Chapter 7
The worry over the café’s neglected accounts heavily outweighed the relief I felt that Doreen and Juliet weren’t thieves after all. And Nonna’s lax attitude to doing things properly – in an up-to-date manner – niggled away at the back of my mind for the next few days and all over the Easter weekend.
Things had changed a lot since she’d first taken over in the café. Everything, every tiny thing, had to be accounted for these days and goodness knows what the tax man would have to say about records kept on scraps of paper in a locked cabinet. Or possibly no records at all. It wouldn’t have been so bad if she had an accountant on the case, but apparently she hadn’t.
I felt anxious for her and toyed with the idea of tackling her on it, but decided in a cowardly way to have a look at the contents of the filing cabinet first. You never know, I told myself, she could have everything completely under control; I could be worrying for no reason. There was nothing else for it, Doreen, Juliet and I all agreed: the very next time Nonna went anywhere during opening hours, I was going in.
In the meantime, several new and exciting things happened. Thanks to a rather jolly telephone engineer who’d put away half his body weight in honey cake yesterday afternoon, we now had internet in the café. We also had a Facebook page, a little devoid of photographs or posts or followers, but I was working on it. And Nonna and Stanley had been out for dinner together!
This morning I’d persuaded everyone to pose for a staff photo and Doreen had come in especially for it. Although given the fact that we were all dying to know about Nonna’s date last night, I suspect that she would have called in anyway.
‘I can’t see that being on Facebook is going to make a blind bit of difference to a village café,’ grumbled Doreen, who was redoing her ponytail for her close-up and dabbing concealer on the mole on her nose.
I smiled to myself. I’d handled plenty of clients in the past who’d been suspicious of new media, only to find them days later secretly logging on to see how many ‘likes’ their picture had got.
‘It might not but if we don’t try we’ll never know, will we? It’s free advertising so it can’t do any harm. And once it’s set up it’ll be easy to run even when I’m not here. Which if I get the job in Manchester could be soon.’
‘Course you get the job,’ Nonna called from the conservatory. ‘If not they all dicky heads.’
‘I’ll tell them that, shall I?’ I said. ‘At the end when they ask why they should give me the job.’
‘Yeah, why not?’ She shrugged. ‘It’s the truth.’
It was only forty-eight hours until my interview with HitSquad. Michael was emailing me every five minutes with articles he’d found online about the company. They seemed like a great bunch to work for. But every time I thought about leaving the café I felt a tremor of an emotion that I couldn’t quite place. It also put me under a bit of pressure; I didn’t have long to break into that filing cabinet. If only Nonna would disappear for the day and give me a chance to look inside it.
Doreen wandered off muttering something about Facebook being an invasion of her privacy while Juliet rearranged her cleavage ready for her picture.
‘This is as good as it gets,’ she said, patting her short red hair. It was rigid with hairspray. She shoved the can back in her rucksack and brushed cake crumbs from her chin. ‘Where do you want me?’
‘Perhaps in front of the cakes?’ I suggested, coughing on the fumes. ‘Looking natural.’
Juliet positioned herself by the counter and pouted flirtatiously.
I managed to get a nice shot of her with a plate of muffins and then it was Nonna’s turn. She posed by one of the lemon trees in the conservatory, sitting in a chair, holding a Lemon Tree Café menu. I don’t know whether it was down to the light in there but the pictures of her were very flattering. There was a soft warmth to her smile and a pink girlish glow to her cheeks. Then again, it might have been a certain gentleman who’d put a twinkle in her eye this morning.
‘Your turn, Doreen. Pop an apron on,’ I said, ‘and pick up that tea tray.’
She obliged, checked her reflection in the coffee machine and flicked her ponytail over her shoulder.
‘Come on, Maria, spill the beans,’ she said, trying not to move her mouth as she spoke. She stared ahead expressionless, while I captured the shot. It wasn’t the most welcoming of looks, but I managed to put her in soft focus and train the lens on the pretty china tea pot instead. ‘We want a blow-by-blow account of your date.’
Nonna smiled mysteriously and tapped her nose.
‘A lady like to have some secrets,’ she said.
