The Pretty Delicious Cafe Read online

  ‘I know.’ She picked up the garlic bread and swept back out of the kitchen, and Anna, liberated from the coffee machine for the first time in an hour, dashed after her to clear the dishes off a departing family’s table.

  There was never a moment’s pause at this time of year – any lull between customers was taken up with cleaning or starting another batch of dough or refilling the biscuit canisters or making aioli. Mostly we were busy and efficient, which was fun, and occasionally we were frenetic and swamped, which wasn’t.

  We didn’t descend into frenzy that day, thanks to Mum, and by three o’clock the only customers were a couple in their sixties, lingering over coffee, and a lean, hungry-looking fellow attacking his steak sandwich as if he feared it might be wrested from him at any moment.

  Cutting myself a thick slice of cheese, I folded it in a thicker slice of bread and leant back wearily against the butcher’s block to eat it. ‘Mum, come and have something to eat. There’s bacon and egg pie left, or roast veggie salad.’

  ‘Lovely.’ She dropped a handful of used cutlery into the sink and straightened up, both hands on the small of her back. ‘Anna, what are you having?’

  ‘Hmm?’ said Anna, who was frowning at the shopping list on the fridge door. We tried to plan ahead and buy most of our groceries in bulk from a wholesale warehouse in Auckland, but at this time of year ingredients vanished at unprecedented speed. ‘Tomato paste, prawns, wholegrain mustard – how much butter have we got left?’

  ‘Heaps, in the big freezer. Oh, but we need crystallised ginger,’ I said.

  ‘Bacon and egg pie, Anna love?’ Mum asked.

  ‘No thanks,’ she said absently. ‘The coffee cake went by lunchtime. Let’s make two for tomorrow.’

  ‘There’s another one in the freezer. I’ll ice it now for this afternoon,’ I said. Sandwich in hand, I crossed the kitchen to get it out. ‘Mum, thanks so much for helping today.’

  ‘Not a problem,’ she said. ‘I’d come in tomorrow, but I promised Carole I’d go with her to see her cousin in Kamo. Is that veggie salad really going begging?’

  ‘All yours,’ Anna said.

  ‘What are you going to have?’

  ‘I’ll grab something in a minute,’ said Anna, beginning to separate eggs into a bowl.

  Mum looked at me worriedly, and I shook my head. Rob could get her to eat, but any comment from me led only to tight-lipped silence.

  ‘Are you doing anything tonight, Mum?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, as a matter of fact. Hugh’s having a few people over for a barbecue.’

  ‘I think he likes you,’ I said.

  Mum sighed. ‘Yes, I know, but what can I do? He’s an old friend; I can’t keep him at arm’s length.’

  ‘Why not reel him in instead?’ Anna asked, tipping her egg yolks into the food processor.

  ‘I don’t like him like that,’ said Mum in a small unhappy voice.

  ‘You might, if you tried it,’ I said.

  ‘No, thank you,’ she said coldly. ‘Now, if you girls can do without me, I’ll go home and do my breakfast dishes.’ And off she went.

  Anna and I looked at one another blankly. ‘That struck a nerve,’ she said.

  ‘Didn’t it, just?’

  ‘She’s only forty-nine.’

  ‘And she has gone out with people, since Dad.’

  But just then a bevy of ladies came in, and we had no time to pursue the subject.

  * * *

  It was seven thirty-eight when I sat down at the butcher’s block with a bowlful of reheated potato wedges and a bottle of tomato sauce. Microwaved potato wedges are neither delicious nor packed with health-giving nutrients, but after twelve straight hours of food preparation I was in no mood to make myself a tasty stir-fry. Anyway, they say tomato sauce counts as a vegetable.

  Anna had left an hour before to get the extra groceries we needed for the next day en route to a party in Devonport. The day’s takings were locked in the little safe in the vacuum cleaner cupboard. The kitchen surfaces gleamed, the windows were smear-free and the toilet was pristine. A shoulder of pork and three chickens were slow-roasting in the oven. I had made vinaigrette and white chocolate cheesecake and quiche, written up tomorrow’s specials and peeled red onions until my eyes streamed. My feet hurt, my knee hurt and I had to meet Philippa Earle at the pub in twenty minutes. I spent five minutes eating limp wedges and feeling sorry for myself, then sighed, got up and went to have a shower.

