Page 2 of Second Chances at the Board Game Café

Feeling guilty that she’d once again been dreaming of what her life might have been like if he hadn’t arrived on the scene, she went into his room to wake him, and sat on his bed for a minute, admiring the delicate features of her boy’s face. At eight years old, he was still baby-faced, with a mop of curly blond hair a little fairer than her own. In sleep, he looked calm and untroubled. Contented even. She leaned over and breathed in his scent, as she’d loved to do when he was an infant. She stroked his hair, and then his cheek, marvelling at the softness of his skin under her fingertips. He stirred slightly, opened his eyes and pushed her hand away.

For the next half hour, Taylor was on autopilot. She bundled Max into the shower and cajoled him into putting on his uniform: slate grey trousers, a white shirt, grey tie and a jumper in a slightly lighter shade of grey. If you were going to make children all dress like clones of each other, you could at least choose something colourful, something fun, for them to wear. Something bright that said, ‘We’re children’. He looked like a mini office worker, like he should be tucking a briefcase under his arm, catching the train to Halifax and doing accounts all day.

She gave him his breakfast – porridge with three-quarters of a tablespoon of honey, exactly as he liked it – and told him to brush his teeth and grab his school things. As they left the flat, he made her double-check that the door was definitely locked.

It was drizzling when they set off for school, along the uneven pavements and cobbled back alleys of Essendale.

The little town lay nestled in amongst the hills of the West Yorkshire Pennines. Scraggly sheep grazed the higher slopes overlooking the higgledy-piggledy streets and stone terraced houses. There was a board game café and across the road, a Costa coffee shop, a florist, an Oxfam shop and a dress shop that sold the kind of outfits Taylor thought of as that ‘mother-of-the-bride’ look. They weren’t to Taylor’s taste, but she kept quiet about that, as they sometimes sent customers her way in search of alterations.

A chimney still towered over the town, a permanent reminder of its industrial past. This valley was once home to many cotton mills. There’d been factories too, where rows of machinists stitched the cloth from the mills into garments. At one time, the clothing industry was the major employer in this town; if you didn’t work in a mill or a factory yourself, you would have certainly known someone who did. It was, Taylor often thought, a fitting place for her to live, although it hadn’t actually been her choice.

This morning, the white geese were guarding the door of the board game café, but she and Max gave them a wide berth. As they walked, she tested him – at his insistence – on his seventeen times table, which she was sure wasn’t a thing he had to learn for school, but Max had known all his times tables up to twelve by the time he was seven. He got every question right – at least, she thought he did, but she wasn’t certain because her son was quicker at mental arithmetic than she was.

At the school gates, she ruffled his hair, and he batted her away as always, shuffling towards the imposing Victorian building with his usual air of resignation. Things weren’t getting any better as far as school was concerned.

She didn’t have time to stop and chat at the school gates with the other parents, nor the inclination to be honest. It was awkward really, always had been, since Max didn’t gel with any of their children, was never invited to parties – well, not unless the entire class was invited anyway – and a couple of them seemed to bear grudges against her that they’d harboured for years. Amelia’s mum, for example, didn’t speak to her over some incident at nursery when Max had lashed out. And a few mums looked down on her, she knew they did, because she was a single mother. For heaven’s sake, this was the twenty-first century.

But as school runs went, it had been a good one, and her mood was beginning to lift as she walked away from Essendale Primary and back towards home.

Taylor lived with Max on the first floor of a small terraced house that had been divided into two even smaller flats. She didn’t know her downstairs neighbour; their interactions over the six years that she and Max had lived here were limited to complaints about noise. Old Mr Russell didn’t appreciate having a child upstairs, even though as children went, Max was a quiet, gentle boy. Clever too, she thought proudly.

She made herself a mug of Nescafé – she usually bought supermarket own brand but this jar had been yellow-stickered – and went to sit on the sofa for a moment’s peace before she began work. She always had loads to do and ought to get started, but at least she didn’t have a long commute – only two metres, in fact, to the large wooden table that was home to her beloved Janome sewing machine. Because this room was not only her bedroom, and their lounge. It was also her workplace.

Taylor’s first task that morning was replacing a zip in a smart but hideously boring pair of men’s trousers. As she unpicked the stitching on the old zip, she wondered if today might be the day that someone phoned and asked, ‘Do you make wedding dresses?’

Probably not.

She’d had only two dress commissions in all these years of running her little business.

The first – the Scrabble pinafore – had ended up in the charity shop. Seeing it there had stung so much. Almost as much as being rejected by John.

Okay, perhaps not that much, but it had been painful. She’d been so excited about making that dress, and it had been so unusual, so eye-catching. She’d allowed herself to fantasise about it kickstarting her dress-making business, and that other women would want her to make bespoke dresses for them too. She’d even put it on her Instagram, hoping another Scrabble fan would want one – although she didn’t have a clue where Kate had bought the fabric – but no-one had even enquired about it, let alone made an order.

Then a weird thing had happened. Not long after the Scrabble dress had made its appearance in the charity shop, Kate had appeared on her doorstep again, wanting a second pinafore for the same friend. This time, the fabric had been even more unusual; a softer cotton printed with what appeared to be little gingerbread men, only they weren’t gingerbread-coloured – they were red, green, blue and yellow. Weebles, Kate had called them. Something like that anyway.

Taylor hadn’t liked to ask what weebles were, or to ask why the first dress hadn’t been wanted. After all, perhaps Kate didn’t even know that the special gift she’d had made for her friend had been dumped in the charity shop. The woman also seemed in a hurry, so Taylor had accepted the commission, and made a start on the weebles dress.

She looked in the hospice shop window now every time she went to Hebbleswick, wondering if that second pinafore would appear there too. Thankfully it hadn’t; Kate’s friend had obviously liked it better than the first one.

Taylor often wondered about those frocks. Did Kate’s friend ever wear the weebles one? Had anyone bought the Scrabble one from the hospice shop or had it gone to a fabric recycling company? Or worse still, ended up in landfill somewhere? She would never know.

Since those two pinafores, there’d been nothing. No orders. No commissions. Not even any enquiries. It was understandable really; made-to-measure garments were expensive, and couldn’t compete with cheap high street fashion chains and online stores. So Taylor tried to be content with being a single mum, living in a one-bedroom flat, sleeping on a sofa bed every night and basically leading a boring life, the highlight of which was watching her idol, the wonderful fashion designer Esme Young, judging the garments on The Great British Sewing Bee.

As a teenager, she’d fantasised about one day studying under Esme. Now she resigned herself to mending clothes for a living, when what she really longed to be doing was designing them.

2

Taylor held her Visa against the card reader, but there was no beep; her contactless payment had not gone through. She tried again.

‘The card’s been declined,’ said the check-out woman.

‘I er…’

Taylor’s cheeks grew hot. She lowered her head so no-one would see her embarrassment, and rooted in her purse, although she knew full well that she didn’t have enough cash on her.

‘I’ll get that,’ came a voice from behind.

Taylor turned to see her favourite client, Mr B, standing at the back of the queue. He looked dapper as always, in his smart trousers, waistcoat and a red and purple polka-dot bow tie. Normally she’d take a moment to admire his attire, but this morning, she wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible.