The Beach Café Read online

  ‘Wait!’ she shrieked. ‘You can’t just walk out!’

  ‘Watch me,’ I said, and swished past her, right out of the door before she could argue.

  My heart was galloping, I was shaking all over and my breath was coming out hard and fast, as if I’d just run up six flights of stairs. Oh my God, Evie, I thought, as the cool air of the morning hit me outside. What just happened in there? What did you just do?

  I cycled over to Matthew’s office on the other side of town and phoned him. I was alternating between euphoria at having quit and shock at how quickly and theatrically it had happened. But nobody with an ounce of sanity or self-respect could have stayed on working for King Sluggo, especially after the take-down-your-knickers remark. You had to know your bottom line, as my mum might have (inappropriately) commented. And when that line was crossed, it was time to make a stand.

  Well, I’d done that all right.

  ‘Hi,’ I said, when Matthew picked up his phone. ‘Fancy skiving off for half an hour so you can meet me for a quick coffee?’

  There was a moment’s silence, when I could imagine him blinking in surprise. Silly me. Matthew wasn’t exactly the skiving type, and especially not on the spontaneous whim of his work-shy girlfriend. ‘I mean – you could call it your early lunch break,’ I put in helpfully, ‘or—’

  ‘What do you mean? Where are you?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m outside your office. Just – ’ Just walked out of mine, was on the tip of my tongue, but suddenly I bit it back. I knew a revelation like that wouldn’t go down terribly well, blurted out over the phone. ‘Just fancied a break,’ I lied.

  ‘Um . . . Well, I’m right in the middle of something,’ he said. He was still working with the same IT geeks from the Christmas party all those years ago, as a programmer for a technical software company. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘It’s kind of important,’ I told him. ‘Please?’

  ‘So is this,’ he replied. ‘Sorry, Evie, maybe later on.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, trying not to feel deflated. I had all the time in the world, after all, now that I was unemployed. ‘I can wait. I’ll be in Marian’s, so come and join me when you can.’

  Marian’s was a café over the road from Matthew’s office. It was dingy inside, with the ceiling still stained tobacco-brown from the pre-smoking-ban years, and every other surface bore a lingering trace of chip fat. My tea came in one of those stainless-steel teapots that couldn’t actually pour the tea without spilling it everywhere – a pretty basic design flaw, I’d always thought – and the UHT ‘milk’ was served in little plastic cartons that were practically impossible to open. I went crazy and bought a packet of shortbread fingers as well, but they were way too chunky and made my mouth feel as if it were full of cardboard when I bit into one.

  I couldn’t help contrasting it all to Jo’s café: the sea breeze versus the drone of a grubby ceiling fan, the sandwiches made from fresh bakery bread instead of anaemic-looking mass-produced slices, the cakes and biscuits warm from Jo’s oven rather than factory-made, and then wrapped in cellophane for God knows how long . . . There was no comparison. The two were poles apart.

  You are the only person to whom I would entrust my precious café. I remembered Jo’s words from her letter, and I felt a pulling sensation inside. Then I knew exactly what I should do. No, not just ‘should do’ – needed to do.

  The girl behind the counter put on the Mamma Mia! album just then and I heard Amanda Seyfried’s clear, high voice sing ‘I have a dream . . .’

  I left the rest of my tea and got to my feet. Matthew hadn’t showed up, but I couldn’t wait any longer. I had plans to make, I had packing to do. Cornwall was calling me and, for the first time in ages, I had a dream.

  Chapter Five

  Dreams are all very well in the heat of the moment, but by the next morning they can look different. Mine certainly did. The night before I’d been fired up with a vision that I’d honour Jo’s memory by taking on the café and making it better than it had ever been. I’d get it redecorated, perhaps even build an extension, expand the business. I’d hire a brilliant new manager who’d run it on a day-today basis, while I, as the owner, would drop in every month to give my devoted staff pep talks and inspiration. Perhaps I’d suggest new additions to the menu, or throw parties for the villagers to thank them for their custom. And together we’d build up a devoted clientele, who came from miles around to sit and admire the views and enjoy the mouth-watering delights on our menus. No longer would the customers be people merely drifting up from the beach – oh no. I would put Carrawen Bay on the map. Holidaymakers would choose to go there especially because I’d made the café such a success.

