A Season for Second Chances
Jenny Bayliss
Chapter 1
Annie was almost home when she realized she’d left her phone at the restaurant. The September evening air was nipping at her jacket collar, letting her know that summer was on the wane. The gentle rhythm of her rubber-soled boots on the pavement was as soothing as the tick of the old carriage clock that used to sit on her parents’ mantelpiece.
The high street was quiet. The pubs had long since expelled their patrons, and the lights in the flats above the shops were all but extinguished. Even a town as busy as Leaming on the Lye had to sleep sometime. Annie wandered slowly back the way she had come. She was completely alone aside from the flash of a bushy red tail as a fox disappeared down an alleyway, no doubt hoping to find a loose bin bag or discarded kebab.
Annie liked this time of day. After the heat and rush of the kitchen during service and then the laborious cleardown, when the last customers departed, full bellied and ruddy cheeked from the house wine, came the quiet. The front-of-house staff left first, carpets hoovered and tables laid ready for lunch service the next day, leaving just the kitchen staff, tired yet strangely elated at having got through another crazy night. When the last pan was dried and the floor mopped, Annie would let them go, listening as their animated conversations drifted out of the courtyard and into the sleeping streets beyond. Since the twins had left home, her chefs had become like her surrogate children. And then she was alone. The calm after another hard-won day washed over her. She was too tired to dwell, which was just the way she liked it.
Up ahead, toward the mall, a man in a leather jacket staggered under the weight of his companion, who leaned listlessly against him, drunkenly singing “Hit me baby one more time.” Annie walked on and soon she was standing back outside the Pomegranate Seed, the restaurant she and her husband, Max—Leaming on the Lye’s answer to Don Juan—had run for the last fifteen years.
Annie unhooked the latch on a tall gate to the side of the building. A steep path led down toward a small courtyard and kitchen garden, with raised beds and cold frames to the right, and to the left, a crooked flight of stone steps down to the kitchen door.
The security light was on the blink again so the graveled passage was in almost complete darkness, save for the dim phosphorescence of the harvest moon. But it didn’t trouble Annie; she knew every dip in the path, every leaning nuance of the ancient steps—this was her domain.
She fumbled for her keys, then let herself in. The kitchen hummed with electrical appliances, the green lights atop the industrial fridges and freezers punctuating the blackness of the still-warm kitchen. Annie located her phone quickly on the vast stainless-steel worktop by way of the red message light. The cold light from the screen spilled out into the sleeping kitchen.
The message was from Max: Sorry love, going to be late. Jude’s fallen out with Petra again, so I’m going to sink a few pints with him. xx. M
Annie rolled her eyes. Petra seemed to throw Jude out of their flat above the pub on an almost weekly basis. She shoved the phone into her pocket and was about to leave when she heard a noise coming from the restaurant. She froze. Shit! She cocked her head in the direction of the restaurant and strained to listen.
She couldn’t make out voices, but somebody was definitely moving about in there. She opened her phone to see what time Max had sent his message—with luck she could catch him somewhere between sober and useless. As Annie’s finger hovered over Max’s name, the last bar of her phone battery blipped out and snapped her back into darkness.
“Bugger, bugger, bollocks!” Annie hissed. The dull thud of a glass dropping onto the rush matting of the restaurant floor thrilled her to attention. Her heart thrummed, eyes wide against the dark, as her breath came hard and fast. And then she did the thing that always made her shout at the actresses in horror movies: She crept toward the noise.
She planned to sneak behind the bar and use the restaurant phone to call the police. The sticking noise her rubber soles made against the vinyl flooring sounded like Velcro strips being ripped apart. Annie pulled herself up onto her tiptoes and teetered on.
As the dim outline of the doorway to the lounge area came into view, Annie got down on all fours and crawled the last few feet.
The lounge area consisted of two long velvet banquettes and low tables—also known as tables eight and nine to the staff—where diners could enjoy drinks and canapés before being escorted to their tables in the restaurant beyond. Annie was squeezed between the open dishwasher and two metal barrels with plastic pipes that led up to the drink pumps. At this level, there was a pervading smell of stale beer and drain.