Page 44 of The Little Board Game Café

‘And it’s quite a walk from town.’

‘Tell me something I don’t know. I can’t pick this place up and move it to a better location. I’m stuck with it. Either I make it work or I go bust and lose all the money Mum left me.’

‘It needs a USP. You need to offer something that Sweet Delights doesn’t.’

A USP. Perhaps he had a point. ‘Such as?’

‘I have an idea. Come out with me on Sunday afternoon.’

She knew it. He was definitely angling for them to get back together.

‘Peter, I’m not sure that’s a good idea. And Sunday’s my only day off.’

‘You know that programme you like where they go to a failing hotel and try to turn it around?’

‘The Hotel Inspector.’

‘That’s the one. Well, they always take the hotel owners to see a more successful hotel, don’t they? Somewhere to inspire them to up their game.’

Emily was surprised he knew that; he’d never seemed interested in the programmes she liked watching.

‘So…?’ she said.

‘So I’m going to do the same for you.’

‘Peter the café inspector.’

‘I’ll pick you up and take you to the place I’ve got in mind. They’ve made it into a destination. People travel miles for their afternoon tea. You’ll love it. Mother went last month and said it was out of this world. Even better than Fortnum’s.’

‘Peter, if you’re hoping to get back with me…’

He held up his hands to stop her. ‘It’s not that, I promise. I still care about you, but I can see now that things weren’t working between us. And I’m sorry that I wasn’t more supportive when you broached the whole café idea. So let me make it up to you. Afternoon tea and business inspiration. My treat. This Sunday. What do you say?’

Perhaps she’d misjudged him. Perhaps he was just trying to be helpful.

‘That’s really kind of you,’ she said. ‘Sunday it is.’

Chapter Sixteen

On Wednesday, Emily closed the café early. Well, there were no customers so why bother staying open? She put the radio on, served herself a bowl of leftover soup of the day and wondered what the hell she was going to do.

There had to be a way of luring more customers in. She’d put more photos on Instagram, flyers in the local library and a home-made poster on the noticeboard in the mini-supermarket. What else could she do? Loyalty cards? Discount vouchers in the local supermarket? Some kind of special event?

A launch party, perhaps, as Kate had suggested. Bit late now though. The café was already open.

Perhaps the trip with Peter on Sunday would give her the inspiration she needed, but she doubted it somehow. Her new venture felt doomed.

She pulled off a piece of till roll and tried to calculate how much she needed to take each day in order to break even. And how much more she’d need to be able to pay herself some kind of wage. It was a depressingly large figure.

She’d been so naïve. This was the kind of thing she should have worked out before she bought a café, not afterwards when it was already going horribly wrong. She’d been so carried away with the idea of fulfilling her mum’s dream that all sense of logic had flown out of the window.

Even more depressing was the next number she worked out: how many weeks she could keep going if trade didn’t improve. It didn’t bear thinking about.

She was sitting with her head in her hands when the door opened. Hadn’t she locked it when she’d turned the sign to closed? She looked up, half-expecting it to be Mr B although he always came in the morning. But it wasn’t. It was Ludek.

‘Hi,’ she said.

‘I was passing.’