The Grand Reopening of Dandelion Café (14 page)

Matt looked momentarily taken aback. Then he rubbed his hand across his forehead and made a face like he was intrigued to watch this play out.

Hugo shrugged. Took a couple of steps forward and swiped one of the cherries that sat in a bowl on the counter.

‘Why are you here?’ Annie asked.

‘I just wanted to see how you were doing, sweetheart.’

Matt had taken a step back. Observing.

Annie had a weird taste in her mouth. And she recognised it immediately as a sense of failure. A sense of never being able to escape. A sense of those looks, like the one Matt was giving her now, that she was a tangle of mess. Like a fishing net washed up on the shore, the knots unfathomable.

Hugo bit down on the cherry, his perfect white teeth cutting through the red flesh. His eyes taking it all in.

‘Nice place you’ve got here,’ he said, taking in the fancy lights in the window, the luscious cakes on the counter. ‘Still making that pie?’

Annie nodded. Her skin prickling.

‘Funny, you know, there I was just chatting to someone and they mentioned this place. Mentioned how you were back, how you owned it. And I thought, that’s interesting. That’s a nice piece of real estate. I wonder how long Annie’s owned that?’

Annie folded her arms across her chest. Hugo leant against the back of one of the plastic booth chairs, his legs outstretched in front of him and reached forward for another cherry, depositing his sucked pip on the counter.

‘He left it to me in his will, Hugo.’

Hugo shrugged. ‘Well you can say that, Ann, honey, but we all know that might not strictly be true.’ He popped the cherry in his mouth in one go.

The door opened and she saw her mum and brother walk in. Jonathan stopped up short when he saw Hugo by the counter.

‘What the bloody hell are you doing here?’ Jonathan asked, striding forward, looking ready to haul the guy out by the scruff of his neck.

Watching Hugo there with Jonathan and her mother, the memories burst into focus like some old TV re-run. Annie was catapulted back to when she’d had to slope in one evening and tell her family that she’d got married.

‘Hello to you too, Johno,’ Hugo drawled.

She thought about when she’d stood in the kitchen doorway and started the story by telling her parents that her and a bunch of her college friends had won flights to Vegas through some competition in a catalogue that one of their mum’s friends worked for. Her parents had shrugged as if that was a nice thing to have happened. Annie had nodded and said that they’d stayed in The Bellagio and been showered with free drinks all weekend so they’d fritter away more money on the blackjack tables.

Jonathan looked around the cafe, almost as if seeing who was in charge, and then remembering it was Annie, said, ‘Have you told him to leave?’

Hugo laughed, ‘I just got here.’

Annie remembered sitting down at the kitchen table, her dad had a glass of wine and her mum was finishing off a mug of tea. There was a bowl of roasted peanuts on the table that her dad had been reaching for but then paused when she said that her then boyfriend, Hugo, had dropped down on one knee with a plastic ring he’d won in a slot machine and made a huge, theatrical show of asking her to marry him.

Her dad had cocked his head to one side, waiting to see which way the story would go, and Annie had looked down at her hands to tell the rest of it. That they’d all thought it would be funny. Her friends wanted an excuse to dress up. That she’d had far too much to drink and that they bought a dress from a sleazy wedding shop on the strip. Layers of polyester lace sticking out like a tutu, the skirt cut high above the knee at the front but trailing down into a train that brushed the floor at the back. That the main thought that had gone through her head was that she could now justify buying the red cowboy boots she’d seen at the hotel shop. And her friends had insisted on a veil and an old woman and her husband had stopped her to take a photograph. A guy getting up from the roulette wheel had flicked her a chip with a wink and wished her luck, and she’d invited them all along. By the time they’d left the main strip the wedding party had trebled in size, like she was the pied piper and leading them all to the fun.

When she woke up in the morning there were polaroid photos of her in her cowgirl wedding dress and red boots kissing Hugo in an Elvis chapel in the back streets of Vegas. All her friends had been dressed up as the King and Hugo had managed to get himself a guitar. In the background were a hundred happy strangers.

‘I wouldn’t advise repeating this welcome on any other customers, just FYI,’ Hugo chuckled. ‘And hello, Mrs White, how are you? I heard you’d remarried. Is he here?’ Hugo looked around as if he gave a damn.

