Christmas At The Cupcake Cafe (31 page)

‘Oh, all right,’ said Issy. ‘I may leave you all to help yourselves.’

‘Yay!’ said the crowd.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Maya, yawning but appearing efficiently at Issy’s elbow with a cup of coffee. ‘I can handle it.’

Caroline ostentatiously tidied away the white jacket in a dry-cleaning bag. ‘Hardly a thank you,’ she sniffed out loud. Issy turned to her. She knew why Caroline was in such a filthy mood.

‘So, Caroline, what are your plans for
Christmas?’

‘I am going to go through Richard’s old address book and fuck all his friends in alphabetical order,’ said Caroline brightly. ‘Why?’

Caroline had been blinking very tightly all day and Issy had caught sight of a solicitor’s letter in her pocket. She guessed it wasn’t good news, as Caroline was being even more of a pain in the arse than usual.

‘Only I thought,’ said Issy, ploughing on. ‘Well, I’m going to be here …’

‘Alone?’ said Caroline sharply. Issy didn’t answer. She didn’t see why she shouldn’t pull rank once in a while, in the case of major insubordination.

‘… and Helena and Ashok wanted to have some family around, so I was thinking I might hold a little Christmas dinner here, in the café.’

Caroline didn’t say anything. Issy knew that if she hadn’t wanted to be included, she would have said something very sarcastic.

‘Would you like to join us?’ Issy asked gently.

Caroline shrugged. ‘Don’t think I’ll be doing the sodding clearing up,’ she said, blinking rapidly.

‘No clearing up, no coming,’ said Issy. ‘It’ll have to be all hands on deck. But it’ll be fun. Pearl?’

Pearl wrinkled her nose. Normally they just went to church and sat in front of the telly. But it might be more fun here for Louis, with Ashok’s little cousins running about the place …

‘I’d have to bring my mum,’ she said. ‘I can’t leave her on her own on Christmas
Day.’

‘Of course,’ said Issy.

‘And I don’t know how we’d get here without buses or anything …’

‘Oh, I’ll pick you up in the Range Rover,’ said Caroline. ‘I won’t be doing much else in the morning.’ She remembered herself. ‘Of course it’s great to be alone on Christmas morning. I’m going to have a bit of a spa day, some real “me” time.’ Suddenly she burst into tears.

As Issy comforted Caroline, Pearl thought about Ben. She hadn’t decided whether to ask him for Christmas. Well, that was what she told herself. She still didn’t like thinking about where he’d got that bloody monster garage for Louis. But if she wanted to keep things civil – and she did, she did – she’d have to pretend that it was from a job, and that she hadn’t noticed her maintenance had dried up. She’d tackle him again in the new year. She thought that he thought she made more money than he did, or that she somehow didn’t mind paying for everything. She sighed. Everything did feel bloody unfair sometimes.

‘Um, and maybe …’ Issy looked at her, raising her eyebrows. ‘Louis’ dad?’ she whispered. Louis, however, was totally hypnotised by the Christmas train and didn’t notice.

Pearl shrugged. ‘Well, you know. He’s hardly Captain Reliable.’

‘Hmm,’ said Issy. She felt as if she had no
idea who was reliable and who wasn’t, not any more. Pointless trying to guess really.

‘Fine,’ she said. ‘So we’ll have a huge one. Right here. I’d better find the world’s most gigantic turkey.’

‘Can we come?’ said a regular customer who’d been listening in.

‘No,’ said Issy. ‘They don’t do turkeys that big.’

There was a sigh from around the room.

‘Be quiet and eat your cake,’ said Issy, going over to phone her suppliers, see if anyone could recommend a really good last-minute gigantic turkey supplier.

‘Merry merry merry merry Christmas!’ Louis was singing to the train. It was a song they were doing at school. ‘Merry merry merry merry Christmas. Ding dong! Ding dong! Ding dong!’

Austin’s newly assigned PA, MacKenzie, was incredibly beautiful. She was tiny, with a gym-honed body that could only be arrived at by a lot of lettuce and early rising. Her face was tight, her nose probably not original, her hair extraordinarily bouncy and shiny. She had two degrees and a string of letters after her name, and Merv had called her a paragon of efficiency. She was also, Austin suspected, the most colossal pain in the arse. He already missed Janet terribly.

