Burned At The Bake

by Ashley Cain

  If April wanted to keep Rachel to pretty much the same number of hours that she was currently doing she was going to have to come up with a plan. And if she couldn’t find the hours from others in the café, and save for herself dropping a few hours and Jerome and Sylvain reducing their shifts she didn’t see where that was going to be possible, then she would have to find a way to bring more customers in. Maybe she shouldn’t discount the cookery school idea just yet. Finishing her second glass she glanced at her watch and with a start saw that it was just past midnight. She needed to be up in just under six hours. Turning off the patio heater and picking up the glass and the now half -finished bottle of wine she went in to the cabin to go to bed and a sleep she knew would not come easily.

  Chapter 3

  The following day was as busy as April had hoped for, and she had no chance at all to give any further thought to the ideas that they had been discussing the day before. Walking in to the kitchen with a tray full of empty plates and mugs from a family of five who had devoured one of her afternoon cream teas, she watched Miguel and Rachel starting to prepare the meals for the evening service. She had to admit that they worked well together and, even though meal preparation was not part of Rachel’s job description, she carried fresh vegetables from the store room and fish from the fridge without complaint.

  April was not sure though for how much longer they could sustain the evening meal service. The bookings were well down on the Saturday before, and if she hadn’t taken the phone call from one of the Gull Bay residents who at the last minute had decided that he would prefer to spend the late afternoon enjoying the sun in his garden with a gin and tonic or three rather than in the kitchen preparing a meal for his guests, she would have struggled to break even. April was becoming more and more aware that the summer season was coming to a close very quickly, and that she was going to have to make some drastic changes to the staffing rotas fairly rapidly if she wasn’t going to be spending money on staff wages that she wasn’t going to recoup.

  It was clear that Miguel and Rachel had been talking, for as soon as they saw her, they stopped what they were doing. “We’ve been talking about the cookery school” Miguel started. “I thought we could start it in October and run two courses a week. We could do a Christmas theme first of all. Rachel has an amazing recipe for a fruit cake that you can eat at any time of the year. We would need to start advertising now though, put a few posters up around the café and the bay”.

  “What are you talking about?” Martha had followed April in to the kitchen with another load of plates and mugs which she deposited on the counter. She looked from Miguel to April. “Why would you want to start teaching people how to cook, sounds like a stupid plan to me?”

  “Why would you think it’s stupid?” Miguel looked at Martha. “Sounds like a great idea to get more people through the door. I thought you’d be happy about that”.

  “I would be happy to get more people through the door to eat, not to cook”. Martha leaned back against the counter her hands on her hips. “They will stop coming to the café for something to eat if they know how to cook themselves, and I for one can’t afford to reduce my hours”.

  “Nobody is asking you to reduce your hours” Miguel argued “It’s not just about you though is it? We are a team and Rachel needs to keep her hours as well”.

  “I see” Martha huffed although it was pretty clear from the look on her face and her rigid body posture that she didn’t particularly like what she saw. “So, this is about keeping your girlfriend in a job is it?” Martha was not one to shy away from saying what she thought.

  Miguel reddened. “Rachel is not my girlfriend” he protested, although the red and purple blush that started to spread over his neck and ears suggested he wouldn’t be too unhappy if she was. “It’s about helping the team” he waved his hand in an arc around the group, although April thought it may have felt more encompassing if he had put down the sharp knife he was holding before he had. “There is no I in team”

  April sighed. She needed to try and strike a balance between keeping everyone happy and making money. It was clear that Martha wouldn’t be willing to reduce her hours and she couldn’t blame her for that. She had worked for the café for four years and shouldn’t be put at a disadvantage just because a promise to Rachel had been made without thinking through how it was going to be delivered. She held her hands up to stop the disagreement boiling over in to a full-blown argument. There were still customers in the café, late afternoon arrivals who had completed their walk over the cliffs and wanted a rejuvenating pot of tea and slice of cake before travelling home, or to their holiday accommodation.

  “I haven’t made any plans yet” she jumped in before Martha could form the words that were clearly going to come from her open mouth. “But I can guarantee Martha that you will not be asked to reduce your hours”.

  “I know that is not your intention, but it might happen if you give airtime to this crackpot scheme and you end up with no customers”. It was clear from the look on her face that Martha was quite happy for the discussion to turn in to an argument. That was the one problem with Martha, April thought despondently. She could never let anything go if she thought her hours or her money was at risk. She didn’t really know her that well despite the fact that they had worked together for four years, but from what Hope had mentioned in passing, and Hope knew everything there was to know about anyone, her ex-husband had left her virtually penniless a few years back. April could empathise with how she felt, she herself growing up had never really felt secure as both her parents had divorced and neither had wanted much to do with her. If it hadn’t been for her grandma, she would have had no-one to fall back on at all. It must be tough to feel like you have nobody and she could understand why Martha might feel as though she had to battle to protect herself.

