She looked up and smiled. ‘I’m not even open yet, girls.’
‘Dot, meet my sister Rachel,’ said Diana, pushing her forward.
‘Look at the colour of you,’ grinned Dot.
‘I live in Thailand.’
‘How do you cope with that?’ she asked disapprovingly. ‘Two sisters living so far apart.’
Rachel watched Diana moving around the room, stroking the rickety tables. She couldn’t see the potential in this place; then again, her own flat proved that she lacked the Midas touch when it came to interiors. Diana, on the other hand, had always been a wizard. It wasn’t just herself she could make look pretty. Her Christmas trees were always beautifully decorated, even when she could only afford to go to the pound shop; presents were always exquisitely gift-wrapped; her home had the sort of taste and style th
at money alone couldn’t buy. And right now Rachel could tell that she wanted to get her hands on the Blue Ribbon café.
‘My sister has a proposition for you,’ she said without further preamble.
Diana shot her a horrified look, but Rachel always did things with purpose once she had made up her mind to do something.
‘She wants to invest in your business. She thinks it has a lot of potential.’
‘This place?’ said Dot, taking off her apron.
Diana’s expression softened, her eyes sparkling with excitement. ‘It could be fabulous, Dot.’
‘Listen to her,’ agreed Rachel. ‘Have you ever seen that Meryl Streep movie It’s Complicated? That fabulous café-bakery that Meryl’s character owns? Deli porn, that’s what it was. Diana could make this place as sexy as that.’
Dot looked as if she didn’t know where to put herself. She clearly didn’t see the café as in any way pornographic.
‘What Rachel means is that I really would love to help you give it a facelift, bring it right up to date, back to the glory days of when Ron was still with us,’ said Diana more gently.
‘I want to sell the place, not bring it up to date, lovey,’ said Dot. ‘I could always sell it to you if you were interested, but I’m not sure you’d . . . well, with respect, I can’t really see a smart lady like you standing behind a counter.’
‘Which is why the two of you should do it together,’ said Rachel, looking at Diana and then Dot. She remembered the days when she was setting up the diving school with Liam. They had found a tiny shack by the beach and spent all weekend painting it red, white and blue. They had flyers printed, delivered them all over the island, and accosted tourists in the streets to hustle for business. They had both arrived in Thailand a little burnt-out and broken, but the diving school had brought them back to life again, and Rachel just knew that this place could do the same for her sister.
‘Tell me what it was like in its heyday,’ said Rachel, noticing that Dot didn’t look convinced.
‘Oh, it was marvellous, lovey,’ replied Dot, softening. ‘Everyone used to come here,’ she said. ‘On a summer Saturday they’d queue down the street for tables. It was Ron’s recipes, you see.’
‘Do you still have them?’
Dot shook her head sadly. ‘Not really. Well, he had a little notebook where he’d scribble down his experiments, but I can’t make head nor tail of them.’
‘Do you still have it? The notebook, I mean?’ asked Rachel.
Dot rummaged in a cupboard. ‘Here it is,’ she said, handing over a pale blue pocketbook.
Rachel flipped it open but could only frown when she saw the text. She’d had visions of being able to revive the bakery using Ron’s old recipes, but Dot was right, it made no sense at all. Instead of the clear step-by-step instructions you got in cookbooks, it was a lot of scrawled letters and numbers – ‘S1Y BHF BS 2pch’ – with no relation to each other.
Diana peered over Rachel’s shoulder. ‘Do you think they might be ingredients?’
Dot shrugged. ‘What on earth can “MHFP” mean?’
‘Look, there’s a gap between the letters, I think it’s “M HF P”,’ said Diana, trying to make sense of it. ‘Could it be “milk half pint”? Look at the next one: “B 3 O”? I think that might be “butter three ounces”.’
Rachel started to laugh. ‘I think you’re right, Mary Berry. Check this out: “4e”. That’s got to be four eggs, surely?’
Dot snatched the book back, her eyes skimming over her late husband’s script as though he was coming back to life with each deciphered message.
‘Girls, you’re right!’