‘So I’ve just typed up your sked-u-al?’ she said, talking in a rat-a-tat voice with an upward inflection that sounded like everything was a question. It was not, Austin was learning, a question. It was an order. ‘And if you could, like, be on time for all your appointments so I don’t need to make so many calls to keep people waiting? And if you could, like, check out my colour-coded filing system so you always have the right files to take with you? And if you could, like, have your lunch order ready by ten thirty every day so I can get it right for you? And you need
to look into contract apartment leases, like pronto? And we’ll start work on the green card, like, before you go back to close down your London office?’

Austin bowed his head and did some quick nodding, hoping she’d leave him alone. She stood in front of him, arms folded. For such a tiny person, she made an awful lot of noise.

‘And, you know, I realise you’ve just arrived,’ she said, ‘but I think it is, like, unprofessional to leave a child in my office? It’s not really acceptable to me? You know I have a bachelor’s from Vassar? And I’m not even sure that it’s, like, legal?’

Austin sighed. He knew this was true. He couldn’t keep dumping Darny around the place; it was driving both of them crazy. But he’d promised to stay a few more days and set everything up, then go home and work out a couple of weeks’ notice – although Ed, his old boss, was so proud that his boy had gone to the big team, he wasn’t really expected to do much more than go out for a few leaving pints. Ed had also confirmed what Austin had suspected: they wouldn’t be filling his post. They did need to fillet; even though Austin had done well in the job, it was going to go to keep good on the bank’s promise to shareholders. Which meant there hadn’t really been a way back after all.

He didn’t know what else to do with Darny. He wasn’t enrolled in the school yet, and it wasn’t like he could go to a nursery or a crèche, however much Austin wished he could.

‘You would be prosecuted
for doing this to a rabbit,’ Darny had announced cheerfully as Austin had perched him on his sofa with a Spiderman comic and a packet of crisps the size of a pillow, which Darny crunched with a noise that drove Austin to distraction. ‘I wouldn’t mind seeing that old lady again. She was cool.’

‘Which old lady?’ said Austin, struggling to figure out who Darny was talking about. If she wasn’t wearing a black pointed hat and living in a gingerbread house, he was willing to give it a shot at this point.

‘Marian. No, Miriam. Something like that. Issy’s mum.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Austin, warily. He’d forgotten she was here. They’d met a few times; he thought on the surface she seemed pleasant, a little batty, mostly harmless. Underneath, from stories Issy had told him late at night, he thought what she had done was much, much worse. But she could babysit, couldn’t she? She owed Issy that much, at least.

Then he remembered, as he did afresh and anew dozens of times a day, the way things were with Issy, and wanted to howl with anguish.

He didn’t. He couldn’t. Darny shook out the gigantic packet of crisps so all the dust floated to the floor. Then he burped loudly.

‘I’ll call her,’ said Austin.

Issy was up
to her eyes in marzipan when the phone rang. Nonetheless, she knew, in the way that sometimes you just do. Some phone rings sound different to others. And it was just when she was thinking of Austin.

Although, if she was being honest, she had been thinking about Austin every waking moment and every sleepless-night moment and her few and far between early-morning dreaming moments too. So.

She wiped her hands down her striped pink apron and picked up her phone. Number unknown.

It wasn’t unknown to her.

‘Austin?’

‘Issy?’

She swallowed hard. ‘I mi …’

Then she stopped herself. It had nearly all come tumbling out, all the heartache and the sadness and the terror she had that she was going to lose him. All her neediness and insecurities brought to the surface. But how would that help? What would it prove? That she could guilt him into giving up his amazing life? Did she think that would make them happy?

She tried again. ‘I’m making marzipan. Acres of it.’

Austin bit his lip. He could just see her, pink with the exertion. Sometimes, when she was concentrating, she even let the very end of her tongue slip out of her mouth, like a character from
Peanuts
. There she was, doing what she loved best; happy and immersed in her kitchen. He couldn’t take that away from her. He couldn’t.

‘I hate
marzipan,’ he said.

Issy gulped. ‘Well, one, you are wrong. And two, you haven’t tried mine.’

‘But I don’t like the flavour and I don’t like the texture. I do think people should be allowed to have different tastes in food.’

‘Not when they’re wrong.’