  ‘Your aunt would have been proud,’ the villagers would say when they came in. ‘We can’t believe how well you’re managing the café without her – and all the way from Oxford, too!’

  By the time I was halfway to Cornwall the following day though, I wasn’t so sure if it was that I had a dream, or that I was living in a dream. Boring reality was trickling in, dampening all my big ideas. I couldn’t even run my own bank account, let alone a full-grown business. I didn’t have a clue about managing staff or giving pep talks. And Oxford was a bloody long way from Cornwall. Too far to be popping back and forth all the time.

  Matthew had put it more bluntly. ‘What sort of normal person quits their job to babysit a beach café two hundred miles away?’ he’d asked over dinner the night before. ‘I just think this is a bit . . . reckless, Evie. I don’t think you’ve thought it through properly.’

  Well, if I was being reckless, it felt surprisingly good. Dangerously good in fact. To hell with boring reality. There I was in the car, with my overnight bag packed, the keys to the café and the knowledge that I never had to answer the phone with ‘Crossland Financial Solutions, Evie speaking, how-may-I-help-you?’ for the rest of my days. I’d never have to be in the same room as Colin Slime-bucket Davis again. And every time I imagined Jacqueline’s look of horror when she discovered that massive wedge of filing I’d left her, I couldn’t help but laugh to myself. It was Friday, the sun was beaming down, I was singing along to the radio at the top of my voice and, best of all, I was heading for the beach. My beach. Yes, all in all, I was in way too cheerful a mood to be having any sort of crisis. I felt as if I’d just unlocked a cage and set myself free. Now I was stretching my wings, taking flight, and—

  BEEEEEP!

  A white van was blowing its horn and flashing its lights behind me and I realized I’d been so absorbed in my daydream that I’d slowed to fifty miles an hour. I had to concentrate, I was nearly at Exeter and always managed to get in the wrong lane when the motorway ended.

  ‘What are you going to do down there anyway?’ Matthew had asked when I’d begun packing up a case of clothes and toiletries.

  ‘Well, you know,’ I’d replied airily. ‘Make sure everything’s running smoothly and the staff are managing okay. Help out in the kitchen, or—’

  ‘You? In the kitchen?’ Matthew had snorted. ‘Anyway, I thought you were going to sell the café?’ He sounded suspicious, as if I was planning to trick him in some way. ‘I thought you’d decided?’

  No, Matthew, I said inside my head. You’d decided that. But I hadn’t.

  I’d shrugged, tucking in a few paperbacks I’d been meaning to read for ages. ‘I just need to be there at the moment, that’s all,’ I replied. I knew this would sound irritatingly flaky to Matthew, who had no truck with whims and fancies, so I added, ‘Look, humour me, will you? It’s something I want to do. I’ll be home again in a few days, and life will go back to normal.’

  His lower lip seemed to be sticking out. Surely he wasn’t going to sulk about this?

  ‘I’ll bring you back a Cornish pasty, how about that?’ I said, trying to lighten the mood.

  He sneered. He was sulking. ‘I don’t even like them,’ he muttered, huffing out of the room.

  I’d felt a tiny bit bad, but not nearly bad enough to stop me
going. And why the hell shouldn’t I go? This was a big deal, this inheritance. Way more important than a crappy temping job with the Human Slug. And yes, okay, so I didn’t have a game plan as to what I’d actually do when I got to Cornwall, but that didn’t matter. I just needed to make sure everything was ticking along as it should be. I could make up the rest when I got there.

  I sighed, thinking back to when Matthew and I had said goodbye that morning. It hadn’t exactly been on the best of terms. Neither of us had slept well the night before. I’d tried to snuggle up to him, hoping to make friends again, but he’d turned his back on me. Sex wasn’t on the cards then – not that that was any big surprise. It had been weeks. I was beginning to think Matthew had gone off me lately. There were only so many times a bloke told you he was ‘too tired’ before a girl started taking it personally.

  Over breakfast we’d both been quiet – me, because I felt vacant and spacey from tossing and turning all night, and him because . . . well, I got the feeling he was still in a tremendous strop with me. He grunted when I asked if he wanted a coffee and barely looked in my direction. Was he trying to guilt-trip me into changing my mind and not going? I wondered. If so, it wasn’t working.

