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need.”

    Agathe bristled. “I’d still like one. Coffee and a Danish pastry, please.”

    “Just the coffee.”

    “Look, who’s the customer here? The customer is always right.”

    “Not when she’s wrong,” said Mamma.

    “Do you talk to all your customers like this?”

    At the other end of the counter, Cesare was starting to move. He may even have cleared his throat but Mamma held up a hand and he stopped.

    “The customers I talk to like this are the customers that need talked to like this. You don’t need the Danish. Danish will make you old. Don’t let him make you old. You’re not old.”

    Agathe slumped on her stool. “Just coffee,” she said.

    Getting the coffee took some time. Mamma Cesare had to shuffle back to the coffee organ and pour milk into a tin jug and grind her special mix of blue-black beans and coax steamy whistles from the pipes and flip levers and push buttons and build a crescendo of cream into a swelling finale that frothed in the cup.

    She carried it back to Agathe and, reaching up, placed it carefully on the counter.

    “Coffee,” she said. “No Danish.” Then Mamma Cesare gently turned the saucer. There, at one side, there was a mouth-sized block of chocolate—two layers, white on the bottom and bitter-dark on top, stamped with the image of a tiny coffee cup. “No Danish.”

    “How did you know?” Agathe asked.

    “Sometimes I know. Sometimes I see things. Sometimes people tell me things.”

    Agathe was embarrassed. “What people? Who knows? Who else knows my business?”

    Mamma Cesare gave her hand a reassuring pat. “Not these people. Just people I know. They come here, they talk to me sometimes. Drink your coffee. Let’s talk.”

    Agathe took a sip of coffee and looked deep into her cup. “I don’t know what to talk about,” she said.

    “How about him?” Mamma Cesare nodded towards the door where a tall man stood at a high table built round an ornate iron pillar. “That’s Mayor Tibo Krovic.”

    “I know,” said Agathe. “I work for him. Didn’t the voices tell you that?”

    Mamma Cesare harrumphed a little but pretended not to notice. “Every morning, Good Mayor Krovic, he comes in here and stands at that same table. Every morning, he orders a strong Viennese coffee with plenty of figs, drinks it, sucks one mint out of the fresh bag he brings every day and leaves the rest of the bag on the table. Every morning. Always the same, regular as the Town Hall clock. And he does this why? He does this because he is absent-minded and forgetful? No! Not Good Mayor Tibo Krovic. A man can run a town like Dot who is absent-minded and forgetful? No. He does this because he knows I like mints and, if he came in here every day and gave me a bagful, I would have to turn them away. Politely, of course, but it would still very likely cause offence and I would lose a good customer and he would lose a place to drink good coffee. Clever Good Mayor Krovic.”

    “He’s a very nice man,” said Agathe. “I like working for him.”

    “A nice man—pah! Eat some chocolate.”

    Agathe lifted the block between two dainty fingers. She felt it melt a bit under the heat of her skin and she wanted to eat it all in one lump but, instead, she bit it carefully in two and put the other half back in the saucer. A few tiny crumbs stuck to her lipstick. She flicked them away with the tip of a kitten tongue. Men looked. It took ages.

    “All I’m telling you,” said Mamma Cesare, “is that you need a man. I know, I know—you look at me and you think I don’t know. I know. This one,” she gestured back along the counter at Cesare standing like a black statue, “where do you think he came from? And all I’m telling you is, when you need a man, make sure it’s a good one. Anybody can get the bad ones. The bad ones there are a lot of. The good ones are harder.”

    Agathe almost laughed. “Mayor Krovic is my boss. He’s not interested in me—and I’m not interested