Page 93 of The Little Board Game Café

‘Stock-take. I need to do a stock-take.’

Chapter Thirty-Three

She stomped down the high street, then stopped dead in her tracks.

There was a ‘for sale’ board outside Sweet Delights.

Had the competition with Costa Coffee proved too much for Peggy?

Emily didn’t like the woman, but it seemed a shame. Someone had once told her there’d been a café there for over sixty years; it had been Peggy’s mother’s and grandmother’s before her. Perhaps the new owner would keep it as a café, but Emily doubted it somehow. It’d be a brave person who took that on with one of the UK’s biggest coffee shop chains practically next door.

*

She closed the door of the Little Board Game Café behind her with a bang, thinking about Kate again. She put her bag down, unsure of what to do now she’d got here. There was no need for a stock-take. She already knew what was in the fridge and the freezer. She made herself a pot of tea though she wasn’t thirsty – not after all the tea she and Kate had drunk – and took a pack of playing cards from the shelf. And then, sitting at one of her own tables in her own, empty café, she began a game of Solitaire.

What a crap weekend this was turning out to be. She’d screwed things up with Ludek, then fallen out with Kate. Why had sleeping with Ludek made her panic so much? Could Kate be right? Was she afraid of falling head over heels with someone for fear she might lose them? Because of the brutal way she’d lost her mum?

And what was it she’d said to Ludek? Oh, the irony. Don’t let what’s happened in your past hold you back in your present.

She felt bad about walking out on him like that, and now she felt bad about Kate too. She shouldn’t have abandoned her either, not when she was upset about Freddie.

Where would she be without Kate? She’d been staying in that spare room for weeks now. Rent-free.

Emily suddenly thought of Annie. Hadn’t she said she was sofa-surfing? That her friends were getting sick of her? Emily thought of their conversation outside Oxfam, how Annie had been admiring that awful dress but probably couldn’t afford it, not even at charity shop prices.

An idea popped into her mind; maybe if she did something good this morning, she’d feel a bit better about things. And Julia was right: she could use some help in the café. The new Costa opening didn’t seem to have had much impact upon trade.

She scrolled through her phone and found the missed call from Annie and, on the spur of the moment, without doing any calculations to see if she could afford to employ someone, sent her a text offering her four hours a day, Monday to Friday. Twelve till four. Minimum wage. Which admittedly wasn’t much, but was more than she ever managed to pay herself.

Annie would probably turn it down anyway. It might interfere with her benefits or something. Working twenty hours a week wouldn’t be worth it.

Emily put down her phone and picked up the cards again. When they were all sorted into their respective suits, she played another game. And then another. And then she decided that Solitaire wasn’t that exciting – not compared with the games she usually played with Ludek – and she might as well open up the café if she was going to be here all day.

It was almost three o’clock when her first customer came in, a tall woman in a tweed skirt who somehow made Emily think of libraries. She ordered a pot of tea and a brownie, donned a pair of reading glasses and sat in the corner, absorbed in a paperback.

About fifteen minutes later, more customers arrived: a fair-haired woman wearing a tie-dyed dress with a dark-haired little boy in some kind of smock.

‘We wanted to know what the fuss was about, didn’t we?’ The woman ruffled his hair.

‘The fuss?’

‘Insta. This place has loads of great reviews.’

Perhaps that was why it had been so busy recently. Social media was working its magic.

They sat down in the window table and requested an americano, a glass of milk and a banana. ‘He only eats natural sugars,’ said the woman.

Once Emily had taken their order over, she glanced at the other customer, who was happily pouring a second cup of tea from the pot. With no one to serve, Emily pulled out her phone, and checked out Instagram. There was a whole heap of pictures she hadn’t seen. Snaps of her rocky roads, brownies, lemon drizzle and even a Chorley cake. She’d never noticed any customers taking photos of her food. This was unexpected. Flattering though.

A sudden crash interrupted her reading. She looked up. The little boy was standing by one of the empty tables and the menu, the sugar bowl and the meeple salt and pepper pots lay on the floor at his feet. Luckily nothing had broken. His mother said nothing.

The boy squealed and ran to another empty table, swiping everything onto the floor again and laughing loudly. Before Emily could stop him, he’d rushed to a third. The librarian-like customer closed her book, pulled on her coat and left. Half of her brownie lay uneaten, her tea cup was still half full. Emily was about to take them away, when there was another crash as the boy swept more items onto the floor.

Stay away from the board games, Emily prayed.

‘Excuse me,’ she said, walking over to his mother. ‘Could you please ask your child to stop doing that?’

‘Nothing’s broken. I don’t know what your problem is.’