The Cherry Tree Cafe (27 page)

Jemma held up her hands and laughed.

‘It’s nothing to do with me!’ she grinned. ‘I’m not your mother.’

‘I just didn’t want you to think—’

‘What?’

‘Oh I don’t know. I didn’t want you to think it meant anything. Yes, I admit I like him but I’m not about to jump into a relationship – let alone bed – with
him.’

I knew I was rambling and the more drivel I spouted the more it looked like I had something to hide. I waited for Jemma to continue teasing but the mention of relationships and beds seemed to
have halted her in her tracks.

‘Can you come round to the house for dinner tonight?’ she asked seriously. ‘It’s important.’

‘Sure,’ I told her, my concern rushing back, ‘is everything all right?’

‘Everything’s fine,’ she smiled, ‘it just seems like ages since we had a chance to chat properly without Café business getting in the way. Talking of which, you
haven’t got time to help me clear a couple of tables have you?’

Later that day during a long, hot soak, I grabbed the opportunity to have a long, hard think about all the things that were happening in my life and try to marshal them into
some sort of order. As I lay immersed in a Soap and Glory bubble bath complete with cup of tea and a slice of Jemma’s delectable red velvet cake, I realised it was high time I stopped
floundering about. If I didn’t get my act together and make some decisions soon then I was in real danger of missing out. I’d come a long way in the months since my break-up with Giles,
but I wasn’t home and dry yet; there were still hurdles to face and conquer.

There could be no denying that I had fallen head over heels in love with my little flat, the Cherry Tree Café, and all its associated opportunities. I had not, however, fallen head over
heels in love with Jay, because annoyingly my heart still belonged to Ben. As I turned from smooth goddess to prune and the water became more tepid than tempting, I had to admit that in spite of
everything that had happened I was still as crazy about him as I had been when we were at school.

I loved Ben, body and soul, and it didn’t matter that he wasn’t around or that our Skype session had been a disastrous fail; my heart had been touched and I still wasn’t over
the boy I’d lusted after in the school canteen and beyond. My heart was apparently the one part of my anatomy that refused to toe the line.

I leant forward, turned the hot tap and felt the wave of warm water wash over me. Last night I had been tempted, with the assistance of too much cider, to kiss Jay but I still wasn’t
convinced that I had offered him any money. Dad had taught me to be careful with the little I had and I couldn’t imagine that I’d been so drunk that I’d been tempted to throw
caution to the wind and offer to fritter away Granny’s life savings, but how could I be sure? Cider had always had a funny effect on both my body and my behaviour.

And what about the City Crafting Café? Yes, I loved the place; it had healed and soothed me on one of my darkest post-Giles days, but did I want to buy it? Did I want it to be my future?
Did I really want to move back to the bustle of the city or was I happier here in Wynbridge? Surely being close to family and friends was of more value than anything else, wasn’t it?

As I pulled the plug and reached for my towel I knew I had finally made up my mind.

Bottle of Prosecco in hand, I opened the gate and walked up the little path to Jemma and Tom’s front door. Ella banged on the bay window and waved, bouncing up and down excitedly. I could
see her mouth opening and closing, her warm breath on the window and wondered why she was so thrilled by my arrival. Before I had a chance to raise the knocker, the door was snatched open.

‘Hello, Lizzie.’

I stood open mouthed, the bottle slipping a little in my grasp as I took in the tanned vision before me. It was all I could do to stop myself from jumping up and throwing my arms around his
neck. It was such a jolt to see him, a wholly pleasurable jolt according to my traitorous heart and it started in the soles of my feet and spread with alarming speed throughout my entire body. Over
and over again a little voice in my head kept repeating ‘
he loved you once, he loved you once
’ whilst a more cautionary adversary fought back with ‘
and he hated you too
and he hated you too
.’

‘Oh,’ I said, ignoring them both, ‘hello. Still no beard then.’

‘Still no beard,’ Ben smiled guardedly. ‘I couldn’t cope with the tan lines.’

I craned my neck to look around him, fully expecting to see the Spanish bikini clad beauty who had been doing her utmost to get him dancing, but the hallway was empty.

‘I didn’t know you were coming back,’ I said.

‘About that,’ he began, ‘I know . . .’

