Chapter 34
CHAPTER 34
F orty-eight days remained.
Forty-eight.
Gemma was over ten per cent of the way through the eight-week trial, and the first week had gone so well that she had almost forgotten Kent was in the kitchen. He was certainly efficient, and there were zero complaints about the food. In fact, she got so fed up with hearing the line “Compliments to the chef” that she stopped telling him. She was starting to think that the arrangement would work. After all, his only current initiatives as executive manager had been minor menu alterations, like the pesto and balsamic options and changing the cheese blends in their toasties. But she was forced to do a double take when she walked into the cafe early Tuesday morning.
“Kent,” she said, pushing open the door to the kitchen. “Why are there blackboards that say ‘Reserved’ on four of the tables? We don’t take reservations.”
A slight smile corkscrewed at the corner of Kent’s mouth.
“I know. It’s a technique to stop people lingering too long.”
“Sorry? I don’t understand.”
“Did you look at the times?” he said. “I put times on all the reservations.”
Gemma frowned. “I think I saw one was at 12:45 and another at 11:30.”
His smile widened as he dried his hands on a tea towel and walked across to her.
“Exactly. They’re all in the afternoon or late morning. When people sit down, they think they’ve got a limited time at the table. That makes them move on a little faster, get a few more covers in and hopefully it should put off some of those all-day lingerers. I’d been considering it for a while, but after yesterday, when that woman with the long grey hair spent almost two hours nursing one Americano, I thought it was time to put it in place. At least four more customers would have had a seat if she’d just spent a reasonable time here.”
An uncomfortable pressure started building behind Gemma’s ribs.
“Margaret’s mother is very ill in the hospital. It doesn’t look good at all.”
“That’s all very sad, I get it. But even so, she could have ordered more than one drink, right?”
The pressure of a moment ago was reaching boiling point. Was he actually serious? Did he truly want to push grieving people into drinking their Americanos faster? What kind of monster was he?
Pushing past him, she reached into the cupboard where the black bags were stored. A cafe that put time limits on their customers wasn’t the type of place she was running. Not now, not ever.
“What are you doing?” Kent asked as she tore off a bag and marched out of the kitchen.
“Putting those blackboards where they belong.”
She could feel Kent on her heels as she went around the tables, sweeping up the blackboards and dropping them straight into the bin bag. When they were all in there, she turned around and handed it to him.
“Now that you’ve wasted the first part of my morning. I need to get on with the rest of my work,” she said. “And if I see those things out here again, I won’t just bin them. I’ll burn them.”