He sits back down with his plate and his mug and settles back with his legs up on the table again, lifting them for me to get past and take the seat opposite.
‘You’re the only person to have ever understood why this matters,’ he says before eating another forkful of lemon meringue pie.
I want to ask about his ex-wife, because I’m sure there’s more to his divorce than he’s mentioned so far, but after tonight, it doesn’t feel like him opening up is a million miles away.
I sit back too and put my feet up on the same table, and just enjoy his company. I rest my legs alongside his, and it feels like part of a puzzle piece that was missing, even when I realisewhyhis alien pyjama trousers looked so demure earlier. ‘Oh God, they glow in the dark.’
As darkness falls, the alien faces all over his trousers start gaining a distinct green glow, and there’s just something about a man who isn’t afraid of glow-in-the-dark clothing in a non-ironic way.
We’re both too comfortable to get up and turn a light on. Reece looks like he could fall asleep at any moment, so relaxed that he’s slumped almost horizontally on the bench seat. My right leg is pressed along the side of his good leg, my arm resting on his calf, his arm long enough for his fingers to draw mindless patterns on my thigh, and I can’t remember the last time I felt so contented or enjoyed an evening so much that I never, never want it to end.
14
A few days have passed, I’ve found my old laptop buried in one of the boxes Jared threw out and Reece has set up a Wi-Fi hotspot that gives me an internet signal in the campervan. I’m sitting at the table with the windows and door open, enjoying the fresh summer breeze and the quiet babbling of the river behind me, while I search for jobs I can apply for locally, but my heart isn’t in it.
Every job is so… uninspiring. Life has changed infinitely. I’ve been brave enough to change everything, and it would be a huge step backwards to return to a similar job to the one that sucked the life out of me before, and I keep thinking of what Reece said the other night, about serving pie out of the van window, and no matter how hard I try, I can’t get the idea out of my head. The abandoned tearoom in the village is too big, it’s not something I could do by myself, but the campervan is just the right size, and I know this is a village that misses its tearoom…
I look up at the crashing sound of heavy building materials being thrown into the skip outside. Through the window, I can see Reece hauling old plasterboard and broken timber down the steps from the pub. He’s wearing loose jeans with building-related stains all over them and rips big enough to show a sliver of thigh, and a navy-blue T-shirt that looks like there’s more paint onitthan on whatever he was painting when he wore it last. His forehead is glistening from the exertion and the sun beating down on the car park, and hestilllooks like he belongs on a billboard for sexy construction workers.
And I decide to be brave, because if I don’t voice these thoughts to someone, they’re going to stay inside my head forever. Maybe not the part about sexy construction workers though. ‘You look like a man in need of a cuppa and a slice of hot apple pie.’
He turns around with a bright grin. ‘You got me. I didn’t even need to chuck this stuff in the skip, but I could smell baking and I wanted an excuse to come down and see if I could be of assistance in taste testing…’
I’ve been watching walkers for a few days now. The ones flagging in energy by the time they reach here. The way people can smell what I’ve been baking and keep looking over with interest, and I’ve been wondering about how many of them might stop for a cup of tea… if there was somewhere to get one. I keep thinking of the tables and chairs, stacked up unused in the pub, and the walk-in cupboard I watched Reece get plates out of once… It feels like the answer is staring me in the face, if I pluck up the courage to look back at it.
‘Stay there, I want to try something,’ I say as Reece makes his way over. I’ve got the window open, and instead of inviting him in, I make a cup of tea and cut a slice of the apple pie I’ve just got out of the oven, and duck down to hand it to him through the window.
‘Which is…?’ He takes the plate and mug and looks around for somewhere to put them down, but I haven’t got that far… yet.
‘Just something you said the other night.’
I can see from the look on his face that he knows exactly what I’m talking about, and then the words spill out in a rush.
‘There’s nowhere for miles that walkers can have a cup of tea and a sit-down. That’s why the pub was always so busy. This is perfect positioning. It’s a long, steep walk to the waterfall, and we’re right at the beginning of it if you’re coming, or the end of it if you’re going. When do people need a cup of tea and a slice of cake more than that? The tearoom in the village has closed down and people miss it, and this would be smaller and much more manageable and…’ I trail off because I’m running out of oxygen, and Reece laughs at how fast I’m speaking.
‘I don’t think I’ve ever heard three paragraphs come out as one sentence before.’ He sets the mug down inside the window and leans against the van to break off a forkful of the pie on his plate.
‘I think it’s a brill—’ He shoves the fork into his mouth mid-sentence and stops as a look of bliss overtakes his features. ‘Oh my days. That is thebestapple pie I’ve ever eaten.’
He shovels another couple of forkfuls in like he can’t get enough of it, and watching his enthusiasm fills me with so much joy. Despite his cheerful persona, I don’t think he lets himself be truly uninhibited very often, but my grandma always said that the right food at the right moment can have a magical effect.
‘It’s not just a brilliant idea – it would actually be criminal if the people of Thimblenouthdidn’tget to taste the things you can bake in one small van.’ He reaches over for the mug and lifts it to his mouth for a gulp of tea. ‘SoI’mthinking that your Nostalgia Café should live again, right here, in this car park. And I’m certain you were thinking the same thing.’
The words make me feel both ecstatic and off-balance with the implausibility of my own thoughts, and the reassurance that I haven’t gone completely round-the-bend in thinking it. ‘But it would be impossible, unfeasible madness. I couldn’t just…’ I trail off, imagining picnic tables and chairs in the car park. Baking in the campervan. Doing something that matters to people and tome. Actually staying here, in this little oasis, doing what I’ve always dreamed of doing, albeit on a smaller scale…
‘Why not? You’ve got the van and you’ve got the baking skills. What’s stopping you?’
‘For starters, I don’t own this van. Or this car park. And my oven has one shelf. I can make one pie at a time, and I don’t have enough plates, or cups, or cutlery, or tables, or chairs. I’d probably need to register with the local council which would involve some kind of affirmation that this ismyvan. I’ve already completed a food safety course to serve food to the public and have my food hygiene certificate, but I’d undoubtedly need business insurance, and…’ I trail off. There are so many things to consider that even starting to list them feels overwhelming.
‘Those are practical problems, and practical problems have practical solutions. Let me look it up.’ He gets his phone out of his pocket and I stand in the van and instead of watching his long fingers whizz across the screen, I look around the small space. One pie or cake at a time. A menu board outside with each day’s options on it. Tea. Coffee. There’s a fridge to store things in, and I could get a small display case to showcase what’s available. Whatever I felt like making in the morning could be on sale to tired walkers before lunchtime…
I try to tell myself that this is ridiculous. You can’t just decide to open a business in a stolen campervan in someone else’s car park, but even as I’m forming the arguments, I can feel something else bubbling up inside me. The fizzing, irrepressible energy that comes with the thought that something completely impractical might just be possible after all.
What if this is exactly what The Nostalgia Café was meant to be… Not a fixed location in a tiny backroad in Sevenoaks with an untrustworthy friend, but something mobile and free and perfectly positioned to catch people when they need it most? Something I could do for myself, just me, without relying on anyone else…
Reece’s phone appears under my nose as he holds it through the window. ‘There’s the registration form. You don’t need to register the van, only yourself as the owner of a food business. You can use the pub as your address.’
I take the phone and scroll through the page he’s showing me. Name. Address. Location of where the van will operate. All standard stuff, nothing where I have to register the vehicle itself as my own. ‘But what about… your boss? What about the fact this is private property and I don’t have permission to be here?’
