The Pretty Delicious Cafe

by Danielle Hawkins

  ‘The radio’s broken,’ I said. ‘I can only listen to CDs. But if Taylor Swift isn’t your cup of tea you’ll find Mariah Carey in the glove box.’

  ‘Please tell me you’re kidding,’ he said.

  ‘I’m kidding,’ I admitted. ‘Pass me a drink?’

  * * *

  It was quarter past one in the morning when we got to Thames. Jed directed me through the quiet streets to a small, rectangular weatherboard house with the kitchen and living room lights on, set close to the road behind a low brick wall.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said as I pulled up beneath a streetlight in front of the house. ‘Will you be okay driving back?’

  ‘Yes, fine. Would you like me to wait for ten minutes in case you need the car for something, or just leave you to it?’

  ‘Could you wait just a minute? I’ll go in and see what’s happening, and give you a wave if everything’s alright.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said.

  ‘Hey, I’m sorry for stuffing up your New Year’s.’

  ‘There were some pretty nice bits,’ I said softly.

  ‘Yes. Yes, there were.’ He smiled at me, got out of the car and went quickly up the path. I climbed out more slowly, carefully straightening my sore knee, and watched him knock on the sliding door leading to the living room.

  After a few seconds a round-faced girl with dark hair drew back the curtain.

  ‘Jesus, Jed,’ she said, sliding the door open. ‘What have you done to yourself?’

  He looked down at his blood-smeared shirt. ‘Nothing. I cut my hand. Sorry, it looks a bit gory.’

  ‘Baby, what happened? Are you okay?’ cried a second woman, hurtling through the doorway to throw her arms around his neck. She was nearly as tall as he was, with long blonde hair pulled back untidily into a ponytail. She was fairly overweight, and she wore sagging track pants and a thin cotton T-shirt that would have looked better with a bra underneath it, but she was still very pretty. No, I corrected myself. Beautiful. Anyone who’s recognisably lovely without making any effort whatsoever is beautiful.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Jed said. ‘How are you?’

  She pulled back to look at him. ‘Freaking amazing. Jess, my head’s so clear, it’s like the clouds have lifted, and all that shit that stops you seeing your way’s just gone, and you know what you’re meant to do, it’s fucking brilliant!’ She was talking very fast, her hands on Jed’s shoulders and her lovely face ablaze with excitement. If that was mania, I thought it would almost be worth the depression.

  With a lightning change from hyperactive to sultry she moved closer to him and slid her hands down his arms. ‘Baby, it’s good to see you . . .’

  Jed caught her hands as they reached the front of his jeans. ‘Come inside,’ he said, leading her in. Turning to close the door behind them, he lifted a hand to me, then slid the door shut and pulled the curtain across.

  I was limping slowly along the pavement in a fruitless effort to ease the ache in my knee, which would have much preferred a Voltarin and a lie-down to a short walk and a few more hours of driving, when the door reopened and the dark-haired girl came down the path, handbag under her arm.

  ‘Hi,’ I said as she drew level with me.

  She stopped, looking at me curiously. ‘Hi. I’m Rochelle.’

  ‘I’m Lia. I’m just the chauffeur – Jed had had a few drinks, so I drove him down.’

  ‘And you’re going to wait out here?’

  I shook my head. ‘No, I’m heading back up north. I’ve got to work tomorrow.’

  ‘You live in Ratai? That’s a long drive.’

  ‘At least there’s not much traffic at this time of night,’ I said. She yawned and, taking my cue, I added, ‘I’d better get going. Goodnight.’

  ‘Goodnight.’

  We climbed into our respective cars and drove away. The only thing that was even slightly good about the trip home was that, between my knee and the evening’s many and startling revelations, I was in no danger of falling asleep at the wheel.

  Chapter 14

  I was woken from near coma the next morning by Anna saying sharply, ‘Lia! Are you alright? Lia!’

  ‘Ugghhh,’ I said, and buried my face in the pillow.

  ‘It’s quarter to seven! And why is there blood all over the kitchen?’

  I sat up and squinted at her through eyelashes stiff with mascara. Waking up in last night’s makeup makes you feel like such a grub.

  ‘’S not mine, it’s Jed’s,’ I said thickly.

  ‘Jed’s? You brought Jed home?’