‘Some, yes,’ I retorted, ‘but you’ve got more secrets than James Bond and the entire Secret Service.’
‘Anyway, boss, you shouldn’t have gone to the Cross Keys if you wanted to keep a low profile,’ Juliet piped up from behind the counter. ‘I saw Adrian this morning. He said you and Stanley looked very cosy.’
‘Because we sit by the fire that’s why,’ Nonna said, wiping her cloth over the window sill. ‘And no gossip about your boss, thank you very much.’
‘I think it’s lovely,’ I said, lifting my gaze from the camera to smile at her. ‘To find love in old age. Or any age, for that matter.’
‘Don’t worry, love, you’ll meet the right man one day, everyone does, even her,’ said Doreen, nodding towards Juliet who was giving the milk pipe on the coffee machine a thorough rubbing down and didn’t look the least bit offended.
‘True that. Did I ever tell you how I met my Dean?’ Juliet said. ‘One winter, he came round to investigate my neighbour after a report of cruelty to his rabbit, Bobsie. He knocked on my door and when I saw him in his RSPCA uniform and rubber gloves I nearly fainted into his arms.’ She fanned her face with a slice of toast. ‘What a hero. He whipped Bobsie from her hutch while the owner was out. Unfortunately, her wee had frozen her bum to the bottom of the cage.’
Doreen and I winced.
‘Both Dean and the rabbit were traumatized. I took them both in. I remember that bum – as bald as a baboon’s. Bobsie’s that is, not Dean’s. His was peachy.’
Nonna patted my face. ‘You will meet one special boy and boom: you in love. It will happen. It will be peachy for you too.’
‘Can’t wait,’ I said, trying to shake off the image of Dean giving Bobsie a Brazilian.
‘Like me,’ agreed Juliet, retrieving her sturdy bra strap from where it had slipped down her arm. ‘What about you?’
This last question was addressed to Tyson, who had called in for lunch. The garden centre had reopened after a week. Nonna had been to see if Clementine needed any help with the paperwork, but she’d said that she was ignoring all the bills for the moment because the bedding plants season had begun and if they didn’t sell them before they got too big for their pots, there’d be no money to pay the bills with anyway.
‘Me?’ Tyson’s entire head turned pink. ‘I’m not in love.’
‘No.’ Juliet tutted. ‘What do you want to order?’
‘Cheese-and-beans toastie, please.’
‘And you knew Dean was the one, straight away?’ I marvelled.
‘Aye, hen, he’s a proper gentleman.’
‘Like Lorenzo.’ Nonna sighed. ‘A true gentleman.’
‘Stanley’s a gentleman too,’ I said softly. ‘That’s two good ones you’ve managed to meet. That’s two more than me. This could be the start of a new love affair, Nonna.’
‘Pfft, and piggies might fly.’ She began tidying the pots of herbs, snipping off dead leaves and pinching shoots between her fingers. ‘Stanley is a good man. But Lorenzo is only man I ever love.’
The faraway look in Nonna’s eyes made my heart squeeze; she’d given up on love at an early age, just like me. Mum had been a baby when her father had died, she had no memories of him at all, and now she was fifty-three. And Nonna had been on her own all those years. Thinking that I might spend the rest of my life without falling in love was a sobering thought.
‘I don’t know whether to be happy or sad,’ I said, lowering my camera.
‘Be happy. I have my work, my family and my health, at my age I lucky to have all those things.’
‘Good,’ I said, ‘and we’re lucky to have you.’
I spent the rest of the morning trying to convince myself that I was absolutely not turning into my grandmother.
By the following morning, we’d got two hundred followers on our Facebook page and I was feeling sufficiently optimistic to have a go at tackling Twitter.
Nonna couldn’t fathom why we’d want to bother.
‘Why everyone wanna beep-beep-beeping all the time?’ she’d scowled, miming pressing the buttons of a phone with her finger.
‘Because people keep in touch with each other these days, Nonna,’ I’d explained. ‘All the time. We’re a nation of sharers.’
‘I don’t wanna keep in touch,’ was Nonna’s response. ‘My worst nightmare. I want “Private, keep out” written on my Facebook window.’
