Page 32 of The Little Board Game Café

‘Hello? Anyone in?’

She put her scouring pad down and peered through the kitchen hatch to see a small, grey-haired man standing in the middle of the café. His appearance was somewhat eccentric, with his chocolate-brown trilby, crimson bow-tie and foreign newspaper tucked under his arm. She glanced at her watch: eleven o’clock. She’d done two hours already and had barely achieved anything.

‘I thought I’d locked the door,’ she said.

‘Good morning. You must be the new owner.’

‘Yes, I am. But I’m not actually open yet. Not till next Monday.’

‘I’ll have a cappuccino and a pain au chocolat, please.’

Had he not heard her?

Honestly. She hadn’t got time for this.

But then he smiled at her. A kind smile that creased his whole face, but there was sadness in his grey eyes, a loneliness that she recognised because she’d seen it in Dad. He looked about Dad’s age too. Emily hated the thought of her father being turned away from the pub or the café in the garden centre.

‘I’ve no pain au chocolat. Would a Chorley cake do?’

She had brought a Tupperware full of them, baked the previous evening at Kate’s, to keep her going through the day. But, as Mum used to say, food was better shared. She could always nip out later and buy herself a sandwich.

‘A Chorley cake would be lovely,’ he said.

Emily couldn’t quite place his accent. East European, perhaps.

She’d brought a pint of milk too. She took the top off and sniffed it just in case; it wouldn’t do to give her first customer food poisoning by making their coffee with rancid milk. The milk was fine, but when she went over to the coffee machine, she remembered that she didn’t even know how to turn it on.

Her customer – her first customer – was sitting at the only table that wasn’t covered in pots and pans, waiting expectantly. She placed the Chorley cake in front of him. ‘There’s a problem. I don’t know how to work the coffee machine yet. Would a cup of tea do?’

‘I’ll show you how.’

He stood up, stepped behind the counter and switched the machine on. Emily watched as he tipped some beans into the grinder. ‘Don’t grind too many. It’s best to grind them fresh each day.’

‘I’ll need more than that when I open for all the other customers.’

‘Don’t grind too many.’ He smiled and patted her arm.

Then he showed her how to measure out the right amount of ground coffee and frothed the milk.

‘You need to check online for all the different ratios of milk to coffee. A latte is different to a cappuccino,’ he said as he poured the milk into his mug – Emily had hastily washed one up – and finished the whole thing off with a sprinkling of chocolate. ‘And I’m afraid I can’t show you how to make those fancy patterns on the top. You’ll have to use the YouTube for that. It’s amazing how much you can learn on there. I’ve never looked back since I did the Silver Surfers course at the library. Anyway, you know how to do a cappuccino now.’

‘If I can remember all that.’

‘I’ll order a second one then, and you can practise.’

She measured out the coffee, as he’d done, and frothed the milk, before mixing the two and adding the chocolate.

‘Ta-dah!’ Emily said, delighted that she’d made her first cappuccino.

‘Since we have two cappuccinos,’ said the customer, ‘I think you might as well get yourself a Chorley cake and join me. You can tell me all about your plans for this place. I’m Stan, by the way. Stan Baranski.’

Mr Baranski told her he’d been coming to the café for several years. He called in every day after his morning stroll in the park and had a cappuccino and pain au chocolat whilst he read the paper.

‘I’m happy to make it a cappuccino and Chorley cake from now on. These are excellent. Home-made?’

Emily nodded, her own mouth full of buttery pastry and juicy sultanas. You were supposed to use currants, but she preferred sultanas.

‘The pain au chocolat were frozen things that Nico bought in anyway,’ Mr Baranski continued. ‘You can’t beat home-made.’