Third is an architect’s drawing of a café. My café. A representation of what The Two Teas will look like when Moby’s take it over, when it is no longer The Two Teas but just another black and cream Moby’s café – exactly the same as all the other Moby’s cafés up and down the country. From the plan it looks as though they’d take out the plate glass window at the front, from which my customers love watching the world go by, and extend out the back into the garden. They’d build over the herb garden that I’d been growing since I was fourteen years old – half my life.
The shapes of the drawings start to blur as my eyes fill with tears and I squeeze my eyes shut because I am absolutely not going to cry in front of either Ben or Marcus.
‘What the hell have you done?’ I ask looking over at Ben. His face is still white as a sheet.
‘I tried to stop it, Ellie,’ he replies. ‘I thought I had stopped it. I don’t understand how this happened.’
Marcus snorts loudly.
‘What?’ Ben asks, looking over at him.
‘I thought I’d stopped it,’ Marcus mimics. ‘Why would you try to stop it? What would be in it for you to stop it?’
‘This is between me and Ellie,’ Ben says. ‘It has nothing to do with you. I don’t know who gave you the right to open other people’s post in the first place.’
‘How could you do this to me?’ I ask before Marcus has a chance to say any more. ‘I thought we had something… I thought we were…’ I look away from him. ‘Was that your plan?’ I ask. ‘To seduce me to get me to agree to sell up?’
‘Of course that wasn’t my plan,’ Ben says walking over to me. He touches my arm but I move away from him. ‘From the moment I first walked through that door and saw you and this café and how beautiful you’d made it and how much you loved it, my plan was to stop this from happening. To do whatever it took to stop Moby’s doing this.’ He gestures towards the paperwork.
Marcus snorts again.
‘Stop snorting, Marcus, for God’s sake,’ I say.
‘Well what possible power does he have to make Moby’s change their mind?’
‘I don’t have any power,’ Ben says sadly. ‘Clearly or they wouldn’t have gone ahead anyway.’ He pauses. ‘When did this letter arrive?’
I look at Marcus and he shrugs. ‘Friday I think,’ he says.
‘What’s the date on the letter, Ellie?’ Ben asks.
‘Thursday,’ I say quietly.
Ben doesn’t respond but when I look at him his jaw is tight, his eyebrows knotted. No wonder he tensed up every time I mentioned Moby’s.
‘I told you to look after her,’ Marcus says into the silence.
‘I was trying to look after her,’ Ben replies. ‘Her and the café.’
I watch Marcus open his mouth to say something else but I interrupt.
‘Just shut up, both of you,’ I say, throwing the papers onto the counter. ‘I’ve had enough of this. I don’t need anyone to look after me.’
‘I warned you about him…’ Marcus begins.
I hold up my hand. ‘I’m sick of hearing it, Marcus. I don’t want to know about how good we were together and how we could be again. Just get the message.’
Marcus shuts up then, looking completely crestfallen but I don’t care. I turn to Ben.
‘And as for you I can’t even look at you right now. I can’t believe you didn’t tell me about this. I shared stuff with you I’d never talked about with anyone before and this is how you repay me.’
‘Ellie, please…’ Ben begins.
‘Get out,’ I say, anger running through me. ‘Get out of my café. I don’t want to hear any more excuses and I don’t want Moby’s money or their horrible corporate tea.’
‘I told you so,’ Marcus sneers at Ben.
‘You can get out too, Marcus.’
‘But, Ellie…’ Marcus whines.
‘Leave,’ I repeat. ‘And if you want to help me, Marcus, could you phone Abi and ask her to come in as soon as she can. I need someone I can trust at the café today.’
22
Gossip is currency in Sanderson Bay and by the time I’ve walked through the fresh snowfall to my aunt and uncle’s for Sunday lunch I can see by the way they look at me that they already know at least some of what happened early this morning.
Luckily for me Marcus must have called Abi almost straight away – more to tell her the gossip than to get her to come into work early I think, but at least she was there within an hour telling me to go and rest or go to my aunt’s or whatever I needed, that Marcus wasn’t far behind her and that between them they’d manage for the day.
‘You know what’s happened I’m guessing,’ I said to Abi when she arrived. I’d already had several texts from Sascha demanding I ring her and tell her everything. I was fairly sure the whole Bay knew.
She nodded. ‘I’m so sorry, Ellie.’
‘Sympathy won’t change anything,’ I said as I walked away. I hadn’t meant to sound so ungrateful, especially when she’d come into work early, but my mind was whirling and I had no idea what to think or say to anyone.
So when my aunt and uncle greet me with overly enthusiastic smiles as though they are speaking to an upset child, I almost turn around and walk away.
‘Come in, Ellie,’ James says when he sees me hesitate on the doorstep. ‘It’s freezing out there.’ It’s the smell of Miranda’s famous roast dinner that draws me in eventually.
After a lot of fussing about and pouring of wine, we sit down to dinner. My phone beeps again with another message from Sascha so I turn it off.
‘You decided not to bring anyone with you today then, love,’ Miranda says. I can’t work out if she’s alluding to Marcus’s attendance last week or the fact that the whole town knows I’ve spent most of the last two days and nights with Ben. Either way it seems like a good time to address the elephant in the room.
‘I’m assuming you’ve already heard on the Sanderson Bay grapevine what happened this morning,’ I say.
My aunt and uncle exchange a meaningful glance before turning back to their plates.
‘We heard there was some sort of misunderstanding,’ my aunt mutters.
‘Oh it was far from a misunderstanding,’ I reply. ‘It turns out that all this time Ben has been prepping me to announce that Moby’s still want the café.’
‘They what?’ James says, putting down his knife and fork with a clatter. ‘Over my dead body.’ He looks furious. My uncle had always been more opposed the Moby’s offer than Miranda who I knew had been drawn to the money more. I get why, of course I do, but I’ve always been glad they turned it down in the end.
‘This has nothing to do with your body, love,’ Miranda says, putting a calming hand on her husband’s arm. ‘Dead or otherwise.’
‘They offered an eye-popping amount for it too,’ I say.
‘How much?’ James asks.
I tell him and they look at each other again. It’s significantly more than they were offered.