Christmas At The Cupcake Cafe (16 page)

‘You have to encourage young people,’ said Issy, who felt strongly about this after a year of watching increasingly dejected teenagers turn up looking for work with barely literate CVs. None of these kids had a job or any experience and she wished she could do more for them; but the CVs were all full of grandiose claims about empowerment and being an envelope-pushing people person and horrible sub-
Apprentice
claims that, when she looked at the slouching, embarrassed adolescent in front of her, didn’t seem to be helping anyone. Austin called her Jamie Oliver, but he agreed. Just not when it came to Darny.

‘It’ll make
things worse,’ he said. ‘Darny doesn’t need an excuse to open his mouth.’

‘No, he needs to know when it’s appropriate,’ said Issy. ‘That’s why we need to be there for him.’

But then, of course, Austin had got called away to the land of women with pin-thin legs and spiky heels and amazing luxury and being cosseted all day long, and it was she who had to pull on as many layers of clothing as she could manage after a long day at the café and try to catch out Darny as he insisted that they’d been instructed to be all in black as Miss Fleur had convinced them that that would make it more dramatically powerful. Issy had sighed and finally agreed.

It had been bracingly cold outside, and they’d passed other families rushing towards the main school building on Carnforth Road. Words of merry excitement filled the air, and Issy couldn’t help but feel a momentary pang; everyone was excited about being with their families at Christmas time, and she hadn’t even heard from her bloody mother, while Austin was miles away and Darny was already, before they’d even got to the school gates, disappearing into a vast sea of adolescents, most of whom were impossible to tell apart. Issy supposed it was a true sign of growing older when you couldn’t really tell what young people looked like; individually they just looked young.

Oh, she missed her Gramps
so much. He was good at young people. He liked them, encouraged them. He’d hired lots of apprentices in the bakery, some of them from awful backgrounds, and the vast majority had thrived and done well and gone on to other jobs and lives elsewhere, and for so long they’d received hundreds of Christmas cards every year from happy customers and family friends and … Issy didn’t even open email Christmas cards. She just couldn’t see the point these days.

Of course everyone else knew where to go, so she played with her phone to make it look like she was very busy and engaged, and followed the general stream towards the gym auditorium. Someone had obviously tried to make it look festive – there were paper streamers hanging from the ceilings – but it couldn’t disguise the fact that this was an inner-city school trying its best, not a posh luxury private school with theatrical societies and fully equipped sound-mixing desks.

Issy paid a pound for a plastic cup of scorching, slightly bitter mulled wine to give herself something to do, and reminded herself to stay out of the line of sight of any of Darny’s teachers; that was strictly Austin’s department. One of the reasons, she figured, that she and Darny stayed on reasonably friendly terms was that she hadn’t once interfered in his schooling or how he was getting on, even when her fingers itched to do so, and she knew it was the right thing. He had frequent letters home and detentions, and Austin would sigh and beg him to behave, and Darny would put forward very rational arguments as to why
he shouldn’t have to, and it would go back and forth until everyone was exhausted and frayed and Issy would retire to the kitchen and whip up some Peacekeeper cookies and hope that one or other of them would grow out of it.

She didn’t know a soul at the school. She texted Austin quickly. He was just leaving another meeting and texted back, ‘I told you not to go’, which was of course not helpful and made Issy wonder what the emoticon was for mild frustration. She sipped her mulled wine – the second sip was slightly better than the first, on balance – and wondered who to text next. This was danger hour for Helena, who would be trying to settle Chadani into bed, a process that could take several hours. Then her other friends … but it had been so long, and they all (she tried not to count, but they mostly did) had children now, and had moved away, or were travelling all the time, or didn’t really know what to talk to her about once they’d got past cakes. She really needed someone to whom she could say, ‘Isn’t this just total hell?’

‘OH MY LORD, isn’t this just TOTAL hell?’ came a strident voice. She glanced up. To her utter surprise, Caroline, in a bright red fitted dress that was almost totally inappropriate for a school concert, but which also still looked slightly amazing, was marching through the serried ranks of other parents, who parted to let her through.

‘Darling, thank GOD there’s
someone I know here. Everyone else looks COMPLETELY feral.’

Issy winced and tried to make a ‘she doesn’t really mean it’ face to the rest of the world.

‘Sssh,’ she said. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’

‘Oh GOD, well, if that bastard goes through with what he’s threatening, I’m going to have to send Hermia to this hellhole one day and have her mugged for her watch and shoes before she’s even made it through the metal detector.’

‘Caroline, can you keep your voice down?’

Caroline looked mutinous. ‘I was hoping they’d ban me, then the Bastard would have to keep them at their private school like any rational human being. I don’t understand how he can be so evil.’

‘I think it’s rather a good school,’ said Issy. ‘It’s integrated, progressive—’

‘I don’t want progressive,’ hissed Caroline. ‘I want them hit on the hand with a ruler three times a day and doing cold runs in their underpants. Build a bit of bloody backbone, that’s what this country needs.’

‘But doesn’t that turn out bastards like your ex?’ said Issy. The mulled wine must be stronger than she’d thought.

‘Well, quite,’ said Caroline. ‘He shafted me before I had the chance to shaft him. If it wasn’t happening to me, I’d probably be quite impressed.’

A slightly fusty-looking older man was standing on the platform, speaking into a
microphone that bent feedback in and out. ‘Can everyone sit down, please?’ he was saying, his tone of voice indicating that he fully expected to repeat that exact sentence several times before anyone actually listened to him. The sole spotlight reflected off his bald head as he bent over to look at his notes.