  ‘No! Well, yes, but . . .’

  She looked at me suspiciously. ‘How much did you drink last night?’

  ‘Stuff all. I’ve just had two hours sleep.’ I rolled out of bed onto my hands and knees and crawled across the floor to my chest of drawers, that being less of a shock to the system than standing. ‘Be there in five minutes.’

  I was eight minutes, but considering I showered, dressed, did my hair and donned an elastic knee brace in that time, I felt quite proud of myself. As I entered the kitchen Anna, looking sickeningly fresh and well-groomed as she measured flour into the bowl of the big mixer, nodded towards a mug of coffee on the end of the bench.

  I took a sip. ‘You’re wonderful.’

  ‘Now tell me why Jed’s been bleeding all over the kitchen.’

  ‘It wasn’t that much of a mess, was it? I would’ve cleaned up, but we had to go in a rush, and then it was four when I got home and I forgot.’ I put my coffee down on the bench and began shredding a roast chicken, dropping the meat into a stainless-steel bowl.

  ‘Go where in a rush?’ Anna asked.

  ‘Thames.’

  ‘What? Lia, would you just start at the beginning?’

  ‘Sorry.’ I took a steadying mouthful of coffee. ‘Right. So, Isaac cornered me at the pub last night, as he does, and Jed came past and told him to bugger off. So then Isaac told me I was a slut, and Jed knocked him down.’

  ‘What?’ Anna said, abandoning her bread dough and turning to face me.

  ‘I know. All very dramatic. That’s where the blood came from: Jed split his hand open on Isaac’s jawbone. I brought him back here to bandage it up – it seemed the least I could do.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘But why did you go to Thames?’

  I sighed and pulled a leg off my chicken. ‘Because Jed’s wife is bipolar, and she rang him up on a high. He thought she must have stopped taking her medication, and he was worried about their little boy.’

  ‘Jed’s married?’ said Anna.

  ‘Separated.’

  ‘And he’s got a kid.’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘And he just left them to it and moved up here? What a guy.’

  ‘He stayed for three years with someone with serious mental health issues who won’t take her medication!’ I said hotly. Anna had no idea of what Jed had had to deal with. How dare she go all pious and judgmental? You’ve got no idea either, whispered the voice of reason. You just want him to be a hero because you’ve got a crush on him.

  Her eyebrows went up. ‘Okay, okay! Sorry!’

  ‘Anyway, he’s moving back to Thames at the end of the month. Maybe he’ll go earlier, now.’ And maybe the lovely Tracey would start taking her pills, and they’d work things out and live happily ever after. A nice person would hope so. ‘How was your night?’ I asked, relaxing my shoulders with an effort.

  ‘Fine. Good,’ said Anna. ‘We had drinks and a barbecue at Melody’s place – you’ve been there, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yeah. She’s got a big soft-focus photo of herself on the sitting room wall.’

  ‘It’s her wall.’

  ‘True,’ I said. ‘Although I think I’d have toned down the airbrushing a bit, if I were her. It’s fairly obvious you don’t actually look like a model when you’re standing there right beside the picture.’

  ‘Man, Lia, you can be harsh when you want to be.’

  ‘Well, the last time I saw Melody she told me
she’d seen a pair of shoes just like mine in a shop, and she’d wondered who would actually pay money for anything so ugly. I went off her at that point.’

  Anna looked sceptical. ‘Did she honestly say that?’

  ‘Words to that effect,’ I said darkly.

  She gave a small, incredulous smile, and my shoulders stiffened again. Repressing the urge to cry ‘She did!’, I said instead, ‘Did you go into the city?’

  ‘Yeah, we went to the Viaduct. It was amazing.’

  ‘Many people there?’

  ‘Thousands. It was heaving.’

  ‘Huh. I thought they were all up here.’ I started on the second chicken, looking out the big west window at the early sunlight on the bush-clad ridge above the café. It was a beautiful day, the kind it’s a crime not to be out in. Imagine if I didn’t have to be here right now – if I could get outside, all by myself, and have the space and quiet to talk myself into a better frame of mind, I thought. The next twelve hours, full of people and noise and cooking and relentless niceness, stretched before me like a sentence.

  ‘Why did you have to go to Thames?’ Anna asked suddenly.