  ‘What’s up?’ I asked after a while. ‘Is this about me heading off to Cornwall? Because I do need to get this sorted out, you know. Whatever happens – whatever decision I make – I do actually have to go there at least once more. And now seems a good time.’

  ‘What with you having flounced out of your job, you mean,’ he put in, rather too caustically for my liking.

  I glared at him, fed up with his sulks. ‘Yeah, that’s right,’ I said. ‘What with me flouncing out of my job. I don’t know what came over me. It was such a great place to work, as well. I must have been mad.’

  He stood up, even though he hadn’t finished eating. ‘Suit yourself,’ he grumbled, leaving the room.

  I ground my teeth as I heard him stomping upstairs. He was a fine one to talk about flouncing anywhere. And – I broke off from my train of thought as I realized I’d been in completely the wrong lane for the A30, and was now heading merrily into the centre of Exeter instead. Bollocks! I thumped the steering wheel in frustration, blaming Matthew entirely for my slip-up.

  It took almost five hours to get down to Carrawen Bay, including an impromptu lunch break in Exeter, and then twenty minutes swearing furiously as I tried to find my way back to the Cornwall road, with the rain lashing down in buckets all the while, so hard I worried that my wipers were about to fly off in their vain attempts to clear the screen. Then, just as I’d passed Launceston and was thinking I was onto the home straight, I got stuck behind a muck-spreader, which crawled along at fifteen miles an hour. I didn’t have space to overtake for ages and could feel impatience bubbling inside me as it trundled along, leaving clods of mud on the road in its wake.

  But at long last, the muck-spreader turned off at Pendoggett, and then my spirits lifted as I had my first glimpse of the Atlantic, dark and grey though it was. Now the trees were becoming more hunched over, forced into growing in strange, bent shapes by the battering wind that swept across from the sea. The black-and-white Cornish flag fluttered from the tops of pubs and B&Bs and, just ten minutes later, I was heading into Carrawen, and the storm seemed to be blowing itself out.

  It was only as I passed the grocery shop – Betty’s Pantry – that I realized I’d brought absolutely no groceries with me, not even a carton of milk. I pulled over to the side of the road and hesitated. There would probably be stuff at the café I could use, but it didn’t seem right just to start helping myself. So I turned off the engine, grabbed my purse and dashed into the shop to pick up a few things.

  Betty – if that was the stout, pinny-wearing, blue-rinse lady behind the counter – raised her eyes from the copy of OK! magazine she was flicking through as I hurried in and stared at me for a moment, as if trying to place me. Then she gave a loud snort of derision and turned back to her page.

  I felt slightly discomfited – was the snort aimed at me? – but assured myself quickly that no, of course it wasn’t. Betty didn’t know who I was, so why would she be snorting at me? It was probably some shenanigans in her magazine that had caused the noise of contempt. Misbehaving celebrities, no doubt, or drunken members of the aristocracy. Fair enough. They often warranted a snort from me, too.

  I began loading my basket. Cereal, bread, butter, cheese, milk, teabags, a huge slab of chocolate – well, why not? It was kind of a holiday, wasn’t it? . . . Then I heard the mutter. ‘That’s her over there, Jo’s niece.’

  ‘What, the one who—’

  ‘Yep. Her.’

  I spun round in surprise. Betty was leaning on the counter talking to a younger woman with a short peroxide-blonde bob, wearing a pink velour tracksuit. Both were staring quite openly at me, with scornful looks on their faces.

  I stared back for a moment, my heart thumping. ‘Are . . . are you talking about me?’ I asked eventually.

  ‘Yep,’ Betty replied, folding her doughy arms in front of her. Her dark, piggy eyes glittered with dislike. Bloody hell. I felt like I’d wandered into a Wild West saloon all of a sudden.

  ‘I’m surprised you can show your face around here,’ the blonde woman tutted, looking down her sharp little nose at me. ‘What a nerve!’ She turned her back pointedly and addressed Betty. ‘Twenty Lambert & Butler for me, love.’