‘Wall,’ I corrected.
‘My friend Tansy from line dancing is on Facebook. She gets men from Russia saying she looks sexy,’ said Doreen, looking over my shoulder as I logged on to the café’s page. ‘Has anyone commented on my photo?’
‘Not so far,’ I said, biting back a smile when her face fell. ‘Give it time.’
I was convinced that offering free wifi would have its benefits. Teenagers didn’t frequent anywhere without it these days. And it would appeal to business customers too: we could let people have the conservatory for meetings and lunches … Of course, I wouldn’t be here soon, with any luck I’d be at HitSquad by then. I’d have to train Doreen and Juliet up on social media and hopefully steer Doreen away from sex-starved Russians.
But to keep myself occupied until my interview tomorrow, I was focusing my attention on Twitter and had booked a model for a photoshoot …
‘Can you get him to sit up by the chair, Biddy?’ I said, arranging a plate of biscuits tantalizingly close to the edge of the table. ‘And sniff the air?’
I’d found out the previous day that it was National Pet Month and in the absence of anything more appropriate like, say, National Cappuccino Day or Eat More Cake Month, I’d decided that we should get on board and be more pet-friendly. I thought a few pictures of a dog enjoying an afternoon at the café would make a nice story for Twitter. Biddy from the pet shop, who was doing her own campaign – a free bag of frozen mice with every snake purchase – had popped in to lend me Churchill, her elderly black Labrador. It wasn’t going well. So far he’d trumped so viciously that two people had left and then he’d chewed the edge of my cardigan to bits when I hadn’t been looking.
‘I’m trying,’ said a harassed Biddy, poking Churchill in the tummy. ‘Oh, I know! This is his favourite. Come on, boy, frankfurter.’
Biddy was an ‘old before her time’ sort of woman in her late forties. She had thinning blonde hair and was a whizz with a crochet hook. Mum once said that the decor in her house was wall-to-wall woollen squares. She produced an inch of cooked sausage from her poncho and waved it under Churchill’s nose, but he simply yawned and closed his eyes again.
‘What would tempt him?’ I asked, half wishing I’d plumped for National Stress Awareness Month instead; at least I wouldn’t have had to look far for models. I fanned my face, still recovering from the aftermath of Churchill’s wind.
‘Sex mostly,’ Biddy replied with a tinkly laugh.
‘Ha.’ Nonna flicked a cursory cloth over the table, narrowly missing the plate. ‘That tempt us all.’
Oh God. I took a picture of a sleeping Churchill and tried not to dwell on my grandmother’s innermost thoughts.
The door opened and in came Stanley being dragged by a small white poodle on a pink diamanté lead. Churchill, with a sudden burst of energy, leapt to his feet at the sight of this vision of canine beauty, and wagged his tail so hard that he knocked the plate off the table.
‘Sex slave at your service,’ muttered Juliet, elbowing me in the ribs.
‘Don’t,’ I murmured, feeling nauseous again. ‘Just don’t.’
‘Hello, everyone. Meet Crystal,’ Stanley stuttered, stumbling forward and trying to tip his hat to us without falling over.
‘Steady on, Churchill!’ Biddy gasped, trying to grab his thumping tail as he darted out of reach.
Juliet snorted. ‘Men. All the bloody same.’
The poodle dived through Biddy’s legs, causing poor Stanley to end up with his face in her poncho but still determinedly holding on to the diamanté lead.
The two dogs both lunged for the same Bourbon biscuit and managed to get hold of one end each. I took the picture just as their doggy lips met in the middle.
‘That was perfect, Biddy!’ I said with a grin and great relief. ‘If this doesn’t get the café’s Twitter feed buzzing nothing will.’
Churchill and Crystal began trotting round in circles, nose to tail, sniffing each other’s rear ends.
‘Ahh,’ said Juliet. ‘How romantic.’
‘So that’s where I’m going wrong,’ I said.
‘Humph,’ said Nonna with a gimlet-eyed glance at Biddy.
‘Heavens,’ said Stanley, looking down at something brown mushed into his hand. He gave it a tentative sniff. ‘What on earth …?’
