href="#ulink_58eafa30-25ea-5a9a-8981-4c2e3c4e80c7">Chapter Two
‘You take our milk?’
Annie turned to see a man pull up on a moped. He’d pulled off his helmet and gave his hair a quick ruffle before reaching in his pocket for a packet of Camel Lights. She guessed he was Italian, maybe Spanish, dark skin, broken nose, and a long face that looked like it never smiled.
‘Yes,’ she said, looking down at the crate of milk and then at him with an expression that said, Why would anyone want to steal this much milk.
He shrugged. ‘Si. As long as we are clear,’ he said, before getting off the bike and strolling over to the door of the cafe and unlocking it.
Annie looked back at the milk, then at the wonky cafe sign, then at the open door. It hadn’t actually occurred to her that the place was still trading.
She followed the guy in, looking around as he switched on the lights, the tea urn, the radio. Fluorescent strip lights flickered as Magic FM boomed to life.
‘You work here?’ she called out as she saw him flick his cigarette out the back window and hang his denim jacket up on the hook in the kitchen.
‘No. I am just breaking in,’ he returned the expression she’d given him earlier about the milk. ‘With the key.’
‘I’m Annie,’ she said, sliding the milk onto the cracked Formica countertop and holding her hand out.
‘Good for you,’ he replied, tying a black and white bandana round his head. ‘You’re too early for breakfast. We don’t open for ten minutes.’
Annie had to stifle a smile, backing up and taking a seat in one of the booths with four plastic chairs bolted to the floor. Yesterday’s paper was on the table. She turned to the back and started the crossword while she waited for the time to tick away.
At two minutes to nine a scruffy-looking boy cycled up, threw his bike against the window and loped inside bringing a cool breeze with him. He must have been about sixteen. Awkward-looking and gawky, like he couldn’t quite handle the fact he might be quite attractive. Not chocolate box, but a combination of thick, floppy hair, big wide eyes and heavy eyebrows that worked to give him a handsome moodiness and baby-faced innocence that teenage girls found irresistible. Underneath his denim shirt he wore a Kinks T-shirt. His jeans were ripped everywhere, not artfully, but because he looked like he couldn’t be bothered to buy a new pair. And his trainers were like Marty McFly’s in Back to the Future. He made Annie smile just looking at him.
Chucking his rucksack in the corner he pulled an apron off the hook, swiped the unwashed mugs from the countertop and started to fill the sink with water. It was a second before he noticed Annie and the sight of her made him glance nervously at the guy in the kitchen. When he didn’t seem to pay any attention to either of them, the boy took his lead and blanked her completely.
Annie kept on doing her crossword.
Five past nine she sat back in her seat and said, ‘Any chance I could have a cup of coffee?’
The boy looked terrified. The guy in the back shrugged.
‘Black. One sugar.’
‘There’s sugar on the table,’ the boy said.
‘OK, just a black coffee then,’ Annie replied.
He scuffed about banging the coffee machine and grinding some beans.
It was maybe quarter past when he set the chipped mug down in front of her and said, again, ‘Sugar’s on the table.’
The door opened and slammed. A woman in her late sixties strode in. Apron already tied under her bosom. Hair like an electric shock. Face like a Bassett Hound; droopy and eyes sliding away. ‘Well, well, well. I wondered when you’d show up.’
‘Hi, Martha,’ Annie folded the paper up and stood up from her chair, awkward because it didn’t push back so her knees had to stay slightly bent. She decided to step out from the table completely.
‘We’re doing just fine,’ Martha said, walking straight past her. ‘Just fine. We don’t need anything. Ludo. Aren’t we doing just fine?’
The guy in the back, who was sizzling bacon in a pan, a cigarette smoking in an ashtray on the windowsill, gave a thumbs-up.
Annie licked her lips. She walked over to the counter and folded her arms so she could lean against it. The boy looked nervously between her and Martha. ‘Who’s running the place?’ Annie asked.
‘Me. Ludo. Who do you think? The same people who have been running it for the last ten years. Mum couldn’t do it. She sat where you’re sitting. And we’ve been fine. Just fine,’ Martha hung her bag up on one of the hooks and took a pad from the stack by the till. ‘Just fine. I told your mother to just leave us to it,’ she said as she walked away to serve two men who’d trudged in, leant their fishing gear up against the window and were sitting at the booth furthest from the counter, mud dripping off their wellie boots onto the lino, a black labrador flat-out in the aisle.
‘OK,’ Annie said, and pushing off the counter turned and went back to her seat and her surprisingly good cup of coffee. Sitting down she glanced around the place, the sun streaming in through the dusty windows, surreptitiously taking in the cracks in the ceiling, the spiders’ webs, the wonky pictures and dreadful paintings, the dirty path on the lino where years of feet had trudged up to the counter, the fake flowers on every table. She picked hers up and turned it upside down, the flowers stayed where they were, glued into their vase.
She was just examining the plastic menu, the laminated corner coming unstuck and peeled apart by fiddling fingers, when the bell above the door chimed and someone else walked in.
Annie glanced up, expecting another of the motley crew of waiting staff, but paused when she caught sight of the man elbowing the door closed. Tall, serious-looking, he pulled off aviator sunglasses and slid them into the neck of his dark-green T-shirt. It was the colour of seaweed, the sleeves bleached by the sun. He was wearing grey marl tracksuit bottoms, rolled up to reveal tanned, sinewy calves and flip-flopped feet that were still damp. He’d clearly just come off the water, probably been rowing or maybe paddle boarding.
She didn’t realise she’d been holding her breath until he’d strolled past her and then she had to exhale really slowly so that no one realised she’d stopped breathing.
‘Morning,’ he said to the boy when he got to the counter.
When no one replied, Annie glanced over her shoulder, intrigued. She just caught the boy hanging his head and sloping out the back to the kitchen. Martha moved into his place and nodded to the man.
‘Usual, Matthew?’
Matthew… Annie realised she knew exactly who he was. Two years older than her brother at school, he’d been head boy, won loads of sport trophies. She remembered school assembly, when all the first-formers, her included, would sit cross-legged staring up at him in awe as he sauntered on stage to collect his prizes, all cool and terrifyingly grown-up. She couldn’t remember his surname. Watson, maybe. Windsor? She could remember the scandal though, he’d got Pamela Chambers pregnant and she’d gone into labour in the middle of her physics A-level.
Annie watched as he took a seat on one of