  I gaped, completely confused. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I said, feeling hot all over. ‘But you’ve got it wrong, whatever it is. I’ve just come down here to—’

  ‘Oh, you don’t need to explain,’ Betty interrupted, without deigning to look at me. She handed over a pack of cigarettes to the blonde woman and took the money. ‘We’ve heard all about it. And let me tell you, Jo would have been ashamed of you. Downright ashamed.’

  I stood there, still utterly in the dark. ‘Look, there’s obviously been some misunderstanding,’ I tried wretchedly, but Betty wouldn’t let me finish.

  ‘Save your breath,’ she snapped, ‘but understand this: you’re not welcome in my shop. So you can just put those things back on the shelf right now, because I won’t be serving you.’ Then she counted the change into the blonde woman’s hand. ‘Eighty, ninety, five pounds. Thanks, Marilyn.’

  The blonde woman left the shop and I went up to the counter. ‘Please can you just tell me what this is all about?’ I asked, hoping to appeal to any shred of decency that the old bag might possess.

  She merely jerked a thumb at the door. ‘How many times do I have to tell you? Out! Hoppit!’

  I gave up. I left my basket of groceries on the floor – she could dream on, if she expected me to meekly put them all back – and walked out, feeling bruised by the encounter and still baffled. What the hell was all that about?

  ‘Okay,’ I muttered to myself as I got back into the car. ‘So . . . I’ll just go straight to the café then.’

  It was mid-afternoon and the village seemed quiet. I drove past an old man leaning heavily on a stick and a young guy walking a collie, but there was barely another soul around. The houses and pavement glistened wet from the rain as the church clock tolled the half-hour, and I felt self-conscious, imagining curtains twitching as my car went by, and the whispers of contempt: There she goes. Her. What’s she doing here anyway? Doesn’t she know she’s not welcome?

  I tried to snap out of my paranoia. I was being silly. Betty had got the wrong end of the stick about something, but that didn’t mean the rest of the villagers would have it in for me. Rude old cow. I’d steer well clear of her shop while I was down here, that was for sure. I imagined she packed a hefty right hook.

  I rounded the corner, almost through the village now. There was the sea in front of me, wild and choppy-looking, with white crests on the cold, grey waves as they crashed into the bay. The seagulls were keening above the water, their harsh cries like spiteful laughter as they dipped and swooped. I unrolled my window, suddenly needing to brea
the in the fresh sea air after the disconcerting experience in Betty’s shop, and the cold wind burst inside, wrapping itself around my burning face.

  And then, at last, there was the café – thank goodness. It sat there like a place of refuge; I couldn’t remember ever feeling so glad to see it, so relieved to be back. I was somewhat apprehensive too, though, as I pulled into the small car park tucked behind it. I still hadn’t quite got my head around all of this – me owning the café, and Jo no longer being there. And, like Betty, the staff hadn’t exactly been pleased to see me the last time I’d been in. In fact, Carl and the red-haired girl, Saffron, had been pretty rude. But I was sure all that would change once we got to know each other, and we could work together to keep the café busy and successful like one big happy f –

  Oh. I had just noticed how much litter there was strewn around the car park. The wind sent a couple of crisp packets whirling about off the ground, like blue-and-green butterflies. And . . . Gross! One of the dustbins had fallen over and its bin bag had been half-dragged out – by the yobbish seagulls probably. It had been ripped open, and the contents had spilled everywhere.

  I frowned. Not exactly the best first impression for the place. Back when I’d worked for her, Jo had been super-strict about fastening the bin lids on tightly. I’d teased her about it, calling her obsessed, but maybe she’d had a point.

  Oh well. Perhaps it was too much to expect the staff to carry on doing everything perfectly without her. They were probably under a lot of strain, trying to keep the place going without her guidance. I bet they missed her loads. I couldn’t be too hard on them right now.

  I got out of the car and locked it, then began walking towards the front of the café. Something rustled behind me and I swung around just in time to see a long, scaly tail flick behind the bin and vanish. Oh God. A rat! I really hated rats. And I was pretty sure that the Environmental Health people weren’t all that keen on having them hanging around cafés, either. Shit. I was going to have to play Bad Cop with the staff, and remind everyone to clear up the rubbish properly. That would go down well.