‘Frankfurter,’ we all supplied.
I handed him a napkin.
‘Crystal is my neighbour’s new rescue dog,’ said Stanley, attempting to detangle himself and the lead from Biddy’s legs. ‘I’m looking after her while he’s away at a conference. I hope she’s allowed in?’
‘Absolutely,’ I said, pointing to a large dog bowl filled with water. ‘And very welcome. As are you.’
Nonna flounced away to the store cupboard to fetch a broom, muttering under her breath in Italian. Biddy clipped a lead to Churchill and headed to a quiet table in the conservatory to tackle a raspberry muffin I’d given her as a thank you. Stanley tucked Crystal under his arm and looked nervously in Nonna’s direction.
‘I’m glad we are a dog-friendly café,’ said Juliet. ‘Dean says more places should allow animals in.’
‘Dicky head. He don’t have to clean up,’ Nonna grumbled, wielding her broom menacingly at the crumbs.
‘Maria,’ said Stanley, clearing his throat, ‘I’ve taken the liberty … I do hope this wasn’t too forward of me … and of course if it’s not convenient—’
‘Grazie a Dio,’ Nonna muttered. ‘Hurry up or I be dead before you spit it out.’
Stanley’s Adam’s apple bobbed nervously. ‘The cinema, this afternoon. There’s a special screening of an old Doris Day film. Would you like to come with me?’
‘I just check my diary,’ said Nonna, charging off to put the broom away with a suspiciously pink face. ‘Yes, I’m free.’
‘Really?’ Stanley’s eyes lit up. ‘Marvellous. There’s a bus from the green in fifteen minutes, I’ll just have to pop home to take Crystal back first.’
Nonna patted her hair. ‘Wait, I get my coat, I come with you.’
This was it, this was my chance to take a look in that filing cabinet.
‘I suppose you’ll be gone for hours, won’t you, Stanley?’ I shot a sideways look at Juliet.
‘All afternoon. And afterwards, I’m going to suggest a fish and chip supper on the way home.’ He frowned. ‘Unless you think that’s too much. I’m out of practice; I haven’t dated for fifty years.’
Nonna appeared in her coat, handbag and bright coral lipstick. ‘Okey cokey, we go. Don’t wait up.’
‘Have a lovely time,’ I said, ushering them out.
Ten minutes later, Juliet and I stood at the window, watching the pair of them reappear without Crystal, cross the village green and sit at the bench at the bus stop.
‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ I murmured.
‘Operation Paperwork?’
‘Exactly.’
We looked at each other nervously.
‘Maria would kill us,’ Juliet breathed, wide-eyed.
‘I’ll do it,’ I said, full of resolve. ‘She can’t kill me; I’m family.’
A single-decker bus rumbled around the corner. As soon as I saw Stanley and Nonna get to their feet I stealthily made my way to the store room. Juliet followed closely behind, muttering something about the Mafia and concrete overcoats.
I opened the door to the store room and snapped on the light. My route to the filing cabinet was blocked by several bulky objects. With Juliet’s help, I shifted the broom, a vacuum cleaner, three buckets, five mops, a set of stepladders and two big food processors with bits missing. Finally, we had a clear path to the old metal cabinet.
‘Pull the door to,’ I whispered and crept forward.
There were three drawers in the cabinet. Only the top one was labelled ‘private’, the other two weren’t labelled at all. I tried them all. The bottom two were unlocked and didn’t contain anything exciting: old food catalogues, some recipe books and manuals for the electrical appliances. The top drawer marked private was locked.
Above the cabinet was a shelf stacked with dusty jars of Nonna’s homemade preserves: lemons, jam, chutney and something dark and plum-like. There was a nail protruding from the edge of the shelf and from it hung a key.
Holding my breath, I unhooked the key and slid it into the keyhole. The key turned.
I looked over my shoulder at Juliet who was right behind me, biting her nails.
‘I’m in,’ I whispered.
‘Hardly Fort Knox, is it, hen?’
‘Yes, well, that’s because she trusts us,’ I hissed back.
We looked at each other guiltily.