Winifred looked past him to Annie, her expression concerned, then glancing back to Hugo said softly, ‘I’m very well thank you, we’re all very well. I think however, my son is right, it’s probably best if you were on your way.’

The problem was that while Annie’d thought the wedding was funny ‒ stupid, but funny ‒ Hugo had had other ideas. He’d obviously been listening more intently than she thought when her dad would ring and get her to call a mortgage company about a property he’d bought in her name for tax reasons. She’d just assumed he’d been focused on the TV or the book he was reading. But he hadn’t been. He knew everything. He knew how much it was worth, he knew how long she’d owned it, he knew how much he was entitled to. And he wasn’t going quietly.

Telling her parents that she’d got married as a bit of a laugh on holiday wouldn’t really have been that much of a problem. They’d have rolled their eyes and told her to grow up. Telling her parents that the only way this guy would divorce her was if he was paid a considerable sum, less than the value of half the property she owned, but enough to make him happy, that was a problem.

Especially considering that her dad, while asset rich, was cash poor. Everything he owned was tied up here and there, always waiting for the market to shift, for an investment to take off. The only thing he’d owned that would get Hugo his money and a quick-smart divorce was that beloved Jaguar XK140 ‒ kept wrapped up snug in the garage, waxed, polished, driven on a Sunday morning then carefully, reverently put back to bed.

She remembered her dad sitting silent for a moment, a gentle tapping of his fingers on the tablecloth, then the scrape of his chair against the kitchen floor, both hands on the table as he pushed himself up. Her mum watched him with her hands clasped in front of her, waiting for him to pass judgement.

‘Annie, this isn’t about the money,’ he’d said. ‘He can have the money. I’ll sell the car. What worries me is that I’m not going to be around forever to sort out the messes you get into. I look at your future and I have no idea what to see. That’s what worries me.’

In the silence his eyes had been huge, disappointed, concerned. It was a look that seemed to last a lifetime. But then Annie had wiped her nose with her sleeve and her mum had sighed and handed her a tissue. And her dad had turned around and walked up the stairs.

That was the final nail in why none of them trusted her. That was why none of them believed she’d ever grow up.

Because of this bastard lounging in front of her, who’d already walked away with a suitcase full of cash and now seemed to be coming back for more.

‘Out!’ Jonathan flicked his head towards the door. ‘Leave. We don’t want you here. You’ve caused enough trouble.’

Hugo laughed. ‘Oh, Jonathan. You sad, sad little man. Don’t tell me what to do. If I’m owed something, I’ll have it.’

Annie watched him with narrowed eyes. ‘Owed something?’ she repeated. ‘You think you’re owed something? You stole everything I had.’

‘Spare me. You were worth way more than I was given.’

‘Sod the money, Hugo. You took from me. You took my relationship with my dad. You took my relationship with people. With my family.’ She swept her arm so it encompassed Jonathan and her mum. ‘You think you’re owed something, well go ahead. Look into it. See when I was left it. You’ll find it was long after you got what you wanted. But if you want half of this, this place?’ She pointed to the cracks in the ceiling, to where the plaster on the walls was crumbling in the section behind the counter that none of the customers would see, to the crummy old till and the electrical sockets that were hanging out of the wall by the tea urn. ‘You take it. Seriously. Take it.’ She made a movement like she was throwing something his way. ‘There. That’s half of nothing. In fact. Actually. It’s not nothing. It’s less that nothing. It’s basically inherited debt. So if you think you have any claim on it, then you actually owe me.’ Annie came out from behind the counter and stood right in front of him. She watched Hugo’s expression change. Falter.

‘Ha. I thought that might change your mind,’ she said.

Hugo stood up straight, brushed down the trousers of his suit. ‘I’ll look into it,’ he said.

‘You do that. Because if you really think you should be a part of this then you’re going to have to scrabble together some cash, Hugo. Because the cafe, well, it has nothing.’ She glared at him and watched as his eyes flickered away from her.

‘Well it was good to see you, Annie.’ Hugo backed up a step and then started to make his way to the door. ‘Jonathan. Mrs White. Good. Nice. I’ll, er, catch up with you later.’

And then he was gone.

There was no noise in the cafe, only the sound of Clemmie’s voice drifting in the air. A couple who’d been eating cherry pie at the window seat were watching them all wide-eyed with fascination.

‘Well. That’s that done, isn’t it? Golly.’ Annie’s mum was the first to speak.

