Free The Ballroom Café by Ann O'Loughlin

rounded the bend in the driveway.
    ‘I did not sleep a wink. My stupid ideas. I should never have gone this big. I am sure I have baked too much. It will be a terrible waste.’ She stopped to look at Debbie. ‘Are you all right? You look a bit peaky.’
    ‘Hard time sleeping, too.’
    Ella gave her an odd look, but Iris, screaming from upstairs, made them take the stairs two at a time. The café looked like a sauna, white steam puffing across the room.
    ‘I am nearly scalded with this coffee machine,’ Iris shouted.
    Ella shouted to open some windows as she ran to switch off the machine. ‘Iris, stick to the garden or the washing-up. All you had to do was turn the dial.’
    ‘I only wanted to sneak a cappuccino.’ Iris stopped Ella’s hand moving for a china cup. ‘I need a mug; I am so nervous.’
    The steam dissipated, clearing to the corners. Debbie, checking out the windows, saw as many as twenty coming in the gate. When they had got past the bank of rhododendron, she took Ella by the hand and pointed to the group flowing towards the house.
    ‘My good lord in heaven, I am not going to have enough to feed them. I don’t even know some of them.’ Her voice was shaking, a tear rolling down her face. ‘Do I look all right?’
    Debbie nodded. Reaching over, she opened two buttons at the top of Ella’s cream blouse and loosened her golden hair from behind her ears. ‘Now you look great,’ she said.
    Ella, pink on the cheeks, was embarrassed but felt ridiculously happy.
    ‘I don’t want to meet any of that crowd. Time for me to exit,’ Iris said, rushing down the stairs and outside to the kitchen garden.
    Muriel Hearty led the charge. She had not just spread the word about the café; she had promised more.
    ‘They have opened up the old house. Sure, we have to have a look. No stranger was ever allowed past the downstairs before,’ she babbled on to anyone who would listen.
    Many went to gawp. Those who thought they might find some clues as to the tragic history were disappointed but seduced, instead, by the flowing fountain and garden rills, the view from the café windows, and both Ella and a quiet American behind the counter.
    Ella patrolled the garden tables and the aisles of the Ballroom Café, personally checking with each customer if they were happy. At one stage, Roberta swept by to hand her sister a red note.

     
    Are you happy now the whole of Rathsorney has come to gawk? Don’t take this as a measure of your success but as a level of the notoriety of the O’Callaghan sisters still. You have had your fun. For pity’s sake, stop now. R.

     
    Ella took the pencil from its place balanced at her ear and wrote a reply, holding it out at eye level so her sister could scan it.

     
    The Ballroom Café stays open. Like I said, put up or ship out. E.

     
    By lunchtime, all the scones were gone and people sat inside and outside with tea and coffee and slices of cake. To make everything go further, Ella had to halve the slices of cake, but nobody seemed to notice, so enchanted were they by the delicate china and the faded elegance of the old house. When the last person left, at four o’clock, Ella shut the hall door and asked Iris to put a closed sign on the main gate. Debbie had already started the washing-up.
    ‘Leave that, dear; your feet must be killing you.’
    ‘I want to get along.’
    ‘Sounds like you have plans.’
    She saw her shoulders hunch up, a shiver of tears making Debbie stoop further over the sink.
    ‘Debbie, what is wrong? Has someone said something to you? Those women can be awful cruel: they don’t mean it, but they are vicious gossips.’
    Debbie turned, her face patched red from crying. ‘It’s not the women. Everybody was perfectly nice to me.’
    ‘Darling, what is it?’ Ella put her arm around her shoulders, steering her to a small table for two.
    ‘It’s my birthday today. I lost my dad recently. Silly, really, at my age to be so caught up on a