‘If you don’t mind me asking,’ he ventured, ‘are you going to stay long?’

This is all I need, Dulcie thought resignedly. A nosy, chatty health-food freak. What’s more, one with a beard.

‘It’s just the car,’ he went on, gesturing apologetically towards the window. ‘You see, I’m afraid it’s blocking my garage.’

Dulcie stared at him in disbelief.

‘It took me ten minutes to squeeze into that space! Why didn’t you come out and tell me in the first place?’

‘I’m sorry ... I was busy in the kitchen. There is a notice .. . anyway it doesn’t matter,’ he hurried to reassure her. ‘I don’t need my car for the next couple of hours. You’re welcome to stay until then.’

Dulcie wondered if anything nice would ever happen to her again, or if she truly was on the downward spiral to hell. Parking restrictions and time limits did her head in. She especially couldn’t cope with them today.

‘It’s okay.’ She resigned herself to queueing up to get into the NCP. ‘I’ll move the car.’

The car, however, had other ideas.

‘I don’t believe this, it’s done it again,’ yelled Dulcie, stalking back into the café and hurling her bag on to the counter. ‘The bloody thing won’t start!’

At table four a group of wholefood enthusiasts glanced up disapprovingly from their nut cutlets and garden-sized salads.

‘Well.’ On the defensive, Dulcie tugged down the hem of her short skirt. ‘Sorry, but it pisses me off.’

‘Rufus!’ a woman’s voice yelled from the kitchen. ‘Two lentil and broccoli bakes.’

Rufus, his beard twitching with amusement at the expression on table four’s faces, said, ‘Hang on a sec,’ to Dulcie, and went to fetch the order.

‘Now,’ he said, when the lentil and broccoli bakes had been dispatched, ‘tell me what’s wrong.’

Dulcie wanted to wail, Bloody everything! Instead, she rummaged in her bag.

‘Look, it’s okay. If I could just borrow your phone, I’ll call a garage. They can tow it away and fix it.’

‘Come on.’ Gently, with a hand in the small of her back, Rufus guided her to the door. ‘Garages cost money. At least let me have a look.’

Dulcie relayed the stalling-at-the-traffic-lights story and Rufus had another go at starting the engine, without luck. ‘When did you last check the oil?’

Dulcie looked at him. Having first removed his apron, he had lifted the bonnet and was now peering underneath. As he wiped his oily hands on a piece of kitchen roll, Rufus returned her gaze.

Slowly he said, ‘Okay, put it another way. Do you check your oil?’

It was all right for him, thought Dulcie. He was wearing a weird hand-knitted grey jersey and brown corduroy trousers. There was grey in his hair. He had a beard, for heaven’s sake...

Without beating about the bush, he was a man.

She glanced down at her sunflower-yellow shirt and whiteskirt. Her legs were brown, her sandals gold and her toenails Pomegranate Pink.

‘Do I look like the kind of person who checks the oil?’ The dipstick was duly hauled out, wiped on kitchen roll and re-dipped.

‘There is no oil in this engine,’ Rufus announced gravely.

For the first time, Dulcie suppressed a smile. The way he said it sounded like No Wheels On My Wagon. She looked suitably ashamed.

‘Oh.’

‘I mean really no oil.’ Rufus shook his head. ‘It’s a miracle the engine hasn’t blown up.’

‘Ah.’

He tut-tutted, then straightened up and smiled.

‘My ex-wife was the same.’

Bored with lessons in car maintenance, Dulcie found herself wondering what his ex-wife looked like. Wholesome, presumably. Like Rufus, only without the beard. She tried to imagine how he would look if he shaved it off.

With a start, Dulcie realised he was still talking about oil.

.. a five-litre can of Castrol GTX Protection Plus. They sell it in the garage down by the river. Bit of a hike back up the hill, but that can’t be helped.’

That was the trouble with these do-it-yourself types: they always wanted you to do it yourself too. Dulcie leaned wearily against the wall.

‘Can’t I just phone the garage, get them to do all that?’

Rufus was looking at her thin arms. In return, Dulcie wondered how old he was – around thirty-five at a guess, though with beards it was always hard to tell. Then she wondered if the grey sweater was older or younger than Rufus.

‘Look, you’ll never carry a five-litre can all that way. I’ll go.’

‘What about the café?’ said Dulcie, startled.

Sounding amazingly unconcerned, Rufus said, ‘You’ll just have to take over until I get back.’

Chapter 37

It was like visiting your granny in hospital then suddenly being hauled into the operating theatre and told to take over while the surgeon went off for his lunch break.

Well, Dulcie conceded, maybe not quite like that, but along those lines. Luckily the café wasn’t crowded so she didn’t have to get into a flap. All the prices were chalked up on the blackboard behind the counter, the till was ancient and straightforward to use, and any questions Dulcie had were answered by Maris, who worked in the kitchen.

