‘Don’t mind him. We used to run the place together but he just helps me out, cleaning and such, now. Though I don’t know how much longer he can keep that up for, either.’

I’m uncomfortable that she’s saying all this in front of him but I suppose I don’t have a right to be. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Eh. What can you do? Anyway. You won’t be needing to come back here much, ’cept for the service counter, handing off tickets.’

She introduces me to Charlie, the other line cook, a short, friendly man, maybe in his forties, who’s missing his left front tooth.

‘So it’s just me out front?’

‘That all right?’

I blink. ‘Definitely.’

‘Small operation.’

Mary Anne gives me some basic training – waiting tables and hosting and how to write down the orders and how to use the register. Most of which she assumes I already know how to do, which I don’t, necessarily, but it’s not proving especially difficult. Mary Anne says I have a face for waitressing, which I guess is a compliment. I’m allowed to keep my tips and read when it’s slow – no phones, though.

I shadow her in the morning, seeming vaguely bored the whole time, and I learn something useful, if intensely irritating – I can tell who is a local by how they react. One of the first groups is a mom, a dad and two little girls – suspected tourists by the bathing-suit straps that poke from under their T-shirts. They are perfectly pleasant and agreeable and Mary Anne speaks to them formally but they don’t seem to mind.

When the locals sit down, they are perfectly happy to see Mary Anne, who calls them by name, who call her by name – but as soon as they catch sight of me, they turn in on themselves, quieten down, comment something about ‘that time of the year’. My fanciful hope of becoming one with the locals is fizzling out by the second seeing how much disdain they have for outsiders. Not that I imagined they’d welcome me with open arms, but I’d hoped for better than active discomfort towards my existence.

Five groups of guests bring us nearly to noon and I decide this isn’t going to be a particularly difficult job.