‘Alright. I’ll let you know when I’ve finished this job,’ Rob said.
‘Cinnamon teacake,’ Mrs George was saying as she leafed through the recipe book. ‘My grandmother used to make that . . . my goodness, five hundred grams of butter!’
‘Nothing wrong with butter,’ George said. ‘Wonderful stuff.’
‘Yes, dear, but not with your cholesterol.’
‘Bye, Hugh,’ I called, seeing him retreat towards the door. ‘Thanks so much for the coffee.’
He smiled and raised a hand. Mum became entirely absorbed in piling pumpkin peel onto a plate.
‘We must go, too,’ said Gail firmly.
‘Lovely to meet you all,’ George said. ‘Who knows; we might just be spending a lot more time up in this neck of the woods.’ His voice implied that we had quite a treat in store, should this come to pass.
Eventually Gail prised him loose from Mum’s side and took him away. For about six seconds the resulting quiet was a huge improvement, and then it began to feel less like a welcome relief and more like an uncomfortable silence.
‘The breeze is picking up,’ said Mum, making a gallant attempt to fill it.
‘Maybe we’ll get some rain,’ I said.
‘Not enough to be useful, from the west.’
‘True.’ Having exhausted the weather as a topic I reached up to pull the tie out of my hair, and encountered the bird’s nest from hell. ‘Oh, crap.’
‘What’s wrong?’ Mum asked.
‘Hair’s turned into felt.’
She crossed the floor to inspect it. ‘What have you done to it?’
‘Washed it with soap. Some lowlife stole my shampoo.’ I tugged at the hair tie, with no effect whatsoever.
‘Why don’t you just cut it off?’ said Rob.
‘Because I’d look like one of the Jackson Five.’
‘You’re making it worse. Sit down and let me look at it,’ said Mum, chivvying me towards the window seat. I sat, watching Anna drizzle pumpkin cubes with oil and trying to think of a pleasant, innocuous, ice-breaking remark.
I hadn’t found one, and Mum had pulled quite a large amount of my hair out by the roots, when we heard yet another car turn up the café driveway.
‘Piss off, you tossers, we’re closed,’ said Rob.
‘That’s the attitude you want in a service industry,’ I remarked.
‘It’s Jed and his little boy,’ said Mum, waving as my car passed beneath the big kitchen window. ‘Sit down, Lia, I’ve almost got it. Robin, pass me your pocket knife.’
And thus it was that Jed came up the back steps to see my mother bent over my head like a chimpanzee looking for fleas, cutting something loose with the scissors from a Swiss army knife.
‘That’s not a prawn, is it?’ he said, and Anna laughed, which may or may not have been a good sign.
‘It’s a hair tie,’ I said, as Mum gave a final snip and dropped it into my lap. Suspecting that my look was more Afro from Hell than Textured Beachy Waves, I pulled my hair hastily back into a ponytail.
‘Brush it first!’ Mum protested.
‘Later,’ I said, and smiled at Craig, who was eyeing the strangers warily from behind his father’s leg.
‘Have you got any more pizzas with cheese on?’ he asked me, cutting across the polite greetings of his elders.
‘Craig,’ said Jed repressively.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘I like pizza with cheese on,’ Craig said, fixing enormous dark-lashed eyes on my face.
‘Me too.’
‘It’s my favourite food in the whole world.’
‘You can choose a pizza base out of the freezer, if your dad says it’s okay,’ I said, and my chest felt suddenly tight. Reaction, I assumed, to Anna’s annoyance at this casual handing out of merchandise – well, stuff her. I could give people pizza bases if I felt like it, especially people who’d just fixed the mixer.
Jed nodded, and I crossed the kitchen with Craig at my heels to open the big chest freezer. I lifted him up. ‘There, see? In that box.’
‘It hasn’t got cheese on.’
‘No, that’s your job. You put grated cheese on top, then bake it in the oven till it’s all nice and melted and golden on top.’
‘Oh,’ said Craig. He took a frozen pizza base from the cardboard box at the front where they were kept, wriggled to get down and retreated at speed. ‘Cold,’ he said, thrusting it towards his father. ‘You hold it.’
