Afternoon Tea at the Sunflower Café

by Milly Johnson

  ‘It’s been very interesting having him back in my life,’ said Edith. ‘He’s told me so much about how Ivy and Bill fared over the years, what they did and what they became. I would never have known, otherwise.’

  Edith used the word ‘interesting’, thought Cheryl. Not wonderful or exciting or lovely, but interesting.

  ‘I rather think that fate paid them back for their duplicity,’ Edith went on. ‘Bill stole money from us to put into a business which turned out to be a dismal failure. He milked funds from it and bought a flash sports car, crashed it and ended up a paraplegic. Alas, he became very bitter about his fate and Ivy left him on numerous occasions. I think young Lance grew up in a very unhappy household.’

  ‘Oh, that’s a shame,’ said Cheryl and she meant that. Lance might have been a creep, but no child deserved to be brought up with warring parents. Cheryl knew only too well what that was like.

  ‘It was always my intention to leave my money to the Maud Haworth Home for Cats and Brambles to Lance,’ said Edith.

  Noooo, Edith. Leave the lot to the kitties, Cheryl wished inside.

  ‘I have no children. I thought the cottage should go to someone in the family. But, I’m afraid, having got to know him, Brambles will fall to hell before I leave it to Lance.’

  A pin-drop silence ensued. Cheryl had NOT been expecting that.

  ‘No, I might be in my nineties but I’m not entirely daft,’ Edith went on with a little laugh. ‘I know that Lance wouldn’t cherish my beloved Brambles. The house doesn’t like him. I can tell that because he always feels cold in it.’

  Just like Ruth Fallis did, thought Cheryl. Brambles was an excellent judge of character.

  ‘Ironically, had I not met him again, I would have left things as they were.’ Edith sighed and shook her head as if trying to rid it of a nasty thought. ‘He came into my life to ensure his inheritance and he’s ended up losing it. Oh, it’s been fascinating finding out about all those missing years, but I’m afraid I’ve discovered that Lance is more than a chip off the old block and I shan’t be fooled by a Nettleton again. I don’t want to see him any more after today.’

  Edith shivered. The little old lady who thought she lived in the Louvre still had some razor-sharp faculties.

  ‘Thank God,’ sighed Cheryl. She wouldn’t have to worry about Lance stealing from Edith again.

  ‘So I’ve decided to leave Brambles to you.’

  Cheryl froze, not sure if Edith was joking or not. It wouldn’t have been typical of Edith’s humour to make such a statement if she didn’t mean it, but then again, she couldn’t be serious, could she?

  As if suspecting what was running through Cheryl’s mind, Edith attempted to convince her she was serious.

  ‘I mean it, Cheryl. I’ve written a new will. I’m going to take it to the solicitor’s office in the morning. Look.’ Edith took the wad of papers out of the long envelope and handed them over to Cheryl. ‘When I die, Brambles will be all yours.’

  Cheryl took the papers and unfolded them with fingers that had started to tingle. Her eyes flittered over the words until they locked onto her own name.

  I revoke all previous wills and codicils . . . I Edith Mary Gardiner . . . savings to Maud Haworth home for cats . . . Brambles and all of its contents to my cleaner and friend Cheryl Parker . . .

  Cheryl now had trouble reading the document because her hands were shaking so much. She tried to talk but her mouth was so dry that her words came out as a hoarse whisper.

  ‘Edith . . . I can’t . . . I can’t . . .’

  ‘Who else can I leave it to who would love it? I know you care for Brambles and Brambles cares for you. I have decided it will be yours and there’s an end to it.’

  Cheryl shook her head slowly in amazement. The words were starting to distort on the page. Her eyes were reading but her brain couldn’t absorb the information. It was too big for her grey cells to take in. She wasn’t the sort of person to inherit a house. It was so huge and generous a bequest that it felt wrong.

  ‘I . . . can’t . . .’

  ‘Yes you can and you will.’

  ‘I don’t know what to say, Edith. I really don’t.’

  ‘Don’t say anything. You don’t need to. I just wanted to tell you so you were prepared. This is our little secret of course. Lance won’t like it, but by then I’ll be gone and he won’t be able to do anything about it. Now go, on your way. I’ll see you next week.’ Edith lifted the will from Cheryl’s hands and tucked it back in the envelope.