  ‘Chauffeur,’ I said. ‘Jed had drunk too much to drive. I just dropped him off at the house and came home.’

  ‘Did you see the crazy wife?’

  ‘Nope,’ I said shortly, downing the rest of my coffee in one gulp.

  * * *

  The day was busy right from the start, with a flock of ladies in trendy jewel-toned sports clothes arriving on foot at eight thirty. They were followed by two fragile, hungover young couples wanting coffee and fried food, and another two men who looked even more fragile and had four unrestrained small children between them.

  ‘Hey, guys,’ Anna said to the two biggest children as they hurtled past the coffee machine into the kitchen and ran in circles around the butcher’s block. ‘You need to stay on that side of the counter, away from all the hot things and sharp knives. Okay?’

  They ignored her completely. ‘You’re it!’ shouted one little boy, slapping the other one on the chest and leaping onto the window seat.

  ‘Oi!’ I said. ‘Outside! You can go out this door and play tag on the lawn, if your dads say it’s okay.’

  ‘Dad!’ the other boy shouted. ‘Can we play outside?’

  ‘No,’ one of the men called back. ‘Come here, your breakfast will be ready in a minute.’

  The two boys trailed unwillingly back into the dining room, where they expressed their disappointment by scattering the contents of the toy box across the floor and singing ‘What Does the Fox Say?’ in shrill incessant voices. I hoped the hungover couples didn’t make a habit of rating their dining experiences on the internet.

  ‘Jed has one of those,’ Anna said softly, passing me on her way to the fridge.

  I smiled, probably a little wanly, and she gave my shoulder a quick sympathetic squeeze.

  Just after eleven Rob let himself in the kitchen door. ‘Morning,’ he said, kissing the back of Anna’s neck. ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘Busy. Could you clear some tables, love?’ said Anna. She slid the cheesecake she was carrying into the display cabinet and tossed him a damp cloth. Rob caught it and went out into the dining room, where instead of clearing tables he fell into conversation with Maggot Robinson, who completely deserved his nickname.

  ‘This is fabulous,’ Philippa cried from the front door, a toddler on her hip and husband and older child in tow.

  I looked up and waved, poured the milkshake I was making into a tall glass and delivered it to a boy of about twelve who was so intent on his phone that he failed entirely to notice.

  ‘Luke!’ said his mother sharply. ‘Thank the lady!’

  ‘Thanks,’ the boy said, not looking up.

  ‘Luke Jonathon Shepherd! When you thank someone you make eye contact, and you smile. Go on!’

  Luke eyed his mother with resentment, flicked a glance in my direction and muttered, ‘Thanks for the milkshake.’

  ‘Lia, this place is amazing!’ Philippa said, advancing across the dining room.

  ‘Thank you!’ I recognised her husband from Facebook and smiled at him. ‘You must be Campbell. Nice to meet you.’

  ‘Hi,’ said Campbell, crouching down to wipe his small son’s nose.

  ‘And that’s Travis, and this is Olive, our baby,’ Philippa said.

  ‘Good morning, Olive,’ I said. Olive turned her face into her mother’s shirt and whimpered. ‘She looks just like you, Philippa.’

  ‘Now there’s a scary thought, princess,’ said Philippa fondly, looking down at her daughter.

  ‘I’m sorry for rushing off last night,’ I said. ‘It was all a bit fraught.’

  ‘Pretty sexy, having two guys fighting over you,’ she said, at a volume that would have done nicely for hailing a passing ship. Rob, talking to Maggot two metres away, looked at me with one eyebrow raised. ‘Did you score with the hot mechanic?’

  ‘Philippa! No!’ I said.

  Rob’s other eyebrow went up.

  ‘You did!’ she cried. ‘Go, Lia!’

  ‘Would you like a table, or did you just drop in to heckle?’ I asked.

  Philippa giggled. ‘Table, please. Can he –’ she nodded towards Rob, ‘be our waiter?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Have you not met my brother Rob?’

  ‘If I knew you had a brother who looked like Brad Pitt I’d have spent a lot more time at your place in the holidays!’

  Rob, meeting my eye with barely concealed horror, retreated at speed to clear a table on the far side of the room.

  ‘Who is that woman?’ he muttered ten minutes later, passing the coffee machine with a stack of dirty plates.

