‘I’ve heard rumours about it. Not much happens in Fethering you don’t hear rumours about.’
Her voice had a nasal twang. She was short. Her purple trousers and tight black woollen top seemed to restrain her body, almost corset it. A gold motif round the neck of the top was echoed by the gold leather of her sandals. Her hair was cut short, black with a purplish sheen.
‘And what do you think about it?’
Josie shrugged. ‘What does it matter what I think about it?’
‘Well, you are the current owner of the place.’
‘Yes, but as soon as I get the price I want for it, I’ll be out of here.’
‘And you don’t care about its future?’
‘Why should I?’
‘Well, you’ve invested so much time and effort into it.’
‘It’s my business. What is a business except for something you invest time and effort into? Then when you decide to leave, you want to cash in.’
‘Are you telling me you don’t care whether it continues to operate as a café or not?’
‘There’s a logic for it to continue operating as a café. Maybe I can get a better price if I sell it as a going concern. If someone offers me more, I don’t care what they want to do with the place.’
Jude dared to joke, ‘There’s a local rumour it’s going to be sold and reopen as a sex shop. Would you approve of that?’
Her question only prompted another shrug. ‘Be no skin off my nose.’
‘But don’t you feel any responsibility for your regular customers?’
‘Why should I? Do they feel any responsibility for me?’
‘Not responsibility perhaps, but they feel a loyalty to you.’
‘Do they? Do you think they would notice if suddenly one day they don’t see me in the café, they see another owner? It wouldn’t make a single one of them blow the froth off their cappuccino.’
‘You don’t make it sound as if you’ve enjoyed your time running Polly’s Cake Shop?’
‘It’s a business. It’s my work. Why should I enjoy my work? The vast majority of people in this country don’t enjoy theirs.’
‘No, but surely in the hospitality business you have to maintain at least a front of being welcoming?’
‘And that’s exactly what I have maintained – a front. Listen, Jude, I bought this business at the end of a very sticky divorce, when my bastard ex-husband and his bastard lawyer screwed me out of a lot of the money I should have got by way of settlement.’
‘Do you mind if I ask the reason for the divorce? Did your husband find someone else?’
‘No, he didn’t have the balls to do something like that. In a way, I would have preferred it if he had. No, the divorce was on the grounds of his “unreasonable behaviour”.’
‘That could cover a great variety of things.’
‘It certainly could. And if you think I’m about to itemize them, you’ve got another think coming. So, given the circumstances that made me end up here, are you telling me I should be sentimental about Polly’s Cake Shop? It’s never been more than a means to an end. That end is funding my retirement. I’m shortly to retire and my only concern is to get as much money for the place as I can.’
‘Are you planning to move away from Fethering?’
‘You bet your life I am. The moment I see this village for the last time cannot come soon enough.’
‘Right.’ A lot of the supplementary questions that Jude had been planning now seemed to be irrelevant. Having heard Josie’s views on Fethering, it was clearly not the moment to ask whether she felt a sense of community about the place. (She had a feeling that Josie’s views on ‘community’ would make Carole’s sound positively benign.) Nor was it time to enquire whether, as suggested by Flora Claire, she might consider selling Polly’s Cake Shop at a lower price ‘for the sake of Fethering’. The important part of the interview with Josie Achter could be reckoned to have come to an end.
And she didn’t seem the kind of woman who’d appreciate small talk. Jude was preparing the right kind of farewell remarks when footsteps were heard hurrying up from the café and the door opened to admit a short slender girl with wiry dark brown hair, dressed in jeans and T-shirt but carrying a black waitress’s uniform. Jude thought there was a pretty strong chance that she was Josie’s daughter Rosalie.
‘Morning,’ said the girl on the way through the sitting room to the rest of the flat.
Josie did not even acknowledge the greeting, and certainly didn’t make any introductions. She just called out, ‘Ros, I’ve asked you not to change up here. You don’t live here any more. You can change down in the Ladies like the rest of the staff.’
There was no response from the bedroom.
‘Your daughter?’ asked Jude just for confirmation.
‘Yes.’ No further comment or elaboration.
‘I heard a rumour that at one stage there was a thought of her taking over the business.’
‘As I said, there are a lot of rumours in Fethering. Doesn’t necessarily mean any of them are true.’
At this point Rosalie, now in waitress kit, came hurrying back through the sitting room. She wasn’t carrying her street clothes, so presumably would be returning to the flat to change back at the end of her shift. But as she made her way to the door leading down to the café, neither she nor Josie said anything.
Jude, whose work had often involved her in the complexities of mother-and-daughter relationships, knew that there could be many explanations – including her own presence – for their silence.
But she thought it was worth continuing the previous conversation. ‘I’d heard that Rosalie did a Hospitality and Catering course in Brighton.’
‘So?’
‘Some people thought that was with a view to her taking over the business.’
‘Well, some people, not for the first time, were wrong.’
Jude thought she must make one more attempt to fulfil her brief from the SPCS Action Committee. ‘From what you said earlier, Josie, you don’t seem to have much sentimental attachment to Fethering …?’
‘I’m glad I made my attitude clear.’
‘Is there any particular reason for your disillusionment?’
‘Other than the fact that the place is full of stuck-up bitches?’
‘Yes, I admit the village does have its fair share. But, putting that on one side—’
‘Fairly hard to put on one side, given that it’s the predominant feature of the place.’
‘Yes, but on the other hand—’
‘Jude, I have run Polly’s Cake Shop and I have lived in this flat for over ten years. I have smiled winsomely at the stuck-up bitches of Fethering as I have served them endless pots of tea and cinnamon toast and éclairs. And have any of them ever shown any interest in becoming friends with me? That was in fact a rhetorical question. Not one. In all the time I’ve been here, I have not been invited to a single person’s house. So why should I feel any sentimental attachment to this breeding ground of snobbery?’
‘And you think that’s the reason why you’ve been kind of … socially excluded? Because the stuck-up bitches regard someone who runs a café as their inferior? Like you’re “trade”? Well, I know this village is old-fashioned, but I can assure you that there are a lot of people in Fethering who don’t—’
‘It’s not to do with my being “trade”. Or at least, it’s only partly that. No, the reason why I’m, as you put it, “socially excluded” is pure, old-fashioned anti-Semitism.’
Jude was knocked sideways by that; the last thing she’d expected to hear. It hadn’t occurred to her that Josie Achter was Jewish.
‘Oh, it’s very subtle in a place like this,’ the café owner went on. ‘No overt discrimination, no shattered windows, no spray-painting on the walls; just a genteel assumption that just being a Gentile puts you in a superior position to anyone Jewish.’