Free The Cherry Tree Cafe by Heidi Swain Page B

coiffured head a little shake of confusion. I couldn’t bring myself to say the words. I couldn’t stand there and tell her that
I was back in town as a singleton with no romantic prospects or attachments.
    I pushed past her back into the bar.
    ‘There’s no mistake,’ she called close behind me, her voice losing its upmarket tone. ‘I read it in the paper!’
    The music came to a shuddering halt and everyone clapped and cheered for an encore.
    ‘What?’ I shouted above the din.
    ‘We all did!’ Erica shouted back, her expression triumphant. ‘Everyone knows! Your mother put an announcement in the paper the other week.’
    She grabbed the pile of stacked local newspapers from the bar just as Jim lunged for them. Gradually, as the noise subsided, all faces turned to us. Erica rifled through the pile, Jim still
ineffectually trying to snatch them from her grasp. Erica held on tight as she finally found her quarry and my heart began beating as if it was chasing the hundred-metre gold.
    ‘Here it is!’ she laughed, her cruel voice ringing through the air as the last discarded pages settled around her feet. ‘Mr and Mrs Dixon are proud to announce the engagement
of their only daughter Elizabeth to Giles Worthington . . .’
    She was cut off in mid-flow by Evelyn who had raced around the other side of the counter and snatched the paper from her grasp. I watched on incredulously as she screwed it into a ball and threw
it aside.
    ‘You’re barred!’ she shouted in Erica’s face. ‘Go on! Out! And this time you won’t be coming back!’
    She frog-marched Erica through the door and Jemma and Jim led me back behind the bar and into the pub kitchen.
    ‘Why didn’t you say anything?’
    Jemma shook her head in disbelief as she watched me pacing the floor.
    ‘How could you let me come in here, knowing that was sitting on the bar?’ I shouted. ‘Whatever must everyone be thinking?’
    Still Jemma said nothing.
    ‘I think,’ Jim said nervously, ‘everyone thought you’d come in to brazen it out, love. Get it over and done with quick, like,’ he added. ‘Like pulling off a .
. .’
    ‘If you say band-aid, Jim, I’ll bloody swing for you,’ I seethed, ‘I really will.’
    Jim gave a wry smile and rubbed his stubbly chin.
    ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ he said kindly. ‘Take your time. You can go out the back way if you like.’
    ‘No way,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘I’m not hiding now. When I leave it’ll be through the front door.’
    ‘Good for you,’ he smiled, ‘give me a shout if you need anything.’
    He backed out of the door and closed it quietly behind him. All the time he’d been talking, Jemma had sat silent and unmoved.
    ‘Well?’
    ‘I don’t know what to say,’ she said, reaching for her hair.
    ‘How about, I’m sorry?’
    ‘I’m not saying sorry for something I knew nothing about!’
    ‘How could you not have seen it?’ I shouted. ‘It was there, large as life in black and white. What did you think? That if I knew then I wouldn’t come back?’
    ‘I’m telling you,’ Jemma said patiently, ‘that I, we, didn’t know. No one had mentioned it and we don’t always get a local paper these days. They’re not
always delivered and with everything else going on I don’t have time to chase the newsagent about it!’
    I slumped down in the chair opposite and rested my head on the edge of the table.
    ‘I’m so sorry,’ Jemma whispered. ‘If I’d had any idea . . .’ her words trailed off as the door quietly opened.
    ‘Shall we head off?’ It was Tom with our coats.
    ‘Yep,’ I said, jumping up, ‘I want to get out of here, but I’m not going out the back.’
    ‘I should think not,’ Tom smiled. ‘Come on, Jemma.’
    ‘And I’ll tell you something else,’ I said, as I struggled into my coat.
    ‘What’s that?’
    ‘By the end of tomorrow, my mother will be wishing I’d never been born!’

Chapter 8
    As I had walked defiantly back through the bar, my