The Grand Reopening of Dandelion Café (11 page)

‘I don’t think you were prying,’ he said, looking down at his hands. ‘I just…’ He blew out a breath and flopped back against the sofa. ‘I just think of them and think how stupid I was going off. I wrote them to no one really. The early ones weren’t even to him, they were to nothing. To this being that kept tapping on my brain everywhere I was.’ He licked his lips then, after a moment, said, ‘The guilt was like this ball stuck in my chest.’ He put his hand on his heart, ‘And it would appear at all the wrong times. At the top of the Corcovado or once when I was heli-skiing in the Talkeetna Mountains in Alaska?’ He said it as a question, as if asking if she’d ever heard of them. She shook her head. ‘Anyway, I’m at the top of this vertical slope and I can’t stop my legs shaking. In my head there’s just his little face. And I didn’t want that.’ He paused and reached forward to pick up his wine glass. ‘Sorry.’

Annie shook her head. ‘You can carry on.’

‘Nah.’

‘The postcards are well-thumbed, Matt. He’s read them all. You know that, don’t you?’

Matt didn’t reply.

Annie glanced away, decided it was best to change the subject. There was a stack of books against the wall to her right and next to that a cardboard box full of medals. ‘Are those yours?’ she asked, pointing at the box.

He stood up to see what she was pointing at and then nodded.

‘Wow.’ She reached down and picked a medal up. Embossed on the big gold disc was the figure of a rower in a boat. ‘Are they all for rowing?’

‘Yeah.’

She thought back to what he’d said about training for the Olympics at seventeen. ‘Do you have an Olympic one? I saw one once, it was a show-jumper’s. It was amazing. Really heavy.’

Matthew sat back down on the sofa and picked up a bit of now-congealed cheese on toast. ‘I didn’t go.’

Annie looked confused. ‘I thought you said…’

He shook his head. ‘We had River. I had to get a job.’

‘Oh shit.’ She put the medal back down in the box and folded the flaps closed. ‘Is that why you left? Oh sorry, no you don’t want to talk about it.’

He gave her a wry smile, like he knew she was desperate to know.

‘Yes. I was very young and very angry. I was angry with myself and angry with Pamela and I was angry with this baby that I didn’t want and that I felt had ruined everything I had ever worked for in my life. And I couldn’t do both. Nowadays you can get National Lottery funding or sports grants but back then you couldn’t and we had a baby to support. And that was it. I’m not a very good person, Annie.’

She frowned. ‘What, when you were seventeen?’

‘I only came back a year or so ago.’

She got up from her chair and, taking her glass and the blanket that was folded over the back of it, went to sit on the sofa next to him. ‘When did you want to come back?’ she asked.

He smiled. ‘About ten years ago.’

Annie curled her feet up so that her toes were just touching the seams of his jeans, and laid the blanket out over her legs. ‘If we were all perfect in our pasts then we’d have nothing to hope for in our futures.’ She took a sip of wine. Matt looked down at his hands.

‘Matt, I don’t think it’s about being there all the time or never making mistakes, it’s about getting there in the end. You’re here. You saw him play. Yes, maybe you buggered up a bit in the past but better to go than stay and get more and more resentful. I’ve met Pamela and her husband, they’re lovely. That doesn’t mean River doesn’t want you in his life. And I mean, look at all this stuff.’ She pointed at the pictures of the crazy adventuring. ‘You have to work at the things that are important. It’s hard.’

Matthew rested his head back on the edge of the sofa. His eyes were closed and she stared at his profile. The tightness of his jaw, the lines at the corners of his eyes. She wondered if she could see tiny flecks of grey at his temples.

‘I read those postcards, Matt. They aren’t to no one.’

He opened one eye.

‘They’re to your son.’

Chapter Eleven

Annie woke up to the phone ringing. She was lying on the brown corduroy sofa with the blanket tucked around her and another quilt laid on top. Her eyes struggled for a second to focus, and when they did she saw Matt standing by the window in his boxers, his iPhone to his ear.

‘Calm down. Just calm down,’ he was saying to whoever was on the other end of the line.

Annie sat up, rubbing her eyes. Then she caught sight of herself in the mirror, hair sticking up wildly on the side she’d slept, and began madly trying to flatten it down. The light in the room was hazy, as if the sun had only just risen and was yawning itself. She looked around for a clock and saw the one by Matt’s bed said four.

