The Grand Reopening Of Dandelion Cafe

The boy blushed and sniggered from behind his fringe. Ludo whacked him with a tea towel and made him laugh.

Annie rested her chin in her hands and took it all in via the big mirror. The fact the poor kid was called River and then the way Matthew was watching, lips closed, muscles in his cheeks taut like he was clenching his teeth, feet no longer tapping on the base of the stool, hand stilled on the page he was about to turn on his book.

Was he jealous, she wondered. But then he glanced up and caught her eye in the mirror and she dropped her eyes to her phone as quick as she could. She could feel him still watching her. He kept his head turned her way, kept his eyes on her in the mirror, almost like a punishment for her snooping. His moody, dark gaze fixed on her blushing, embarrassed face.

‘One cherry pie.’ It landed in front of her with a slap. ‘We haven’t got any cream.’ River put down a jug of milk instead and walked away.

Annie stared down at the bowl. The same off-white china with brown flower trim round the edge. The familiarity of the sight made her breath catch in her throat. The wobbly lattice across the top, the cherries glistening, dark like velvet, sticky and squished. The thinnest layer of frangipane just coating the base, enough to sweeten with a hint of almond, Enid would say, but not so much that you would know it was there. Everything you’re doing is to bring out the best in the cherries. Let them do the work. And then sit back and watch.

Nabbing her teaspoon from her coffee cup, Annie was just about to take a bite when the bell above the door went again and her mother sat down in the seat opposite.

She was accompanied by Valtar, her lovely Latvian husband, an accountant and occasional Elvis impersonator. He’d come to the island a couple of years ago to perform at the pub and heroically taken on the job of wooing Annie’s mother. She often wondered if he knew what he was getting himself into, but he still gazed at her with adoring eyes and, for Annie, there was nothing more important than that. It was what her dad would have wanted. That her mum would be loved and looked after. He hadn’t let her mother so much as touch a bill or take any part in the business and in doing so had left her floundering when he passed away.

‘Sweetheart, you’re here. Why didn’t you phone me? I had to hear it from the bloody milkman, and you can imagine how delighted he was to pass on news that I didn’t know.’ Winifred Birzgalis (née White) huffed as she glanced at Annie over the shabby laminated menu.

Before she could reply, her brother Jonathan and his wife Suzi, their twin nine year olds, Gertrude and Wilbur, and their dog Flash, a tiny fluffy thing that was some expensive hybrid and terrified of everything appeared as well.

‘Shove over, Sis.’ Jonathan jabbed her between the ribs so she’d move chairs and then sat down with Wilbur on his lap. ‘Wil’s starving, can he have your pie?’

Chapter Three

Annie pushed the bowl of cherry pie over to Wilbur and he started scooping it into his mouth like he’d never eaten before in his life.

‘He’s always hungry,’ sighed Suzi as she pulled up a chair and sat at the end of the table. Immaculate as always, she was dressed in diamanté jeans, a jumper with a zebra sequinned on the front and a jacket with a huge fur collar. ‘Have you said thanks, Wil?’

‘Thanks, Aunty Annie,’ Wilbur said, voice muffled with pie.

Annie nodded, feeling herself shrink back into the corner of her seat. Overwhelmed by so much family. She blamed the pie. If she hadn’t ordered it then she’d have left fifteen minutes ago.

‘Aunty Annie?’ Gertrude said in the kind of up-talking singsong voice that they use in Gossip Girl.

‘Yes, Gerty?’ Annie adored her niece. She was naughty and funny and like a quirky little munchkin.

‘Granny Winifred said the other day that she thought I might be like you and Daddy pulled a face and said that he hoped not.’

Suzi gave an embarrassed giggle but Jonathan glanced up from his menu and barked a laugh as if it was the funniest joke he’d ever heard.

Valtar put his newspaper down. ‘Is not good to be like Annie? What’s wrong with Annie?’

