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‘There,’ she professes a few minutes later. ‘What do you think of that?’
I turn my head from side to side; it looks good.
She smiles. ‘Stick your FMBs underneath, and the look will be complete.’
‘FMBs?’ I ask.
‘Fuck-me boots. Sorry, another rugby boy term,’ she explains when she sees my eyebrows shoot up.
‘Are you sure there isn’t anything you need to tell me? You seem to be very close to the rugby team, from all these fascinating expressions you’ve learned.’
‘It’s nothing like that. I think I’m invisible to them, so they don’t bother to moderate their language when I’m around. I don’t mind. It just highlights how tragic they are. I pretty much know their opinion of every girl in our year, plus all their slang phrases. It might come in useful one day, you never know.’
‘Only if you accidentally get transported back in time and find you need to be able to speak Neanderthal,’ I tell her with a smile. ‘Don’t you need to get yourself ready? We ought to leave soon.’
‘I haven’t got much to do. I’ll have a quick shower, bung on a pair of jeans and a shirt. I’m just the sidekick today, after all.’
* * *
As we step out of Sevenoaks station, I pull out my phone to try to work out how to get to the café, and I’m pleasantly surprised to see that it’s just a little way up the road. Sure enough, a couple of minutes later, Katie and I find ourselves standing in front of the parade of shops that I remember from yesterday. The café looks only marginally more inviting with the lights on, and I can see through the window that only a couple of the tables are occupied.
‘Whoever did the signwriting needs a spelling lesson,’ Katie observes.
I didn’t notice the writing on the windows yesterday, but I look at it now and can see her point. Large letters promote the ‘All Day Breakfast’s’ and, slightly more worryingly, ‘Traditional Roast Diner’s’.
As we push open the door, the first thing I notice is the smell of stale fat. It’s not strong, but it’s enough to be off-putting. There’s nobody behind the counter, so we settle ourselves at a table and peruse the menu, which is also littered with spelling mistakes.
‘I think I might have a bacon roll and a cup of tea,’ Katie remarks. ‘What about you?’
‘Sausage roll and a coffee, I think. How do you suppose we order?’
I look up and see a large, late middle-aged woman standing behind the counter with her arms folded and a disdainful expression on her face. I’m certain she’s the person I spoke to on the phone earlier. I know she’s seen us, but she’s making no attempt to come over, so I ease myself out of my chair and approach the counter.
‘What can I get you?’ she asks, in a bored voice.
I give her our order, which she writes down on a small pad before ringing everything up on an ancient-looking till. I extract my debit card from my purse to pay.
‘Eight pounds twenty. We don’t take cards,’ she says, as if I’ve tried to pay with buttons. I put the card back and hand over a £10 note.
‘Have you got 20p?’ she asks.
‘No, sorry.’
She sighs dramatically as she counts out my change, which she places on the counter, before turning and slowly waddling off to the kitchen with the order.
‘Ireallydon’t like her,’ I say to Katie, when I get back to the table.
‘It’ll be interesting to see how her attitude changes when she finds out who we are,’ she replies.
‘Assuming it does change.’
A few minutes later, the woman appears at our table with a couple of mugs and some cutlery, which she plonks down unceremoniously. Without a word, she turns her back and wanders over to clear one of the other tables.
‘Unbelievable,’ I mutter, causing Katie to snort with laughter.
It takes us a little while to work out which is the tea and which is the coffee. Neither of them appear to smell of anything, they’re both the same colour, and neither of them appear to taste of very much either. Eventually we decide that the one that tastes like dishwater must be the tea, and therefore the other one must be the coffee.
‘This is obviously instant, and it’s either so cheap that it has no flavour, or they’ve been incredibly stingy with it. Bit of a cheek to charge one pound seventy for this,’ I observe, after a few sips of the scalding liquid. ‘How’s yours?’