‘OK, where are you?’ Matt was talking really slowly. ‘Yes. Yes. OK. OK. Stay there. I’m coming. No. No I won’t tell your mother, I promise. Just stay there. OK.’ He ended the call and strode over to the chair where his jeans from the night before lay.

‘What’s going on?’

‘I don’t know. It was River, he’s pissed somewhere. He’s with a girl who keeps passing out and being sick and he doesn’t know what to do.’

‘Jesus Christ.’ Annie jumped up from the sofa and grimaced when she looked down at her leather leggings and top from the night before. ‘Do you want me to come?’

Matt paused as if the thought hadn’t occurred to him. ‘Yes. Yes please.’

‘Can you lend me a jumper?’

He half-laughed, as if that was the most he could summon up under the circumstances and threw her a navy blue hoody. ‘Claire’s wellington boots are by the back door if you want to wear them?’ he said.

‘OK, yeah,’ Annie followed him down the stairs. At the back door she pulled on the pink pearlised wellies and a dark-green gardening jacket that she presumed was also Claire’s and jogged after Matt, the too-big wellies making a squelching sound as she walked.

‘Very fetching,’ he said when she caught up with him.

Matt was wearing a grey sweatshirt and some natty microfibre jacket that looked like it would keep you warm and somehow save your life if buried in an avalanche.

‘Where are we going?’

‘To the wasteland.’

‘Classy.’

What remained of the wasteland was round the back of the new-builds. An area of scrub land that, after plans had been approved for the new estate, locals had campaigned to have conserved for wildlife. But the developers had ‘accidentally’ hacked down most of the trees when they built the first lot of houses and used that as a reason to suggest they should raze the rest of it to the ground.

Annie and Matt marched together through the park, past her mum’s house ‒ all dark ‒ the bowling green, the flats, the allotments and the old manor house, finally arriving at the barbed-wire fence of the wasteland. It was so cold their breath clouded like cigarette smoke and their fingers and toes tingled, numb. Annie could see River sitting on one of the sawn-down cherry tree stumps, holding the tiny drummer girl in his arms, his black jacket wrapped round her. As they got closer they could see her face was white, ghostly in comparison to the blackness of her hair. Her red lipstick was smudged on her chin.

When River looked up and saw them, Annie had never seen such relief in a person’s eyes. He looked about twelve.

‘I don’t know what to do. I didn’t know who else to call. Her dad would kill us. She’s not allowed to be in the band or with me. And now…’ He was crying. ‘I don’t think she’ll wake up.’

Matt shrugged off his jacket and with one arm holding River steady, used the other to place the coat over the girl. Beneath their feet the grass crunched with frosted dew.

‘Listen, mate, I’m going to take her off you, OK?’ he said with a quiet, soft authority that made River nod. ‘Annie’s here too, see look, there’s Annie.’

When River glanced up, Annie did a little wave.

‘OK, now you have to let her go and let me carry her, OK, I’ve got her. Now tell me what her name is.’

‘Clementine,’ River said and wiped his nose with his shirt sleeve, his hand shaking. ‘Clemmie.’

Annie took her own coat off and draped it over his shoulders. ‘Put this on,’ she whispered to River who just seemed intent on watching Matt as he laid Clemmie out on his jacket and was kneeling down so that he could check her breathing.

‘Is she dead?’ River asked, sniffing again.

Annie felt a bit sick and could feel herself holding back panic the way she’d seen her parents do in an emergency. River’s face was all blotched and red and terrified.

Matt shook his head. ‘No, she’s not dead, mate. She’s OK. I think she’s just probably had too much to drink.’

River inhaled a shaky breath and put his hands over his face as his whole body started to shudder.

‘River?’ Annie put her arm around him. ‘Honey, has she taken anything else apart from alcohol?’

Matt looked aghast at the question but Annie gave him her best big-eyes to shut him up.

River shook his head.

‘You’re sure?’

He nodded.

‘OK.’ Matt stood up, lifting Clemmie up like she weighed nothing more than a rag doll, and wrapped the jacket back round her. ‘We’re going to have to take her to hospital. Just to be on the safe side.’

Five hours later and the four of them were sitting round a table in the cafe. Clemmie, who had been sick numerous times before being examined by a tired, disinterested junior doctor and told off for drinking more than her body weight would allow, had sipped a hot chocolate, wolfed down a bacon sandwich and was lying curled up in the booth with her head in River’s lap, fast asleep.

