The Grand Reopening Of Dandelion Cafe

‘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 (#ulink_cd4a3c13-f408-56e3-85c8-1ce75115129c)

‘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.