Milly Johnson is a joke-writer, greetings card creator, newspaper columnist, after-dinner speaker, poet, actress, winner of Come Dine with Me, Sunday Times Top Ten author and recipient of Yorkshire Society Award For Arts and Culture 2015. You can find more about the Yorkshire Society at www.yorkshiresociety.org.uk
She is half-Yorkshire, half-Glaswegian so don’t expect her to buy the first round.
She likes cruising on big ships, sparkling afternoon teas, sunshine and birds of prey. She does not like marzipan or lamb chops.
She is proud patron of two fabulous charities: Yorkshire Cat Rescue (www.yorkshirecatrescue.org) and The Well (www.thewellatthecore.co.uk) which is a complementary therapy centre for cancer patients.
She lives happily in Barnsley with her two teenage sons, Teddy the dog and two very spoilt cats. Her mam and dad live in t’next street.
Afternoon Tea at the Sunflower Café is her eleventh book.
Find out more at www.millyjohnson.co.uk or follow Milly on Twitter @millyjohnson
Also by Milly Johnson
The Yorkshire Pudding Club
The Birds & the Bees
A Spring Affair
A Summer Fling
Here Come the Girls
An Autumn Crush
White Wedding
A Winter Flame
It’s Raining Men
The Teashop on the Corner
Short stories, available in ebook
The Wedding Dress
Here Come the Boys
Ladies who Launch
First published by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd 2015
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Copyright © Millytheink Ltd, 2015
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Export TPB ISBN: 978-1-47114-083-9
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For my nanna Hubbard.
A woman who loved her cakes and
was the best cleaner in Christendom.
I miss you.
A smart girl leaves before she is left.
MARILYN MONROE
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
My Perfect Afternoon Tea
Prologue
The awning that hangs over the window is a tired yellow and white stripe and much of the paint has flaked off the sign above the door announcing that this is The Sunflower Café. On a quiet lane in the village of Pogley Top, it barely registers as a place of interest. But should your eye venture past the unspectacular façade and you push open the door and walk in, you would find yellow walls as cheerful as sunshine, pretty sky-blue curtains dotted with sunflowers and a long window affording the village’s prettiest view of the adjacent stream. You would find a warmth as if the café has a spirit that welcomes you and is happiest when filled with laughter and chatter. Of the women who visit here to partake of the owner’s delicious and generous afternoon teas, many of them are like the café – you would never guess what beauty and strength sit beneath the ordinary outside.
Hung up are many pictures of sunflowers but one, near the door, in particular catches the eye. Underneath the smiling giant petalled head is written a poem:
Be Like the Sunflower
Brave, bright
bold, cheery
Be golden and shine
Keep your roots strong
Your head held high
Your face to the sun
And the shadows will fall behind you
This is the story of three women who never realised they had the capacity to be the tallest, boldest, brightest flowers in the field.
Chapter 1
When Jimmy Diamond told Della on Thursday morning that she would have to cancel her day off on Friday, he could not have known what whe
els he had started in motion.
When Della protested and said that she’d had it booked for weeks; it was her old boss’s retirement party, Jimmy still insisted that she couldn’t take it.
He said no.
In the fifteen years she had worked for him, he had never said no before. He might have man-grumbled a bit under his breath when she asked for a favour, but he knew what side his bread was buttered where Della was concerned. He would never have found anyone else who worked over and above the call of duty as she did, watching his back, doing his dirty work, covering his tracks more than Della did and if she had to take a rare afternoon off for a dental appointment or if there was a panic on with her elderly mother, it had never been a problem before.
Had he said yes, this story would never have been told and life would have trundled on in much the same way as it had for years. One woman would have continued to exist unhappily on the begging end of a non-relationship and one woman would have eaten the equivalent weight of a small emergent country in truffles. But Jimmy Diamond had said no.
