Chapter 4
Fiona had never seen the inside of Bill’s house, and she was surprised at how tidy it was. But not half as surprised as Bill was when he opened his door to see her standing there.
He had invited her in with obvious reluctance when she said, ‘I need to talk to you about something,’ and Fiona concluded it was only because he preferred to hold the conversation in his living room rather than on his doorstep and not because he was being friendly. Nosey neighbours were a given in a small town like Sweet Meadow.
‘Tea?’ he offered.
‘That would be lovely.’ She waited in the living room as he went into the kitchen and she heard him fill the kettle. Patch, who had barked vociferously when she’d rung the bell, now greeted her with tail-wagging enthusiasm, and she bent down to stroke his ears.
‘Don’t stand on ceremony,’ Bill said, poking his head into the room. ‘Sit down. Milk? Sugar?’
‘Just milk please, and not too strong.’ Fiona perched on one side of the sofa and glanced around curiously. My, but it was old-fashioned. The room looked like a relic from the middle of the last century, and she suspected that little had changed since Bill’s mother had been alive. He kept it neat and tidy, though. There wasn’t a speck of dust, and he plainly vacuumed often, judging by the absence of dog hairs.
Bill returned to the living room with a cup and saucer in one hand and a plate of biscuits in the other. He gave the tea to Fiona and balanced the plate on the arm of the sofa.
‘Help yourself,’ he said, going back into the kitchen to fetch his own cup. ‘Right, then,’ he began, sitting down in the armchair which was angled towards the telly. ‘What do you want to talk about?’
‘Molly and the cafe. I’ve just come from there, and she’s had an electrician and a builder in to take a look at it.’
‘And?’
‘It’s going to cost.’
‘I could have told her that. In fact, I think I did.’
‘ She can’t be expected to pay for it, and I know the council won’t.’
‘Are you suggesting she has a whip round?’
Fiona tutted. ‘Don’t be daft. She needs to do some fundraising, but I don’t think she knows where to start. That’s why I’m here.’
‘You want me to fundraise for the cafe?’
Fiona didn’t appreciate the way he was looking at her, like she’d lost the plot. ‘Well, yes.’
‘I think I’ve done my bit when it comes to the park. If you recall, I rounded up half the town to help clean it up.’
‘It was hardly half,’ she scoffed. ‘Twenty people wasn’t even a street’s worth. OK, maybe there had been thirty, but that was it.’
‘It was twenty more than before. I don’t recall you offering to get your hands dirty when Molly and Jack called that meeting at the bandstand. You were only there because you thought there was going to be live music.’
Fiona glared at him. ‘Anyone can make a mistake. And you were only there to see how many turned up.’
‘I made up for it, didn’t I?’
‘So did I! Enjoyed the hot dog, did you? You ate two, if I remember rightly.’
Stalemate ensued as they glowered at each other. Then Fiona decided to be the bigger person (because Bill certainly wasn’t) and she subsided. ‘Let’s not argue over who did what. Can’t we put our heads together and come up with a way to raise the money needed to re-open the cafe?’
Bill slumped back in his chair. ‘I reckon it’s a waste of time and money. No one will use it. That’s why it closed in the first place.’
‘How do you know? You weren’t here.’
‘My mother kept me in the loop,’ Bill said. ‘She used to love telling me all about the goings on in Sweet Meadow.’
Fiona said slyly, ‘I bet your mum would have liked to see it brought back to life.’
‘Keep her out of it.’
‘ You were the one who brought her into it, not me.’
They glowered at each other again, then Fiona got to her feet. ‘Sorry to have disturbed you. I can see myself out.’
Bill rose, hard on her heels as she stalked to the door; probably to make sure she left.
She didn’t bother saying goodbye, because she was too upset. And the reason she was upset was because she feared he was right. When she was a girl, the park had been a busy place – people out for a Sunday stroll, kids playing ball on the field, nippers on the swings and hurtling down the slide. There was always someone there she knew and who she could play with, and when she was older she used to sit in the long grass in the meadow and make daisy chains with her friends.
She had met Bradley in the park. He had been a couple of years above her in school, so she knew of him, but he hadn’t noticed her until she was about sixteen and had started wearing cheesecloth shirts and flared jeans. She also remembered the Salvation Army brass band playing their trumpets and trombones on the bandstand, and someone shaking a tambourine. You never saw tambourines these days, and she wondered when they had gone out of fashion. Probably around the same time she stopped wearing flares.
Were her fond memories of the park clouding her judgement, and was her longing to have something purposeful to do screening her from the reality that the cafe was unlikely to open again anytime soon, no matter how much Molly wanted it to?
And even if it did reopen, Fiona was too old to even consider managing it. She’d left all that behind when she’d sold the cafe, and the reason she’d done that was because it had become too much for her. She must have been daft to even entertain the idea. Did she honestly want the commitment? Or the hassle?
But there had been that frisson of excitement this morning when she’d seen the electrician’s van…
Frisson or not, she had put her cafe days behind her.
Feeling rather down, she hurried through the gate and made her way to Molly and Jack’s cottage. She may as well make it clear to them that even if, by a miracle, Molly managed to open the place, Fiona wasn’t the one who would be running it.
