The Beach Cafe (4 page)

‘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.

I jotted down a couple of numbers and went to make peace with Matthew.

The next day in the office I waited until everyone had gone for their lunch breaks and then phoned one of the estate agents, who was based in Padstow, a few miles from Carrawen. I spoke to a very friendly bloke, who took down all my details and sounded extremely interested when I said I’d inherited the café and was wondering what to do with it. I could almost hear him rubbing his hands with glee in fact, when he told me he knew the very café I meant, and that it would be a splendid investment for a businessperson or a company – it was a prime spot of land, and absolutely ripe for redeveloping.

‘What, you mean a buyer might just . . . knock it down and build something else there?’ I said uncertainly. I hated the idea of someone ripping apart the beautiful old building, tearing down the wooden frame, dismantling the windows and doors. I had a vision of all the tables and chairs, the coffee machine, even the framed photos from the walls being dumped in a skip, and winced. I didn’t like the thought of the café being anything other than what it already was.

‘Absolutely,’ he enthused. ‘Obviously any purchaser would need to apply to the council first, in order to change the use of the building, but I wouldn’t think it would be a problem. It’s a wonderful beach; I’m amazed the area hasn’t been developed further before now, to be honest. When you look at what has happened to Padstow and Rock, the opportunity is there for the taking, frankly.’

‘Yes, but . . .’

‘We also get lots of clients interested in second homes in Carrawen Bay,’ he went on, not seeming to hear me. ‘
Lots
of clients. And it would be very easy for someone to turn the café into a luxury holiday home, for instance. Those views would make it a very special property.’

I squeezed my eyes shut, feeling disloyal to Jo as his words gushed into my ear. I could just imagine the look of horror on her face if she could hear me having this conversation. ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Only – well, there are people working in the café at the moment, you know, they have
jobs
, so I wouldn’t want them to lose out if I sold the place. And if I
was
going to sell it, I’d definitely want it to carry on being a café, so—’

He gave a cheerful laugh. ‘It doesn’t really work like that, I’m afraid, Miss Flynn,’ he replied. ‘It would be up to the buyer to do what they liked with it, once a sale had gone through. Do you want me to pop round, have a proper look at the place and give you a valuation? I could drop in later this week, if that’s convenient. Then, if you’re happy with the price, we can get the ball rolling, measure up, take some good photos and book in some viewings. I can think of at least five clients off the top of my head who’d be
very
interested. Yeah?’

I hesitated. This was all happening too quickly. I only wanted to sell the café if . . . Well, if someone like Jo was going to be there at the helm, keeping the place just as it had been run for all those years.

I sighed. I was dreaming, wasn’t I? I was kidding myself.

‘Miss Flynn?’ the estate agent prompted. ‘I could drop in on Thursday if—’

‘No,’ I interrupted. ‘No. Um . . . I need to think about this for a bit longer. Thanks for your help, though.’

‘Well, if you change your mind, give me a call back; my name’s Greg, and I’d be delighted to have this property on our books.’

I bet you would, Greg
, I thought miserably, replacing the receiver. Greg wouldn’t care about the kind of person he sold it to. He wouldn’t vet all the potential customers to make sure they were nice, decent people who would be custodians of the café, look after the staff and the building properly, would he? No. He’d be all too happy to flog it to the richest person who came along with plans to turn it into a spa complex for swanky types, as long as he got his big fat commission.

I sighed again and put my head on the desk. I couldn’t let that happen. I wouldn’t let that happen. But what was I supposed to do?

I slammed the front door behind me, threw my bag onto the floor and kicked off my shoes, sending one smacking against the hall radiator with a dull clang. ‘That bloody, bloody, bloody, BLOODY sex-pest,’ I fumed.

It was Wednesday, and I’d just had the worst day in the office ever. I’d overslept and then had a bike puncture on the way to work, making me doubly late, and meaning a bollocking from Jacqueline, followed by a ton of punishment filing. A crampy PMT had kicked in halfway through the morning, then at lunchtime I’d managed to wrench my ankle on one of the cobbled lanes off the High Street, and snapped the heel of my shoe clean off. Just to put the icing on the cake, later that afternoon Fatso Davis had ‘accidentally’ brushed his hand against my breast in the lift, making my skin crawl. I had jerked away from him in revulsion, but the smirk on his face let me know he’d copped a good old feel.

‘Bloody, bloody, BLOODY DISGUSTING – Oh. Hello, Saul.’ I broke off my tirade as I stormed into the kitchen and saw him at the table there, doing a jigsaw with Matthew. Saul was the absolute nicest kid in the world. He usually stayed with us on Wednesday and Saturday nights, and even in my worst PMT-and-sex-pest rage, just the sight of him was enough to make me feel better, as if the world had shifted onto its rightful axis again.

He jumped off his chair and ran over to hug me, and I wrapped my arms around him, kissing his lovely tufty brown hair.

‘I forgot it was Wednesday. Oooh, am I glad to see you, it feels like ages. Are you okay?’

‘Yep,’ he said. ‘I finished that Lego dinosaur, you know – do you want to see a picture of it?’

‘Too right I do,’ I replied, giving him a last squeeze before letting him go. It had taken Matthew a full six months to tell me he had a son, when we started seeing each other, and when he’d finally broken the news he’d been a bag of nerves, apologetic even, that there was this child in his life, this boy from his doomed first marriage. He shouldn’t have been nervous or apologetic, though: in my eyes, Saul was nothing but wonderful. Since I’d been introduced to Saul, my life had grown accordingly to encompass the joys of Lego, Play-Doh and football, and more recently Gogos (small plastic alien-type creatures), Match Attax card-collecting and
Beast Quest
. I loved it.