‘But then if it was left to you,’ I cut in, ‘I still wouldn’t know that you’d gone, would I?’

Ben nodded. His eyes fixed firmly on mine.

‘Yes, I’m sorry about that. I know I should have told you. I had planned to, but it was all such a rush. A spur of the moment thing really and then the Skype session was such a
disaster.’

‘No matter,’ I interrupted with a shrug. I thrust the bottle into his hand and brushed past into the hall. ‘You’re a free agent. It’s nothing to do with me and like
you’re so fond of saying, it’s all water under the bridge, isn’t it?’

Less than an hour ago I had been lying in a bubble bath privately admitting that I was head over heels in love with this man, but now, faced with the reality of him, I was terrified of falling
so obviously under his spell, especially as we shared such apparently cataclysmic ‘baggage’, the details of which I still knew very little about. I took a deep breath and warned my
brain and my heart not to become befuddled by the tantalisingly tanned features and reassuring presence of the man who had vanished without giving me a second thought.

‘Lizzie!’ Ella suddenly shouted as she raced up the stairs. ‘Will you come and read me a bedtime story?’

‘Of course I will, poppet, hang on.’

I trotted up the stairs after her and away from danger before I was completely ensnared.

‘Did you know he was coming back?’ I hissed at Jemma, when I finally joined her in the kitchen. ‘Is this why you asked me to come to dinner tonight?’

‘Yes,’ she answered shortly, ‘we did know.’

‘You panicked this morning when I mentioned Jay and bed in the same sentence, didn’t you?’ I whispered, not picking up on her frosty tone. ‘You thought I was going to
fall for him and you wanted to give me one last chance with Ben?’

‘Maybe,’ she muttered, ‘but now something else has come up and it’s all gone rather sour. I’m going to check on Ella and after dinner we need to talk. Stir this,
would you?’

I stirred the risotto as instructed whilst Tom set the table and Ben opened the Prosecco. I tried to avoid looking at either of them and wondered what had happened to put Jemma in such a foul
mood.

‘I’m only going to apologise so many times,’ Ben whispered as he leant past me to reach the glasses. ‘I’ve actually come back to tell you why I went in the first
place and to explain my mother’s silly comments.’

‘Honestly, I’m not bothered,’ I lied, feeling secretly pleased that his clandestine exit had played on his mind. ‘You should have saved yourself the air fare. You could
have sent me a text or set up another Skype session if you were that worried.’

‘I’m being serious,’ he snapped, ‘there are things I need to tell you.’

‘Like how you’ve fallen in love with the sarong-wearing dance partner?’ I said lightly.

‘The what?’

‘The girl in the club or wherever you were!’

‘Actually I was in my dad’s bar,’ he frowned, ‘crammed in the only spot where you can get a fairly decent internet signal, and the sarong-wearer was my prospective
step-mother. I told you she was young.’

Before I had a chance to say anything, Jemma marched back in and began clattering plates and bowls.

We merely picked at the dinner she had gone to the trouble of making and our glasses still stood half-full, even after the meal had ended. To be honest, having jumped to the wrong conclusion
about Ben and his Spanish senorita, I was grateful for a few minutes’ silence in which to recover, no matter how awkward. I forced myself to look only at my plate and the wall opposite.

‘Shall we move?’ Tom finally suggested in an overly cheery tone. ‘Go and have our coffee in the sitting room?’

‘No,’ said Jemma, ‘I want to stay in here.’

I didn’t know what was wrong, but she was hardly the hospitable hostess who had asked me to dinner earlier in the day. I wondered if she was annoyed that I still hadn’t made a
decision about the crafting sessions at the Café and thought what a relief it would be all round when I told her and Tom I was finally good to go. I wasn’t going to let the fact that
Ben was back change anything as far as the Cherry Tree was concerned.

‘I saw Jay earlier,’ she said before I had a chance to make my announcement. ‘He popped into the Café. He said he was sorry about the potential change of plan and asked
if he could use the crafting space to display his frames. He offered me a healthy commission, said it might help bring in some extra revenue if the space became empty. I got the impression that he
seemed to think you might not be with us for much longer, Lizzie.’

I looked from her to Tom and back again.

‘
What
?’