The office junior Ivanka had turned up to work that Thursday morning acting limp and tearful with a sickness and diarrhoea bug, obviously unfit to work, so Della had sent her back home again. Ivanka had protested a little before relenting and saying that she would be in after the weekend. Then Jimmy breezed in and announced that he was off that afternoon to schmooze on a golf course and wouldn’t be back until Tuesday. When Della reminded him that she had booked Friday off, Jimmy had thrown up his hands and said that someone was needed in the office and as he couldn’t be there and she had sent Ivanka home, who did that leave? Nope, there was nothing for it: as office manageress, it was Della’s duty to be there, especially in such a busy period. Once upon a time, cleaners had been ten a penny, now demand outstripped supply and they were like gold dust. Della’s attendance was needed more in manning the phones than it was in Whitby, eating vol au vents and drinking warm white wine out of a plastic tumbler at the party of a bloke who probably wouldn’t even remember who she was, said Jimmy firmly.
‘Of course he’ll remember who I am,’ said Della, her mouth a defiant thin line. ‘I worked for him longer than I’ve worked for you.’
Della saw the features of his face soften and she guessed he was about to change tactic.
‘Oh, Dells,’ he sighed and held out his hands in a gesture of apologetic surrender. ‘Of course he’d remember you. But he won’t need you like I do. I have to go on this golfing weekend with Pookie Barnes. I owe him after he’s shifted all his business to us from Cleancheap and he’s making noises about recommending our girls to clean the offices of his contacts. I have to keep him on side. I hear that Roy Frog is hopping about it.’
Jimmy laughed at his own joke. He and Roy Frog’s firm Cleancheap had a long-standing rivalry. Della knew that it was thanks to Jimmy’s schmoozing that Pookie Barnes, Cleancheap’s biggest customer, had jumped ship faster than a rat on the Titanic wearing a lifejacket.
Still Della tried to reason with him. ‘Jimmy . . .’
‘You shouldn’t have let that Ivanka go home.’ He wagged his finger at her, intimating that this situation was of her own doing. He always referred to the office junior as that Ivanka as if she still wasn’t part of the Diamond Shine crew despite working there for six months.
‘I couldn’t exactly chain her to the desk, could I?’ replied Della. ‘Besides which, she wouldn’t have been much use in her state.’
‘I’ve worked through worse.’
‘Well good for you, but the lass wasn’t putting it on. Any idiot could have seen that. Bed was the best place for her.’
‘Aye, I suppose you’re right. She should spend the day in bed.’ He grinned. ‘Send your old inferior boss a present instead with apologies for your absence.’
‘It might not arrive in time.’
‘Send him a bottle of champagne. On me. Overnight delivery.’
If Della’s eyes had opened any further they would have burst out of their orbits and dropped onto the desk. Jimmy Diamond was as tight as a duck’s stitched-up arse. He would sooner have cut his own balls off than paid next day delivery on anything, never mind champagne for a bloke he didn’t even know. He must be desperate for her to cover the office if he was offering to go to those lengths.
‘I can tell what you’re thinking,’ said Jimmy, guessing correctly. ‘I’m not exactly famous for charging champagne to the company account for people I don’t know, but I really need you here, we’re too busy for you to be off at the moment. Come on, Dells, don’t be mad with me.’
He gave her his best round puppy-dog eyes.
‘Okay, Della, what do I have to do for us not to fall out about this? Do you want me to beg? Look, I’m begging,’ and Jimmy got down on his knees and clenched his hands together as if praying to her.
‘Oh get up, you fool,’ said Della, trying her best to remain annoyed.
‘I love you, Della. You know I do.’
Oh, if only, thought Della.
‘And you love me, which is why you’re going to send that bloke some champagne instead of going to his crap party.’
He was right.
‘Please please please, Dells. Be my friend and tell me that you agree with me,’ Jimmy insisted until her face broke into a resigned smile and she knew that he had won her over. Again. He always could because with the tiniest bit of flirting, a little bodily contact, the mere hint of appeal in his voice, she was putty in his hands and had been for fifteen years.
‘Don’t go mad though. No frigging Dom Perignon. Bubbles is bubbles.’
That sounded more like him. He hasn’t gone totally mad after all, thought Della.
‘Oh, and order some chocs for the missus will you, love. Top notch, big box.’
Della sighed. ‘Okay. If I must.’