‘You should probably leave me to it,’ I said. ‘So you’re not implicated in my crime.’
Juliet shook her head. ‘Maria will be halfway to the cinema by now, don’t worry about it. Besides, we’re a team, aren’t we?’
She patted my shoulder awkwardly, which was the equivalent of a declaration of love coming from her.
‘I appreciate that,’ I said truthfully.
I tugged open the drawer and stared inside. It was absolutely stuffed with receipts, invoices, scraps of paper, bank statements … It was the end of March now, there must have been at least a year’s worth of paperwork in here. And all this was going to have to be sorted out for the tax office.
‘Jesus.’ I whistled through my teeth. ‘I can’t believe she’s kept all this hidden away.’
‘The thing is,’ Juliet hissed, ‘what are we going to do about it?’
I shook my head, distracted by a thick Manila envelope sitting on top of the other papers. It was marked with a scrawled privato in faded blue ink. There was a word below it which started with ‘Ben’ but I couldn’t make out the rest. I turned the envelope over and found that the flap was loose. I peered inside, feeling my stomach tremble as I did so. Nonna was a private person; I knew what I was doing was bad, but I couldn’t resist. Just a tiny peep, I told myself. I put my hand in and drew out a few black-and-white photos and some sort of official document.
Suddenly the door flew back on its hinges and crashed against the wall. I dropped the pictures back into the envelope.
‘Eh, what you doing?’
Nonna’s angry face glowered at us from the doorway. Juliet swore. My mouth went dry. She’s your grandmother, I reminded myself reasonably, she loves you.
Nonna spotted the envelope in my hands and seemed to swell in size. ‘Put that down,’ she bellowed. ‘You look at my private things? Get out, get out now!’
OK, maybe I overestimated that.
I quickly shoved the envelope back in the cabinet and slammed it shut.
‘We thought you’d gone,’ said Juliet, creeping closer to me.
‘I see,’ Nonna spat. ‘You, you snake in the garden, Rosanna.’
Stanley appeared at Nonna’s side. ‘Hello, ladies. The bus didn’t stop,’ he explained cheerfully, not picking up on either the terror on our faces or the fury on his date’s. ‘We’re going to phone for a taxi.’
‘Let me do that,’ said Juliet, stumbling past me, sidling past Nonna. She bore Stanley away, leaving me to face the music.
I held my hands up. ‘I didn’t see anything. Just a lot of paperwork that needs sorting.’
‘You know what private mean, eh?’ Nonna narrowed her eyes as I shuffled towards her, past all the clutter still in the cupboard. ‘Private things are private for a reason. Now I don’t trust you.’
‘I’m sorry for prying,’ I said meekly. ‘But you can’t just close your eyes to this. It’s got to change. You need help—’
‘You just the same as your mamma ten years ago.’ Nonna prodded my shoulder with her fingertip. Close up, I could see her hands were trembling. Despite her obvious anger I felt a surge of love for my prickly grandmother and tried to take hold of her hands but she shrugged me off.
‘You think you know everything. I don’t want your help,’ she said stiffly. ‘The Lemon Tree Café is mine; I don’t want anyone interfering. Not your mamma and not you.’
She stood back to allow me out of the cupboard. I felt totally wretched but frustrated too.
‘If caring for you is interfering, then I’m sorry,’ I said, swallowing the lump in my throat.
‘If you care for me, then you don’t go behind my back.’
A look of pain crossed her face then, but she pulled herself together and walked away.
‘You finished here,’ she muttered over her shoulder.
Everyone in the café was staring at us. Including, I noticed with a sinking heart, Stella Derry, who was already reaching for her mobile phone. The news would be all round the village before I even made it home.
‘My month is up anyway,’ I said loudly, holding on to my last vestige of pride. ‘And I’ll probably have a new job this time tomorrow.’
‘She’ll come round, hen,’ Juliet said gruffly as I snatched up my bag and jacket.
I glanced over at Nonna who was snapping at Stanley that their date was off as the café was unexpectedly short-staffed.
‘Maybe,’ I said, giving her a very quick hug. ‘And maybe piggies might fly.’