Chapters (50)
- Cover
- About the Book
- Dedication
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Thirty-nine
- Acknowledgements
- About the Author
- Also by Sandie Docker
- Book Club Questions
- Welcome to the Kookaburra Creek Café
- Prologue
- One
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She stood in her kitchen, her heart beating fast, not sure where to start. It was too late to make more bread. Betty would be upset, no doubt. So would Claudine. They loved her homemade loaves. But they’d forgive her, just like they had that time a town-wide blackout had turned the oven off in the small hours of the morning. She’d make up some excuse or other. Joey would be able to bring over a few loaves from the bakery if she texted him now, and he’d be popping by for his coffee in about twenty minutes anyway.
Coffee! She hadn’t put her coffee on. Nothing could be achieved before that ritual was taken care of. The drip of the Colombian blend falling into her favourite yellow mug was just the tonic she needed. She switched on the coffee machine to heat up and freshly ground the beans. She’d make enough for two.
She took down the wooden chairs, each a different colour – blue, pink, red, orange, purple, green – from the round white tables they perched on overnight. She rearranged them in new combinations, as she did each morning. Except Joey’s chair. He liked the aqua and he liked it beside the east-facing window. He was her best customer, after all, even if his motives weren’t altogether benign, so she kept his favourite spot for him, just the way he liked it.
As her coffee cooled she wiped down the tables and set them with the salt and pepper shakers collected from around the world: Babushka dolls, English phone booths, an Eiffel Tower set. Every time someone from town travelled overseas, they brought shakers back from their trip as a gift for Alice. Joey had started the tradition with the Leaning Tower of Pisa set and Betty had continued it with the two camels from Dubai. One day, on the table in the middle of the café, Alice would place a set she brought back herself.
She hoped the young thief was all right, that she hadn’t been too frightened. Alice knew a little something about being discovered where you shouldn’t be. She could never forget those early days when scared, alone and afraid, she’d stumbled upon the neglected café in the tiny town of Kookaburra Creek nestled in the hills in the middle of nowhere and somewhere.
As always, the routine of setting up the café soothed Alice completely, and she slowly sipped her coffee in front of good old Sylvia while waiting for inspiration to strike.