Page 59 of The Little Board Game Café

Sanding was hard work. An hour or so later, Mr B stood up and stretched his back.

‘Lunch?’ he said hopefully.

Emily rustled them up some soup.

‘What you haven’t told me,’ said Mr B, ‘is why you’re painting board games on the tables.’

‘I’m transforming The Lancashire Hotpot into a board game café. There’ll be the games on the table tops, but other games too. Though I’m not sure where I’ll find the money to buy them.’

Mr B nodded. ‘I could ask Marjory to keep an eye out for games in Oxfam.’

‘That’d be great, thanks. Though I want some more unusual games too. The kind we play in the board games group. I don’t suppose you’d find those in a charity shop. I’ll try eBay.’

‘And all this is in aid of impressing Ludek?’ said Mr B. ‘You must really like him.’

Why did everyone think this was about Ludek? Mr B had only seen them together once so Emily wasn’t quite sure how he’d jumped to that conclusion.

‘No, I’m doing this to attract more customers. And besides, I like board games.’

‘Well, I hope it works. I worry about you going out of business.’

‘You and me both.’

Mr B worked much more quickly than Emily did and, by five o’clock, all the table tops were sanded.

‘Do you fancy some dinner?’ she said. ‘There’s leftover soup from yesterday and I could make some scrambled eggs.’

‘Yes, why not? But let’s not eat here. It’s too dusty. I’m only five minutes away. We can always come back afterwards and hoover up.’

She grabbed a box of eggs and filled a Tupperware with the previous day’s soup of the day and they set off. On the doorstep, Mr B suggested dusting herself off a bit before stepping inside. ‘We don’t want to be cleaning my house as well as your café.’

Emily did as he’d asked, then heated the soup and scrambled the eggs in his tiny but immaculate kitchen. They ate at a small table in the corner. She was ravenous; all that sanding had really worked up an appetite. After they’d eaten, they both agreed that they felt too tired to clean up the café that night so she said goodbye to Mr B and set off for home.

*

The following day, Mr B was waiting outside the café when Emily arrived at five past nine. He was wearing his overalls again, and carrying a Sainsbury’s bag.

They started work immediately, sanding the table legs this time. They were much more fiddly than the tops.

At around eleven, Mr B downed tools and said, ‘It’s cappuccino o’clock, Emily.’

She took the hint and fired up the machine. They sat down at one of the newly sanded tables and Mr B opened his bag. Instead of his usual Polish newspaper, he produced a Scrabble box.

‘We can’t play now,’ Emily said. ‘There’s too much to do.’

‘For reference purposes only.’ He opened the lid and unfolded the board. ‘We need to work out what colours of paint to buy for our project.’

Since when had this become ‘our’ project? Emily didn’t know, but she rather liked it. When she’d first bought the café, she’d felt so alone every day, standing behind the counter wishing someone would come in. And now Mr B was helping with the tables and Kate had promised to do the publicity. She felt as if she had a little team of people behind her, rooting for her, and it was a great feeling. If only Ludek were part of that team.

Together, Mr B and Emily figured out that they’d need two shades of green, two shades of blue, salmon pink and dark orange to recreate the Scrabble board on the table tops. Chess would obviously be easier: they’d need black and white. With the greens from the Scrabble and some sunshine yellow, they could make a Cluedo board. Mr B reckoned that they wouldn’t need any extra colours for Snakes and Ladders – they could make do with what they’d got. They’d also need some paler shades, he suggested, as the base colours of the tables, and plenty of varnish to seal the end results and ensure a good finish.

They continued sanding the table legs until Emily’s stomach told her it was lunchtime.

‘There’s still some soup,’ she said to Mr B. ‘Or I could make us scrambled eggs again?’

‘Thank you, Emily, but I need to pop out for an hour or two. I’ll see you a little later.’

It was after three when Mr B put in his second appearance of the day and suggested she made a pot of tea.