahhing about what to do with ‒ contemplating everything from a wetland centre to a cinema ‒ Annie had desperately wanted. Her intention being to preserve that land, and his dream. To do something good and beautiful with it. But it had all gone to Jonathan because he was the one they all trusted. He wasn’t the one who’d made the mistakes. He was the one with the bloody PhD. She’d ram that certificate up his nose if it wasn’t framed in his surgery.

And what had he done? He’d been duped by a smarmy developer and flogged the plot in a deal that still made people wince when they talked about it. Her father had been a wheeler-dealer, no bones about it. Alan Sugar crossed with Arthur Daley. He chucked a bit of money here. A bit there. Lackadaisical with a streak of ruthlessness. Built up an empire during the week based on shady deals done in the back rooms of pubs and cafes off the beaten track. Places where she sat at the counter and ate ice cream while he went out the back for a meeting that seemed, to little Annie, to involve mainly wild hand gestures and oodles of red wine. But however shady, it was all done with a heart of gold, a Robin Hood moral compass that made him continually bat away the very developers that her brother had fallen straight in with. A generosity of spirit that made people nod to him in the street as he walked past. Had people turning up on their doorstep at all hours needing help with their problems. He was like the unofficial mayor and while he was alive the island just knew it was safe.

Sadly, the only thing her brother had inherited from her father was his stubborn self-belief. The rest ‒ the entrepreneurial skill, the emotional intelligence, the Lady Luck chancer gene ‒ had skipped him completely. It was Valtar who had diplomatically stepped in and saved the rest of the portfolio. Securing sensible deals at good rates when the market was buoyant.

‘OK, I’ll talk to Valtar.’ Annie nodded.

‘He’ll just tell you what I’m telling you,’ Jonathan sighed.

Annie cracked. ‘Oh for goodness sake. You’re so annoying. You’re a doctor, you know nothing about how to run a cafe.’

‘Oh and you do?’ he scoffed.

‘Please don’t argue.’ Winifred held her hands up to quiet the pair of them. ‘Remember, Annie, Dad wouldn’t have minded what you do with it, so don’t feel under any pressure.’

Suzi had come to the door with the yapping dog in her arms. ‘We’ve got to go, hun,’ she said, stroking Jonathan’s arm.

‘Me too,’ Annie said, flicking the flicky hair that she was completely un-used to behind her ear, for ever ruined by Jonathan’s teenage haircut comment, ‘Thanks for having me.’

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.