Page 17 of Second Chances at the Board Game Café

But he was her love child. Hers and John’s.

She sighed, wondering if John would bother to visit this summer for Max’s birthday or if she’d have to make an excuse for him again. If she could wave a wand and have three wishes for her boy, she’d ask for him to hasve a friend, the ability to fit in at school and a proper dad.

9

They could have caught the bus to and from Essendale. The bus stop was closer, and the fare a little cheaper, but Max loved trains, and Taylor was feeling proud of him; for a boy who didn’t like change, he had taken the house move in his stride.

On the station that first morning, she spotted another child wearing the dull grey uniform of Essendale Primary, an older boy sitting on a bench reading a book, with a teenage girl beside him, who was staring at her phone.

‘D’you know him?’ Taylor said to Max, nodding in the direction of the boy.

‘Year 6,’ was all he said, so she didn’t pursue it. Max was nervous of the Year 6 boys.

The boy and girl – his sister, presumably – boarded a carriage towards the rear of the train.

‘I want to sit near the driver,’ said Max, so he and Taylor went to sit near the front.

The school run was time-consuming. To reach Essendale Primary on time, they had to take the train just before twenty-five past eight, then wait outside the school gates as school didn’t officially start until ten to nine. Then there wasn’t a train back until half past nine, which meant the morning run alone took almost an hour and a half out of Taylor’s day. If he’d agree to change schools, it would make life so much easier.

On the first day, Mrs Green had wanted a ‘quick word’ about Max’s behaviour after school, so they missed the train home and had to wait for over half an hour.

The following day, Taylor managed to grab Max and make her escape before the teacher spotted her. She was feeling rather chuffed with herself when they reached their front door, as the entire afternoon school run had taken less than an hour.

The door was a little tricky to open – someone had shoved a carrier bag through her letterbox, causing an obstruction – and Max began to moan that she was taking too long and that he needed a wee, although when they finally got inside, he raced straight to his bedroom to play with his trains, rather than to the bathroom.

Taylor put the kettle on, took him up a glass of milk and a chocolate digestive, then opened the carrier bag. There was a pair of jeans inside. Men’s jeans. Good quality ones too.

Strange. Who’d put a pair of jeans through her letterbox? None of her regulars had mentioned needing a pair of men’s jeans altering or repairing. She checked the zip but it was in perfect working order, and in any case, the jeans appeared brand new. If it weren’t for the creases, she’d have hazarded a guess that they hadn’t ever been worn.

The kettle boiled. Taylor made her cuppa and went into the lounge, perching on the arm of the sofa.

Max appeared with a box of train tracks and began setting them up around the legs of her sewing table. ‘Just for this evening,’ he said.

‘But you’ve got a bigger bedroom now, Max.’

‘Pleeeease. I’ll put it away before bedtime.’

Later, as she grilled fish fingers, buttered a couple of rounds of bread from a sliced loaf and heated up a can of baked beans, Max fetched more track and extended his rail network into the kitchen, right under her feet. She smiled to herself. It’d serve him right if one of Captain Birdseye’s best slipped off her spatula and landed on his beloved Flying Scotsman or whatever it was.

‘Mum, what’s this?’ Max was holding out a piece of paper.

‘Where d’you find that?’

‘On the floor by the sofa.’

Taylor took the paper. In old-fashioned cursive handwriting, someone had written, Hello Taylor, We met a couple of weeks ago in the board game café and I was wondering if you could perhaps take up these jeans? By 6 inches please.

He had signed his name – Harry – and written his phone number.

The note must have fallen out when she pulled the mystery jeans from the bag.

She cast her mind back to that morning in the board game café. Just before Tarquin had appeared and offered her this house, there’d been a guy behind her in the queue. She couldn’t recall anything about him except that he’d been wearing a grey suit and had asked her about the flavoured syrup, which had seemed a bit odd. That short conversation had seemed insignificant at the time; she hadn’t expected him to become a client.

The baked beans were bubbling a bit too ferociously now. Taylor turned the heat down and checked the fish fingers, which had been about to burn.

She looked at the jeans again. Six inches seemed like a lot. Had he been particularly short? She racked her brains but couldn’t remember. Still, a new client was always welcome, particularly now, when she might have lost a few of her regulars because of moving her business to Hebbleswick.

Once he’d eaten his beans and slightly singed fish fingers, Max seemed content to play with his railway again. She made him promise to take it all back upstairs before bedtime, then decided to get on with shortening the jeans. Why would you buy a garment that was so much longer than you needed? she wondered, as she took out her scissors.