Poppy Blake - The Windmill Café

Rosie turned her back and busied herself with filling a bucket with scalding hot water and adding her best friend – a generous slug of disinfectant. Her chest felt as though it was going to burst as she tried to keep a lid on her churning emotions. Why, oh why, had she agreed to give Suki and her messy friends a cookery lesson?

‘Wow, these scones look amazing! Is it okay if we sample our masterpieces, Rosie?’

‘Of course. There’s butter in the fridge for the scones.’

The kitchen filled with the most delicious fragrance of warm caramel as the cookies were removed from the oven and transferred to a wire rack to cool. Rosie made a cafetière of coffee and everyone moved to the terrace to indulge in the products of their labour, laughing and chatting about their life in Ibiza and how different things would be when Suki started touring to promote her album. Rosie relaxed, relieved that the tutorial was over and she had her precious kitchen back under her control.

‘Ah, so this is where you’ve all disappeared to?’ said Felix, snatching up a cookie and taking a bite.

‘I see you’re happy to eat at the Windmill Café, then?’ observed Suki, watching Felix’s expression closely.

Clearly Felix hadn’t thought his actions through properly because he stopped in his tracks, his mouth full of warm cookie, his eyes widened with surprise. Rosie suspected that he was in the process of considering the etiquette of spitting out the offending biscuit and reluctantly thinking better of it. He swallowed and paused as everyone waited for his verdict. It was apparent from the look on Felix’s face that he was expecting to keel over in agony.

‘Well?’ demanded Jess.

‘Before you answer my sister’s question, you might like to know that I made these cookies with my own fair hands!’ cried Suki.

‘They’re very… erm, well, nice.’

‘Nice? Is that the best you can do? I’ve spent the last two hours slaving in a hot kitchen and all you can say is “they’re nice”?’

‘Delicious, amazing, magnificent! What do you want me to say, Suke?’

‘As my boyfriend I expect you to show an interest in what I’m doing. It wouldn’t have killed you to have joined us this morning. I booked this break so we could spend time together but so far you’ve chosen to spend all your time either drinking with your friends or asleep.’

‘I wasn’t asleep. I was busy on the phone making enquiries!’

‘Enquiries? What sort of enquiries?’

‘I’ve managed to speak to the environmental health guys responsible for this area and they’ve promised to come over as soon as the lab tells us what kind of poison they found in your spray.’

‘You’ve done what?’ cried Suki, shooting an apologetic glance at Rosie and Mia. ‘Felix, you really are a complete moron. The reason we’ve just spent the whole morning baking is so that we have a selection of baked goods to sell to the café’s visitors. I was going to donate the profits to a local kid’s drama club. How can I do that when you’ve arranged for a bunch of inspectors to come swarming all over the place? I want you to cancel them right away.’

Felix held Suki’s eyes for a moment, clearly wanting to argue back, but realizing he had an audience who were likely to maul him to pieces if he tried, he spun on his hand-made Italian leather loafers and left the café.

‘Felix really is an absolute… oh, God, who’s this ringing?’

Suki scrambled around in her Birkin for her phone, checking the caller ID before swiping her finger across the screen and walking out onto the terrace to take her call in private.

‘Hello, Dr Bairstow? Yes, thanks for calling. So, what did the lab say?’

Rosie noticed that Suki’s face was devoid of its usual colour again, and that she was fiddling with her hair like her sister Jess did, wrapping a coil around her thumb and index finger in agitation. It was obvious that what Dr Bairstow was telling Suki wasn’t good news and her stomach lurched like a penny down a well as she wondered what new horror he had delivered. She didn’t have to wait too long for the hammer to fall.

‘Oh my God, Oh my God! Oh my God!’

Suki dropped down on one of the café’s overstuffed sofas and burst into tears.

‘What’s happened? Who was that on the phone?’ asked Jess as she rushed over to curl her arm around her sister’s shoulders.

‘It was Dr Bairstow. The lab has identified the “foreign substance” that was found in my throat spray. It was something called aconitine. Apparently, I’ve been lucky ! In larger doses it can affect the cardiovascular system and cause multiple organ failure but because I only ingested a small amount and I was sick almost straight away, there were no long-lasting effects. Oh my God, what if…’

Rosie stared mutely at Suki, her jaw loose, her brain sending out synapses like fireworks as she tried to comprehend what Dr Bairstow’s findings meant. What on earth was aconitine and how had it got into Suki’s throat spray? Far from matters at the Windmill Café improving, they were getting worse, much worse, and Suki was clearly scared at hearing of this turn of events.

‘What the hell is aconitine?’ demanded Felix, reappearing at the French doors along with a cloud of cigarette smoke, and taking a seat on the other side of Suki. He reached into his pocket and handed her a bunch of tissues to dry her tears, the tremble in his hands belying his concern.

‘Dr Bairstow hadn’t heard of it either, so he did some digging on the internet. He found this case a couple of years ago – a gardener found dead in his garden and doctors couldn’t find out why. It was eventually discovered to be aconitine poisoning from a plant called devil’s helmet or monkshood – apparently one of the deadliest flowers in the plant kingdom. He’s promised to email me the case and photographs of the plant, although I’m not sure I want him to.’

‘But, Suki, how could you have come into contact with monkshood?’ asked Rosie, her brain starting to clear as she wrestled with the implications of this new turn of events.

‘I have no idea, but Dr Bairstow’s had to inform the authorities and they’re sending over a team of inspectors to investigate sometime tomorrow. Rosie, I’m sorry, but you’ll have to close the café until they’ve given the place the all-clear and we’ve been asked to stay until it’s over in case they want to ask us any questions.’

‘Gosh, Suki, it should be me apologizing to you. This is the last thing you deserve when all you wanted was a relaxing break. I’ll do whatever the authorities want; close the café, the holiday site, anything. I want to get to the bottom of this as much as anyone.’

‘But if it was in Suki’s throat spray, it’s unlikely anyone else came into contact with that, don’t you think?’ said Mia, speaking for the first time since Suki’s phone call.

Suki’s eyes widened as if realizing something for the first time. Her tears returned with a vengeance and her voice rose up an octave to squeak level.

‘Oh my God, you’re right! How did the aconitine poison get in my throat spray bottle? Do you think someone put it there? Do you think someone wanted to hurt me… to kill me?’ Suki crumbled into huge wracking sobs and she rocked backwards and forwards in Jess and Felix’s arms as Nadia looked on in mute desperation and horror.

A roll of nausea swept through Rosie as she tried to comprehend what Suki had just said. If Suki’s suspicions turned out to be right, who could have done such a terrible thing? And more to the point, why? Had they wanted to damage Suki’s voice so she couldn’t sing for them that evening or was it something darker altogether? And why use such an unusual method? If Suki had been poisoned with bleach, then that would have been a different story, but whatever Felix thought of her café, she was one hundred percent certain that there was no monkshood stored in her kitchen cupboards!