  ‘Edith, I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘You’ve said that already,’ chuckled Edith. ‘You don’t have to say anything, my dear girl. This is what I want and so it will happen. Brambles will be in the hands of the best person I know and I shall lie very happily in my grave knowing that.’

  Cheryl didn’t want to think about Edith’s passing. She put her arms around Edith as if wanting to protect her.

  ‘I’ll look after it for you. I promise.’

  ‘I know.’ Edith put her small hand on Cheryl’s cheek. ‘I know you will.’

  Half-dazed, Cheryl walked through into the hallway, colliding with Lance who appeared to be eavesdropping behind the door. The shock brought Cheryl immediately to her senses. How on earth had he managed to enter the house without either herself or Edith hearing the front door crack open? The man moved like a cat on a hoverboard.

  ‘Careful where you go,’ said Lance, holding out his hands to steady her whilst smiling like someone from the war days who sold silk stockings on the black market.

  ‘Oh hello, Lance. You’re early,’ said Edith, appearing behind Cheryl.

  ‘Well, I know you haven’t been too well recently, Auntie Edith. I was worried about you.’

  ‘Don’t talk rot. I’m right as rain,’ humphed Edith indignantly. ‘Have a nice weekend, Cheryl. I will see you next Thursday, as usual.’

  Edith turned and walked stiffly into the kitchen. Cheryl stood and watched her go, having a strange sense that she shouldn’t leave her. What if Lance had overheard their conversation? That might put Edith in danger.

  ‘On your way,’ whispered Lance with an oily smirk as he passed her.

  Cheryl dawdled in the hallway, taking a long time to put on her coat, ear cocked towards the conversation happening in the kitchen.

  ‘Here, let me lift that tin of biscuits down for you, Auntie. You shouldn’t be stretching that high,’ she heard Lance’s obsequious voice.

  ‘I reached to put them up there, Lance. I’m sure I can reach to bring them down again.’ Edith’s voice was full of snap.

  ‘Are you all right, Auntie? You seem a little out of sorts? I’ll put the kettle on. We’ll have a nice pot of tea.’

  Cheryl couldn’t linger behind any longer. Her bus was due in less than five minutes and the next one wasn’t for another half-hour. She closed the door as Edith said, ‘I don’t want you to stay for long, Lance. I want to read my book in peace.’

  They were the last words Cheryl ever heard Edith Gardiner speak.

  Chapter 26

  Hilda Curry was exactly where Della had said she would be when she last spoke to Connie on their secret mobile phones – at the corner table in the Sunflower Café. The reason that Della knew this was because Hilda suffered obsessive compulsive disorder and her timetable was as unbending as a steel rod. Although ‘suffer’ was the wrong word where Hilda was concerned because she enjoyed the order that the condition brought to her life and the reputation it brought to her cleaning. She had been ‘a domestic operator’ for over forty years and was the Queen Bee at Diamond Shine. Where she led, the others followed.

  The Sunflower Café was on a quiet lane in the village of Pogley Top, a mile away from the town centre. Sandwiched between a post office and a tile shop, it didn’t look much from the outside with its shabby facade, but when Connie pushed open the door, she found a bright and cheery bustling café with walls the colour of sunshine and sunflowers everywhere she looked. As she waited fo
r someone to come and show her to a seat, as a sign on a small table requested, a picture of a giant yellow flower head hanging up caught her eye. There was a poem underneath about being bright and bold like a sunflower. If only. Connie knew she was more of a wallflower, or one of those weeds that people didn’t have any compunction about treading on. No one stood on sunflowers. They were the kick-asses of the flower world.

  The tables by the window were all occupied by pairs of old ladies partaking of afternoon tea, if the three-tiered cake stands of finger sandwiches, sweet-filled pastries and scones were anything to go by. Hilda was always assured of securing the corner table because her younger sister Patricia owned the café. At three-thirty every Thursday, Hilda Curry had a pot of tea and a cream scone here and as luck would have it, Connie noticed that the only vacant table was right next to Hilda’s.

  Patricia appeared from the kitchen at the back apologising for keeping Connie waiting. She had the same red hair and ruddy complexion as her sister but didn’t share her much older sister’s dainty build. Connie bumbled towards the vacant table with a huge bag of cleaning products and her mop and bucket props, making sure that Hilda couldn’t fail to notice her.