Her mum did a little eye roll and said, ‘There’s nothing wrong with Annie. Not now anyway.’

Annie didn’t say anything, just looked up to see River standing with a huge tray of cappuccinos and pots of tea, clearly intrigued by the chat.

‘She was a nightmare,’ Jonathan said as the drinks were being divvied out. ‘She was married and divorced by the time she was twenty-one. And the less said about that the better. I’d be driving around in a 1956 Jaguar XK140 if Dad hadn’t had to sell it to pay off that disaster.’

Annie blew out a breath. ‘I can’t believe you’re still going on about that car, Jonathan.’

‘I’d like to be like Aunty Annie,’ Gerty said without looking up from her iPad, and banging her trainers against the legs of her chair. ‘I think she’s cool.’

Annie held in a smile but couldn’t help wishing that the conversation wasn’t taking place with River watching, listening.

Jonathan snorted. ‘Yes it’s just all the stuff it took to get to this stage.’

Annie suddenly felt really warm.

‘She was a bit of a terror, darling,’ Winifred said to Valtar.

‘A bit?’ Jonathan frowned as if that was a huge understatement.

River smirked.

‘Life was never dull,’ Winifred appeased.

‘Gerty, sit up straight.’ Suzi leant over and pushed her daughter’s shoulders back so she wasn’t slouched over the iPad.

Annie couldn’t sit there any longer.

‘I have to go to the loo,’ she said, starting to stand. Jonathan sighed because it meant he had to move as well, along with Wilbur.

The bathroom was outside. Through the kitchen and out into a tiny yard that backed onto the cherry orchard. On the ground, scattered over the many pots of herbs and green shoots, the winged seeds of the sycamore still lay where they’d helicoptered down in autumn. Annie didn’t need to go to the loo at all, she needed a moment just to get herself back.

It was always the same. Whatever she did, they’d still just remember her for the bad exam results, the late nights, the cigarette packets stashed in the shed, the teenage stuff that everyone did apart from her bloody brother. The arguments, the parties, the secrets, the mistakes. The marriage. The money.

She thought about her brother, raised as high as the family pedestal would allow without him bashing his head on the ceiling, with his perfect family and his degree from Oxford and his PhD from Cambridge and his GP practice and his comments about how Dad should never have had to bail her out.

Her one regret was not being able to pay that money back. She’d had these fantasies of buying her dad another Jaguar and leading him over the bridge to see it parked by the river, sparkling like the sun catching the waves.

‘You OK?’

Annie jumped when she heard the drawl.

‘Shit! Sorry, you startled me. I was just erm—’ She pointed to the cherry trees. ‘Just, you know, looking.’

The guy from the bar was standing in the doorway. Matthew. She noticed in the daylight how tanned his face was. The lines of his cheekbones rusty with sunburn and his nose freckled. His hair was pushed back from his face, like it was held back with salt water from the sea, brown with dirty-blond streaks.

He didn’t say anything and the silence made her nervous.

‘I just needed a…’ She pointed again to the cherry trees and then, not wanting him to think that she was talking about needing to go to the loo added, ‘I just needed a break.’

‘Understandable,’ he said.

‘I should probably go back inside,’ Annie said, pulling the sleeves down on her sweater and wishing she went to the gym a bit more given the lines of muscle down his arms and legs.

He strolled over to where she was standing looking over the wall at the trees. The slight breeze was making Annie shiver and the branches rub together like little animals were tapping at the bark.

‘So you own this place now?’ he said after a moment.

‘Yeah,’ Annie said with a laugh. ‘Yeah. I’m not sure anyone’s too happy about it.’

He shrugged. ‘They’re just scared.’

‘Of me?’ She shook her head as if the idea was preposterous.

He turned around so his back was leaning against the crumbling wall and raised a brow to suggest she was deliberately misunderstanding him.

Annie looked from him down to her shoes and then out across at the orchard. She spotted one of the trees that was about to burst. Tomorrow, maybe the next day, it would be full colour.