  “I’m not doing anything without thinking it through carefully”. She shot a warning look at Miguel willing him to stay quiet. Rachel was busying herself in the fridge and had been for some time. If April did not diffuse this argument in the next few seconds the poor girl would get frostbite.

  “I should think not. For a start the kitchen isn’t big enough to do cooking classes. Where would everyone work?” Martha looked around the room.

  “I’ve thought of that”. Miguel held up his hand proudly. He wasn’t going to stay quiet but at least they were talking and not arguing. April wanted them to get back to their customers though, her and Martha had been in the kitchen for a good couple of minutes and they would have some arguments in the café as well as in the kitchen if they were not careful. “I agree it would be difficult to do it in the kitchen the way it is, but If we knocked this wall down here it opens up this whole space. We could build cupboards on all three sides that will then hold all the foodstuff and provide plenty of workspace for three people. Then all you would need to do would be to put in an additional oven here and you have plenty of room. We could easily train six people at a time”.

  Martha gaped at him.

  “And how much is that going to cost, with knocking walls down, fitting cupboards and buying ovens?” Martha glared at him, her eyes sparkling with anger. “Presumably Miguel, you would want your builder friends to do the work. You should be ashamed of yourself, encouraging April to spend money just so you can line your friend’s pockets and keep your girlfriend in a job”.

  So much for trying to diffuse the argument, April thought wearily. Without warning it had fired back up again quicker than the steak dianes that Miguel had cooked as the special the night before. April had had enough, she needed to take the heat out of this kitchen and refocus all their attention before she had no customers and no staff.

  “Enough” she clapped her hands to get their attention, wincing internally as she thought how school maidish, she probably looked. “I have said I will think about it and I will. I have promised that no-one will have to reduce their hours and I mean it. I am not stupid” April looked at Martha, “and I am not going to s
ay yes to every idea I hear” she transferred her gaze to Miguel who looked away embarrassed. “Now can we can all please get back to work?”

  She turned away and pushed open the door to the café before anyone could answer her. Two of the customers were waiting at the cash desk to pay and a table of four, who must have come in and sat down whilst they were arguing in the kitchen, looked as though they were about to leave. Not a moment too soon, April thought to herself, mentally berating herself for allowing herself to be distracted. Fortunately, she heard a noise behind her. Martha had followed her out and was heading over to the table of four who, reassured that they were going to be looked after, settled themselves down again with smiles. April headed to the cash desk.

  I can’t think properly when I am trying to be influenced by other people’s agendas, she thought to herself. She knew that neither Martha nor Miguel would deliberately try and force her in to something that would benefit them rather than herself, but she also knew that they both had too much at stake to be completely objective. Martha could not risk the café being unsuccessful, as she depended on this job for her income and jobs in Jersey were hard to come by over the winter. Miguel on the other hand was desperate for Rachel to stay at the café as he obviously had feelings for her and wanted to keep working with her. He clearly did not want Rachel to leave and him lose the opportunity to tell her how he felt.

  No, April needed some uninterrupted time to think and she knew exactly where she would go. Looking at the now relatively empty café and checking that she had a spare hour before she would be needed again, she shouted across to Martha that she was popping out. Without waiting for a response, she headed for the door.

  Chapter 4

  When April wanted to think she always went to the beach and sat on the rocks at the bottom of the cliffs that came down to the sea on the east side of the bay. There were very few tourists about this late in the afternoon and so she wouldn’t be interrupted by the sounds of children playing in the rockpools that circled the base of the rocks. The tide was coming in and soon the rocks would be covered, but for the next half hour or so she could sit in the relative stillness and do nothing but consider her options for the next few months.

  She liked to think of these rocks as her rocks. As a child when her parents were divorcing, a nasty and bitter divorce that meant that she had spent long periods with her grandparents, she had come down here to play in the rockpools with a small fishing net, or just to sit and read a book. When her grandfather had died, suddenly and without warning when she was sixteen, she had fled to these rocks to cry. Her grandmother had found her with the waves lapping at her ankles and they had cried together until they could not distinguish whether their clothes and faces were wet with the spray from the sea or their tears. And when her grandmother had died four years ago, after a short but painful illness, she had come to the rocks and screamed at the sky to a God who had taken away a woman who had felt more like a mother to her than her own mother ever had.