‘Hey, Evie, your hair’s gone all short,’ he said, his eyes wide as if he’d only just noticed. ‘You look really cool, like a boy.’

‘Thanks,’ I said, knowing that this was surely the ultimate compliment.

‘Hi,’ Matthew said, coming over to kiss my cheek. ‘Everything all right?’

I kissed him back and a heavy sigh gusted out of me. ‘Not the best day of my life,’ I told him, withholding the full details as Saul’s bright, interested eyes were still fixed on me. I hoped he hadn’t heard my earlier shout. Matthew would kill me if Saul went back to his mum tomorrow and asked, ‘Mummy, what’s a sex-pest?’ in his innocent, piping voice. Emily, Matthew’s ex, would be on the phone within five seconds and I’d be in the doghouse for at least a year.

Matthew went to finish some work while I got on with making dinner. I wasn’t the most accomplished cook, it had to be said. I had wrecked several saucepans in the past, the most memorable occasion being the time I forgot about the egg I was boiling and left the pan on a flaming gas ring for several hours. The water had boiled dry, the egg had exploded, and the pan was giving off a foul burning smell by the second hour. ‘How can anyone forget that they’re boiling an
egg
?’ Matthew had shouted in exasperation. ‘You only have to remember for three flipping minutes, Evie!’

‘I know,’ I’d said sheepishly. ‘I just . . . forgot.’

The one and only time I’d tried to cook a roast, I’d given us food poisoning (‘This chicken is so raw it’s practically still alive!’ Matthew had realized after the first fatal mouthful). The birthday cake I’d attempted to bake for Matthew had mysteriously vanished into the bin after that first revolting slice we’d each had (it seemed to taste of curry powder; I had no idea why or how). And I’d never been able to make a cheese sauce without having to sieve the lumps out of it.

I could do toast, though, and a half-decent fry-up. And anything that just needed putting in the oven I was mostly okay with. Luckily Saul’s favourite food was pizza. Even I could manage that.

We decorated the pizza together in our traditional way, leaving a quarter of it as a margherita for Saul, arranging mushrooms and ham on my section, and olives and pepperoni and extra cheese on Matthew’s. Saul loved spending ages lining up the shiny olive halves in patterns, and sprinkling the grated cheddar just so. ‘It’s snowing cheese,’ he said, as he let the pale-yellow curls fall from his fingers.

‘Or maybe it’s sand,’ I suggested. ‘Cheesy sand, on a cheesy beach.’

He grinned. ‘Dad said you’d been to the beach at the weekend. Did you go rock-pooling?’

I lifted the pizza carefully and slid it into the oven. ‘Not this time, no,’ I said. ‘Do you like rock-pooling?’

‘Yeah!’ he said, as if that was the most stupid question he’d ever heard. ‘Course I do! It’s my favourite thing on holiday. My aunty Amanda lives by the sea. She is soooo lucky, lucky, lucky.’

‘Mmm,’ I said distractedly, shutting the oven door. ‘My aunty used to live by the beach too. She loved having the sea as her next-door neighbour.’

‘When I’m a grown-up, I’m going to live right
on
a beach,’ he told me, wiping his cheesy hands on his school trousers before I could stop him. Oops. Emily wouldn’t thank me for that. ‘I’m going to build myself a sand
CASTLE
to live in – do you get it, a real castle, made of sand? – and I’m going to go rock-pooling
ALL DAY
.’

‘That sounds good,’ I said, ‘but only if I’m allowed to visit you.’

He nodded. ‘I’ll build a special bit of the castle just for you,’ he promised. ‘A whole wing!’ He laughed. ‘Hey, isn’t it weird that castles have wings, like birds do? As if they could fly away!’

I ruffled his hair, a surge of love for him stopping me speaking for a moment. ‘You’re a sweetheart,’ I told him. ‘Now – are we going to set this table, or what?’

I dreamed of the beach at Carrawen that night. It was a cold, crisp day in my dream, with that pale-blue early-morning light you get at the coast in winter. The sea was luminescent, sleek and calm, the weak sunlight glittering on its rippled surface like a million sequins. I was the only person there and I stood right in the centre of the bay, gazing out at the indigo-blue line of the horizon, letting the peace and stillness fill me all the way up. I was so happy. So content. So calm . . .

Then the radio sprang into life beside my head, burbling DJ nonsense and shattering that perfect peaceful moment. I groaned, stretching out a hand and fumbling to hit the Snooze button. I wanted to slip back into my dream, wanted to be swallowed up again by the empty calm of that winter beach, but annoyingly I couldn’t return a second time.

I rolled over towards Matthew’s side of the bed, but it was empty and I guessed he must already be up and having breakfast with Saul. He had to take him in to school on Thursday mornings, and lived in fear of running late and thereby suffering the wrath of Emily. She had spies at the school, according to Matthew; a crack team of mums who clocked what time he arrived with Saul and reported back every detail of the viewing.

Emily was always perfectly civil to me, if not actually
friendly.
She was a nurse: a brisk, uber-organized sort of a person, who seemed to iron everything that had a crease in it (even Saul’s pants, for goodness’ sake), and generally ran her house, and life, like clockwork. Hospital corners on all of
her
beds, I bet. I got the impression that she judged our household accordingly. (Not a whole lot of ironing attempted, and not a single properly made bed, needless to say.)