  Philippa and I had lived on the same floor of the student village in first-year university. We hadn’t made any particular effort since to keep in touch, but she was a prolific Facebook updater, so I was well abreast of her children’s development, husband’s DIY skills and recent enthusiasm for Amish friendship loaves. She was in Ratai for a few days, staying with her husband’s parents.

  It was ten past eight when I got to the pub, and the car park was full. I left my car around the corner behind Ratai Plumbing and Gas and made my way across a stretch of rough gravel and over a low wall to the back of the building. I often do seem to end up approaching my destination by some unorthodox route, a habit that will come in handy if ever I decide to take to breaking and entering.

  The front door was manned by two professional-looking bouncers, neither of whom I recognised. The band inside was so loud that I could feel the bass through the soles of my feet, and a pudgy youth was being sick into a nearby agapanthus bed. This is fun, I told myself as I went up the shallow concrete steps, but I wasn’t all that convinced.

  The Ratai Hotel was over a hundred years old, a two-storey kauri building with twelve-feet high ceilings and old-fashioned sash windows. The ground floor was divided into a series of smallish panelled rooms that opened one into another, with a closed-in veranda wrapped around the whole lot. The main bar was at the back, and although it was the largest and lightest room in the building, it was no place, when filled with five hundred people and a live band, for the claustrophobic.

  Looking around for Philippa without much hope, I actually spotted her among the crowd, sitting with another woman at a high table not far from the bar.

  I set off towards them, pausing to shout greetings at acquaintances I passed along the way. (The band, as bands do, had turned up their amplifiers to a volume that would have been absolutely spot on if they’d been playing to an audience five hundred metres away across a busy airfield.) Reaching the table at last, I tapped Philippa on the shoulder, and she turned and threw her arms around me.

  ‘Lia!’

  ‘Hi!’

  ‘You look amazing!’

  ‘Thanks! You too.’

  ‘You’ve lost weight, haven’t you?’ she bawled. Philippa, I remembered, always used to tell people they’d lost weight – not because she thought they had, but because it was the nicest compliment she could think of and she liked to say nice things to people.

  ‘How are you?’ I shouted back.

  ‘Great! This is my friend Debbie.’

  Debbie and I smiled at one another across the table.

  ‘What would you guys like to drink?’ I yelled.

  ‘Vodka and lemonade,’ shouted Philippa. ‘Deb?’

  ‘Same.’

  I turned, and Jed, passing with a beer in each hand, raised his eyebrows in greeting. ‘Aurelia,’ he said.

  ‘Hi,’ I said, unable, on the spur of the moment, to think of a suitably nasty name starting with J. ‘Happy New Year.’

  ‘You too.’ He smiled at me and disappeared into the crush.

  Philippa dug me in the ribs and shouted, ‘Who’s the hottie?’

  ‘He’s a mechanic in town,’ I answered.

  ‘Good with his hands,’ she said, waggling her eyebrows suggestively, and as I headed for the bar I put up a short, heartfelt prayer that the two of them not come face to face during the course of the evening.

  ‘– soon as I got my period back,’ Philippa was shouting when I returned with the drinks. ‘That was it. She didn’t want a bar of me.’
r />   ‘I’m still breastfeeding Morgan,’ Debbie yelled in response.

  I was not, it seemed, going to be able to add a lot to this conversation.

  ‘How old is she now?’

  ‘Fifteen months.’

  ‘Good for you. You do get to the stage where you want your body back, though, don’t you?’

  ‘No, I think it’s a really precious experience,’ roared Debbie. ‘It’s not for long, in the scheme of things.’ She accepted her drink, turning to me. ‘Thanks. Do you live here full time?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Oh, you’re so lucky. I’d love to get out of the city. This would be such a wonderful place to bring up children.’

  ‘You’re in Auckland?’ I shouted, leaning across the table to make myself heard.

  ‘Yes. In Ellerslie.’

  ‘How many children do you have?’

  ‘Two little girls. They’re full on.’

  ‘I bet.’

  She shook her head. ‘You think you know what being busy is, and then you have kids. It’s crazy.’

  ‘It never stops,’ Philippa agreed. ‘On call twenty-four hours a day. Enjoy having time for yourself while you can, Lia.’