Molly beamed when she saw her, and Fiona felt awful that she was about to wipe the smile off the girl’s face.
‘I’ve been thinking about the cafe,’ she began solemnly. ‘It’s lovely of you to think of me and even nicer of you to ask, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to refuse your kind offer. Managing the cafe is beyond me now. I’m too old and too past it.’
‘You definitely aren’t!’ Molly cried, but Fiona shook her head.
‘To be honest, I’m not sure I want to be involved at all, but I wish you all the best with it.’ A sudden prickling at the back of her eyes made her blink and she swallowed hard. Tears? How silly. She really must be getting old.
‘Please don’t dismiss it out of hand,’ Molly urged. ‘See how you feel when it’s open.’
But that was the problem, wasn’t it? Bill was right. The odds of it being open anytime soon were non-existent. Not only that, it had been silly of her to get her hopes up just because she was bored. She needed to find something else to do to occupy herself, rather than dream of having a cafe again. But the fact was, all she knew was how to feed people. She simply wasn’t good for anything else.
***
A second ring of his doorbell took Bill by surprise. It appeared to be a day for callers. He could go weeks, months even, without anyone knocking on his door (apart from during the local elections, when every person and their dog wanted to speak to him), and now he had two callers in one day.
Seeing Fiona earlier had been a surprise. Seeing Molly was even more of one, and he wondered what she wanted.
After inviting her in, he made a second cup of tea for a visitor in as many hours, then sat in his favourite chair and gazed at her expectantly.
Molly took a sip of her drink, then dived straight in. ‘I’m worried about Fiona.’
Bill kept his expression blank, but he felt a flicker of concern.
The young woman continued, ‘I believe you’re aware that I asked her to manage the cafe once it’s up and running, and I honestly thought she was going to do it; she seemed to be all for it this morning. But she came to see me just now and told me she feels that she’s too old. Fiona’s not old!’ Molly’s expression was worried. ‘Didn’t you tell me not so long ago that she’s bored? And as she used to own a cafe, I’d say that this would be ideal for her. I thought she was coming out of her shell, but she’s gone back into it.’
‘You shouldn’t have got her hopes up.’
‘What do you mean?’ Molly’s brow creased into another frown.
Bill snorted. ‘It won’t work. It’s not cost-effective; not enough people spend time in the park, and I don’t blame them.’
‘But they will , ‘Molly insisted. ‘It’s looking tonnes better already, and people are going there for a stroll or a game of ball with the kids, whereas they only used it as a cut-through in the past. And when the children’s play area is repaired, it will be even nicer.’
‘Sweet Meadow has already got a cafe,’ Bill pointed out, unwilling to concede defeat in the face of Molly’s logic, enthusiasm, and vision.
‘It won’t be in competition with Best Bites,’ Molly argued. ‘If people are in town, they’ll call into Best Bites for a coffee. The customers for this cafe – our cafe – will be those people who are already in the park.’
She had a point.
Suddenly Bill felt guilty for poo-pooing the idea and refusing to help. Was it his fault that Fiona had changed her mind about managing the cafe? He didn’t know her particularly well, but even he could see that she’d gone downhill since she’d sold her business, yet as soon as the spark had returned, he had thrown a bucket of cold water on it.
Maybe he had been too harsh. And did his opinion matter anyway? He knew nothing about how a cafe operated, but one thing he did know was that Molly was a very focused and determined young lady. If anyone could pull this off, it was her. Look at what she had achieved already: the cottage was a credit to her (despite Bill thinking that she had been a mug for buying it), she had managed to get the council on board with regular litter-picks and new bins, the pond was now a thing of beauty, and everything about the park felt more hopeful.
Molly was passionate, committed, and enthusiastic. If he had been lucky enough to have had a daughter, he hoped she would have been like her.
When she put her mind to something Molly moved heaven and earth to achieve it, and Bill felt a twinge of nostalgia as he remembered being like that once.
He guessed Fiona might have been like it, too.
Were the advancing years responsible for the passion fading and the enthusiasm dimming? Or was it that you allowed yourself to become jaded and more embittered, he wondered.
Bill didn’t have the answer, but he knew that since he’d retired the lights in his proverbial house were dimming one by one. If it wasn’t for Patch, he doubted whether he would be bothered to get out of bed in the morning, and he suspected that Fiona might be feeling the same way.
There was something else he suspected, and that was Fiona might come to regret turning down the opportunity. The thought of her lights dimming made his chest ache.
‘Would you like me to have a word with her?’ he asked, feeling awful.
‘Would you? I’d very much appreciate it. You saw what she was like during the clean-up, when she cooked all those hot dogs for everyone. She was in her element. There was a glimpse of the old Fiona. But when I spoke to her earlier…’ Molly shook her head, her worry apparent.
‘Leave it with me,’ Bill said, feeling even worse.
He had made this mess, it was up to him to sort it out, and if that meant telling Fiona that she shouldn’t listen to an old codger like him and that he was envious that the cafe would give her a new lease of life, then that’s what he would do.
