The Beach Café Read online

  We’d reached the bottom of the path by now, and stepped onto the beach. It was low tide, and the waves had left curved ripples, like scales, on the wet sand. Clumps of bladderwrack lay black and glistening where the tide had dumped them, and the wind tugged at what was left of my cropped hair, tickling the back of my bare neck. The beach was empty, except for us and a man with a lolloping black Labrador and two little blonde girls in spotty wellies, who were shrieking and running around with the dog.

  I couldn’t help veering towards the café, drawn helplessly to it. Mum and Dad had stayed overnight up in Jo’s flat there, as Mum had wanted to make sure all the practicalities had been taken care of: the fridge emptied, the heating turned off, the windows securely locked, that kind of thing. ‘Come on,’ I said to Matthew. ‘Let’s go in, have a cup of tea and talk to the staff.’

  He wrinkled his nose suspiciously. ‘Evie, wouldn’t it be better not to get caught up emotionally in this? What are you going to say? I mean—’

  I knew what he meant. He wanted me to get shot of the whole caboodle as quickly as it had landed in my lap. Why say anything to anyone? Why get involved? Maybe it would be easy for him to do that without becoming sentimental, but me, I wasn’t made like that. ‘Matthew, the café was Jo’s. How can I react any way other than emotionally?’ I snapped. I wished he didn’t have to be so down on the place. I wished—

  ‘Evie, Mr Davis has asked for coffee again. How much longer are you going to be?’

  A sharp, nasal voice broke into my thoughts. I looked up from my computer screen to see Jacqueline, Mr Davis’s PA, glaring at me between her thickly mascaraed false eyelashes. It was like being confronted by Bambi with a bad attitude.

  ‘Two minutes,’ I said evenly, trying not to rise to her goading. It struck me as ridiculous that Mr Davis couldn’t actually drag his fat arse to the kitchen to make his own coffee, if he was dying of thirst; and presumably Jacqueline, who was only a glorified secretary herself, felt it beneath her too. What was so demeaning about – gasp! – flicking a switch on a kettle with your own finger, for God’s sake, or walking to the Starbucks on the High Street, even?

  Jo had never treated her staff like scum, never bullied them, never made them feel crap. You could tell from the way they’d all turned up at her funeral with lowered heads and tears in their eyes. According to Mum, the café had been closed for a few days after her death out of respect, and when we dropped in on Saturday, the staff who were working there still looked shell-shocked. My gaze had automatically flicked to the counter, expecting to see Jo at the coffee machine, sharing a joke and a laugh with a customer. Of course she wasn’t, though.

  The café wasn’t huge, but it gave the illusion of space, with its high timbered ceiling, and the large windows and glass doors that opened out onto the deck. Inside, there were eight tables, and a couple of booths by the windows. Outside, there were wooden tables and chairs, with colourful beach umbrellas that provided shade when the sun was blazing down. On hot days, the glass doors could be folded back so that the breeze floated inside, although on cooler days the doors were shut tight, and the place felt cosy and warm, especially when you saw the white-headed waves churning tempestuously as they rushed foaming up the beach.

  Jo had always made the cakes and pastries herself, and it gave me another pang to see the cake counter empty that day. Clearly nobody had felt up to filling her shoes when it came to providing the most sinfully delicious chocolate brownies in Cornwall, or the yummiest fruity flapjacks. Oh, Jo . . . It seemed impossible that she wasn’t ever going to walk out of the kitchen again with a tray of freshly baked goodies. ‘Get one of these down you,’ she’d always say.

  I wondered how the staff were feeling about working in the café now. Cornwall didn’t exactly have high employment rates, and they were surely worrying about their future job prospects. One of the girls behind the counter looked barely sixteen, with her fresh little face and henna-red ponytail. What would she do if the café closed? What would any of them do? It wasn’t just a business I had inherited, it was people’s lives too.

  I tried to shake the red-haired girl’s face out of my head and return to the real world, this Oxford office world, as I waited for Mr Davis’s letter to print. It was taking ages, I registered dimly, glancing over at the printer. Then I noticed that a red light was flashing ominously. PRINTER ERROR, the display panel read.