  April had never known whether her grandmother had kept her illness from her deliberately, or whether she really and truly had not known how ill she was until towards the end. She had asked Hope at the time, but Hope had not been able to, or had preferred not to, answer. April had been away in Manchester and had just completed her final exams when her mother had phoned her. She had known that something was wrong straight away, her mother rarely phoned her and had not been bothered to enquire how her exams had been going. She had got straight to the point, without preamble or any of the pleasantries that she imagined most mothers would start a conversation with, and told her bluntly that her grandmother was seriously ill.

  April had been planning to spend a few months travelling with her friend Eve before deciding what to do with her life, but had jumped on to the first flight that she could get so that she could look after her grandmother. The end was as quick as it was unexpected, she had died only two days after April had returned. April was sure that her grandmother had kept her illness from her so that she could finish her exams without worry, and was pleased that she had been able to cling on to life long enough for her to have the opportunity to say goodbye. It was a week later that she had discovered that her grandmother had left her the café and the cottage and from there on her life path seemed to be mapped out for her, different to that which she had expected, but with no clear plans of her own one that she had grabbed hold of with both hands.

  She did though, sometimes when she was alone, feel melancholy for the chances and opportunities that she had given up without question or thought. She missed Eve, who had delayed their trip for a few weeks to allow April to decide what she was going to do, but had then decided to travel alone to see the world. Not that she had been alone for long or seen much of the world. She had met a young Australian in the departure lounge of Heathrow airport when a systems failure had caused all the flights to be delayed. He had been travelling the world before joining his family’s cattle ranch and six hours and several rum and cokes later Eve had swapped her ticket to Bangkok for a one-way ticket to Perth. Four years later her business management degree was helping her set up a backpacker’s hostel in the small coastal town a hundred miles from Perth where her now husband’s family had their ranch, and she was juggling her business start-up with three small children. Clearly there was not much to do after dark in Western Australia.

  April envied her for the opportunity to share the ups and downs of life with someone she loved, although she wouldn’t have wanted the responsibility of a child never mind three at this stage in her life. April had a very small circle of friends in Jersey, although not as much time to spend with them as she would have liked. She was blessed to have the close-knit family of workers in the cafe, although that was being sorely tested at the moment. She would love to be able to talk through the problems with someone who had her best interests at heart but there was nobody to share her life with, and hadn’t been since Archie, her boyfriend at university.

  She often wondered what would have happened between her and Archie if her grandma hadn’t died and left her the café just as she had finished her studies. They had been on the same course, her, Archie, Eve and a half dozen others who had spent three years as a tight knit group sharing hopes, dreams, laughs and many hangovers. She and Archie had been an item for just over a year by the time the course had finished, close, but she didn’t think either of them had thought it would be forever. Not close enough to make long term plans anyway.

  Archie had secured a job in Manchester as a business analyst for a company making plastic components and April had thought that she may stay in Manchester once she had returned from her travels with Eve. Her grandmother’s death, and the bombshell news that she had been left the café and the cottage, had put paid to any loose ideas that she had had about that, and it had become clear that her destiny was to return and make a life on her home island of Jersey. There had never been any question that Archie would have given up his new job and life in Manchester to join her.

  Archie and her had never really split up. They had stayed in contact, daily, then every other day, then weekly. There had been loose plans for him to visit Jersey when he had some holiday, and for her to visit him in Manchester when a gap in the café renovations had allowed. But neither had materialised. And then Archie had met someone else in a nightclub in Manchester and that was that. She hadn’t shed a tear over the loss which told her that it would never have worked anyway.

  Her grandmother had made a living without a degree in business and management, and although she hadn’t been rich it had kept her going and allowed her to build up a reasonable amount of savings that had ensured that April had got enough to start with. She wondered now if it wouldn’t have been better for her to have followed her grandmother’s lead and kept things as they were for at least a couple of years whilst she learned the business. A degree was all well and good, but it didn’t necessarily beat years of experience. Her grandma survived with just a small café and her and Hope
serving. Winter or summer had never made much difference to her takings as it had only really been the locals who had come in for a coffee, or a glass of rum or whiskey that her grandmother kept out of sight under the counter and illegally served in the morning to those who knew she kept it and how to ask for it. The only cake she had ever served was a plain seed cake. April though had had bigger ambitions, and she had spent all her inheritance turning both café and cottage in to what she felt now was the best café in Gull Bay. The café was successful and brought in a good income, but it also had a lot of outgoings and a heavy responsibility. For April to be able to pay her bills she couldn’t just survive the winter, the café had to thrive.