  Connie dumped all her stuff and took off her coat and sat down. She could feel Hilda’s sideways glance on her as she studied the menu. When Patricia came to take her order, Connie asked for tea and a cream scone too, as if it were some sort of staple snack for cleaners. Anything was worth a go to strike up a conversation with Hilda.

  ‘What a bonny place,’ commented Connie, turning to talk. ‘I never knew this cafe existed.’

  Hilda smiled politely but didn’t engage.

  ‘Bit nippy out today,’ Connie tried.

  ‘Yes it is.’

  Connie was just thinking what to do next when Patricia arrived with a tray holding a generously-sized teapot and a jug of milk, a scone almost bigger than the plate it sat on, butter curls and two dishes of jam and cream, plus cutlery.

  ‘Oh, I’m ready for this,’ Connie said over-loudly to Patricia. ‘There’s nothing better than a tea and a scone after scrubbing someone’s house.’

  ‘Get it down you and hope you enjoy it, love,’ said Patricia with a smoky chuckle.

  Connie was aware that Hilda was still studying her. She turned quickly to catch her and smiled. ‘The scones look delicious, don’t they?’

  ‘Yes, they are very good,’ replied Hilda. ‘The jam is home-made and the clotted cream comes from Yorkshire, not Devon. And you get butter as well. In a lot of places that serve afternoon teas, you don’t, you know.’

  ‘I know,’ replied Connie, relieved that the conversation was now flowing two ways. ‘Cream scones served with no butter, it’s unthinkable, isn’t it? Come here a lot, do you?’

  ‘Every week. My sister owns it. She’s the best baker of scones in Yorkshire,’ Hilda bragged proudly, then she leaned over to impart a confidentiality. ‘Well, my half-sister, I should say. Her mother, my step-mother, is younger than me.’

  ‘Funny you should say that because I’m actually older than my auntie,’ lied Connie, but she was sure that God would forgive her in the circumstances. Connie inclined her head towards Hilda’s mop and bucket resting against the wall in the corner. ‘You been out cleaning as well?’

  ‘Yes, I’m a professional,’ Hilda nodded. ‘Have been for forty years.’

  ‘Forty years? Never.’ Connie spread the jam on her scone and didn’t have to act that she was impressed by either on the information or the quality of the baking, because she was in both cases. ‘You don’t work for Lady Muck, I take it?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Lady Muck. I tell you, if you don’t, you should.’ Connie took a bite from her scone and poured herself a cup of tea from the pot.

  ‘What’s Lady Muck?’ asked Hilda, showing interest.

  ‘It’s a cleaning firm. New one.’ Connie leant forwards towards Hilda as if divulging a great secret. ‘I’ve never been on so much money per hour. Two pounds above minimum wage.’

  ‘Really?’ Hilda twisted in her seat to fully face Connie.

  ‘And they’ll recompense you if any clients cancel. And they give you an allowance so you can buy your own cleaning stuff,’ Connie went on.

  She was reeling Hilda in now. Della had told her how much she hated using the substandard products which Diamond Shine supplied and always substituted her own for them, paid for by herself.

  ‘And they do an Employee of the Month award and the winner gets fifty pounds.’

  Connie had thought of that on the spot.

  ‘And they give you some money towards travelling expenses.’

  Whoa, slow down, said a voice in Connie’s head. She’d be saying that they made up a packed lunch for everyone in a minute.

  ‘And you get a Christmas bonus. And a bit of sick pay, cash in hand.’

  Now that really is it! the voice said. Hilda had been fully hooked out of the water after the Employee of the Month, there had been no need for more bait.

  ‘You’re joking?’

  ‘I’m not.’

