The Kookaburra Creek Café Page 16

  Up ahead, a little to the left, her headlights caught something and Alice slowed down. Perhaps it was just lightning. She rolled slowly closer and could see what was maybe a building. She turned the wheel and felt the ground, soft and slippery, give way under her tyres. She tried to speed up and her wheels spun. She tried again. Bogged.

  No lights shone through the windows, no signs of life emanated from the wooden house at all. Perhaps it was empty.

  She waited in the car. Twenty minutes? Two hours? No one came. No one went. No lights turned on.

  Closing her eyes she took in a deep breath. She grabbed her things and bolted through the downpour and up the few steps to the house’s front door.

  She knocked quietly. No answer.

  She knocked loudly. No answer.

  Above her head a sign creaked as it swayed on metal chains in the wind. She couldn’t read it, though, in the dark. Gently she leaned on the door. If it opened by itself, then she technically wasn’t breaking in. It offered some resistance and she pushed it harder. She jumped back as a bell clanged loudly. She stopped, frozen, waiting for someone to come and shoo her away, but no one did.

  She shoved the door again, her heart racing as the bell sang once more. Inside there were tables and chairs arranged in groups and a counter up the back. A café? A restaurant? Maybe there was food. She could eat and rest till morning, and get out before the owners came back to open up.

  Alice woke in the morning stiff and sore. Apparently the floor of a pantry in a strange kitchen was not the most comfortable place to spend the night.

  Standing up, Alice tried to stretch out. Her limbs ached, her back cramped. She rubbed it gently. The shelves of the pantry weren’t particularly well stocked, but there were items there she could probably use: some tinned tuna, some crackers. She shoved them into her bag. A thick layer of dust covered every surface and Alice wondered how long it had been since anyone had been in there.

  Not that it mattered. The safest thing for her to do would be to leave. Without delay.

  ‘Can I help you?’ A voice startled Alice and she spun around.

  An old woman stood before her, dressed in finery Alice had never seen the likes of in Lawson’s Ridge. Jewels dripping from every finger, and smothering her neck a silk scarf draped just so in purple – the same colour as the stripe in her grey hair. She wore heavy make-up that stuck in her wrinkles, and looked Alice up and down with shrewd grey eyes.

  ‘Are you here about the job?’ the lady asked, her voice thick with suspicion.

  Alice wondered how long the woman had been standing there; if she’d seen Alice take the food.

  ‘Ohh . . . yes.’ How else she could explain her presence?

  ‘Fantastic. Come and sit down and we’ll have a chat. I’m Harriett Brookes.’ The woman extended her hand.

  Alice shook it briefly. She’d have to play along. If this woman rang the police, they’d send her to a home, or a shelter, or some other horrible place.

  ‘As you can see the place has been a bit neglected lately. My sister owns it. Had a fall, you see, and, well, she’s no longer able to run the place. I thought about selling, but it didn’t seem right. I know so little about running a café, so I need to put in a manager. You do have experience managing a café, don’t you?’

  Alice nodded, too petrified to say anything.

  ‘Very well, then. It will be full-time. The pay is terrible, but what can you expect from such an endeavour?’ She shook her head. ‘I always told Genevieve this place could be a comfortable nest egg, if she’d only realise its potential. Perhaps you can help with that?’

  Alice nodded.

  ‘You don’t say much, do you, petal?’

  Alice shook her head.

  ‘I’ll need you to cook something for me.’

  ‘Cook?’

  ‘Yes. Manager is quite a loose term, really. You’ll be the cook, waitress, the, well, everything. Are you all right? You’re terribly white.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Alice swallowed the lump in her throat.

  ‘Good. Now, I’ll be perfectly honest with you. No one else has applied, not even a sniff, so as long as you can throw something basic together, we can start talking details.’

  Alice stared at her.

  ‘Take these.’ The old lady handed her the shopping bags she was carrying. ‘I’ll get myself some more and I’ll be back in an hour to see what you’ve come up with.’ The woman turned and threw her scarf over her shoulder as she walked out. ‘One hour,’ she turned back. ‘And I’ll be back.’ She looked Alice in the eye.

  Alice collapsed with her hands on her knees. There was no way she was going to cook for the old lady, but she’d certainly take whatever was in the bags with her.