  My phone was ringing. Emails were pinging. Jacqueline was looking pointedly at the clock, and Mr Davis was heaving himself out of his chair and lumbering towards me, no doubt with images of my bottom dancing before his eyes. Oh God. I only just managed to bite back the scream of frustration that rose inside my throat.

  ‘I really, really, really hate working in that office,’ I moaned later, to my best friend Amber. We’d met after work for a drink in The Bear, a cosy ye-olde-type pub in town, and it had taken me a large gin and tonic and a packet of peanuts to feel even slightly less harassed. ‘I hate it, hate it, hate it.’

  Amber wrinkled her nose. ‘How long’s your contract for?’ she asked.

  ‘Another month. Four sodding weeks. Twenty bloody days. I can’t do it, Amber, I just can’t. I’ve started hiding the filing in a cupboard, because I’m so behind on it, and have been fantasizing about bottom-armour to protect myself from Evil Colin’s molesting hands.’ I sighed. ‘That’s not good, is it?’

  ‘That’s not good, babe,’ Amber agreed. ‘Nothing else come up from the agency?’

  ‘Nope,’ I said gloomily. ‘They don’t care. As long as they’re getting their cut, they’re just leaving me to get on with it.’

  ‘Well, you know what I’m going to say,’ Amber began, her dangly earrings swinging as she leaned nearer to me. ‘Life is too damn short to waste it in that boring office.

  Think of all the other stuff you could be doing. Fun stuff! Stuff you enjoy! Stuff that makes you happy!’

  ‘I know,’ I said, but she was on a roll. Once Amber’s in full flow, you might as well drink your drink and let her get it all off her chest.

  ‘I mean, there are other jobs in Oxford,’ she reminded me, slapping a hand down on the table in emphasis. ‘Plenty of other jobs. It’s not like you have to work there because there’s nowhere else.’ Another slap. Our glasses wobbled. ‘Tell them to eff off and walk out, that’s what I would do.’

  ‘I know you would, but—’ She would, too. Amber had been through even more careers than me. We’d met at drama school, so she’d suffered the actor-wannabe torture as well, although, unlike me, she’d never truly given up on her dream. She’d had bit parts in EastEnders and Emmerdale to show for it, lucky thing, as well as several seasons in panto, and various roles in local theatre productions. Sure, she’d also been a till-monkey in a museum shop, tried a stint as a commis chef in the Randolph, set herself up as a freelance events organizer (for all of six months) and, more recently, was working in a florist’s over in Jericho, but she was still auditioning, still hoping, still learning lines and stepping into other characters’ shoes. I wasn’t sure if she was dedicated or deluded, but she could at least claim to have ambition, which was more than I could say for myself these days.

  ‘But nothing, Evie!’ she interrupted now. She flung up her hands and her chunky silver rings glittered in the pub lights – one, two, three, four. ‘Where’s your bottle gone? Come September, you’ll be slaving away at college and you’ll wish you’d done something more exciting over the summer.’

  ‘Matthew thought it would be a good idea to save up . . .’ I started saying, but she raised an eyebrow, and nothing else came out of my mouth.

  ‘Remember India? He thought it was a good idea for you to do something boring then, too,’ she said, drumming a stubby-nailed finger on the table. ‘And you totally missed out!’

  ‘I know,’ I said wretchedly. ‘I hear what you’re saying. But . . .’

  ‘I’m getting us another drink,’ she told me. ‘And then we’ll come up with a plan. I’ll be right back.’


  I watched as she strode to the bar. Amber was tall and skinny, with long, flame-red hair that tumbled down her back in waves. She had blue eyes, a wide full-lipped mouth, and a dirty, throaty laugh. She wasn’t classically beautiful, but there was something about her – some invisible energy, or effervescence – that meant people noticed her, turned their heads and looked at her, wherever she was. As usual, she was wearing skinny jeans that showed off her skinny bum (a ‘copper’s arse’ I used to tease her – as in ‘Call the cops, someone’s stolen her arse!’), a scoop-necked black top and a jumble of scarves and jewellery around her neck. Her silver-sequinned baseball boots twinkled with reflected lights as she walked back, bearing full glasses.

  ‘What about that café, then?’ she said, when she sat down again. She pushed a gin over to me and took a slurp of her own red wine. ‘What happened when you were down there?’