  Connie knew that Diamond Shine offered their workers very little in the way of benefits. Jimmy only employed each girl for a limited amount of hours each week so he wouldn’t have to pay out sick or maternity pay; any extra hours were paid cash in hand. He had learned many lessons from Dick Gibson who used to own a rival firm, Victoria’s Sponges. Dick employed full-time workers with sick pay, overtime, maternity and redundancy money. Victoria’s Sponges had ended up folding because, in Jimmy’s words, ‘half of Dick’s cleaners got pregnant and he’d ended up paying for them just to sit on their arses lactating.’ Jimmy preferred to concentrate on extolling the basic virtues of working for an agency when they were recruiting: that the company found them their work, and he paid insurance in case one of them knocked over a precious vase. A cleaner who worked for Diamond Shine didn’t have to fanny about with all the essential business stuff: all they had to concern themselves with was their cleaning. And if any client started being funny about handing over their money, Della would be straight on the case. No one messed with Diamond Shine.

  The cleaners often developed attachments to their clients and vice versa. Della had told Connie that if Hilda moved firms, her entire client list would move with her and when Hilda moved, the other girls wouldn’t be far behind. What Connie hadn’t taken into account was that the girls themselves might still feel some loyalty towards Jimmy.

  ‘Lady Muck, you say?’ Hilda took a pencil out of her pocket and scribbled the name on a serviette.

  ‘I’ve got a card somewhere,’ said Connie, digging in her own pocket and pulling out a handful of them. ‘She’s looking for new cleaners and she told me to give them out. You should give her a ring.’

  ‘Where’s she based?’

  ‘Penistone way, but I don’t need to go to the office.’

  ‘How do you get the money to them then?’

  ‘The ones that don’t pay by direct debit give me cash and I hand it in to a financial agent in Maltstone once a fortnight,’ she replied.

  ‘Hmm.’ Hilda studied the card whilst she sipped her tea.

  ‘I can tell you this though: she’s had so many cleaners ringing her that you ought to get in fast if you want to get on the books.’ She raised her hand and looked at her watch. ‘Oh flaming hell, my bus will be here in a minute. I knew I didn’t really have time to come in here. Plus I didn’t think the scones would be this big. I’ll have to come here again.’

  Connie grabbed her mop and bucket and took another quick bite of scone for dramatic effect. ‘See you again probably,’ she said to Hilda.

  ‘Yes, yes, see you,’ said Hilda, although she didn’t raise her head to say goodbye as she was too busy staring at the business card with Lady Muck’s details on it.

  Chapter 27

  Astrid and Wenda were just about to do a bomb on a house that Friday morning, which was the recognised term for an intensive and usually multi-handed clean, and
the pair of them had called in to the office to replenish their cleaning stocks from the store cupboard. The two women were the physical opposites of each other: Astrid, long golden hair, a six-foot-four German Amazon who used to be a loose-head prop rugby-player with a beard and balls. Wenda, a tiny, skinny little woman with short dyed fluorescent tangerine hair; and yet they were best friends and preferred to go on jobs together. They were the bomb queens of the firm.

  ‘I’ve had another complaint about you,’ said Della to Wenda’s back, which was protruding from the store cupboard. ‘Mrs Forrester says you were late again yesterday.’

  ‘Mrs Forrester can fuck right off,’ said Wenda with a sniff. ‘I was half an hour late and I stayed three-quarters of an hour extra to make up for it.’

  ‘That’s not the point. She wants you to be on time.’

  ‘You tell her why you vere late, Venda,’ said the formidable Astrid in her odd half very-broad-Yorkshire, half German accent. ‘She could do nowt else, Della.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Della. ‘You could do nothing else about what?’

  ‘Mr Vilson. Und his bluddy family,’ put in Astrid before Wenda could speak. ‘Ze bastards.’

  ‘I go to Mr Wilson before Mrs Forrester, don’t I? I couldn’t leave the old guy in the state he was in,’ said Wenda, zipping up her bag. ‘His lot pay for a cleaner because they can’t be bothered going over and helping him themselves. He’d shit the bed and it was days old. I had to hammer the muck off his sheets before they went in the machine. He shouldn’t be by himself.’

  ‘Tell her abart ze dog.’ Astrid nudged Wenda, nearly knocking her over.

  ‘Dog hadn’t been fed or watered. I hated myself for it but I had to ring the RSPCA last week. He can’t look after it. I thought the little thing were dead when I walked in. It were just sat at side of him on t’sofa.’ Wenda wiped her eye with the back of her hand. ‘He loved that dog but he had to let them take it away.’

  ‘He should be in a hom,’ added Astrid. ‘An old peoples hom.’