Page 96 of The Little Board Game Café

But was there anything she could do? How about taking to social media again herself? With the café empty, she took photo after photo, trying to get the perfect shot. The jam jars full of Scrabble tiles. The table tops. The canvases. The shelves of board games, mostly Ludek’s. She shuddered, thinking how much damage Charlie could have done. She’d have to return them.

She flicked through the photos, trying to decide which one to use first, finally settling on a photo of a coffee mug with one of Annie’s dice cakes in the foreground, taken from a low angle so you could see two of the canvases in soft focus in the background. She uploaded it to Instagram, tagging it with #boardgames, #boardgamescafé, #Essendale, #deliciouscakes.

Mr B arrived for coffee with two of his Polish friends. Instead of Chorley cakes, they ordered three domino biscuits.

‘You’ve surpassed yourself with these, Emily,’ said Mr B. ‘I love your Chorley cakes but these are out of this world.’

Emily decided not to mention that she hadn’t actually baked them.

The men began a game of Scrabble in Polish, but gave up after ten minutes; apparently there weren’t enough ‘z’ tiles in the English set for the words they wanted to make.

On Wednesday, Mr B and Marjory both ordered dice cakes, proclaiming them divine, before embarking on a game of Ticket to Ride.

‘I still prefer Scrabble,’ Mr B said. ‘These other games are…’

‘…a bit complicated for the likes of us,’ said Marjory. ‘But we like the new games-themed cakes. So imaginative. And they taste great. Your baking’s getting better and better, Emily. You should go on The Great British Bake Off.’

It had definitely been a mistake taking Annie on: not only would she have to raid what remained of her savings to pay her wages if trade didn’t pick up by Friday, but Annie’s superior baking was showing Emily’s up.

On Thursday lunchtime, the door opened and the familiar little black wheels of a shopping trolley appeared in the doorway. Emily rushed over to help, grabbing the door as Mrs Sinclair and Mrs Scott came in and sat down at their usual table as if they’d never been away.

‘You haven’t been in for a few days,’ Emily said, as she went over to take their order.

‘Half-term, dear,’ said the taller one. ‘I went away for a few days with my son, daughter-in-law and their four children and I’m exhausted. Baby-sitting every single evening so they could enjoy themselves. I’m saying no next year.’

‘And you, Mrs…?’ Emily hesitated. ‘Have you been somewhere nice?’

‘No, but I didn’t want to come in without Sylvia. I can’t handle Florence on my own. She insists we play Scrabble and she’s very argumentative. Last week I made the word “check-in” and she said it was hyphenated, and I didn’t have a g to make it into “checking” and she said I had to miss…’

At that moment, the door opened and Florence appeared.

Mrs Scott – or was she Mrs Sinclair? – looked slightly guilty and said, ‘I think I’ll have the hotpot again please, dear.’

Her former MIL2B greeted her with a kiss on both cheeks and said, ‘I’ll have one of your delicious hotpots too, please, Emily.’

Emily went to the kitchen, marvelling first at how friendly Florence had been and secondly at the fact that their absence had had nothing to do with the bad review. School holidays! It hadn’t occurred to her. Did that explain Julia and George’s absence too?

On Friday, Julia and George appeared, but there were no other mums with them.

‘Julia, can I ask you something?’ Emily said, placing their order on the table.

‘Fire away.’

‘It’s just… I haven’t seen you for a while.’

‘Centre Parcs,’ she said. ‘I’m exhausted.’

‘Nothing to do with the review then?’

‘Review?’

‘A customer left me a bad review on Instagram,’ Emily said. ‘And she posted it on TripAdvisor and Facebook too. Then you stopped coming in and a couple of other people too. I was worried I’d lost my best customers. Thought I’d go bankrupt.’ She laughed to make it sound as if she was joking.

‘I don’t know anything about a review.’ Julia took a sip of her americano. ‘God, I needed that. You’re a nightmare in the school holidays, aren’t you, George?’

George was looking at the games shelves, dithering between Carcassonne and Ticket to Ride.

‘Show me the review,’ said Julia.