  ‘Well, I had a chat with the staff,’ I said. ‘There are just three of them at the moment because the season hasn’t started yet. So there’s the chef, Carl, who seems a total prat, and then two teenagers, Seb and Saffron, who only work there on Saturdays. I told them that, as the new owner of the café, I would look after them and make sure nothing happened without giving them plenty of notice, but . . .’ I shrugged. ‘I was a bit vague, really. Matthew told me I shouldn’t have spoken to them until I had clearer plans, but I felt I had to say something.’

  It had been pretty awkward, actually. The red-haired girl, Saffron, had practically glared at me, so suspicious did she look when I told her I’d inherited the café. ‘Right – so you’re going to be running this place, from two hundred miles away?’ she’d asked disbelievingly. ‘How’s that gonna work?’

  I’d forced a smile, not liking the chippy look on her face. ‘Well, I’m not sure yet,’ I confessed. ‘I guess I’ll need to take on a manager, someone who’ll be here during the week, unless, Carl, you could serve the customers as well as cook for them . . . ?’

  Carl, who was lanky and olive-skinned, with oily brown hair tied back in a ponytail, looked scornful. ‘Right,’ he drawled. ‘So you want me to serve customers, cook, wash up, ring up the till – all on my own? All for the same pay? No chance, love.’

  My cheeks burned at the patronizing ‘love’. I was at least ten years older than him, the cocky shit. ‘Fair enough, it was only a suggestion,’ I said coldly. ‘Okay, in that case, I’ll advertise for somebody else. In the meantime, I guess the café will have to be closed during the week.’

  ‘Great,’ Carl snapped. ‘So I’m losing four days’ work, just like that? Brilliant.’

  ‘Well, what’s the alternative?’ I asked, through gritted teeth.

  ‘Oh, all right,’ he moaned. ‘But I want a pay rise if I’m going to have to do more.’

  Seb, the other member of staff, hadn’t spoken all this time. He looked about seventeen and had a pleasant pimply face and a thatch of straw-coloured hair. He wore a bright purple T-shirt with the slogan I AM NOT A GEEK. I AM A LEVEL-9 WARLORD printed on it. ‘I was hoping to take on more shifts when it’s half-term,’ he said when I turned questioningly to him. ‘That’s when the café starts getting busy, and Jo usually needs more help. So maybe Saff and I could pitch in that week, and—’

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ Saffron interrupted rudely.

  I sighed. This wasn’t going very well. ‘Look, I know it’s not great for anyone, but let’s try and pull together, shall we? For Jo’s sake? Seb, that would be brilliant if you could come in over the half-term week, I really appreciate it. That’s the end of the month, yeah? Great. Carl, I’ll be in touch about pay once I’ve gone through the books.’

  And that was the best I could offer. I’d taken away masses of paperwork to decipher and had been wading through it ever since, attempting to keep up with the bills and wages and untangling various correspondences. The reality of having inherited a business had suddenly become very daunting.

  ‘Whoa,’ Amber said, when I told her all of this. ‘You’ve got your hands full, then.’

  ‘I know,’ I replied. ‘It’s a massive job. And everyone keeps on at me to sell up and be done with it, but I don’t know if it’s the right thing to do. Jo loved that place – it was her life. And for me to just stick up a “For Sale” sign, and—’

  Amber wrinkled her nose. ‘Yeah, but realistically, what else can you do? Run the place from Oxford? That’s never going to work,’ she said bluntly.

  ‘It might do,’ I countered. ‘If I found the right manager, if I could get someone like Jo to run it for me . . .’ I trailed off, not even convincing myself. Jo was one in a million. She was irreplaceable.

  ‘And, if you did decide to sell up, you wouldn’t need to temp any more, would you?’ Amber went on. ‘You’d be quids in! You could tell that Colin to sling his hook, and walk out of there tomorrow. Have yourself a little holiday. Maybe even take your best mate along too . . .’ She leaned back in her seat triumphantly, clearly viewing this as the trump card. She had a point. The thought of sticking it to Colin was so tempting that my fingers twitched at the prospect of flinging themselves into V-signs. The thought of Amber and me hanging out on a beach was even better. I had a sudden vision of us tanned and drunk, clinking glasses of ouzo together on a Greek island, or cold beers on the Costa del Whatever.

