Page 33 of The Little Board Game Café

When they’d eaten their fill of Chorley cakes and finished their coffees, he stood up, held out a ten-pound note and said, ‘It’s been lovely, Emily. See you again soon.’

She tried to wave his money away, but he pressed it firmly into her hand.

After he’d gone, she turned the sign to closed, double-checked that the Yale lock was on and studied the ten-pound note. Not to check if it was fake – though as a responsible business owner, she should probably have done that – but because it was the first money that her café had made. She felt like framing it. But there was work to be done, so she shoved it into her pocket, filled a bucket with hot soapy water and scrubbed the floor. She cleaned the fridge, washed every pot and pan in the place and scoured the cooker inside and out, removing every last speck of grease from the hob. Sustained by tea and Chorley cakes, she was still cleaning way after it grew dark. The whole place smelled fresher, but it was still gloomy. She would definitely need to paint the walls.

Emily had forgotten about Kate’s date and was disappointed to find the little house was empty. It would have been lovely to tell someone about her first day in the café, and her first customer. She baked another batch of Chorley cakes that evening, rather than cooking dinner, and ate two, still warm from the oven, washed down with a glass of cold milk. Then she collapsed into bed.

*

The following day, Mr Baranski – sporting a purple bow-tie this time–- tapped on the door at two minutes past eleven. Emily put down her scourer and let him in, before firing up the coffee machine.

He arrived at the same time on Wednesday.

‘Good morning, Mr B,’ Emily said as she opened the door. She hoped he’d be okay with her calling him that. ‘You’ve gone for blue today, I see,’ she added, looking at his tie. ‘Very smart.’

‘Good morning, Emily.’

‘Usual, is it?’

‘Yes, please. And I’d love it if you would join me. You look like you could use a break.’

She washed her hands, made two cappuccinos and placed the Tupperware of Chorley cakes on the table between them.

‘I’ve been living off these for the last few days. Been too tired to make dinner.’

‘Emily, you’ve got to look after yourself,’ said Mr B, his eyes full of concern.

*

On Thursday morning, Emily caught the early bus to Halifax – the nearest town with a DIY store – and selected two huge tins of white emulsion, along with a selection of rollers and brushes and a large plastic sheet to cover the floor. It was far too heavy for her to take on the bus, so she took an Uber back to the café. She pushed all the tables to one side, stacking the chairs and leaving one table tucked away in the corner for Mr B.

She had just finished putting the first coat of paint on the walls and ceiling when he arrived, at eleven on the dot, carrying a plastic bag.

A canary-yellow bow-tie this time, she noticed as she put down her paintbrush.

Emily made them each a cappuccino. As she placed the Chorley cakes on the table, he produced a Tupperware of his own.

‘Your dinner,’ he said. ‘Man shall not live by Chorley cakes alone. Best put it in the fridge.’

She took off the lid to look and was hit by a familiar aroma: chicken soup. Real chicken soup made with proper stock from the carcass, the way her mum always used to. It didn’t look like Mum’s soup – there were noodles as well as vegetables – but it smelled so similar. Her eyes welled with tears and she scrabbled to find a tissue.

‘Sorry,’ she mumbled. ‘It smells so delicious and it brought back memories. My mum—’

Kate knew about the accident, of course, and other friends back in Thornholme, but these days she never talked about what happened. Even Peter had known only the bare facts, not the details. But now she found herself telling Mr B about the worst day of her life.

Her mum had been standing on the corner of the high street, not far from the market where she’d been buying vegetables. She always went to the market on Thursdays, choosing the freshest ingredients, buying local produce that was in season long before it became trendy. A dog ran into the road and a lorry swerved to avoid it. It narrowly missed her mum on the pavement, but the stones it was carrying were not properly secured. Several tumbled off onto her.

A policewoman interrupted Emily’s algebra lesson and drove her to the hospital. She barely recognised Dad. He appeared to have aged ten years in one morning and hardly uttered a word.

‘Your mum wouldn’t have felt any pain,’ the doctor had said, but how could he be so sure? Emily had tried to picture the scene. She had so many questions. Whose dog was it? Why wasn’t it on a lead? What did the driver look like? Was he upset? Was he sorry?

She’d imagined her mum lying in the gutter, bleeding, broken. A bag of vegetables by her side. A lonely swede rolling out into the road.

‘She’d have laughed at the irony of it,’ Emily said to Mr B. ‘A proud Lancashire woman like her being crushed by a load of Yorkshire stone. You couldn’t make it up.’

A knock at the door interrupted them. She hastily wiped her tears and looked over to see Ludek, peering in through the glass. Emily hadn’t seen him since he’d removed her engagement ring at the surgery. She’d thought about him though – just a few times a day – and had wondered about going along to his board games evening, but Kate was never free and she’d somehow never managed to summon up the courage to walk in on her own.

Still trying to dry her cheeks, she went to let him in.