Page 55 of The Little Board Game Café

The tutor left the room and Emily wandered over to the trolley with the others. There was a large jug of filter coffee, a large flask of hot water for tea and a beautiful array of pastries: macarons; mille-feuilles; chocolate tarts; white chocolate eclairs.

She helped herself to an eclair and a mug of filter coffee and returned to her workstation.

‘What do you do?’ said the blond-haired woman who had asked all the questions, turning to look at her.

‘I have my own café,’ Emily said.

‘Oh, we have a professional in our midst. No wonder you knew about choux pastry. Whereabouts is it? Would we know it?’

‘West Yorkshire.’ She suddenly felt as if every pair of eyes was looking at her.

‘Goodness. You’ve come rather a long way for a course.’

‘Don’t you know all this stuff anyway,’ said another woman, ‘if you run your own café?’

‘Most of it, yes. I was hoping the course would be a bit more advanced. Didn’t they mention macarons and flaky pastry on the website?’

‘Rough puff,’ came a male voice from the doorway and Emily turned to see the tutor had returned. ‘That’s part two. Next Saturday. You can book on that as well if you like. We offer a five per cent reduction to returning students.’

Emily didn’t remember seeing anything about a part one and a part two course on the website, but the tutor had such a steely gaze that she didn’t dare argue. She’d have a look later.

The coffee break over, they placed their empty plates and mugs back on the trolley and the lesson began again.

At lunchtime, Emily wandered along the high street, marvelling at the number of great charity shops. The garments on sale were a far cry from those on offer back in Essendale. Barely worn, many had designer labels. The prices though! Almost as expensive as buying new.

And so many cafés. Admittedly Chiswick had more inhabitants than Essendale, but imagine the stress of trying to run a café here, in the face of so much competition. The first two she went in were completely full – not a single table to be had – and she ended up buying a sandwich and eating it on a bench on the green.

After she’d finished, she took out her phone and googled the cookery school.

On our patisserie courses, the blurb read, we teach you how to make different types of pastry including shortcrust, choux and rough puff, and a wide variety of desserts including profiteroles, fruit tarts, macarons and mille-feuille.

On our patisserie courses. Not course.

She scrolled down and saw that there were six courses listed, ranging in difficulty from the easy one that she had selected to a full twelve-week diploma course. This is the course to choose if you want to bake professionally, the website said.

What had she been thinking? Of course it took longer than a day to bake to the level she’d need if she was going to transform The Lancashire Hotpot into a patisserie. How could she have thought any different?

Chapter Twenty

Emily scurried back towards King’s Cross, tail between her legs and tears in her eyes.

This morning, she’d walked these same pavements full of hope and optimism, convinced that she’d master the art of patisserie then magically apply her newly acquired skills as she spent the weekend baking a whole batch of hand-crafted delicacies. She’d open on Monday to find a queue of people. Or at least a couple of customers whose names weren’t Marjory and Mr B.

Okay, so she wasn’t that unrealistic. She knew that patisserie wasn’t easy. She knew it would take time and practice before she had anything good enough to offer to customers, and that even then, it might take a few days, weeks even, for word to spread of the new, improved offerings at The Lancashire Hotpot.

But that course hadn’t taught her even a fraction of the skills that she needed and the fee had been astronomical. Money she could ill afford. A second course at a five per cent discount? Out of the question. Never mind the twelve-week professional diploma.

Emily wiped her cheeks on her sleeve, and weaved her way in and out, between businessmen in expensive Italian suits talking loudly on their iPhones and women with foreheads full of Botox and designer handbags full of…what did women like that keep in their designer handbags? She had no idea. They were obviously successful people anyway. Achievers. People who set out to do something and managed it. People who were the opposite of her.

It was a relief to reach the station, to look up at the information board and see the platform number for her train. She didn’t venture into London often, but whenever she did, she always felt that she was already back home in Yorkshire the moment she stepped aboard the Grand Central at King’s Cross. There was something very northern about those trains. The name for a start. ‘That’s grand!’ was a phrase you often heard in God’s Own County. All the staff had a Yorkshire accent and, once the trains had left London, they didn’t stop again until they reached Donnie (Doncaster). Even ticket prices were designed to appeal to your average Yorkshireman (who was outdone, it was said, only by the Scots in terms of his reluctance to put his hand in his pocket. Emily thought this was a myth anyway; she’d met many generous Scottish and Yorkshire people in her time.) Anyway, it was the perfect route for a cash-strapped café owner from Essendale who’d already wasted far too much money on a useless patisserie course.

She walked along the length of the train, trying to find the quietest carriage. She needed to think. To work out what her options were now. The last thing she wanted when she was in this mood was loads of fellow passengers drinking wine from the buffet car and making lots of noise.

She finally decided on coach B. The seats were mostly arranged in twos but there were some groups of four with a table in between. She chose one of those, praying that no one would join her. Across the aisle, a pair of older women sat down, placing carrier bags from the National Gallery and the Tate on the table. She thought back to the art gallery/café where Peter had taken her. If only he hadn’t. Then she wouldn’t have wasted her time and money on this stupid trip to the capital. And Ludek wouldn’t have witnessed that kiss.

She put her elbows on the table and her head in her hands, willing the minutes to pass and the train to depart. What was she meant to do now? Call it a day and admit that the café was a failure, do what she should have done all along and find herself another job? Peter was right: for the café to succeed, she needed to turn it into a destination but venturing into patisserie had been her one and only idea about how to do that. What else could she do? It was game over, unless she could come up with something else.

She looked at her watch. Two minutes and the train would be leaving and at least one bit of good luck: she had the table to herself. The carriage was filling up but was still reasonably quiet.