Page 38 of Second Chances at the Board Game Café

‘Yeah, the smell was dreadful when I first came to view it. And there was a lot of mould.’

‘Do you own this place or rent it?’

‘I rent it.’

Harry bit his lip. ‘I’m not an expert, but a few of my clients are landlords and rental properties need to have a certificate showing that the electrics are safe. I think the place needs to be checked by someone properly qualified. Promise you won’t use that socket. Have you got an extension lead to power up your sewing machine?’

‘Yeah, somewhere. Thank you so much. Do you fancy a cuppa? I could certainly use one.’

He nodded. ‘Please. May I use your bathroom first?’

‘Sure. Top of the stairs. On the left.’

It was only when she was filling the kettle that she realised she didn’t know the reason for his visit.

Harry reappeared as she was pouring the milk into their mugs. ‘Washing machine still not fixed?’

Taylor was puzzled. ‘How did you know?’

‘Your bath is full of washing. I wish you’d let me sort it out.’

‘I couldn’t let you do that. Let’s have our tea.’

They went into the lounge. Taylor put their mugs on the coffee table and sat down, patting the cushions, indicating that Harry should sit beside her. He did so a little awkwardly, she noticed, taking care to leave a good few inches between them.

Gentlemanly as well as kind, she thought. She rather liked that.

Harry reached down for his carrier bag and took out the shirt and the dragon pillowcase that he’d taken home from the upcycling evening.

‘I hope you don’t mind me dropping in like this,’ he said, ‘but I wanted a little advice. I thought I might make a start on this at home, but then I realised I’m not actually sure about what to do. If I cut the dragon out, then stitch it onto the shirt, won’t the edges fray? I wondered about cutting out a centimetre or so…’

‘Not an inch?’ she couldn’t resist chipping in.

Harry looked at her nervously. His eyes met hers, then he laughed as he realised she was teasing him. ‘I wondered about cutting it out, leaving a centimetre around the outside so that I could turn a kind of hem on it, but the shape is probably too fiddly for that.’

Taylor still had those curtains to finish, but helping him with his dragon shirt was a much more appealing prospect.

She took the pillowcase from him and looked at the fabric. ‘Far too fiddly. It probably will fray over time, but that’s part of the charm of appliqué, and there are things you can do to reduce the fraying. I’ll show you.’

She stood up, and went over to her stack of plastic boxes. In the second box from the top, she found what she was looking for – fusible webbing.

‘Okay, Harry. Cut out your dragon leaving, say, two and a half centimetres – that’s an inch if you prefer imperial – around the outside. You then iron this webbing onto the back of him. Or her. I guess some dragons must be female or they’d have all died out by now.’

He smiled. Almost everyone on the planet looked better when they smiled, but with Harry, it made a huge difference. He was almost unrecognisable from that nervous-looking guy she’d first met in the board game café. Attractive even, although was she wearing rose-coloured spectacles because he’d turned up today at exactly the right moment, right when she needed someone, and helped her out?

A knight in shining armour.

A knight who’d brought along his own dragon.

She smiled to herself as she looked down at the pillowcase.

‘When the webbing is stuck to the dragon, you then cut it out properly. Then you stitch it onto your shirt using zigzag stitch. Some people use hairspray to seal the edges a little more first. You could try that.’

‘I’m not sure I possess such a thing as hairspray,’ Harry said.

She laughed. ‘No, but I do. You start cutting out and I’ll go and find some. There are some scissors next to the sewing machine.’

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