  She rummaged around the kitchen for anything else she could take. As she backed away from the pantry, the picture above the oven caught her eye. It was a photo frame of an old lady wearing a lace bonnet. The eyes looked vaguely familiar, which was ridiculous, Alice knew, and the smile reminded her of someone too. She reached up and touched the old frame and it fell off the wall, smashing to the bench below. She immediately started to clear up the shattered glass, hiding the tiny sparkly pieces beneath an old newspaper in the bin.

  As Alice re-hung the picture, a piece of paper fell down from behind the frame. A recipe for chocolate fudge cupcakes. Alice looked up to the woman now back in her place on the wall and could have sworn she saw the old duck wink at her.

  Yep, she’d definitely lost her mind.

  Reading through the ingredients, Alice checked the bags and the pantry. It was all there. She could try it, she supposed, even though she really ought to leave. But it did look pretty easy.

  She looked back to the photo and tilted her head. She supposed, at an angle, with a slight squint, the funny old lady could have looked a bit like a Spinster Sister. Sally and Sue’s long-lost cousin?

  ‘You have lost the plot totally, Alice,’ she said out loud, and reached for a bowl on the shelf beside her.

  The voice inside her head tried to tell her again to leave, but as Alice measured out the ingredients it fell silent. She cracked the eggs, and the birds outside causing such a racket a moment earlier stopped their bickering. She whisked the batter and the whirr of the ancient fridge faded into nothing. All there was was the round beating of the whisk and the in and out of her breath. Nothing else. Cake batter. Breathing. Silence.

  ‘Oh good. You’re still here.’ The old lady, true to her word, had returned exactly one hour later. She picked up a cupcake. ‘These . . . are . . . divine. If the rest of your cooking is half as good, we’ll be just fine.’ She extended her hand. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Alice Pond.’ Damn. She should have given a false name.

  ‘Well, Miss Pond, you are a little younger than I was envisaging.’

  ‘I’m eighteen.’

  ‘Still.’ She frowned. ‘Oh, why not?’ A large smile spread across her face, deepening the fine wrinkles around her eyes. ‘I’m too old to worry about such things. If you’re game, I’m game.’

  Alice had a job. Not one she was capable of doing, but it was better than nothing. After Hattie – that’s what the old lady had asked to be called – had left, Alice had tried to drive off, far away from there. But the engine spluttered in protest and Alice was stuck.

  Beads of sweat covered her forehead as she looked around the room. Everything was white: the chairs, the tables, the counter, the walls. Small and quaint. How busy could a place like this really get? If Alice could con the people of whatever town she was in for long enough, earn some money, keep a roof over her head, she might have time to figure out her next move.

  She picked up a menu from the table and read over it, wondering what she’d be expected to make. Sandwiches. She could probably manage those without too much stress. Salads, how hard could they be? Burgers, hmm; a little more difficult. Lasagne. Her chest started to tighten.

  Alice moved to the kitchen and in the pantry was an old cookboo
k. She flicked through it and started gathering ingredients. Eggs, flour, mince, vegetables. There wasn’t a lot to choose from, but she needed to teach herself how to cook, and fast.

  By the time the moon had made its way across the sky Alice was covered head to toe in flour and butter and scraps of things she really didn’t want to think about, but she’d done it. Well, sort of.

  Of the ten menu items, she’d managed to assemble three. She lined the plates up on the bench and picked up a fork. The sauce of the penne pasta with tomato and cheese was a little runny, but it tasted okay. In fact, it tasted good and Alice finished the whole bowl. The burger was a little bland and definitely overcooked. She’d have to fix that. Not that she knew how. Her mum would’ve known. She really wished she hadn’t ignored Sonia every time she’d tried to wrestle Alice’s attention away from books to teach her to cook. Not that it was the first time she’d wished that. Every day for the first year after Sonia’s death, as Bruce drank away his grief, she’d wished she knew how to make anything other than a cheese sandwich.

  The last of the three dishes was shepherd’s pie. Alice brought the fork up to her lips, taking in the delicious smell.

