Agatha said she was creating good karma in the only way she knew how.
‘This is the key to my café in Perrinby. I thought, as you don’t have a job to go back to … well, I thought you were just the person to give it a new lease of life. What do you say?’
Katie opened her mouth but no words came out. All she could hear was the tooting horns of the ubiquitous scooters the local residents and tourists loved so much, mingled with the chirp of crickets and the soft melody of Gamelan music.
‘I … you … you want me to run a café in Cornwall?’
‘Yes, it might need a lick of paint, but all the bills are paid for the next three months – rates, utilities, insurances, that sort of thing – and you have all the right qualifications and skills to make a go of it.’
‘Oh, Aggie, I … I’m sorry, no, I can’t …’
‘Of course you can, darling. I’m happy here; Bali is my home now, and I’ve no intention of returning to my old life in the UK. But it would be great not to have the place empty, especially as it used to be such a hub of the community with all the locals popping in. And I was thinking if you could breathe new life into the place, turn a bit of a profit, then perhaps some of those profits could be used to help with the cookery school. I’d love to take on more girls, vary the recipes we’ve been experimenting with so that the restaurant’s customers don’t get bored with the same old chocolate chip cookies after you’ve left. You know those banoffee cupcakes you made last week were the fastest selling dessert item in the history of Agatha’s Beachside Café.’
‘No, what I mean is …’
Agatha leaned forward, her eyes filled with sincerity and encouragement, but she had misinterpreted Katie’s reluctance. Katie opened her mouth to explain, then closed it again. Agatha had thought she’d demurred because her offer was too much, too generous, and of course it was both of those things. But what she had really meant was that she literally couldn’t do it. She couldn’t do it because after what had happened with Dominic, she had no energy, no self-belief, no desire even, to spend the next twelve weeks of her life revitalising a run-down café in a part of the country she’d never been to and where she knew no one. She was bound to make a mess of it – just ask François about the doggie-cake debacle.
Agatha realised what was causing Katie’s hesitation and she reached out to lace her fingers through hers, a gesture that caused tears to prickle at her eyes.
‘Darling, you can do anything you put your mind to! Now is the perfect time to decide what exactly you want your future to look like. It’s time to pursue your own dreams, just like Dominic is doing.’
A flash of pain scorched through Katie’s veins as she thought of her ex-fiancé living the high life in the bars and nightclubs of Ibiza where he was trying to make it as a musician. The vibrant Mediterranean island was where Dominic, along with his best man Iain and six of his closest friends, had flown off to for his long-anticipated stag weekend, but what had totally floored her was that whilst his friends had returned home after their three-day sojourn of drink-fuelled revelry, Dominic had not. Instead of a text telling her he’d landed safely at Gatwick, she’d received one informing her that the wedding was off because he ‘needed some time to think about whether marriage was the right way forward for him’.
Not only that – it had turned out that he had also emptied their wedding account of every last penny and then disappeared from her world, neatly avoiding all her efforts to contact him. If it hadn’t been for her best friend, Cara, would-be chief bridesmaid, travel agent and eternal optimist, coming to her rescue with a suggestion that she transfer the already-paid-for honeymoon to something that had been on her bucket list for years, she would be looking at her sanity in the rear-view mirror.
‘Katie, darling, I know what happened with Dominic was devastating, but you can’t let what he did define you. Since you arrived here in Bali, I’ve seen lots of guys show an interest in you, but you’ve always turned them down. I know it’s hard, but you have to learn to trust again – not everyone is like Dom.’
Katie smiled at Agatha who, by making such a generous offer, had just bestowed her with the first vote of confidence she’d had for years. However, whilst she had been open about her heartache over Dominic, she hadn’t told her new friend that her issues ran far deeper than her ex-fiancé’s rejection, and anyway, despite her gentle urging, she had no intention of letting anyone into her heart ever again.
‘So, what do you say? Will you do this? It’s the perfect solution, even if I do say so myself.’
‘I don’t know, Aggie …’
Katie fiddled with the plaited leather friendship bracelets at her wrist, and when she raised her eyes and saw the hope shining in Agatha’s kind, chestnut-coloured eyes, a new emotion joined the maelstrom of doubt in her chest.
Guilt.
Agatha had been through so much in the last year – her husband cheating on her, a difficult divorce, gruelling treatment for breast cancer – yet here she was chasing her dreams with vigour, with a smile on her face, a song in her heart and an eye on helping others to do the same. She loved what Agatha was doing in Bali. She loved the fact that everything her students created in her cookery school was sold in the café – nothing wasted, nothing without purpose. She wanted to help her, wanted to give something back, something more than just her Kindle. And if she did this, at least she would be busy and it would keep her abandonment demons bay.
So, trying her best to hide the reluctance in her voice, she met Agatha’s gaze and nodded.
‘Okay, I’ll give it a go.’
‘Oh, that’s wonderful! I’m so pleased. I’ll leave you to do your own thing, but what I’d really like you to do is to use some of that amazingly creative talent I’ve seen you display in the kitchen to come up with a new name for the café. Agatha’s Beachside Café is a perfect name for a restaurant in sun-drenched Bali, but for the Cornish coast it just sounds so dull and boring, don’t you think? Not to mention the fact that I’m over six thousand miles away and have most definitely served my last cream tea. I know you’ll come up with something much more enticing to the discerning customers of Cornwall.’
‘Are you … are you sure?’ gasped Katie, her brain completely bamboozled by what was happening. Rename the café?
‘Never more so, darling. I have complete faith in you.’
She was probably the only person on the planet who did, mused Katie as Agatha wrapped her in another jasmine-scented hug.
Over her friend’s shoulder, Katie surveyed the Balinese restaurant, trying to ignore the tightening knot of anxiety in the pit of her stomach. Okay, so she might have graduated top of her class at catering college, and she had worked for one of the most celebrated confectionery chefs in the whole of London, but she knew nothing, nothing whatsoever, about what it took to run a village café other than what she had learned whilst helping Agatha in the cookery school and the beachside restaurant.
She decided that the least she could do was take a trip down to Cornwall to have a look at the café, give it a lick of paint and a couple of weeks, a month max, then she could admit defeat, scuttle back to London and return to her former life, minus the fiancé and the prestigious job. She only hoped that Cara’s sofa was available because she couldn’t afford to keep her flat on without Dominic’s contribution towards the rent.