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Café
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    And to read about what happened to Angie and Selina when they missed their ship, check out
Here Come the Boys
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Afternoon Tea at the Sunflower Café
Prologue
    The awning that hangs over the window is a tired yellow and white stripe and much of the paint has flaked off the sign above the door announcing that this is The Sunflower
Café. On a quiet lane in the village of Pogley Top, it barely registers as a place of interest. But should your eye venture past the unspectacular façade and you push open the door
and walk in, you would find yellow walls as cheerful as sunshine, pretty sky-blue curtains dotted with sunflowers and a long window affording the village’s prettiest view of the adjacent
stream. You would find a warmth as if the café has a spirit that welcomes you and is happiest when filled with laughter and chatter. Of the women who visit here to partake of the
owner’s delicious and generous afternoon teas, many of them are like the café – you would never guess what beauty and strength sit beneath the ordinary outside.
    Hung up are many pictures of sunflowers but one, near the door, in particular catches the eye. Underneath the smiling giant petalled head is written a poem:
    Be like the sunflower:
    Brave, bright
    bold, cheery.
    Be golden and shine,
    Keep your roots strong,
    Your head held high,
    Your face to the sun,
    And the shadows will fall behind you.
    This is the story of three women who never realised they had the capacity to be the tallest, boldest, brightest flowers in the field.

Chapter 1
    When Jimmy Diamond told Della on Thursday morning that she would have to cancel her day off on Friday, he could not have known what wheels he had started in motion.
    When Della protested and said that she’d had it booked for weeks; it was her old boss’s retirement party, Jimmy still insisted that she couldn’t take it.
    He said no.
    In the fifteen years she had worked for him, he had never said no before. He might have man-grumbled a bit under his breath when she asked for a favour, but he knew what side his bread was
buttered where Della was concerned. He would never have found anyone else who worked over and above the call of duty as she did, watching his back, doing his dirty work, covering his tracks more
than Della did and if she had to take a rare afternoon off for a dental appointment or if there was a panic on with her elderly mother, it had never been a problem before.
    Had he said yes, this story would never have been told and life would have trundled on in much the same way as it had for years. One woman would have continued to exist unhappily on the begging
end of a non-relationship and one woman would have eaten the equivalent weight of a small emergent country in truffles. But Jimmy Diamond had said no.
    The office junior Ivanka had turned up to work that Thursday morning acting limp and tearful with a sickness and diarrhoea bug, obviously unfit to work, so Della had sent her back home again.
Ivanka had protested a little before relenting and saying that she would be in after the weekend. Then Jimmy breezed in and announced that he was off that afternoon to schmooze on a golf course and
wouldn’t be back until Tuesday. When Della reminded him that she had booked Friday off, Jimmy had thrown up his hands and said that someone was needed in the office and as he couldn’t
be there and she had sent Ivanka home, who did that leave? Nope, there was nothing for it: as office manageress, it was Della’s duty to be there, especially in such a busy period. Once upon a
time, cleaners had been ten a penny, now demand outstripped supply and they were like gold dust. Della’s attendance was needed more in manning the phones than it was in Whitby, eating vol au
vents and drinking warm white wine out of a plastic tumbler at the party of a bloke who probably wouldn’t even remember who she was, said Jimmy firmly.
    ‘Of course he’ll remember who I am,’ said Della, her mouth a defiant