‘How long have you and Rufus been together?’ asked Dulcie during a quiet five minutes. She leaned against the freezer and watched Maris, who was fluffy-haired and energetic, chop a mound of onions.

Maris looked amused.

‘We aren’t together. Rufus’s wife left him six months ago.’ She wiped her eyes, streaming from the onion fumes. ‘They used to run this place together, and I worked here part-time. Now it’s just the two of us keeping the place going.’ She finished chopping, and deftly slid the onions into a pan of sizzling oil, adding fondly, ‘Bless him, he works so hard. Trying to get over his wife, that’s what it is. He still misses her like mad.’

‘Why did she leave?’

Dulcie wondered if it had been the beard.

‘Louise? Ran off with the bank manager over the road. You wouldn’t have thought it, to look at her.’ Maris, clearly a gloriously indiscreet gossip, glanced at Dulcie for encouragement.

Avid for details, Dulcie said, ‘What, was she the prim and proper type? Or a sour-faced old prune?’

‘Hairy legs.’ Maris lowered her voice. ‘She never shaved them. Well, you’d have needed a lawn mower.’

‘Didn’t put the bank manager off,’ remarked Dulcie. ‘Or Rufus.’

‘Poor Rufus. He adored her.’ Energetically Maris stirred the sizzling onions, then reached for a Sabatier and a bulb of garlic. ‘He’s a lovely chap.’

‘Seems nice.’ Dulcie nodded. If you liked that kind of thing. ‘Do anything for anyone, Rufus would. Got a heart of gold.’

‘Does he drink?’ said Dulcie.

‘What, you mean is that why Louise left him? N0000!’ Maris looked shocked. ‘Nothing like that.’

Dulcie grinned.

‘I didn’t mean does he get paralytic and beat up his wife. I was just asking, does he drink?’

She was busy clearing tables when Rufus reappeared ten minutes later, out of breath but beaming. He poured the oil into the engine, tried the key in the ignition and gave Dulcie a jubilant thumbs-up as the engine burst into life.

‘Thanks,’ said Dulcie before she drove off. ‘That was really kind.’

‘My pleasure.’ Rufus, still pink-cheeked from climbing the hill, smiled at her over the wound-down driver’s window. ‘And thank you for looking after the café. Take care of this car now,’ he reminded her good-naturedly. ‘Try and check the oil at least once every ten years.’

‘I met someone really nice today,’ Dulcie told Pru over supper that evening.

Pru looked doubtful.

‘You mean Liam-type nice?’

Dulcie imagined Rufus and Liam standing next to each other.

‘The opposite of Liam.’ She smiled, thinking that if Liam was a pin-up, Rufus was a quick-wash-and-brush-up. ‘He’s not a bit good-looking. Just ... kind.’

Pru silently marvelled at this piece of information. He didn’t sound Dulcie’s type at all.

‘Where did you meet him?’

Dulcie helped herself to more cannelloni. She offered the rest to Pru.

‘He mended my car.’

‘You mean he’s a mechanic?’

More and more unlikely, thought Pru. But useful.

‘No, I just broke down and he offered to help. He runs a wholefood café in Mortimer Street.’

Dulcie scraped greedily around the edges of the dish for the best bits and added, ‘He’s got a beard.’

Pru was beginning to suspect a set-up. Was Dulcie serious?

‘Hang on, let me get this straight. You fancy a man who isn’t good-looking. He has a beard and he runs a wholefood café.’ She shook her head. ‘I’m getting a horrible mental picture here of David Bellamy.’

‘Don’t be daft, of course I don’t fancy him.’ Forking up her cannelloni with characteristic speed, Dulcie avoided Pru’s eye. ‘He’s just a nice bloke, that’s all. Kind.’

Pru was by this time struggling to keep a straight face. ‘I see.’

‘I don’t fancy him,’ Dulcie repeated stubbornly. ‘I just like him. And you know what?’

‘What?’

Dulcie had been puzzling over it all afternoon. She had only just worked it out. She gazed across the table at Pru.

‘All the time we were talking, he didn’t look at my boobs or my legs once.’

Remembering that she was supposed to be apologising to Liza, and taking advantage of feeling unusually saintly, Dulcie decided to ring her after supper.

‘Who do you keep trying to phone?’ said Pru twenty minutes later.

Still no reply. Fretfully Dulcie hung up.

‘Liza. But the bloody selfish, ungrateful old bag’s buggered off out.’

Maris was serving a family of six when Dulcie came into the café the next day. Up to her elbows in plates, and therefore unable to wave, she waggled her eyebrows instead and called out cheerfully, ‘Rufus is in the kitchen. Go on through and tell him he owes me fifty pee.’