Page 14 of The Custard Tart Cafe by the Sea
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Oh, hun!” Caitlynruns in for a well overdue hug and I fight back the tears, realising how much I have missed my sister. “I can’t believe what’s been going on.” She releases me and holds me at arm’s length as if searching my face for damage. The weak sun streams through the window, shining a spotlight on her strawberry blond bob and smattering of freckles, all of which somehow makes her pewter-grey eyes appear emerald. “What an arse. Who is this guy? I’ll set my javelin mates on him… and I can get the shot putters involved, too, if need be.”
Caitlyn is studying for a sports science degree at Loughborough University. I snuffle back the tears and giggle instead at the vision of my little sister’s athletic friends charging after the idiot who is out to destroy my business. It’s the second time my allies have suggested a sporty solution to my problem.
“Believe me, I’d give you the nod if I thought we’d get away with it. But there’s no sense in all of us watching our dreams go up in smoke, and some of your talented posse are headed for destinies bigger than mine. I’d never forgive myself if I saw them lose their places at the Paris Olympics.”
Plus I’m planning to fine tune my own sporting prowess. Oh, yes! You read it here first: custard tart hurling– on a proper bona fide pitch– will soon be the big new thing everyone’s training for. There’s just the small matter of working out where and how to practice my aim. If only I lived next door to Ten Downing Street…
“True,” Caitlyn acknowledges and I have to swallow down another chuckle because she’s no idea she’s giving the thumbs-up to the crazy thoughts circling my head. “But wouldn’t it be satisfying?”
She looks off into the distance as if watching it all unfolding on a television set.
“Anyway, what are you talking about, with the dreams going up in smoke nonsense? Not going to happen under my watch!” Caitlyn is adamant. “Whatisgoing to happen is we are all going to pull together and work our butts off this summer to make The Custard Tart Café a roaring success. I’ve seen from the sidelines how much work you’ve put into making this business happen over the years and there’s no going back now. This is a mere obstacle, and, like running water, we shall find a way around it!”
I open my mouth, to point out her wishful thinking may never undo the damage that blasted petition must have caused. But Caitlyn’s on a roll, with yet another Schofield sister marketing idea tangent.
“Talking of my uni mates, they’re all coming down to Bath next week for summer training– and they’ll have the weekend off. You know what that means!”
“Do I?”
This already sounds as dodgy as her earlier suggestion…
“Beach day and carbs!”
“I’m not quite following. Is this some kind of athletics jargon?”
“Think fifteen top athletes descending on Weston-super-Mare, the pier, and most importantly, your café. All with highly active social media accounts in tow. Between them they must have close to a million followers.” Caitlyn jumps up and down clapping at her own brilliance. I want to let out a low and sexy whistle myself, but that would be tempting fate. I’d rather put up the buntingifthis outside-the-box idea is successful.
I guess the odds are in my favour– for once. Fifteen well-connected souls with good intentions, versus one irked idiot and his dogged determination (though Tiago’s poodle probably hasn’t put a paw print on that pesky petition, even if he was carried along for the ride). It’s a battle of wills all right. And maybe, just maybe, it’s a battle that Willow will win– with a little help from Caitlyn’s friends, anyway.
I certainly hope so. Because it might just save me embarrassing myself by wreaking havoc with a custard discus…
Or maybe I actually should pace across the football pitch, spin, release, and let my custard shot put rocket through the air, smacking Tiago in the face, as I roar away all the tension of the past few weeks.
CHAPTER NINE
“Come on. Youknow it makes sense,” Kelly pleads. “Matt won’t take no for an answer either. IfIneed this break before the summer season kicks in, thenyoudefinitely do… And as I said to Radhika, I’m not heading off to sunny climes without both of you there by my side!”