Annie couldn’t look at anyone. She felt sick. Stupid. She felt angry that he could still come back here. Annoyed that her brother had seen. That Matt had seen. She felt the humiliation again of her dad agreeing to settle the debt while believing she had no future ahead of her. The set of his jaw as he handed over the cash. The shrugging on of his jacket and the lone walk he took once the front door was shut. The wish that he had shouted at her rather than never mentioning it again. The wish that he had seen her become a woman and a success. The wish that she could turn back time.

‘I have to check something.’ Annie swallowed. ‘Out the back,’ she said and leaving them all in the cafe, disappeared through the kitchen and out into the back yard.

Chapter Sixteen

Annie saw the first drop of rain as it flicked off a cherry tree bud. Bouncing from one to another, it finally plopped onto her silver sequinned leggings and dribbled down to the floor.

She considered going back because soon they’d be dragging the amps back inside and trying to get the bunting down before it got soaked, but her legs felt like they had lost the ability to walk.

Secretly she’d hoped that Matt might have followed her. But he hadn’t.

Then she heard a holler from the roof of the lighthouse and Andrew Neil shouted, ‘She’s down here. I can see her, under her father’s sycamore.’

Annie looked up to see him with his binoculars, pointing in her direction.

She wondered who was looking for her. Was it Matt?

‘Thank you, Andrew.’ She heard her mother’s voice, very polite. ‘Yes, I’ve spotted her. Thank you.’

Then she saw her mum, creeping through the orchard like it was the jungle, waving her hands in front of her for spiders’ webs. ‘This place is ghastly at night,’ Winifred said as soon as she was in earshot of Annie. ‘Just ghastly. I bought you a mackintosh. It’s going to rain.’

She handed Annie a bright-yellow pac-a-mac that matched her own pink one. ‘It’s Valtar’s so it’ll be a bit big,’ she said, sitting down on the tree stump next to Annie and shuffling around to make herself comfy.

Neither of them spoke as Annie undid the plastic mac and pulled it on over her head. The rain a little heavier now but still only a pitter-patter.

‘It’s quite nice actually, isn’t it?’ her mum said, leaning back against her tree. ‘This is Enid’s tree. You’re sitting on your father and I’m sitting on Enid,’ she laughed. ‘Let’s hope they don’t mind. I think Enid would be a dreadful ghost. No perhaps actually your father would be worse. He’d be very moody that he wasn’t enjoying the luxuries of heaven. God rest his soul,’ she said.

Annie looked down at her yellow plastic cuffs and smiled.

‘He was very proud of you, Annie. I don’t know where you get this nonsense about Hugo taking your relationship away from your father. He wasn’t angry with you, he was angry with that little shit. Excuse my language. He’s a piece of work, isn’t he? Nasty little piece of work. But terribly handsome. I’d have probably eloped with him.’ She laughed again, and she leant forward so she could just touch Annie’s hand. ‘No one could have known, Annie. And to be honest, I think some of it’s your father’s fault anyway, he should never have put that mortgage in your name. It was greedy. I told him it was greedy.’

‘He was just so disappointed,’ Annie said.

‘Well maybe,’ Winifred shrugged. ‘But no more so than he would have been with Jonathan and that land. I’m disappointed with him for dying, stupid old bugger. Doesn’t mean I don’t love him. Doesn’t mean I’m not proud of what he achieved and what we achieved with you two. Look at you, your trendy hair and your sparkly trousers. And I looked on your website. Very impressive. I can’t believe a daughter of mine could be so creative. Although I am good in the garden.’

The rain started to get heavier. Bashing the blossom buds as it fell.

Winifred looked up. ‘That’s probably your father now.’ She raised her eyebrows to the sky, ‘Hello, darling, we’re just having a chat about that awful ex-husband of Annie’s.’

‘Mum.’ Annie stopped her.

‘OK, sorry. What was I saying? Oh yes. It was a mistake. And if anything, it got rid of that bloody car. Christ, that was a money pit.’ Winifred shook her head, rain had collected on her eyelashes and clumped them together into little points. She wiped the dampness away and then looked at Annie. ‘And I also wanted to bring something else up that you said earlier about this place.’ She pointed towards the cafe. ‘Your dad wouldn’t have wanted you to sell it. Ever. He loved this place. That’s why he left it to you.’