‘Did you say thank you?’
‘Thank you.’
‘Not to me, you turkey – to Lia.’
‘Thank you,’ said Craig offhandedly over his shoulder, in the manner of one who has learnt that it takes less effort to comply with stupid parental requests than to argue the point.
‘Revolting child,’ said Jed.
The tight, apprehensive feeling got worse. Anna was going to leave – Dad was right: what else could you expect from an enterprise that had been started with all the enthusiasm and business nous of a couple of kids playing house? And then somebody’s cell phone rang, and I realised that this latest bloody premonition of impending doom had nothing to do with me.
Chapter 17
The ringing phone was Jed’s. Again. He shot me a quizzical, half-amused glance as he took it out of his pocket, and his amusement died a rapid death when he saw my face. Turning away, he answered the phone with a sharp, ‘What’s up?’
There was an audible wail from the person on the other end, fading as Jed retreated to the far side of the dining room. Frightened by his father’s sudden desertion, Craig ran after him and clung to his leg.
‘What is it?’ Rob asked softly.
I shook my head, gripping the edge of the chest freezer with both hands. He’d answered the phone, but I didn’t feel any better. Too late, I thought. He can’t fix it . . .
Craig, either offended at being ignored or alarmed by Jed’s tone of voice, began to roar.
‘Craig!’ said Jed, taking the phone briefly from his ear. ‘Stop it, mate, it’s okay.’
He didn’t stop, but Rob strode across the room and scooped him up. He carried him kicking and screaming back through the kitchen and outside, with Mum hurrying behind.
‘We’re leaving now,’ Jed said, his voice overloud in the sudden quiet. He hung up and put the phone back in his pocket, and stood quite still for a second. Then he turned back towards the kitchen, with no particular expression on his face.
‘What is it?’ I asked hoarsely.
He looked through me for a moment before registering the question. ‘Tracey’s hurt,’ he said. ‘Can I have the keys?’
I looked blank, a specialty of mine in times of stress.
‘To the van.’
‘I – they’re still in it. Sorry.’
‘It’s fine.’ Reaching the door, he paused and said over his shoulder, ‘Oh, you need new brake pads. I’ve ordered them, but you’ll need to take your car down in a couple of days and get Monty to put them in.’ He ran down the porch steps. ‘Craig, my man, I think that’ll do.’
And with impressive speed he moved the booster seat from my car to his van, buckled Craig in and drove away.
‘What’s happened?’ Mum asked, staring after them from the porch. ‘Has there been an accident?’
‘I think his wife’s just killed herself,’ I said. And then, as if that statement wasn’t melodramatic enough all by itself, I bolted back inside and threw up in the sink.
* * *
Mum tried quite hard to make me go to bed – which had, ironically, been the height of all my dizziest ambitions only an hour earlier.
‘No,’ I said, scrubbing the side of the sink with the hot tap running. ‘Sorry – disgusting . . .’
‘Lia! Go and lie down!’ said Mum.
‘No!’ I wanted to be where other people were.
‘Then at least sit down, and I’ll make you a cup of tea.’
I retired to the window seat and sat, hugging my knees.
‘Hey,’ s
aid Rob, sitting down beside me. ‘Not your fault. Nothing you could have done.’
No . . . but. But what if she’d hurt herself because Jed wasn’t there to keep an eye on her? And what if he wasn’t there because he’d turned her down on New Year’s Eve – which seemed the likeliest reason for him not to have stayed flavour of the month for long – and she’d thrown him out on the strength of it? And what if he’d turned her down because of me? Such trains of thought are really just an exercise in futile regret, of course; what if the Titanic hadn’t met thick fog on her third night out from Southampton, or if Hitler had choked to death on a fishbone when he was four? I leant my head against Rob’s shoulder, and then remembered Anna’s views on me and my parasitic ways and sat up straight.
‘It’s okay,’ she said dryly.
‘Thanks,’ I said, drier still.
‘Both of you stop it, or I’ll bang your heads together,’ said Rob.
There was a short pause.
I looked at Anna. ‘I’m sorry.’
She bit her lip. ‘Me too. Thank you for keeping things together today.’