  ‘Argh.’ She spat the mince and potato onto the bench. It was the most disgusting thing she’d ever tasted. Whatever she’d done wrong, she’d done very wrong and she threw the rest of the pie in the bin. She’d have to go over that recipe again and check the ingredients.

  ‘It’s a start,’ she said, looking up at the picture above the bench. ‘Not a particularly brilliant start, but a start. Isn’t it . . . Jill, Petunia, Mabel . . . Sylvia?’ Sylvia felt right.

  She arranged her pillow and blanket and bag of clothes on the floor of the pantry into something resembling a soft place to sleep and lay her head down, intent on studying some more. But, within moments, her eyes closed and the menu for the Kookaburra Creek Café slipped to the floor.

  Kookaburra Creek, 2018

  attie sat on the end of her bed and sighed. It appeared they were out of options and the Hargraves were going to win. Unless she could come up with a brilliant plan.

  She stared at the My Fair Lady poster that hung on her wall and a long-forgotten memory rushed back. She’d taken Genevieve, fourteen at the time, to her first musical way back in 1964. Oh how she’d smiled that night. They’d stayed after the show and hung around backstage waiting to catch a glimpse of the cast. When Eliza Doolittle emerged, a bandage wound tightly around her ankle, Genevieve had gasped and rushed forward to hug her.

  ‘What happened to your ankle?’ she’d asked.

  ‘Just a mild sprain. The show must go on.’

  Though she was clearly in pain, Eliza still took the time to chat with Genevieve, and Hattie never forgot that kindness.

  ‘The show must go on,’ Hattie said out loud. Her whole life had been a show. Pity it wasn’t a musical, singing her way to a happy ending. If only real life worked like that. Singing your way to . . .

  ‘That’s it!’ she shouted, jumping up. She threw her scarf around her neck and raced outside into the street.

  The café was quiet for a change, which was good because it made keeping an eye on Freddy and Becca a lot easier. Alice was able to loiter by the tables near the deck and hear snippets of their conversation. Granted, a busy café would have made her a little less obvious, but a busy café also meant she wouldn’t have the time or space to really eavesdrop properly.

  They were supposed to be studying English – the literary devices employed in Catch-22, if she wasn’t mistaken. But there didn’t seem to be a lot of discussion relevant to allusion or irony or anything resembling literature at all.

  A busy café would have made Joey’s presence less awkward. Especially seeing as he’d brought Fiona with him. Again. She knew there weren’t any other places in Kookaburra Creek that served food as good as hers, but surely they could make the short drive to Glensdale.

  She didn’t quite know where to look or what to say. She was happy for him, really. If this meant he’d found joy. Only thing was, it didn’t look like there was much joy today. Whatever they were discussing was serious and Fiona’s face was a storm cloud of unhappiness.

  Alice wanted to tell Joey about Hattie and Hargraves and the café. She was hopeful he might see a solution she hadn’t thought of. But Fiona was always there beside him these days, and it didn’t seem right reaching out to him like that in front of her.

  ‘Alice, is something bothering you?’ he asked as she handed him two espressos.

  Yes, and I could really do with your help. ‘No, I’m fine.’ She smiled.

  He took a sip of his coffee and spat it back into the tiny cup. ‘Sorry, but are you sure?’ He handed Alice the cup.

  ‘Oh. Sorry. I’ll redo it.’

  ‘Ah, just the thespians I was looking for.’ Hattie burst into the café, her perfectly blow-dried hair showing off a stripe the blue of a warm summer sky.

  ‘Oh no,’ said Joey, turning around.

  ‘Nu-uh.’ Alice shook her head. Didn’t Hattie have enough to worry about? Surely she could let this year’s play slip. Just this once.

  ‘Stuff ’n’ nonsense.’ Hattie grinned.

  ‘Costumes.’ Alice raised her left hand in offering.

  ‘Props.’ Joey put his right hand in the air.

  Fiona came closer, all freckles and wide smile.

  ‘Not this year, petals.’

  Alice looked to Joey hoping he was quick enough to think of a way out for both of them.

  Apparently he wasn’t.

  ‘This year we’re doing things a little differently. I’ve been thinking about our little situation, Alice.’

  ‘What situation?’ Joey frowned.

  Hattie blurted out the truth before Alice had a chance to protest. ‘The café is in jeopardy.’

