However, as Katie slid into the back seat of her airport taxi and joined the flow of bustling traffic, mingled in with the panic, the self-doubt and the fear of failure, was a tiny sparkle of excitement as ideas began to ricochet around her brain. By the time she was seated on the plane next to a woman who took bling to the next level, she was brainstorming menus – perhaps with a Balinese as well as a Cornish twist – and ideas for the perfect name for her new venture.
Chapter 2
Perrinby, Cornwall
Katie inhaled a deep breath, her heart hammering out a concerto of anguish as she realised that, at that precise moment, she should have been walking down the aisle to pledge her everlasting love to Dominic. Instead, she was standing on the doorstep of a quaint seaside café boasting a location that would have caused even the most jaded of estate agents to drool: to her left the pretty village green, complete with duck pond and whitewashed bandstand with a splash of late spring daffodils; a little further to her right a golden sandy beach, currently playing host to a handful of intrepid holidaymakers and a gaggle of bobbing sailboats.
One of the techniques Agatha had taught her when she’d arrived in Bali, battered and broken, and thinking she might keel over from the enormity of everything that had happened to her in such a short space of time, was to force herself to focus on the present. So, with difficulty, she erased the painful wedding day image that had popped into her head uninvited, slotted the heavy iron key into the lock, pushed open the door and took a few moments to survey her surroundings.
Even though the fabric of the building seemed structurally fine, there was at least six months’ worth of grime to tackle and a brigade of dust bunnies danced on every available surface, not to mention the faint aroma of disinfectant and neglect. It was a world away from the shiny, stainless steel kitchen she was used to in London where she had created her sugar-paste masterpieces under François’ expert tutelage.
But that life was in the past, a place she knew she shouldn’t linger for long, so she raised her chin, squared her shoulders and resolved to channel her inner Agatha as something else her friend was fond of quoting sprang to mind – every difficult journey started with a single stride. She closed her eyes and conjured up the vision that had morphed from blurry to crystal clear as ideas had bombarded her exhausted brain on the flight from Bali to Singapore, Singapore to Heathrow, and whilst she was handing over the keys to her sunny flat in Hammersmith to her po-faced landlord who couldn’t wait to move the next tenant in.
Now that she could see the interior of the café, its dimensions were even better than she had dared hope. Golden shards of sunlight flooded through the magnificent bay window, which was encircled with an upholstered window seat that Katie could already see draped in the turquoise, lemon and white batik throws she’d brought back from Bali, then softened with a battalion of embroidered cushions.
She wanted to create a calm, welcoming ambience where her customers could relax and take a few precious moments away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life, so she would transform the clinical ice-blue walls with a fresh coat of ivory – or perhaps saffron? – paint and hang dreamcatchers and hand-painted papier-mâché mobiles from the ceiling. She thought of the set of carved Balinese masks she’d tucked into a corner of her suitcase, intended as a gift for Cara but which she now planned to repurpose as wall art. She knew Cara wouldn’t mind; what she’d never had, she’d never mourn.
The thought of her best friend sent a warm feeling through Katie’s veins. Cara was the first person she’d called when she’d cleared customs, and her friend had been delighted to hear she was home, but less so that she was heading straight off to a tiny village in Cornwall to open up a mothballed café instead of partying hard in the wine bars and nightclubs of the West End – her personal prescription for the recovery from heartbreak. However, after listening to Cara rage for a couple of minutes about ‘Dastardly Dominic, the Destroyer of Dreams’, she had skilfully turned the conversation round to one of their favourite subjects – food.
‘I want the café’s menu to reflect not only the essence of Cornish cuisine, but also to include a few Balinese flavours too, as a nod to what Agatha’s trying to do in Bali, Carr. I also want there to be as little waste as possible so I’m going for a pared-down choice of savoury dishes and cakes, and as far as possible, I want the ingredients to be fresh, locally sourced, and free from artificial additives. The coffee’s going to be Fairtrade and there’ll be a selection of herbal teas, and all the crockery and cutlery will be recyclable with zero use of plastics.’
‘It’s a fabulous mission statement, Katie. Agatha’s Beachside Café sounds like the sort of place I’d love to spend a couple of hours aligning my chakras.’
Katie had wanted to keep their conversation upbeat and positive so she hadn’t gone on to confide in Cara that she only had three months to make her venture work. Three months! It wasn’t long to totally transform this careworn Cinderella into a sparkling princess and turn a profit so the business could not only pay its own running costs, but also make a contribution to Agatha’s much-loved cookery school. Maybe if she was reopening the café in the summer months when the tourists descended on Cornwall in their droves, but it was the beginning of March.
Suddenly, the warm feeling in her chest was replaced by a ripple of panic as reality slapped her in the face like a wet fish. Doubts started to circle and the bubble of enthusiasm for her new adventure burst, sending her fragile confidence crashing down. There was no way she could do everything she had planned by herself, and have the café open before the Easter holidays in three weeks’ time. Even if she threw herself on the mercy of the artist who owned the attractive gallery next door, offering to cook him or her an authentic Balinese meal in exchange for a few hours with a paintbrush (and sweeping brush), it was still a pointless exercise.
And yet, what else did she have to do?
She couldn’t go back to London – she had nowhere to live. And she would go stir crazy moping about in the flat above the café unless she filled every minute of her day with physical activity so that the demons who pursued her every waking hour would not follow when her head hit the pillow. And last, and by no means least, she had to give it a shot for Agatha’s sake, didn’t she?
Katie gave herself a shake, stepped over the threshold, and turned a complete circle, taking a mental inventory of the eclectic mix of varnished pine tables and chairs crying out for a coat of pastel pink and sky blue, maybe peppermint green and soft ivory, until her gaze landed on the wide expanse of white marble countertop. A familiar tingle fizzed at her fingertips, and the urge to break out the bottle of antibacterial spray became too much to resist.
She kicked the door shut behind her, smiling at the jolly jingle of the brass bell, and went off in search of a pair of Marigolds so she could make a start on pacifying the insistent call of her hygiene monsters. The craving to scrub, to clean, to polish, was almost overwhelming – an itch that she was desperate to scratch. When she had started to work for François Dubois her colleagues had initially teased her about her preoccupation with cleanliness until they realised that it was a trait that only extended sessions with a trained therapist could cure – something she had refused to consider. She knew what the root cause of her issues was and she had no intention of going there.