She had really wanted to go to Whitby, but Jimmy needed her. And Jimmy was the number one man in her life, as she was his number one woman. Despite what Connie, his Lady Muck of a wife, might have thought.
Chapter 2
In one single hour, Cheryl Parker’s whole existence had tipped upside down and her insides had been scooped out. At least that’s what it felt like as she stood in her tiny kitchen, hand shaking as she gripped the piece of paper which had ended her life as she knew it.
She wished life were like TV. She wished she could press the rewind button back to just before she had opened the envelope. She wished she had put it on one side until she returned from work so that Gary could have found it first and had time to think up an excuse which she might have swallowed and life would have carried on as normal. But she had opened it and what she had found could not be unread. An hour ago she had been making breakfast toast and tea for two whilst Gary was taking a shower and it was just a normal Thursday morning; two more days at work to get out of the way and then the familiar joy of the weekend to look forward to: fish and chips from Cod’s Gift with Gary for Saturday lunch as usual, a bottle of wine and some beers in front of Ant and Dec on the TV. Now she was alone – single – and couldn’t think past the moment. And her heart had been ripped out and stamped all over.
The postman hardly ever came first thing in the morning, but today he had. And he had delivered three envelopes: one containing a catalogue full of rubbishy gadgets, a dental reminder for Cheryl and that one from the building society. A quarterly statement. And Cheryl had opened it and found that the account which should have had four thousand seven hundred and twenty pounds in it, had a nil balance.
She didn’t know how long she stood there, unable to move, listening to Gary mooching about upstairs. She imagined him towel-drying his thick light-brown hair, spraying a cloud of Lynx over himself, getting dressed, blissfully unaware of what trauma his long-term girlfriend was going through. Cheryl heard his feet on the stairs, watched the door into the kitchen open. She saw his eyes lock on to the paper she was holding, then flick up to her face and from the expression she was wearing, he knew instantly what she had discovered.
The words came out in a croak. ‘Where’s it gone, Gary? Where’s the money?’ It was a rhetorical question because she knew. She would have bet her life savings – oh, the irony – that the money was in the till of William Hill.
Gary’s eyes began to flicker, which they did when he was anxious. She knew that his brain would be scrabbling around for something viable to tell her.
‘You won’t believe me . . .’ he began eventually. No, she wouldn’t. Because she had wanted to believe him every single time and every single time he had let her down.
‘Try me,’ she said. Deep down she wished he would say those words which would make it all right. But also, deeper down, she knew he wouldn’t.
‘You weren’t supposed to know. I was hoping to have it back in the account before you noticed,’ he said. His hands were in his hair. ‘Oh God, Chez, I am so sorry. I thought I could do it. One last time. For us. For the ba—’
‘No!’ The loudness in her own voice surprised her. ‘Don’t you dare say it. Don’t you DARE.’
He had used those same words eighteen months ago. He had taken the money she had scrimped and squirrelled away for IVF treatment in the hope of doubling it, trebling it even, he said. He’d been given a tip – a sure thing from someone in the know. She would never forget the name of the horse as long as she lived – Babyface. He had put every penny on its nose and it had come in second. And he had cried and she had comforted him and told him that she forgave him but this was the last chance – no more gambling. And he had given her his word that he would never bet on another horse or dog ever. And she had started saving all over again and had been stupid enough to give him the benefit of the doubt and keep their joint account going as a sign of her trust in his ability to change.
But he would never change, she knew that now. They’d reached the end of the road. Actually they’d done that eighteen months ago and now they were well off the beaten track, stumbling over increasingly rough terrain until they had arrived at this point and could go no further. For ten years she had listened to his Del-boy Trotter promises that ‘this time next year they would be millionaires’ and yet they were still living in the same tiny two-up, two-down rented house with no garden and damp patches on the walls because Gary had been convinced he could win his fortune. For ten years she had been trapped in a vicious circle of her saving a bit of money in a teapot, him gambling his wage away, her having to borrow back from the teapot, him promising to alter his ways and doing it for a couple of months, him gambling his wage away . . . This time her heart would not be penetrated by the sight of the tears slipping down his face.
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