Page 50 of The Winter of Second Chances
Annie’s heart was beating like a bird’s. She hadn’t realised just how much she wanted this until she’d said it out loud.
‘Do as you want with the place,’ said Mari. ‘It’s yours till spring and after that we can negotiate terms. If you make a profit, I’ll take my twenty per cent and if you don’t, then I won’t. Does that sound fair?’
‘More than fair,’ Annie gushed. ‘Thank you so much! Would you mind if I move a few things about? Maybe make a few changes?’ Her brain was on fast-forward, mentally rearranging things, one image after another flashing before her eyes.
‘As I said, my dear, do as you wish. I’m not precious about it, it’s been gathering dust for decades. If you can make it useful again, all credit to you. It’s serving no purpose while it slumbers.’
‘I promise to be sympathetic to its history,’ said Annie.
Mari tsked down the line.
‘Sympathy is for those we pity,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t need your sympathy; it needs your oomph!’
Annie laughed. ‘Okay, I’ll give it my best oomph. I won’t let you down.’
‘I know you won’t, dear. But I should warn you, you may run into opposition from my nephew. As you know, he’s keen for me to sell the place. He might not take kindly to a business starting up. Don’t get me wrong, there’s not a thing he can do about it; I’ve agreed to it and that is that. But it won’t stop him throwing his teddy out of the perambulator!’
Annie felt her chagrin rise at the mere mention of the dreaded nephew.
‘I’ll watch out for tantrums,’ said Annie. ‘So long as it doesn’t cause problems between the two of you.’
‘It won’t,’ Mari said with parental confidence.
Annie had begun making lists and preparations for reopening the tea room as a coffee shop the moment she had put the phone down after speaking with Mari. So that by the time she had called Paul – in his new capacity as a friendwithoutbenefits – and commissioned him to do some building, lifting and general handiwork around the place, she had a clear idea of what she wanted to achieve. The whole thing needed to be done on a shoestring, not least because she was still having to draw cash out on her much abused credit card, and also because this was, after all, just a pop-up shop with a very good possibility of it closing down in the spring if John Granger sold the property. Luckily Paul’s mates’ rates were exceedingly matey and Alfred was on hand as extra muscle and only required food for his services. Maeve had donated a stack of old wood left over from the building of a new barn on the farm and Bill had brought down three unopened tubs of chalk-white paint from when they’d painted their apartment above the pub.
The first thing to address was moving the coffee machine so that it was conveniently reachable from both the cafe and the kiosk. Paul took the partition wall down to make the space open plan and then built a long counter against the far wall, where the coffee machine was re-plumbed into its new position, as was a sink and a five-ring electric hob with a small electric oven (all second-hand), and a microwave (donated by Sally) was set into one of the new cupboards. Beneath the counter he built a series of deep cupboards and plumbed in the dishwasher.
Annie continued to open the kiosk as usual; it was important to keep her customer base happy. And being that it was only a takeaway service, the disruption from banging and drilling was minimal – at least to her customers.
The old nautical oil lamps, which Annie had lovingly restored to their brassy glory, were given to Paul, with her strict instructions, and transformed into a stylish light fitting; the lamps now housed electric bulbs and were attached by a long length of industrial-looking wire. The offensive strip light in the ceiling was removed and the new-old lamps were hung above the counter at different heights, the wire looping between them, as though the lamps were hanging over the side of a fishing boat. Annie had rescued the kitsch floral crockery from the old cupboards and stacked it on top of the coffee machine, where it teetered in a riot of ditsy floral and plush rose petals, like the Mad Hatter’s tea party.
As the days went on Annie fell into tempo with the pulse of running a business on the coast. Come hell or high water – and sometimes the weather at Willow Bay seemed to encompass both – the dog-walkers and the joggers would be out for their early morning constitutionals. Annie would open the kiosk at eight a.m., ready to catch them on their way back, wind-bitten and frozen-fingered and grateful for a hot drink. There was always a lull around nine a.m. and then, between ten and eleven, it was the turn of the Lycra mummies speed-walking their pushchairs and small dogs, in stark contrast to the retired folks – sensibly attired against the cold and steady of pace. Skinny flat whites and tea were the orders of the hour respectively.