‘He didn’t say anything specific but I’d already guessed something was going on after the visit from your city friends and it didn’t take long for me to join the dots.
The City Crafting Café, it’s called, isn’t it? According to the agent I spoke to this afternoon it’s already attracted a fair few enquiries, but the current owner is
holding off and we all know why that is, don’t we?’

Jemma looked straight at me. I didn’t know what to say.

‘You’ll need to give us a bit of warning about when you want your money back,’ Tom joined in, but not able to meet
my gaze. ‘It’ll take us a while to raise it but don’t worry; you’ll get back every penny.’

I was too stunned to speak. It suddenly dawned on me that Jay after our – what I thought was confidential – conversation, had seen a prospective business opportunity and jumped at
the chance. He’d gone straight round to Jemma just to spite me because I refused to offer him the money he wanted. The petty bastard! Suddenly those glasses didn’t make him look so
appealing any more.

‘And you believe this, do you?’ I said to Jemma, ignoring Tom’s comment about the money. ‘You never thought to ask me if what Jay was suggesting was true? You just took
his word for it?’

‘I know your friend is selling her business, Lizzie, and you must have talked to her about it when she came to see you the other week.’

‘So that means I’m buying the place, does it?’ I said unsteadily. ‘I haven’t been to view it, I haven’t even got the agent’s details let alone the
funds, but apparently I’m off!’

For a split-second a flicker of doubt crossed Jemma’s face but I didn’t stick around long enough to see if the penny dropped.

I went to bed as soon as I got back to the flat but I didn’t sleep. I tossed and turned until the duvet was wrapped so tightly around my body I could have been mistaken for an Egyptian
mummy. I was devastated that Jemma and Tom had taken the word of Jay, a former football teammate, over mine – their lifelong friend and confidante.

I understood now why Ella was always so rude to him. Kids, I realised, were far shrewder when judging character than adults. They could see through all the layers of bullshit we shielded
ourselves with. I couldn’t believe it was only hours ago that I had decided I was staying here for good and now I was teetering on the brink again.

‘Hello?’

I’d rung Jay’s mobile, but hadn’t really been expecting him to answer.

‘Hi, Jay. It’s Lizzie. Don’t hang up;’ I instructed, sounding braver than I felt; ‘I think you owe me an explanation.’

I heard him sigh and I crossed my fingers in the hope that he would at least have the guts to offer some kind of justification for his despicable behaviour.

‘I want to know why you went to Jemma behind my back. I thought I could trust you.’

‘I’m sorry, Lizzie, I really am.’

‘So why did you do it? You’ve put me in a really difficult position! I told you that I didn’t know what I was going to do and I also told you that if I decided to stay then I
wouldn’t say anything to Jemma and Tom. What right did you think you had to stir all this up?’

‘To tell you the truth, Lizzie, I can’t believe I did it either. I don’t know what came over me. Can I come round? Can I see you?’

Half an hour later, Jay sat at the kitchen table looking as guilty as it was possible for a man to look. If I wasn’t so angry I would have felt sorry for him, but I was still fuming.

‘The other night,’ he explained, ‘when you told me you’d lend me some money to get my business started, I thought all my Christmases had come at once. You’d already
told me you’d invested in the Café so I thought it would be fine. I’ve wanted this for so long, Lizzie, but I’ve never been able to quite make it work, you know?’

‘Go on.’ I still couldn’t believe I’d made the offer in the first place but cider did funny things to my system; my student photos were proof enough of that.

‘So when you then said it wasn’t possible I could see it all slipping away from me again and I saw red.’

‘You mean you wanted to get back at me?’

‘I just wanted to make things uncomfortable for you, I guess,’ he admitted awkwardly. ‘I began to tell Jemma in a roundabout way what you’d told me but I realised what an
idiot I was being and I stopped. That was when I thought I might be able to use the crafting space myself. I was just trying to make the best of what had turned into a huge
disappointment.’

‘But Jemma’s not stupid!’ I shouted. ‘She was straight on the internet, then the phone. She knows exactly what’s going on. She and Tom think it’s a done deal.
They think I’m already packing to go!’

‘Oh, Lizzie, I’m so sorry. Let me go round and straighten it out. I made the problem, let me solve it.’