‘Barely,’ I said. ‘Thank Mum.’
‘Thank you,’ Anna told her soberly.
‘A pleasure,’ said Mum, disposing herself gracefully on a high stool. She had evidently forgotten all about my cup of tea. ‘Now. Girls.’
‘This sounds ominous,’ I said.
‘I think –’ She stopped and looked at Rob. ‘We think it’s time you took a good hard look at the way you’re doing things. This just isn’t sustainable.’
‘It’ll only be like this for another six weeks,’ said Anna.
‘Another six weeks of this and you’ll both have nervous breakdowns,’ said Rob. ‘So will the rest of us, come to that.’
‘And you can’t provide the level of service you want to when you’re rushed off your feet,’ Mum added.
She was right. We couldn’t, and we weren’t. I rested my forehead tiredly on my knees. ‘I know.’
‘Hey,’ said Rob, elbowing me comfortingly. ‘Being busy is a good thing. You’re obviously doing something right.’
‘What about finding someone to man the coffee machine? Just from – oh, I don’t know – ten till three,’ said Mum.
‘We didn’t budget for employing anyone this year,’ I said.
‘Well, then, I’ll do it,’ said Mum.
‘Mum, no!’
‘Maggie, you do so much already,’ said Anna. ‘We’ll find someone.’
She looked at Rob, who continued, ‘The other thing you need to do is cut back to food that people can just take out of the cabinet and eat. Sandwiches and cake and stuff. Axe the pizzas and the brunch menu. Then, when it’s busy, one of you can serve and one can man the till.’
Something about his delivery of this little speech made me realise that it wasn’t a suggestion; it was a summary of conclusions reached during some earlier debate. All this had been thrashed out and agreed on already. I wondered briefly whether to be offended at being cast as the tricky one, the one who needed to have the news broken gradually and via committee, and decided I couldn’t be bothered. ‘Okay.’
‘Well, I guess we can try it for a few days and see how it goes,’ said Anna, with a nice little show of reluctance.
‘Okay,’ I said again. Not wanting to hear any more scripted misgivings, I stood up and crossed the room to open the vacuum cleaner cupboard.
‘Leave it,’ said Anna. ‘My turn.’
‘How about you go and have a bath, love? Put some conditioner in your hair and leave it to soak,’ Mum said.
‘I have to go and buy some first.’
‘Why don’t you take her back to your place?’ Rob said to Mum.
‘Would you all stop managing me?’ I snapped. ‘I’m actually quite reasonable; you don’t need to treat me like I’m mentally handicapped!’
‘You’re exhausted,’ said Rob. ‘Exhausted people aren’t as reasonable as they think they are. Now go on, piss off.’ He smiled at me, and he must have been right about the exhaustion, because my eyes filled with tears.
* * *
Mum took me home with her and ran me a bath – a hot, deep bath, shockingly decadent for January in a household dependent on rainwater collected from the roof. I lay for a long time in the cooling water, letting my conditioner marinate and looking at the reflections of my toes on the surface of the water. It was surprisingly easy not to think about Jed.
At length I got out, leaving the water in for the garden, put on Mum’s blue satin dressing-gown, wound a towel around my head and went down the hall to the kitchen.
‘How do you feel?’ Mum asked, her reading glasses sliding down to the tip of her nose as she looked up from the paper. Her stripy hair was pulled up into a bun, coming down in little curling tendrils around the nape of her neck, and there were tired smudges under her eyes. You tend not really to look at people you know very well, but it occurred to me suddenly that she was beautiful.
‘Better. Mum, you’re so pretty.’
She lifted her eyebrows at me sceptically and pinched the sagging skin of her throat.
‘You are,’ I said. ‘You’re improving with age.’
She smiled. ‘Thank you. I think. Would you like me to comb your hair out?’
‘Yes please.’ I fetched a wide-toothed comb from the drawer under the microwave and sat down in the chair she had just vacated.
After a few minutes, during which I could almost feel her planning her line of attack as she combed, she said, ‘Poor Jed. Does he have much family support?’
‘I think so.’