‘Christ,’ said Caroline. ‘Is there anywhere we can get a drink round here?’

‘I think he’s asking us to sit down,’ said Issy.

‘Well, I can see what you were like at school,’ said Caroline.

‘Yeah, likewise,’ said Issy, steering her gently up the aisle and passing over her mulled wine. Caroline tasted it and made a face. Everyone had started shuffling in and Issy couldn’t see a seat anywhere. All eyes were on Caroline in her bright tight dress. Issy was burning up.

Finally they landed right at the front.

‘Oh God,’ said Caroline loudly. ‘I think I’ve seen enough, actually.’ She stared meaningfully at the teacher on stage.

‘I will take you out,’ said Issy warningly.

‘What?’ said Caroline. ‘We’re paying for this school, I think we deserve to see how it stacks up.’

‘Actually it’s a publicly funded school so everyone’s paying for it,’ said Issy. ‘It can kind of do what it likes.’

Caroline snorted again. ‘Ha, as if Richard pays tax. Right, if he says “Winterval”, I’m out of here.’

‘I think Winterval is an urban myth,’ said Issy.

‘Like
Kwanzaa?’

‘No, I think Kwanzaa is a real holiday.’

‘Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the Carnforth Road School Christmas celebration – happy Christmas, Hanukkah, Winterval or Kwanzaa, whichever you would like.’

Issy cringed as Caroline gave her a pointed look.

‘We have, this year, with the help of our wonderful drama mistress Miss Fleur, put together something of an alternative event for you …
The Tale of the Spaceman
.’

There was a flourish of excited applause, as the overhead speakers came on and started with an enormous burst of synth chords. The curtain went up to reveal a perfectly black stage with nothing visible on it except, hanging from the top of it, a torch.

‘Hang on,’ said Issy. ‘Is that “A Spaceman Came Travelling”?’ She glanced at Caroline. ‘OK, it is. You win. Let’s go.’

‘I LOVE this song,’ said Caroline, suddenly looking fascinated.

In fact, despite the inevitable silliness – some very painfully sincerely delivered homilies on being an alien sent to earth to discover the terrible fate that it had been left to; a long piece on polar bears dancing that was obviously meant to be very moving but in fact left most of the audience in uncontrollable fits of mirth; a line of girls dressed as sexy penguins which
was obviously meant to be funny but was in fact profoundly uncomfortable as row after row of fathers pretended they weren’t secretly figuring out how old they were; and a truly horrible orchestral interlude that wasn’t improved by being right next to the tuba player – on the whole there was a definite effort being made, which made Issy feel proud and Caroline fiddle with her telephone.

Then it was Darny’s turn. One of the smallest in the lowest year in the school, he stepped forward boldly. Issy was used to thinking of him as a large presence in their lives, as denoted by his enormous smelly trainers and pots of cheap hair gel strewn across their only bathroom, but now he seemed tiny, a small boy amidst the hulking teens and young adults.

Issy, however, had finally relaxed. Something with a strong environmental message was surely well within Darny’s remit for being on message. She quickly pulled out her phone and took an illegal photo for Austin. They were all supposed to buy the official, non-paedophile photo album afterwards, but she wasn’t sure she could wait that long. And he would have been proud, despite himself, that Darny had such a large speaking role.

Darny walked confidently towards the podium with the microphone. Issy realised she was nervous for him. She couldn’t bear speaking in public; even welcoming people into the café was hard enough some days. It didn’t seem to bother Darny at all, though. Come on, she found herself thinking. A nice
little speech about saving the planet for tomorrow and they’d be home free and ready for another glass of terrible mulled wine. Caroline might even take her for a real drink.

Darny lifted up his speech as he got to the podium.

‘Written on recycled paper,’ he quipped, which got an appreciative laugh from the audience. He paused, then began.

‘I wrote a bunch of crap in this essay – which my teacher really liked by the way, so thanks, Miss Hamm – about how to save the rainforest and protect biodiversity for future generations …’

Issy felt herself sit bolt upright all of a sudden.

‘Well, you know it’s crap and I know it’s crap. Everyone in China wants a fridge, and everyone in India wants an air-conditioning unit, and to deny people that kind of thing when they’re working incredibly hard under conditions we can’t even imagine is frankly totally smashed up. So why do we waste our time sorting out our sodding milk cartons and tea leaves? It’s not going to make one tiny blind bit of difference to the polar bears, you know that already. I guess we’re just filling in time here at school and talking about stuff like this for OFSTED, but really we all know it’s crap.’

Issy let out a low groan and her chin sank on to her chest.

‘So instead of fannying about with recycling water bottles – which is a joke anyway; if they were serious about this, you
wouldn’t even be able to buy water in bottles because it’s arse – we might as well—’

Darny’s great ideas for a solution to all the problems of the world were cut off suddenly in their prime by a howling wail of feedback as Miss Hamm launched herself up on stage and grabbed the microphone out of his hands with a look on her face that indicated she regretted the passing of corporal punishment in schools to the very depths of her being.

‘DARNELL TYLER, REMOVE YOURSELF FROM THE STAGE THIS INSTANT.’

She turned to face the crowd. Darny still stood there, looking totally unbowed.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, I must apologise for the unprompted showing-off of one of our younger pupils … Is the guardian of Darnell Tyler in tonight?’

With hindsight, there couldn’t have been a better time for Austin to reply to the photo Issy had sent him with the words ‘Want to leave the country?’