‘Are you sure you don’t want me take you home?’ Annie had asked.

‘There’s no one there,’ Clemmie had replied. ‘My parents are in Hong Kong on business and my sister’s in Spain on holiday.’ She’d done a little shrug and then sat back, swamped by the green overcoat. Annie had tried not to look shocked that this sixteen year old was living pretty much on her own, and instead focused on the sweet fact that she hadn’t let River’s hand go, ever.

While her family had their annoyances, they’d always been there. Her mum, while frantically busy and permanently stressed, had always stopped and listened whenever Annie sidled into the kitchen with some veiled problem that she wanted to chat about while pretending that she didn’t. The forgotten memory of them watching
Extreme Makeover
together on a Thursday night, when her dad and brother were at canoe club, made her smile. If she forced herself she could probably even dig up a memory of her brother not being so bad. Didn’t he once walk her home from a party when she was a bit pissed and hide her from their dad? Hadn’t he warned off that bloke at school who thought that Annie had given his younger brother the run-around?

River coughed, distracting her from her daydreaming, and she glanced up to see him watching her and Matt.

‘I just want to say, you know, thanks,’ he mumbled.

Annie shrugged a shoulder as if it was nothing, ‘That’s OK. We’ve all been there.’

Matt snorted. ‘You might have done. Mate, you’ve gotta be careful with what you’re drinking. You’re only seventeen.’

‘I’m not your mate.’

‘Fine. What shall I call you? Son? See you flinch at that. This is ridiculous.’ Matt sighed, tired, angry and exasperated. When River didn’t reply he pushed his hair back from his face and said, ‘I’m just going to have to call your mother.’

‘No!’

Annie closed her eyes for a moment. It was like sitting between two bulls waiting to charge. ‘Look this is so stupid,’ she said. ‘You had a really great evening. We thought the band was amazing. River, you’ve had a massive shock. Matt, go easy on him, all seventeen year olds drink too much sometimes, just, River, maybe try and learn something from this? And both of you, just, I don’t know, get to know each other. Go and paint the front of my cafe together.’

There was a pause as both of them looked at her, the same frown, the same eyes.

‘Are you serious?’ Matt asked.

‘Yes. There’s pot-loads of turquoise paint. There’s sandpaper for the wood. Go on. Go. And when your little drummer girl wakes up, she can help as well.’ Annie watched as they both sat, neither moving till the other one did. ‘Go!’ she said again. ‘Get to work.’

Matt was about to object again when River slid himself out of the booth, carefully resting Clemmie’s head on his folded-up suit jacket, and said to Matt, ‘Do you want to paint or sand?’

Matt closed his mouth, surprised.

Annie had to hold in a smile.

‘Erm.’ Matt looked past River to the window where the rising sun was starting to melt the crisp morning dew. ‘I’ll sand, I suppose.’

‘Ok then,’ River mumbled and sloped off to pick up the pots of paint stacked up by the kitchen door.

Matt glanced at Annie.

‘Off you go then,’ she said with a wink.

He took a breath and his shoulders visibly relaxed. ‘Thank you,’ he said and she nodded.

‘My pleasure.’

Chapter Twelve

As the morning woke up, the birds started chattering, the spring sun filled the cafe with shimmering dust and locals drifted in and out to have a nose.

Andrew Neil from the lighthouse popped in for a quick cup of tea and said, ‘I’ve been watching, you know. I’ve been watching your changes. I came to tell you I approve.’

Annie rested her forearms on the counter surface and said, ‘Thank you very much. Tell all your lot at the recording studio that they can have a ten percent discount. More if they’re famous.’

‘Oh don’t go giving your profits away too soon, missy. I’ll tell them no such thing. Just to get their butts in here ASAP.’

Annie laughed. ‘Whatever you think is best.’

Andrew took a slug of his coffee, then said, ‘I meant to ask, do you know why Holly’s turned down quite a bit of work recently? I had her lined up for three sessions and she said no.’

Annie shrugged. ‘Maybe she was busy.’

‘Is she working somewhere else? Do you know? She’s the best I’ve got and if someone’s paying her more…?’

‘Andrew, I really don’t know. You’ll have to ask her yourself.’ Annie shook her head. As far as she knew, Holly worked to live, always doing just enough to get by and still enjoy her life. Doing backing vocals and voiceovers for Andrew was easy money and her main source of income. ‘I don’t know why she’d be turning you down.’