‘Good.’ She worked in silence on a snarl at the back of my head for a while, and then continued, ‘You knew that phone call was bad news.’
‘Mm.’
‘And he knew that you knew.’
I said nothing.
‘Is he the first boyfriend you’ve told about your Sixth Sense?’ (The capital letters were audible.)
‘I don’t think he is a boyfriend. And no.’
‘Oh,’ said Mum, sounding a little deflated.
‘By the way, what happened with Hugh on New Year’s Eve?’ I asked. It’s no good being subtle if you want information from Mum; a direct assault works much better.
Her fingers stilled for a moment, and then she tugged the comb through a knot. ‘You do realise, Aurelia, that you’re in a very vulnerable position?’
‘Don’t change the subject.’
‘That’s your prerogative, is it?’
I tilted my face up and smiled at her. ‘Exactly.’
Mum sighed. ‘He wanted to – to take things to another level, and I didn’t. End of story.’
‘Are you okay?’ I asked.
‘Fine,’ she said sadly. ‘I feel like a rat, but I’ll get over it.’
‘You don’t think that maybe if you gave it a try . . .’ I started.
‘No.’ She didn’t say it loudly, but her voice was like a concrete wall.
‘Fair enough. Mum?’
‘Yes?’
‘Has anyone ever looked like a possibility, since Dad?’
She stopped combing again, and I twisted around to look at her. Something in her expression made me say, ‘Who?’
‘Nobody. Don’t be silly.’
‘Oh, come on. You can tell me.’
‘Nobody, Lia!’ she snapped.
‘Sorry,’ I said. I reached for her hand and squeezed it, and she squeezed back.
‘I like being by myself,’ she said. ‘I like my own company; I’m never lonely. I don’t want to reorganise my life around someone else.’
‘If you never do anything that scares you, you never grow,’ I said very quietly. You can overstep the mark with family every now and then, and they’re obliged to forgive you.
‘Yes, thank you, Aurelia; that’s very profound,’ said Mum crisply, handing me the comb.
* * *
She dropped me back at the café after dinner and a particularly exciting episode of Dancing with
the Stars. Anna and Rob had gone and everything was clean and shining. The kitchen smelt of vanilla, orange rind, bleach and warm raw mutton from the joint that had just been put in the oven – not an entirely happy combination, but by morning the lovely rich smell of roast meat would have beaten the rest into submission. Anna had redone the big blackboard above the counter, replacing the list of cooked breakfast options with A little bit of what you fancy does you good! in flowing script, surrounded by multicoloured chalk butterflies. Ironic, I thought, considering she worked on the premise that anything you fancied should under no circumstances pass your lips. I sighed, feeling guilty for being such a bitch, turned off the lights and went down the hall to bed.
* * *
Anna and I were very polite the next morning. I complimented her on her blackboard refurbishment and she graciously approved the addition of bacon and fried potato breakfast wraps to the cabinet. It was more comfortable than the night before, but not by much.
Jed rang at nine thirty, and wiping a floury hand on my apron I lunged for the phone.
‘Jed.’ I heard him exhale, and realised that yet again I’d unnerved him. ‘How’s Tracey?’
‘Unconscious, with head wounds.’
‘Thank goodness,’ I said, and then realised how that might be interpreted. ‘That she’s alive, I mean . . .’
‘You don’t – any idea which way it’s going to go?’ he asked.
I closed my eyes. ‘No. No idea. Sorry.’
There was a pause, during which I watched Anna roll lamingtons in a bed of shredded coconut while trying hard to convey the impression that she wasn’t there and wouldn’t be listening if she was.
‘What happened?’ I asked at last.
‘She decided she could fly, and jumped off a bridge in the Karangahake Gorge,’ he said flatly. ‘She was off her face on P.’
‘Oh, Jed.’
‘I’d better go,’ he said.
‘Yeah. Um, thinking of you. Bye.’
‘Bye,’ he said, and hung up.
I put the phone back on the charger and sank onto a stool. Anna turned around and looked at me. ‘His wife’s unconscious with head wounds,’ I told her. ‘She jumped off a bridge thinking she could fly.’
The Pretty Delicious Cafe Page 13