  Then I felt guilty for imagining a holiday without Matthew and tried to Photoshop him into the vision, but he just started complaining about the heat and worrying about the food hygiene. ‘You know what my dicky tummy’s like,’ I heard him say in my head, and cringed.

  Amber, meanwhile, was warming to her theme. ‘Yeah, I reckon that’s your best option. Sell the café, make yourself a wodge of cash – and Bob’s your uncle, college paid for and sorted. That’s what I would do.’

  ‘Would you?’ I was surprised she was being so businesslike about it. ‘What, just like that?’

  ‘Absolutely just like that,’ she replied. ‘I mean, providing you definitely want to do this teaching thing, of course?’

  ‘Ye-e-es . . .’ I said, more hesitantly than I meant to.

  Her eyes narrowed. ‘Evie, you don’t sound very convincing,’ she told me. ‘Because if you’ve changed your mind, you could always get down to Cornwall instead and run the café yourself. What’s stopping you? A beach summer would be amazing!’

  I was just about to say that there were lots of things stopping me, of course – like Matthew and Saul and work, and . . . well, everything else, obviously – when in the nick of time my phone went and I snatched it up, oddly grateful to have been interrupted. It was only my mum asking me round for Sunday dinner, but it meant I could duck out of Amber’s fierce line of questioning, thank goodness. A beach summer in Carrawen would be amazing, but I couldn’t possibly consider it.

  After I’d hung up again, I went straight in with a query about the new production she was auditioning for at the Playhouse, and kept well away from the subject of my career for the rest of the evening. It felt safer that way.

  Chapter Four

  It got me thinking, though. Amber was right about one thing – however emotionally attached I was to the café, it would be difficult to look after it properly all the way from Oxford. But, if I sold it (sorry, Jo), then I wouldn’t have to stick out my awful temp job any more. I’d have money and freedom, and I’d be able to do whatever I chose for a while. I could even postpone the teaching course, which was looming unpleasantly ahead of me, however positively I tried to think about it.

  Back at home that evening I turned on my laptop, then connected to a property website.

  ‘What are you up to?’ Matthew asked, coming to stand behind me and massage my shoulders. ‘Not planning to move out, are you?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ I said. ‘I’m just curious to know what prices are like in Cornwall. I mean, for the café.’

  ‘Ahh.’ He sounded approving. Good girl, Evie, doing the sensible thing – bravo. ‘Obviously you wouldn’t be able to sell it straight away: paperwork, et
cetera, and—’

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ I interrupted, typing in the postcode and pressing Search, ‘but I just want to get an idea. I was thinking . . . Well, I might be able to leave my job. Which would be nice.’ I gave a short laugh. ‘More than nice, actually. It would be a bloody godsend.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said again. This was a different kind of ‘Ah’, though – less approving, more wary. ‘Obviously you can’t bank on selling quickly . . .’

  ‘Obviously,’ I agreed, leaning closer to the screen as the first ten results appeared.

  ‘And obviously there would be the estate agent’s commission to pay, and—’

  ‘All right, all right, I know!’ I said, irritated by the way he was speaking to me – as if I was some kind of halfwit, as if I didn’t have a clue. Just because he had actually bought a house before, while I’d been a terminal renter all my life, didn’t give him the right to patronize me with all his ‘obviously’s.

  The massaging stopped abruptly. ‘No need to bite my head off,’ he said huffily, walking away. ‘Only trying to be helpful.’

  ‘I know, but . . .’ I began, although he was already out of earshot. ‘I can manage,’ I mumbled, staring at the screen again and scrolling down the results. Nothing. Then I scrolled down the next ten. And the next. Hmm. There were lots of pretty cottages and luxury apartments for sale, but nothing that resembled Jo’s place in the slightest.

  I frowned. Well, what had I been expecting? Jo’s café was unique. Of course there wouldn’t be anything similar on the market. I’d have to contact an estate agent directly and get them to give me a price estimate. Not that I had made up my mind to sell yet – I hadn’t. I just wanted to know the facts before I made any decisions.