Page 4 of Second Chances at the Board Game Café

‘A walk?’ Max made it sound like the most ludicrous thing he’d ever heard. ‘But we never go for a walk.’

‘Then it’ll make a nice change. We’ll go through the park and along the canal.’

This, Taylor knew, was the most direct route to the block with the flat for rent. She would jot down the phone number of the estate agent – there was sure to be a board outside – and broach the idea of moving there to Max. As they walked, Taylor put her left hand in her pocket and crossed her fingers. She left her right hand dangling by her side, just in case Max wanted to hold it. Unlikely, but she lived in hope.

The ten-minute walk was punctuated by snatches of conversation. Taylor asked Max how school had been. He mumbled, ‘Okay.’

She enquired how the weekly spelling test had gone.

He’d got ten out of ten as usual.

‘And how was PE?’ she said, regretting the question almost as soon as it left her lips. Max hated PE.

‘We did football,’ he said. ‘And no-one wanted me on their team.’

Taylor sighed. There were no words to make this better for him.

They left the towpath, taking some steps that led up to the road, and a few metres further along she could see their destination: a small, three-storey block of flats, somewhat at odds with the surrounding properties which were all the traditional Yorkshire-stone terraced houses, so common to the area. This was the exact spot where Nico’s café had once stood, she realised. It must have been demolished to make way for the flats. She hadn’t been down this road in ages.

The block had clearly been finished only recently, judging by the lack of curtains at the windows and the number of estate agents’ boards outside. Most were ‘For Sale’ boards; only one was ‘To Let’. She quickly found her phone and snapped a photo of the phone number, something that didn’t escape Max’s attention.

‘Why are you taking a photo of that sign, Mum?’

She took a deep breath, and crossed the fingers of both hands now.

‘Well,’ she said, unsure of how to begin. ‘There’s a flat available to rent. And I was thinking that you and I could move here. It’s a lovely street, isn’t it? Close to the park. And the canal.’

Please, Max, please agree to this, she thought, but didn’t dare look down at his face to see his reaction.

3

Harry spotted her immediately, and could have sworn his heart skipped a beat. She was utterly gorgeous. He held his breath as she grew nearer, unable to take his eyes off her magnificent curves. She was the stuff of fantasies, his fantasies, in fact. Sights like her had filled his daydreams – and quite a few of his night-time dreams too – since he was a boy.

Just look at her, belching steam.

The Jorvik Express. An LNER A1 class 4-6-2 Tornado, number 60163, in a beautiful shade of racing green that shone out on this somewhat grey spring day. She was pulling a row of maroon carriages, full, no doubt, of tourists enjoying cream teas as they chugged through the Yorkshire countryside. They’d have shelled out quite a bit for the pleasure of stepping back in time and travelling behind this magnificent beast of an engine. Personally, he preferred to appreciate her from the platform. He’d taken the day off work especially.

He was so mesmerised that he almost forgot to take out his camera. He took a few quick snaps, though heaven only knew who he’d share them with. The chaps in the board game group might be interested, but that was about it.

When the Jorvik Express had disappeared from sight, Harry put his camera back in its bag, and decided to walk along the towpath to his home in nearby Essendale. The sun had barely made an appearance all day, but nothing could dent his mood. Not even a cyclist almost ploughing into him nor a rather feisty Canada goose hissing.

He ducked under a low bridge, then headed up a set of steps and onto a side street. Most people would have continued a little further along the towpath then cut through the park to reach the centre of town, but there was something Harry wanted to see.

He stopped at the end of the street and looked towards the spot where The Little Board Game Café – previously Nico’s – once stood. In its place was a low-rise block of flats. Harry couldn’t have imagined a more nondescript building. It looked completely out of keeping, a red-brick square box that appeared to have been dumped in the middle of a quirky, cobbled street, where all the other buildings were terraced houses, built over a hundred years earlier out of proper Yorkshire stone. A lawn had been laid in front of the block using slabs of turf, with a concrete path leading to the front door and a forest of estate agents’ signs.

The new board game café on the high street was a huge improvement on the original place, yet Harry felt a pang of nostalgia for the evenings when he’d walked down this street on his way to meet his friends for a game of Age of Steam or Railroad Ink. Emily, the owner, had nicknamed Harry and his friends ‘The Trainspotters’ almost from the moment she met them, because they always played railway-themed games, but she said it fondly, without even the slightest hint of derision. Yes, that little café that once stood here had been somewhat scruffy, but there’d always been a warm welcome, plenty of games, mugs of hot coffee and Emily’s delicious cakes.

A horrendous, piercing wail interrupted his reminiscences. It was coming from a boy who was kneeling on the pavement near the estate agents’ signs beside a young woman, his mother presumably. She tried to get the boy back onto his feet, but he was having none of it.

Harry didn’t want to stare, but his eyes were drawn to the mother. Even from this distance, he could see she was attractive. Dark blonde hair, which hung in tousled curls above her shoulders; he was reminded of the actress Meg Ryan in her younger days. She wore tight jeans and a kind of patchwork coat in vibrant hues, which stood out on this dull day, even more than the shining colours of the Jorvik Express. This put Harry in mind of those photos you saw sometimes, which were entirely black and white, except for one object – a red flower perhaps or a yellow umbrella.

He wasn’t great at reading body language but even he could see the mother was hassled.

‘But I don’t want to,’ sobbed the boy. ‘It isn’t fair.’

Harry’s heart went out to him. He could relate to that; life had often struck him as unfair. It hadn’t been fair when Harry was accused of copying Stuart Smedley’s homework in their first year at the grammar school; Harry had been helping the other boy as he found maths difficult. It hadn’t been fair when he’d lost his job at Ridley’s; he’d joined that firm straight from university and thought he was in a job for life. And it hadn’t been fair how Fay had used him; he had thought they were in love.

His heart went out to the woman too. He watched the tenderness with which she gazed at the child, the way she laid a gentle hand upon his shoulder, only to have him bat it away. Harry wanted to go over, to ask if he could help, to say something hilarious that would turn those tears into laughter, but humour wasn’t his forte. In any case, he wasn’t the type to intrude, and he didn’t want the young mum thinking he was hitting on her. So he doubled back on himself, rejoined the towpath and walked home through the park. He picked up a teddy that lay abandoned on the grass, propping it up on a bench, so it was easier to spot, in case its owner returned to look for it.