  ‘Philippa Earle. She was my neighbour in the student village. She’s very nice.’

  ‘She’s as dumb as a sack full of hammers,’ he said, depositing his plates in the sink.

  I smiled and handed him two cups of coffee. ‘Take these to table twelve? And d’you want to ask if they’d like something sweet? He looks hungry.’

  Rob looked around for number twelve, found it on the table next to Philippa’s and gave me a dirty look as he went past.

  * * *

  There was a lull around two thirty, and scraping the last of the pasta salad into a bowl I retired to the window seat to eat it.

  ‘Has anyone got their name on this quiche thing?’ Rob asked, holding up a roasting pan with one square of sausage tart in the corner.

  ‘All yours,’ I said. ‘There’s tomato sauce in the little fridge.’

  ‘Should I make you a sandwich, my sweet?’ he asked Anna, who was spreading whipped cream on a sponge cake.

  ‘I’ll do it, I’m nearly finished,’ she said.

  ‘So what’s this about people fighting over you?’ Rob said, looking at me over his shoulder as he opened the fridge.

  ‘They weren’t. Isaac was just being his normal special self at the pub, and Jed wandered past and told him to get a grip, and that made him worse, so Jed knocked him down.’

  ‘Good on him. I’m sorry I missed it.’

  ‘But hey, you got to hang out with Melody,’ I said.

  ‘The woman’s got a big picture of herself on the living room wall,’ he said disgustedly. ‘It’s like a shrine to herself.’

  I laughed. Anna did not.

  ‘Do you want these pickle things on your sandwich?’ Rob asked her, holding up a jar.

  ‘No,’ she snapped, dropping the top half of her sponge cake onto its bed of whipped cream. ‘I said I’d do it!’

  Rob, who is the hardest person to pick a fight with I’ve ever met, merely shrugged and applied himself to coating his sausage tart with sauce. ‘I had a text from Brendon Lynch last night,’ he told me. ‘He’s home for the next two weeks, and he’s keen to catch up.’

  ‘Awesome,’ I said. Brendon was a high school friend and a particularly nice bloke. ‘We’ll have to have a barbecue one night. Who else is around?’

  ‘Lily and A
dam Smith, Toby, Brent Hemingway . . .’

  ‘Crystal McMahon,’ I suggested.

  ‘Or not,’ said Rob.

  ‘Well, we can’t leave her out!’

  ‘Watch me,’ he said.

  ‘Crystal had a major crush on him at high school,’ I told Anna.

  ‘So you’ve told me,’ she said. ‘Several times.’

  ‘Come and sit down for a minute,’ said Rob.

  ‘I’m getting there.’

  She would recover better without me there competing for Rob’s attention. She might even eat something, which could only improve her mood. Getting up, I took the compost bucket and slipped out the kitchen door to empty it.

  Chapter 15

  On Monday evening, two days later, Anna and I had a world-class screaming match. It was our first – petty sniping had, until then, been our limit – and I sincerely hope it will be our last. I’m not sure either of us could take another one.

  The weekend had been frantic. Some twerp flushed a disposable nappy down the toilet on Sunday morning, and while Rob spent an unhappy two hours retrieving it the café customers were diverted down the hall to my bathroom. At nine that night I discovered that my toiletries were gone, down to the half-empty box of sanitary pads in the cupboard under the bathroom sink. Anna burnt her hand on a scorching-hot pizza stone and somebody spilt a large iced coffee across the big sofa. None of these things were disastrous, but when you’re tired every little setback erodes your sense of humour a bit further, until you reach the point where you take a tight jar lid as a personal insult.

  Monday was hot and airless and felt at least forty hours long. We closed at last, and Anna wearily got out the vacuum cleaner while I measured flour for pizza bases into the bowl of the big industrial mixer. I clicked the head of the mixer into place and turned it on, and it started to turn with its customary groan of effort. Cheesecake next, I decided, so it could chill overnight. I was halfway to the fridge for the cream cheese when the slow grinding of the mixer rose to a shrill metallic scream.

  I flew back across the kitchen and turned it off. Dark smoke rose from the mixer head and a drop of dirty oil fell into the dough. I lifted up the mixer head, yanked the bowl free and put it down on the bench, and scooped out the oil with a spoon.