Page 50 of The Little Board Game Café

‘An Indian curry version of Wasabi! We could call it Masala.’

‘Great idea. You can go into games design when you get bored of running your café.’

‘Or when it fails and I go bankrupt.’

‘Don’t say that. You won’t fail. I have every confidence in you. Come on, let’s play again.’

After two more games of Wasabi!, Emily reluctantly decided she should call it a night. Working six days a week – and mostly on her feet rather than sitting behind a desk – was taking its toll and she was tired.

She watched as Ludek packed the game away, ensuring as he always did that every piece was accounted for, every card in the right place.

‘You take very good care of your games,’ she said.

‘I do. It probably seems a little … extreme.’

‘Perhaps a bit.’

‘It’s just … well, when we first came to the UK from Poland, my parents weren’t very well off. We didn’t have a lot of toys growing up, so I really treasure my board games.’

Emily nodded. It made sense now. And perhaps that explained why he had such a big collection; he was making up in adulthood for what he hadn’t had in childhood.

‘Thanks for a lovely evening,’ she said, standing up, ‘and a delicious dinner.’

‘You’re welcome,’ he said.

They walked into the hall. Emily put on her coat but he made no attempt to open the door.

‘I…er…’ she began as he said, ‘So I…’

‘You go first,’ he said.

‘No, you. Please.’

‘Okay, so, I was wondering…’

‘Yes?’

She lifted her face up to his. Their eyes met. Was it her imagination or had he inched closer?

‘Emily, I was wondering…’

She was conscious of her heart thudding in her chest. Her mouth went dry and she licked her lips a little in preparation for…

‘I was wondering if the board games group could meet at your café every week?’

Chapter Eighteen

Dress up, Peter had texted. It’s quite a fancy place.

Emily could have guessed that, given that his mother liked it.

‘Dress up’ was Peter-speak for wear a proper dress. Not jeans and not one of her beloved dungaree pinafores. For a second, she wanted to be a rebel, to put her jeans on and say to hell with him. She wasn’t engaged to him anymore. He couldn’t tell her what to wear. But he was trying to help her; it’d be a bit churlish to be awkward with him. Besides, she hated showing up somewhere only to find she was wearing the wrong outfit. She always felt that everyone was looking at her, judging.

He hadn’t given her any clues about where this place was or what it was like. It could be anything, anywhere. A fancy new garden centre had opened about fifteen miles away and apparently the cakes at the coffee shop there were to die for. It was the sort of place Florence might frequent: she never got her hands dirty in the garden, of course – she had a gardener to do that – but she did like to select her own shrubs. Or there was that farm shop on the hills above Hebbleswick. Emily could imagine Florence going there, paying astronomical prices for organic beetroot and locally reared lamb, then, taxed by the stress and strain of having to carry her own shopping to a till, she’d be bound to visit the on-site restaurant for a cup of Darjeeling.

But you wouldn’t need to dress up if you were going to a farm shop or a garden centre, would you? No matter how fancy it was.

Emily opened her wardrobe, rifling through her jeans and pinafores as if she expected the perfect garment to magically appear. She needed smart casual. She only possessed casual. Except for the figure-hugging poppy-red dress that Peter had bought her from Hobbs when they were going to the annual ‘Businessman of the Year’ awards dinner and he was under the illusion that he would win. He hadn’t.