‘You gonna close the place?’ he asked.

She sucked in her bottom lip. A fat wood pigeon landed on one of the branches in front of her making it bend almost to the floor. The pigeon grappled to hold on.

‘I have no idea.’

‘Well you’d better come up with something quick,’ he said. ‘There’s people depending on you.’

Annie was surprised by the sudden queasy feeling she had in her stomach at that comment. As if someone had sliced through her and she’d just fallen to the ground.

‘Have a word with my brother,’ she said, adding a self-deprecating laugh. ‘He’ll assure them that that’s the worst situation to find themselves in. Get new jobs quick!’

Matthew put his hands in his pockets and pushed himself up from the wall with his shoulders. ‘I have very little time for your brother. As far as I can tell it’s his fault there’s that horrific development on the island. On land he’d agreed to sell to me,’ he said before walking away, back towards the door of the kitchen. He paused on the step, turned her way, hands still in his pockets, and he added, ‘I think we’re all hoping you might be a little different.’

Chapter Four

Annie refused her mother’s invitation to stay for dinner. They’d taken a family walk around the island and been back to her mum’s for another cup of tea and now all Annie could think about was going home. Gerty wanted her to go to their house so she could show her her new trampoline but Annie politely declined. Although the look of horror on Suzi’s face at the idea of an un-arranged pop-in had almost been enough to make her take her niece up on the offer.

‘When are you coming back?’ Her mum asked as she stood on the doorstep in her slippers, wrapping her cardie round her against the afternoon chill coming off the river.

‘I’m not sure. I’ve got to tie up some stuff with work. You know?’ Annie ran her hand through her hair, trying to save it from frizzing up in the moisture.

‘I like your hair like that,’ her mum said. ‘Very modern.’

Annie rolled her eyes, reached up self-concisely to touch the shorn edges of her hair. When she’d finished the shareholder document and presented the mortgage company with her stupidly large cheque, she’d decided that maybe now was the time to celebrate. She had finally achieved what she set out to do. No longer would she have to scrimp and save, squirrelling away money, in an attempt to prove herself. When she couldn’t pay her dad back her loan, it seemed vital to put that money into something else. To prove that she wasn’t the flake they all thought her. That she could create a business, she could be a success. She could invest as her father invested.

Why she never mentioned it to anyone still confused her. Especially when Jonathan’s every success was flaunted on the family WhatsApp group. But it felt like this was her little secret that none of them could take from her. She was triumphant. And none of them could tarnish it with their set-in-stone views of her character.

Sending over her finished files she wasn’t ‘Oh, Annie!’, she was Annie White, owner of White Graphics and Illustration, home-owner. For the first time she hadn’t felt like she was masquerading under a flashy title that she’d made up. It actually felt like her. Like she could relax and believe it. So, to celebrate, she’d bought herself a latte from Caffè Nero, one glossy magazine and one trashy one, a whole big round chocolate orange, and then as she was perusing a new scarf in the window of a far-too-expensive boutique she’d seen a girl walk out the salon next door with dip-dyed pink hair and she’d thought, I want pink hair. Or at least new hair. She felt like suddenly she was allowed to let a little bit more of herself back in. She had paid for her mistakes.

‘I’m all yours,’ she’d said to the hairdresser. He’d waffled on about side-swept fringes framing the face, textured ends and on-trend jagged cut layers transforming a traditional pixie cut. When he’d said that white-blonde streaks were very now she’d nodded and told him to go for it.

And when she’d left the salon, the man from the deli had wolf-whistled and given her a free cannoli.

But now, embarrassed by her mum’s attention, Annie lied and said, ‘It’s been like this for ages.’

‘Well I haven’t seen you for ages.’

‘It’s a teenager’s haircut,’ her brother called out as he came from the living room to the door and stood just behind her mum. ‘I don’t know what your clients think.’

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.

‘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.’