Page 16 of Second Chances at the Board Game Café

He shook his head. ‘No, thanks. I’d like my Saturday breakfast.’

At the weekends and during school holidays, Max had toast and marmalade instead of porridge. Taylor wasn’t quite sure when this tradition had started, but it was something he insisted on.

‘Coming right up,’ she said.

‘Not too much marmalade. It mustn’t touch the crust because I don’t want marmalade on my fingers when I’m eating it.’

They had the same conversation every Saturday. ‘Okay. I can manage that.’

‘Not near the crust. A centimetre away.’

They must have been doing measuring at school in maths.

‘Shall I get my tape measure out?’ She laughed.

Later, when Max had eaten his toast without getting marmalade on his fingers and headed upstairs to assemble his train set – ‘Can I really leave it out all the time, Mum?’ – Taylor drained her mug of tea and decided to make a start on the bunting. There were more urgent things to do – boxes to unpack, for example – but she wanted to create her shop window now, before the usual feelings of self-doubt set in and she decided it wasn’t worth the bother.

Now where was her scraps box?

The large plastic box was easy to locate amongst the sea of cardboard ones waiting to be unpacked. Taylor grabbed a cushion from the sofa, shoved it under her bottom and sat on the floor, sorting through the fabrics. On the top were the most recent off-cuts. Heavier pieces of material left over from making curtains for clients. A rather nice piece of silk – she’d shortened a bridesmaid’s dress for someone so it could be worn at parties. And a large piece of Scrabble fabric, left over from that pinafore dress. There’d been over a metre left. Kate hadn’t wanted it back. She pushed thoughts of the Scrabble dress from her mind; the sight of it in the hospice shop window still had the power to make her feel like a failure.

It wasn’t a failure, she reminded herself. Kate had come back to have a second dress made. She wouldn’t have done that if she hadn’t been happy with the first one. She held up a length of the weebles fabric now, proof of that very fact.

As she delved deeper into the box, the pieces of fabric held more personal memories – memories of garments she had sewed to wear herself. Red polka dots from the dress she’d made when she was fourteen. Green corduroy from her first attempt at making trousers; they’d been a bit of a disaster to be honest, and she’d never worn them. Some lilac silk she’d used to create a cushion as a Christmas gift for her late gran.

And at the very bottom of the box was a small piece of plain blue cotton. It looked like nothing special, but it was from that very first skirt that she’d stitched, back when she was eleven. Holding that fabric in her hands now reminded her of the elation she’d felt when she’d tried it on and it had fitted. It had seemed so incredible, that she, Taylor Sweet, could make a piece of clothing that she could actually wear. And okay, it hadn’t been perfect. One side of the hem had hung shorter than the other, and the seams weren’t straight either, but she’d known where she’d gone wrong and how she could make the next one better.

Taylor stood up and stretched. Her back was still aching – one night on a decent mattress wasn’t going to fix that. She looked down at the sea of fabric pieces around her feet, already beginning to see which colours might complement each other, might look pretty on a string of bunting. The plain blue from that first skirt had to feature – it seemed symbolic somehow – plus a yellow cotton leftover from the first shirt she’d ever made, some material printed with seashells and lighthouses she’d used for someone’s bathroom blind and a rather jolly blue and white check, that had been one of her mother’s tablecloths until Taylor had turned it into a pair of dungarees. She cut squares from each of her chosen fabrics, folding them in two along the diagonals, and stitching down one side of each before turning them all inside out.

Then it was time to swap the sewing machine for the iron, if she could find it. She began to rummage through the boxes, pulling out clothes and books and some soft toys of Max’s, frantic to find it and continue making her bunting. Within minutes, the sofa was hidden under a mountain of trousers and coats and sewing magazines.

‘Mum, I’m hungry.’

Taylor looked up to see Max surveying the carnage that had once been their new lounge.

‘I hate mess,’ he said.

‘I know you do, darling. I’m sorry. I’ll sort it, I promise.’ It should be the other way round, she thought. Mums were supposed to berate their kids for being untidy, but Max liked things to be neat. ‘I can’t find the iron.’

‘It’s in my bedroom,’ said Max. ‘I’ve got the box with the iron, your hairdryer and some towels.’

She glanced at her watch. It was five past two. Already? No wonder he was hungry. It was strange he hadn’t come down earlier; he liked his lunch at twelve fifteen, as that was when they ate at school.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘You know how sometimes you get carried away with something and you forget the time.’

He probably didn’t. Max was always acutely aware of the time.

But to her surprise, he said, ‘Yeah, I know. It was lunchtime one hour and fifty minutes ago, but I was really enjoying setting up my trains and I didn’t want to stop. Will you come and see my new layout?’

And then he did something that he hardly ever did. He held out his hand to her. Taylor scrambled to her feet, picked her way through the obstacle course of bits of fabric and boxes and books and soft toys, and took his hand in hers. He led her up the creaky stairs and into his new bedroom. He had laid out his track, in a kind of figure of eight, with double rails running round the edges and a single section going through the middle.

‘It’s an oval with a reverse loop,’ he said. ‘I saw it on the internet. Those are the sidings. Where the trains can go when they aren’t being used.’

‘You need a station,’ she said. ‘I’ll keep an eye out for one at the charity shop. And if not, perhaps for your birthday. Or maybe Father Christmas will bring one. I’m sure his elves can make stations.’

Max frowned and thumped her on the arm. ‘I haven’t believed in him since I was two. Father Christmas is a Victorian invention.’

Taylor laughed, but wondered, as she had so many times, how he knew this stuff. And how he remembered it. If Google and the Encyclopaedia Britannica had had a love child, Max would be it.