During the lulls, Annie would sit in the tea room and read by the Calor gas fire, so as to hear the ‘OOOhee!’ of customers calling her attention through the window. She opened the shutters on the large picture windows of the tea room to let in the daylight and readNicholas Nickleby– the next book club choice – or Mari’s notebook. It felt like a sublime existence, albeit fishbowl-like at times, as curious faces pressed against the glass to see inside. But she supposed it was understandable, after the place being shut up for the last twenty years. On Saturdays and on her lunch breaks Emily stood outside with a placard which read:SAVE SALTWATER NOOK. It wasn’t a personal vendetta – though it wasn’t ideal – and she quite often bought a hot drink from the kiosk when it was really cold and chatted amiably with Annie about how business was before going back to picketing.
Annie walked the length of the promenade almost every day, either first thing to watch the sunrise or when she closed the kiosk at half past two. The weather grew colder exponentially as the days of October ticked by.
Some days there seemed only to be unrelenting rain, driven horizontally by the wind, the sky leaden and so heavy she could feel it pressing down on her shoulders. On these days Annie stayed in, watching the storm from behind the kiosk window, wrapped in a knitted poncho, cradling a mug of coffee while strands of her hair were lifted by the draught in the old window frames.
She had wondered if she might feel lonely but, in truth, she didn’t, not a bit. Alex and Peter texted regularly, and she called them each weekly for a proper catch-up. She had the book club and she was feeling more and more a part of the Willow Bay community. The evenings were quiet, but Annie revelled in them; she had spent her entire adult life in a career that demanded her evenings and now she had them back.
On nights when the tide was high and the weather unsettled, Annie knew that Alfred would stay, and she always made sure to leave food and a thermos of hot tea in the tea room for him. Early one morning she stepped out for her walk and found bundles of rosemary tied with string on the doorstep, ready for drying, and the garden neatly chopped back – a job she had been meaning to get to – and she understood that she had entered into a bartering agreement with Alfred: food and shelter for odd jobs.
The transition from autumn to winter was accented by the creeping of early morning frosts, which glittered on the sage leaves in the garden and left tell-tale wet patches on the ground when the sun and salt dissolved it. As per Mari’s notebook, Fred had delivered the winter logs and, thankfully, Alfred had been on hand to help Annie sweep the log store and pile them into it. She hadn’t asked Alfred to help her, he had simply appeared when Fred’s van turned up and set to work. He wasn’t much for polite conversation and Annie found his quiet company strangely reassuring. It was an odd sort of friendship, if you could call it that, but it suited Annie as much as it did Alfred.
‘Don’t you ever worry that the tide will come in while you’re in the cave?’ Annie asked Alfred as they worked.
‘Nope. I know the tides like I know myself.’
‘You’ve never been taken by surprise? By a storm or something?’
Alfred chuckled and shook his head.
‘Nope. I respect the sea. I don’t ever take for granted that she won’t take it upon herself to sweep me out to the depths. I know her moods, and when she’s in a tempest I’m wise enough to stay out of her way. She’s just like a woman: you’ve got to know when to worship and when to take cover.’
The man from the council’s environmental health department had been due to drop in today to give her the okay for opening the old tea room as a new cafe business, but he hadn’t turned up, so Annie assumed he’d either got lost trying to find the place or been held up on other business. The air was heady with the scent of newly sawn pine and freshly ground coffee. Not having had time to bake for tonight’s book club, Annie had bought three boxes of macarons at the Willow Bay Stores, which she would offer with coffees of their choice.
The candles flickered as the book club attendees blustered into the cafe, sopping from the rain that fell in sheets across land and sea. Dripping coats were slung across the backs of chairs to dry, and wet boots made footprints on the floor.