  My time to myself, at this time of year, was restricted to time spent asleep. But then my sleep was unbroken by small children, so no doubt I had much to be thankful for.

  ‘Are you going to Pilates next term?’ Debbie asked her friend.

  ‘Definitely. Mum has Travis on Wednesdays, so it will work well. There’s another girl from coffee group who’s keen to come too. But I’m going to miss the first two weeks – we’re going to the lakes.’

  ‘Which lakes?’

  ‘Kai Iwi. We go every year with Campbell’s family. Lia, you should come over for a few days.’

  ‘I’d love to, but I have to work,’ I said.

  ‘Just come for a day on the weekend.’

  ‘We’re open every day.’

  ‘Really? Come after work, then, for a barbie.’

  I smiled vaguely. If I were to drive to the Kai Iwi Lakes after work, I would arrive at about nine p.m.

  ‘How do the kids sleep, camping?’ Debbie asked.

  ‘Amazing,’ said Philippa proudly. ‘Seven till seven.’

  My admiration for her fortitude in coping with the demands of a hectic, child-riddled life vanished completely.

  After another half hour of shouted conversation the band took a break. They were replaced by a sound system, and as the opening bars of that medley from Grease beloved by DJs nationwide rose above the noise of the crowd, Philippa slid off her stool to her feet. ‘We have to dance to this,’ she declared. ‘Come on, girls.’

  She’d only gone a few metres when she ran up against Jed. He was talking to Stefan Boyd, a pleasant fellow in his forties who reared calves and wrote bits of computer software on a small block ten kilometres inland.

  ‘Hi, hot mechanic!’ she yelled. Nobody would have described Philippa as reticent at the best of times, but four vodkas and lemonade had raised her to new heights of self-assurance.

  ‘Um, hi,’ said Jed, looking both amused and embarrassed.

  ‘You know my friend Lia, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Catching up, I took her by the arm. ‘Come on, let’s dance.’

  ‘She’s lovely,’ shouted Philippa earnestly, shaking me off.

  ‘I know,’ he said, which was nice of him, although he really couldn’t have said anything else.

  ‘And she’s really pretty.’

  ‘She is,’ he agreed.

  ‘Come on, leave the man alone,’ I said. ‘You’re pissed as a newt.’

  ‘Irrelevant,’ said Philippa, with a toss of her head. ‘Hey, I said irreve – irrelevant. I can’t be that pissed.’

  ‘Well done,’ Jed told her, grinning.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘We’re missing the song,’ I said desperately. ‘We’d better go and dance.’

  ‘Oh, yeah. Bye, hot mechanic.’ She smiled at him radiantly as I towed her away.

  * * *

  My sore knee didn’t much care for dancing, and after about three songs its low-grade ache had blossomed into a high-level throb. Drawing back from the circle of random strangers we’d joined, I edged through the crush to the door leading out to the covered veranda. I sat down on a wooden bench and cautiously straightened my leg, resting my head back against the wall. It helped a bit, and it was nice to be away from the crush and heat and noise. I must be getting old, I thought. I’m sure I used to enjoy this sort of thing.

  I looked at my watch – it was nine forty-five: far too early for any self-respecting New Year’s reveller to pack it in and go to bed.

  I was just deciding that if I wanted to go home to bed before ten o’clock on New Year’s Eve I jolly well would, and to hell with self-respect, when a knot of teenage girls burst through the door of the public bar and skipped past, giggling, into the toilets. Behind them came a stocky, dark-haired young man with damp circles under his arms and an ominously determined expression.

  ‘Lia,’ he said, in throbbing tones.

  I closed my eyes. Who’d have thought it; this evening might just edge past New Year’s Eve 2004, when Rob passed out in a car park in West Auckland after drinking about a litre of very cheap rum, to become the Worst New Year’s Ever.

  ‘Why don’t you answer my texts?’ said Isaac.

  I said nothing.

  ‘It’s just so rude,’ he said sadly.

  In my opinion, if you’re going to send people nasty text messages you forfeit the right to a civil reply. But, holding firmly to my policy of any-comment-will-just-prolong-this-hideosity, I neither spoke nor moved.

