‘What’s this?’ asked Talia, peering into a huge glass jar that Katie had given pride of place on the marble counter.
‘That’s just an idea I had …’
Katie paused, unsure whether her new friends would laugh at what she had done.
‘Are these Post-it stickers?’ asked Oscar, sticking his hand into the container and choosing a luminous yellow one. A compliment costs nothing.
‘It’s my good karma jar. It’s filled with inspirational quotes and ideas on how to add just a tiny bit of kindness to everyone’s day.’
‘Wow, that’s a fantastic idea! My turn, my turn,’ declared Talia, pushing a bemused Oscar out of the way and dipping in, pulling out a Kermit-coloured piece of paper. ‘Follow your Dreams. Oh, oh, I’ve got an idea for one. Can I add it to the jar?’
‘Of course, that’s exactly what I was intending.’ Katie smiled, pointing to a selection of Post-it pads and a handle-less mug crammed with different coloured pens.
‘Mine’s Dance Naked in the Rain!’
‘I’m adding Take a Moment to Smell the Roses,’ said Jay, reaching for a pen.
‘What about Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff?’
‘What about Treat Yourself to one of Ruby’s Marvellous Manicures?’ suggested a voice with a singsong Caribbean accent from the café’s front door.
‘Katie, this is Ruby who owns the village’s fantastically fabulous hair salon and beauty parlour,’ announced Jay as though introducing Katie to the patron at the Royal Spring Ball. ‘What this lady can’t do with a comb and a can of extra-strength hairspray isn’t worth knowing about.’
‘Hello, Katie, welcome to Perrinby.’
‘Thanks, Ruby.’
‘Well?’
Ruby turned to face Jay with her hands on her ample hips, a look of impatience on her attractive face. Katie immediately understood how Jay maintained such an impressive beauty regime – it was obviously courtesy of Ruby.
‘Oh, my God, darling, I’m sooo sorry! I’m late for my waxing, aren’t I?’
‘By fifteen minutes!’
‘Come on, Talia, Oscar, let’s leave Katie to don her glad rags and do something with that wild hair of hers for Perrinby’s party of the decade.’
Katie watched everyone follow Ruby across the village green before returning to the kitchen, a place she was much more comfortable in.
Chapter 6
Anxiety gnawed in the pit of Katie’s stomach as she stirred in the last of the ingredients to the two huge pans of soup she had prepared using the vegetables she’d bought from the organic farm in the next village, giving one an Indonesian twist and the other a Cornish flavour with a generous dollop of cream from a local dairy. She had arranged the cakes, all seventy-two of them, on the pretty vintage cake stands loaned to her by Talia’s mum, Zoe, who ran the bridal boutique, and there were matching teacups and saucers that Agatha had used in the café.
Finally, she managed to carve out ten minutes to hop into the shower and rinse off the day’s grit and grime before pulling on a short tangerine-coloured shift dress she’d bought for the equivalent of few pounds at a Balinese night market. A surge of contentment washed away her earlier bout of apprehension as she added the necklace-and-bracelet-combo her mum had sent over from Greece to wish her luck for the grand opening the following day, along with a letter insisting that Katie posted lots of photographs of the event on her social media accounts so she could show off her wonderful daughter’s achievements to all her fellow horse-obsessed friends at the riding retreat she helped to run in the Cretan countryside.
A smile tugged at Katie’s lips when she thought of all the support and encouragement she had received from her mum in the weeks following the implosion of her carefully planned wedding arrangements, particularly the threat she had issued to fly over to Ibiza and scour every bar and nightclub in San Antonio until she found Dominic so she could punch him in the nose and give him a piece of her mind. A rush of much-needed confidence spread through her veins. If her mum could embark on a brand-new life among strangers – and in a completely different country – after everything she had been through, then she could too.
‘Hi, need any help with anything?’
‘Oh, hi, Oscar. No, I think everything’s sorted, thanks.’
Katie was delighted to see that Oscar had dressed for the occasion, sporting a pair of splatter-free dark-blue jeans and a freshly laundered pale-pink shirt with the cuffs turned back to show off his tanned forearms, with his halo of golden curls as wild as ever. Despite being sworn off romance for life, she could still appreciate an attractive guy when she saw one. She felt a frisson of electricity shoot through her body when their fingers touched as he handed her a bundle of cards, sending a whoosh of delicious lemony cologne into the air between them.
‘What’s this?’
‘It’s a café-warming gift.’
Oscar reached out to select the first of the cards and took a step to the left, unravelling the banner as he went until the garland of letters, painted in the same pastel shades as the café’s furniture, spelled out the words ‘Welcome to Agatha’s Beachside Café’.
‘Oh, my goodness, thank you, Oscar. I love it!’
Before she’d connected her brain to its modem she had flung her arms around him and given him a hug, then shot backwards to smooth down the creases in her dress when she realised what she’d done – it was the closest physical contact she’d had with a man since Dominic and it felt weird. However, there was no awkwardness; Oscar simply beamed with delight at her reaction and set about draping the hand-made sign across the entrance to the café.
Next to arrive was Jay, carrying the biggest bouquet of frilly pink peonies Katie had ever seen, and accompanied by the most adorable labradoodle puppy sporting a gem-encrusted collar. Jay reached down to scoop up the little dog waiting patiently next to her master’s hand-crafted leather loafers for an introduction. Katie wished someone would look at her with the same adoration she saw in the dog’s chocolate-brown eyes.
‘This little bundle of joy is Dotty. Say hello to our new friend, Dotty.’
‘Woof!’
‘Hello, Dotty,’ said Katie, giving the dog a scratch between her ears and receiving a friendly lick for her trouble.
‘Hey, everyone, it’s me!’ cried Talia, bursting through the door and sending the bell into a fierce frenzy of clanging.
It took Katie every ounce of her willpower not to gasp when she saw what her new waitress was wearing on her head that night. Without wanting to seem overcurious, she assumed that it couldn’t possibly be what it looked like. Fortunately, Jay wasn’t quite as circumspect after he’d popped his eyes back into their sockets.
‘Loving the new hat, Talia!’
‘Thanks, Jay. My horoscope said that if I wanted to make an impression tonight, I had to dress to impress so I thought I’d channel my inner unicorn. So …’
‘Ah, so that’s a unicorn horn, then?’ Oscar smirked, his lips twisting as he too tried to conceal his amusement. ‘Any reason you chose to make it out of luminous pink satin?’
‘Mum had a couple of metres left over from a bridesmaid’s dress she made for Becca and Freddie’s wedding next month, so I pinched it to make this. What do you think? Honestly?’