The Grand Reopening of Dandelion Café Read Free

machine and grinding some beans.
    It was maybe quarter past when he set the chipped mug down in front of her and said, again, ‘Sugar’s on the table.’
    The door opened and slammed. A woman in her late sixties strode in. Apron already tied under her bosom. Hair like an electric shock. Face like a Bassett Hound; droopy and eyes sliding away. ‘Well, well, well. I wondered when you’d show up.’
    ‘Hi, Martha,’ Annie folded the paper up and stood up from her chair, awkward because it didn’t push back so her knees had to stay slightly bent. She decided to step out from the table completely.
    ‘We’re doing just fine,’ Martha said, walking straight past her. ‘Just fine. We don’t need anything. Ludo. Aren’t we doing just fine?’
    The guy in the back, who was sizzling bacon in a pan, a cigarette smoking in an ashtray on the windowsill, gave a thumbs-up.
    Annie licked her lips. She walked over to the counter and folded her arms so she could lean against it. The boy looked nervously between her and Martha. ‘Who’s running the place?’ Annie asked.
    ‘Me. Ludo. Who do you think? The same people who have been running it for the last ten years. Mum couldn’t do it. She sat where you’re sitting. And we’ve been fine. Just fine,’ Martha hung her bag up on one of the hooks and took a pad from the stack by the till. ‘Just fine. I told your mother to just leave us to it,’ she said as she walked away to serve two men who’d trudged in, leant their fishing gear up against the window and were sitting at the booth furthest from the counter, mud dripping off their wellie boots onto the lino, a black labrador flat-out in the aisle.
    ‘OK,’ Annie said, and pushing off the counter turned and went back to her seat and her surprisingly good cup of coffee. Sitting down she glanced around the place, the sun streaming in through the dusty windows, surreptitiously taking in the cracks in the ceiling, the spiders’ webs, the wonky pictures and dreadful paintings, the dirty path on the lino where years of feet had trudged up to the counter, the fake flowers on every table. She picked hers up and turned it upside down, the flowers stayed where they were, glued into their vase.
    She was just examining the plastic menu, the laminated corner coming unstuck and peeled apart by fiddling fingers, when the bell above the door chimed and someone else walked in.
    Annie glanced up, expecting another of the motley crew of waiting staff, but paused when she caught sight of the man elbowing the door closed. Tall, serious-looking, he pulled off aviator sunglasses and slid them into the neck of his dark-green T-shirt. It was the colour of seaweed, the sleeves bleached by the sun. He was wearing grey marl tracksuit bottoms, rolled up to reveal tanned, sinewy calves and flip-flopped feet that were still damp. He’d clearly just come off the water, probably been rowing or maybe paddle boarding.
    She didn’t realise she’d been holding her breath until he’d strolled past her and then she had to exhale really slowly so that no one realised she’d stopped breathing.
    ‘Morning,’ he said to the boy when he got to the counter.
    When no one replied, Annie glanced over her shoulder, intrigued. She just caught the boy hanging his head and sloping out the back to the kitchen. Martha moved into his place and nodded to the man.
    ‘Usual, Matthew?’
    Matthew… Annie realised she knew exactly who he was. Two years older than her brother at school, he’d been head boy, won loads of sport trophies. She remembered school assembly, when all the first-formers, her included, would sit cross-legged staring up at him in awe as he sauntered on stage to collect his prizes, all cool and terrifyingly grown-up. She couldn’t remember his surname. Watson, maybe. Windsor? She could remember the scandal though, he’d got Pamela Chambers pregnant and she’d gone into labour in the middle of her physics A-level.
    Annie watched as he took a seat on