  ‘What?’ He turned to Alice. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘You’ve been busy.’ Guilt rose in her. He had a right to know – so many of his own memories lived within these walls. ‘I didn’t know how.’ She cast her eyes down.

  ‘How? What’s happened?’

  ‘Those details we can fill you in on later. I have had an ingenious idea and have come up with the perfect plan. We’ll start a Keep the Café Fund and, instead of doing a play, we’re going to do a musical.’ She threw her blue, floral scarf over her shoulder. ‘If we’re going to pull off this fundraising, this year will need to be our best ever show. I’ve managed to get that snivelling reporter Sinclair from Glensdale to cover it to increase our sales. And you’ll never guess what we’re doing.’

  ‘I’m afraid to ask,’ Joey murmured.

  ‘Well? Guess.’

  Neither answered.

  ‘Okay, I’ll tell you. Anything Goes.’ Hattie clapped her hands.

  ‘What’s that got to do with us?’ Joey asked.

  ‘Too long have the two of you hidden away in backstage obscurity. But not this year. If we’ve got any chance of pulling this off, then I need some actual stars on stage. I simply cannot let Mrs Harris take the lead again. Not if we want people to come. No offence, Fiona. Or you, Frederick.’ She turned as Freddy and Becca entered the café. ‘But your mother’s voice is not the instrument she believes it to be. We’re all witness to that in church.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ Becca whispered.

  ‘Smile and back away.’ Freddy took her hand and tried to pull her back outside.

  ‘No way.’ She grinned.

  ‘I’ll get to you two later.’ Hattie waved in their direction, the sun streaming through the windows flickering off the gems covering her fingers.

  ‘We really should go.’ Freddy touched Becca’s shoulder and she shrugged his hand away.

  ‘Right now I need to secure my leads,’ said Hattie. She smiled at Joey, Alice and Fiona.

  ‘But I can’t sing,’ Alice protested.

  ‘Codswallop. You’re not in the same class as Betty, granted, but I have heard you enough times, especially in that kitchen of yours, and
your voice is pleasant enough. And let’s be honest, Betty is quite a few decades past being able to pull off Reno.’

  ‘Reno?’

  ‘Reno Sweeney. Surely you know the show. You’re my Reno and you,’ she looked at Joey, ‘you are my Billy Crocker.’

  Joey opened his mouth but nothing came out.

  ‘I’ve heard you singing, too, in the wee hours of the morning as I pass the bakery. Gene Kelly you’re certainly not, but you’re not too bad. And you’ve got that rough around the edges charm we need.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Joey frowned.

  ‘And the audience can just imagine you are taller than you really are.’

  ‘Thanks again.’

  ‘But Hattie,’ Alice found her voice finally, ‘I can’t act.’

  ‘Codswallop. Everyone can act. And you’ll have me there to guide you.’

  ‘But . . .’

  Hattie raised her bejewelled hand. ‘Time to let yourselves be guided into glory.’

  ‘Hattie —’ Joey tried to interject.

  ‘Unless either of you has a better idea on how to raise the funds, then this is the best we’ve got.’ She shot them both a look.

  They said nothing.

  ‘And I think you, Fiona, would make a lovely Hope Harcourt.’

  ‘Oh, I love that musical. Thank you.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Hattie.’ Alice’s voice was weak. ‘But won’t Mrs Harris be upset if she’s not the lead?’

  ‘Of course she will be.’ Hattie tapped her foot. ‘But this is for the future of the café, so she’ll just have to, what do you young ones say, take one for the team and take a minor role. Something that won’t stretch her acting ability too much.’

  ‘You said everyone can act.’ Alice was looking for any way out of this.

  ‘Yes. But I didn’t say everyone can act well. Sorry, young Harris offspring.’

  Fiona didn’t look the least perturbed that her mother was on the receiving end of Hattie’s barbs. She was probably too busy imagining herself beside Joey singing romantic numbers.

  ‘Mind you, I did think about asking Mrs Harris to play Evangeline Harcourt, you know, to keep the peace, but given the seriousness of the situation and the need to draw a significantly more sizable crowd than we’ve ever had before, I think,’ she thrust her chest out proudly and took a deep bow, ‘it’s time.’