  He grabbed me by the shoulders, and my eyes flew open. ‘Let me go!’

  ‘I just want to talk to you!’

  ‘No! Isaac, piss off!’

  And then, as if any more high drama were needed, someone said, ‘Hey! Leave her alone!’

  Isaac released me and turned around.

  ‘Is this dickhead bothering you?’ Jed asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Who the hell are you?’ Isaac said.

  ‘Who the hell cares? She doesn’t want to talk to you, so leave her alone.’

  Isaac swung back to me. ‘You’re fucking him, aren’t you?’ he spat. ‘You little slut.’

  I was still gaping at him when Jed hit him, hard, on the angle of his jaw. The blow knocked him down and he sprawled backwards in a heap. The giggling girls, exiting the toilets as he fell, gave a collective gasp of delight.

  Isaac struggled to his feet, panting. His bottom lip was smeared with blood.

  I jumped up and got between the two men, and Jed snapped, ‘Get out of the way.’

  ‘Look, just stop it, both of you!’ I said.

  Isaac staggered forwards, and Jed pulled me roughly to the side. About a quarter of a second later Isaac hit him, knocking him off balance so he was driven back against the wall.

  In theory, being the cause of a fight seems quite exciting. Romantic, even. In practice it’s horrible. The two of them struggled and grunted, and blood dripped from Jed’s right hand onto the polished wooden floor. Spectators were gathering and the cry of ‘Fight!’ rose above the music coming from the bar. ‘Come On Eileen’ – which to be honest never did that much for me anyway – will forever be associated in my mind with Isaac’s thick, breathless cursing, cut off in a horrible wheezing gasp as Jed hit him in the solar plexus.

  It was nothing like a fair fight. Jed was taller and fitter, and had besides gained a fairly major advantage by cracking his opponent on the jaw to start with. That second blow at the base of Isaac’s ribcage finished him entirely, and he crumpled to the floor, sobbing for breath.

  That was when the bouncers arrived. Since one of the fighters was clearly in no shape to cause any further trouble, they advanced implacably on Jed and hauled him, one on each side, along the length of the veranda and down the steps leading outside.

&nb
sp; ‘Lia! My God, what happened?’ Philippa cried, elbowing her way towards me through the crush. ‘Are you alright?’

  ‘Yes, fine,’ I said, realising as I said it that I was crying. I looked at Isaac, whom someone was helping to his feet. ‘Look, I’ve got to go, Philippa – I’ll call you tomorrow – Happy New Year . . .’ And I ran down the veranda and outside, leaving her standing with her mouth open.

  Chapter 12

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said breathlessly, catching up to Jed halfway across the stretch of gravel in front of the tavern.

  ‘For?’ he asked, not stopping.

  I fell into step beside him. ‘Ruining your New Year’s.’

  ‘And just how, exactly, was any of that your fault?’

  It wasn’t, and I was annoyed both with myself for being unnecessarily apologetic and with him for pulling me up on it. I shrugged and swiped the back of a hand across my wet face.

  ‘Hey, don’t cry,’ he said more gently.

  ‘I’m not,’ I snapped. ‘It’s just – reaction, or something.’

  He stopped walking. ‘Lia, I’m really sorry.’

  ‘For?’

  ‘Creating a nuisance. Disturbing the peace.’

  ‘’S okay,’ I said.

  ‘So, that must have been your ex-boyfriend,’ he said, after a small pause.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘What in God’s name were you thinking, to go out with that sack of snot?’

  I smiled. ‘He wasn’t acting like that at the time. Give me some credit.’

  ‘He’s got some serious issues. Maybe you should talk to the police.’

  ‘And tell them my ex-boyfriend said mean things to me so you beat him up?’

  ‘Nobody likes a smartarse, Aurelia,’ he said austerely.

  We started walking again. ‘How’s your hand?’ I asked.

  He held it up to the dull orange glow of the nearest streetlamp. In its light the blood looked black, just like they say it does in thrillers. ‘Must have just split the skin. It doesn’t hurt enough to be broken.’

  ‘How many broken knuckles have you had?’ I asked.

  ‘One. And it wasn’t from hitting anyone, I’ll have you know. I dropped a flywheel on it.’

  ‘Ouch,’ I said. ‘Have you got anything to patch that up with at home?’