The thing was, it might be true. Bill sensed that his own feet were on the same slippery slope as Fiona’s. Not all that long ago he had captained a commercial cargo ship, with all the responsibilities and challenges that went with being a master in the Merchant Navy. Now look at him… He was envious.
But Fiona had come to him for help, so help was what he would give her. And if he became less of a misery-guts in the process, then he would call that a win.
***
Fiona’s hand hovered over the phone. She desperately wanted to have a chat with David but she knew that she would end up moaning, which would only make her son worry. The last thing she wanted was to alarm him or to be a burden, and it peeved her to think that he might view her as such. She had raised him singlehanded after Bradley died, and in her mind’s eye she was the rock, the one he could always depend on.
But Fiona had sensed a seismic shift since she’d sold the business. It was as though he was her parent, not the other way around. It was subtle, but evident in the way he spoke to her and the way he took over sometimes. She knew he only wanted to help, but she was perfectly capable of changing a plug! And how did he think she managed when he wasn’t around?
Fiona let her arm drop to her side. She would phone him later in the week; no doubt she would have perked up a bit by then. She hoped. Because at the moment she felt rather blue. It was normal to feel down now and again – everyone did – but lately the blue had darkened to black.
Once upon a time, when her little family was a threesome, her world had been a sunny yellow. Then Bradley had been killed in an accident at work, and Fiona’s world had been plunged into darkness. The only thing that had kept her going was David. Her son had needed her more than ever.
Gradually, light had returned, and although she still had her down days, she had found a degree of contentment, and keeping busy had also helped. But now that she was no longer busy, she felt as though she had lost her purpose, that she was fading away, becoming less of herself and more of an invisible old person shuffling inexorably towards the grave.
Gosh, how morbid! She needed to buck her ideas up, and she was just wishing she could summon some enthusiasm for something (anything ) when she had a visitor.
When she saw Bill standing on her doorstep, she was able to appreciate how he must have felt this morning, when she had turned up on his. She was so shocked that all she could do was step aside for him to enter.
There was an odd expression on his face, and it wasn’t until he spoke that she realised what it was. He was sheepish.
‘I’m sorry about earlier,’ he said. ‘You caught me in a bad mood.’
‘Hmph. You’re always in a bad mood, Bill Greaves. Anyway, you’re right. Molly is flogging a dead horse.’
‘Not necessarily.’
Fiona blinked. ‘You’ve changed your tune.’
‘I’ve had a chance to think, and I believe I was wrong.’
‘I’d better sit down.’
Fiona led him into the kitchen, Patch on his heels, and flicked the switch on the kettle before she took a seat at the little table that was only big enough for two.
Bill sat on the opposite chair and the dog immediately settled at his feet. ‘Let me explain, and maybe you’ll forgive me for being so negative. I still think it’s going to take money and hard graft to bring the cafe up to snuff. But I once thought the same thing about Molly’s cottage, which is twice as big – and look what she’s done with it.’
Fiona nodded. She couldn’t argue with that.
He continued, ‘And what a difference she has made in the park. I know she had help, but if it wasn’t for her, everyone would have continued to complain about the place but nothing would have got done.’
Was Bill referring to her? Fiona pursed her lips, wondering whether he was having a dig. She had complained weekly to the council for over a year, to no avail. Had Bill expected her to pick up the litter herself? Did he think that she should have told the loutish teenagers to have more respect? Then she realised that Molly had done exactly that. But Molly was half Fiona’s age, and Fiona was too old and too tired to pick up litter and confront youths.
She hadn’t noticed Bill do anything, either. All he had done was grizzle. It was Molly who had been the catalyst for change. Without her, the park would still be an eyesore.
When she tuned back into the conversation Bill was saying, ‘At least, give it a go. If it doesn’t work out, all you’ll have lost is a bit of time.’
‘I haven’t got much time left. I’m an old woman, in case you hadn’t noticed.’
‘You’re not that old! Anyway, what else do you do with your time? Nothing, as far as I can tell.’
‘What about you?’ she retorted. ‘What do you do with yours ?’ How dare he tell her what to do. If she wanted to sit on her backside all day, staring at the four walls, that was up to her. Anyway, he was no better. All he did was walk his dog and play the odd game of lawn bowls. Hardly riveting, was it?
However, what he said next surprised her. ‘I’m going to help knock that cafe into shape. I want to see it open again.’
Fiona stared at him, confusion flowing through her. Just a couple of hours ago, he had dismissed the cafe out of hand – he had been quite scornful, in fact – yet here he was, declaring his desire to see it open and vowing to help.
Was it something she’d said? Had she changed his mind?
A spark ignited in her chest. Could it be hope, or was it excitement? If Bill was convinced that the cafe’s reopening was a real possibility, then maybe she should be, too. And if anyone could make it happen, it was Molly.
Fiona felt the dark cloud lift as a ray of sunlight broke through. ‘I’ll make us some tea,’ she said, realising that the kettle had boiled a while ago. ‘And I might be able to dig out a couple of slices of orange and almond cake, because we could be here for a while. We’ve got a fundraiser to organise!’