Well, as appealing as the thought of a holiday is, all of this is slightly easier for Kelly than for me. The ice cream parlour she and her partner Matt took over in Bath a couple of years ago is thriving, thanks to its plethora of fantastical flavours, and its central position on historic Pulteney Bridge. I doubt it has ever had to deal with a petition for closure– even if its previous owner, Giovanna Tonioli (Matt’s cousin), initially set it up to annoy her parents after they allegedly cut her out of her inheritance. This just happened to be the family ice cream parlour, also based in the city… smack bang across the road from the one she opened. Yeah, talk about awkwardness. I had a lot of sympathy for the girl at the time when Matt recounted the tragic tale to me. Why does food so consistently evoke so many complex emotions in us human beings?
I guess it comes down to food being love, life, and the heart and soul served up on a plate, or in a cone. Food is everything.
I should have asked Matt for advice on how best to handle things. If he didn’t know the answer then he could have pointed me in any number of helpful directions, courtesy of his culinary contacts in high places. Matt and I have known one another for years, having lived in opposite houses on the same road from the ages of twelve to sixteen, even if we were at different schools. We’d frequently pop into each other’s kitchens for whichever sneaky morsels either of us had on the go at the weekends, and when the weather was good, we’d head to Ellenborough park on the west side of Walliscote Road, our little dot on the map… Until his parents moved the family to a fancier abode in a cul-de-sac just off Sandy Bay, business evidently booming.
Nevertheless, we’ve always stayed in touch in a platonic and strictly just good friends way, and when he’d introduced me to his first steady girlfriend in years– Kelly– it had been besties at first sight. Kelly had come into Matt’s life via the aforementioned Giovanna, and was seeking the solace of a good friendship at the same time as me (Gi had gallivanted off to Italy with her own knight in shining armour, and I’d been a perpetual social floater who was ready to be a bit choosier with my allegiances, settling down with a closer group of on-the-same-ish-wave-length-peeps). Radhika, despite being several years younger, had fit neatly between us when we’d just happened to meet her on the dance floor in one of Bath’s trendy new nightclubs; this one was housed in a high-vaulted, neon-lit cellar, where our new friend was most unimpressed with the ‘distinct lack of talent, given it was a Friday night.’ Radhika is still most unimpressed with this issue wherever we go.
Anyway, I’m going ridiculously off on a tangent.
So, as we’ve already established, Matt grew up in Weston-super-Mare, like me. His family, and extended family, still own a bunch of ofristorantiin the South West, including two in the town; having unfathomably moved from the idyllic island of Capri to a not-so-idyllic, but certainly characterful, Weston– as you do. As useful as any of Matt’s posse could have been to me, at least I now have a sketchy settling-the-score style plan of my own involving a footie pitch and some nimble circus moves. In my mind’s eye, my very public custard tart nibble/lob has a fifty-fifty chance of working and scaring Tiago away from taking the petition to the powers that be. I won’t say I am converted to the idea of staying open past summer, but I will say that, from now until I’ve seen the results of my attendance at the upcoming football match, I will try to chill out and simply go with the flow.
To an outsider, asking Kelly for advice might seem like the obvious plan, but this is the woman who once tried to convince me to serve my customers beetroot and eucalyptus-filled custard tarts; two of Kelly’s iced delights! Yes, I know that some of my ideas are a little outside the box (I grimace as I recall the incriminatory words of the petition), but Kelly’s culinary ‘masterpieces’ take things to a whole new level where commonsense doesn’t always prevail. Even if they are always created in the name of health. In other words, much as Kelly and Matt’s enterprise is a huge success, only half of it caters for mainstream customers’ tastebuds– an area that is very much Matt’s domain.
That’s why I skirt around my petition worries with Kelly, mentioning only the bare bones, so as not to give hercarte blanchefor any ideas whackier than my own. And that’s why Kelly’s brainwave of a girlie break in the Algarve comes as something of a surprise. It is out of character for my friend to even consider venturing somewhere so, well,conventional.
“Oh, I know what you’re thinking,” she chirrups, reading my puzzled expression. “Whilst we might have to do the nightclub in Vilamoura thing one evening, to appease Radhika, that’s as far as I’m prepared to indulge in mass tourism.”
“Right, I see.”
