Christmas At The Cupcake Cafe (6 page)

‘Yes,’ snapped Helena. ‘She’s very sensitive.’

As if in answer to this, Chadani toddled over to the large pile of freshly washed clothes on the sofa and upturned her beaker of supplementary milk all over them.

‘No!’ howled Helena. ‘NO! Don’t! I just … Chadani! That is behaviour of which I am critical! Not that I am criticising you as a person and as a goddess. It is because this behaviour at this time …’

Chadani stared at Helena, continuing to hold the beaker upside down, as if conducting an experiment.

Issy decided not to
press the boyfriend matter any further.

‘I’ll just head out …’ she said.

As she went, she could hear Helena saying, ‘Now, I would be very happy if you would give me that cup now, Chadani Imelda. Very happy. Make Mummy happy now and give me the cup. Give me the cup now, Chadani. Give Mummy the cup.’

Whatever Pearl thought,
Issy decided when she got home, it was time to start the Christmas cakes. She gathered together the huge bags of sultanas, raisins and currants – wondering, as she passingly did once a year, and once a year only, what the difference between them was again – along with the glacé cherries and candied peel. If she didn’t start them now, she wouldn’t have enough time to feed them and they wouldn’t be good and strong and delicious in time.

Darny thumped through to the kitchen as soon as he got in from homework club. As he marched through the door, Issy jumped; he sounded like a grown man already, even though he was only eleven. And of course he’d had his own set of keys since he was six years old.

‘Hey,’ he shouted. Normally he swung straight past her up the stairs to his bedroom to play on his Xbox – unless, of course, she was making something good to eat.

The house Austin
and Darny had inherited from their parents was a rather pretty red-brick terrace, with a large knocked-through downstairs sitting room and a back kitchen, and upstairs three little bedrooms. There was a patch of garden out the back which was in no way large enough to play football, rugby, handball, volleyball or Robin Hood, not that it had stopped the boys trying over the years. Five years of just two chaps there, one small and one overworked and dreamy, had left the place in a very unpleasant state, even though they had a despondent cleaner. Issy was, gradually, trying to do up bits of it: a coat of paint here; a new flagstone floor there. The bones of the house were reasserting themselves, though Issy had kept intact a little square of the skirting board that had a long procession of racing cars drawn on in indelible ink in the hand of a five-year-old.

‘Why didn’t you stop him?’ she’d asked Austin.

‘Well, I rather liked it,’ he’d said mildly. ‘He’s good at drawing; look, he’s got all the wheels in the right positions and everything.’

Issy looked and decided it was sweet. She cleaned up the rest of the paintwork and kept the cars. The rest she was trying to make over.

She couldn’t help it. She never felt she needed to see a therapist to confirm that it was because of her insecure childhood – her mother a restless spirit; her father a traveller she’d never known. The only constant in her life had been her beloved Grampa Joe, whose bakery had always been a warm and cosy haven for her. Ever since then, she’d tried to reproduce that cosy, comfortable feeling wherever she went.

Pre-Austin, Helena had
said once that she was a people-pleaser. Issy had asked what was wrong with that exactly, and Helena had pointed out that all her boyfriends had been really horrible users. But Issy could never march through life like Helena did, doing what she felt like doing and damning the consequences. Meeting Austin, who liked the fact that she liked to please him … well, the boys had complained at first about the house – who really needed curtains anyway, Darny had said; they were just bourgeois (a word he clearly had no concept of the meaning of), about shame and a fake privacy the state didn’t even let you have – but Issy had persisted, and gradually, as the windows were cleaned, and a new kitchen table brought in (they let Darny keep the old one, covered in ink spills and old glue and that part where they’d played the knife-throwing game that time, as a desk upstairs) with a comfortable wall bench covered in cushions, and all Issy’s kitchen appliances, which she bought like other women bought shoes; lamps in the corner of the room rather than bare bulbs (Austin had complained he couldn’t see a thing until Issy had told him it was romantic and would make romantic things happen, which changed his outlook somewhat), and even cushions (which were constantly being secreted upstairs for Darny to use as target practice), the house was beginning to look really rather cosy. More like a home, Issy had pointed out, like normal people had, and not a holding pen for delinquent zebras.

Austin might have
grumbled cheerfully – because, on the whole, it was expected of him, and also because it was exactly what all his interfering aunts had been saying for years, that the place needed a woman’s touch. In the past there had been plenty of women who’d promised to supply that and tried to inveigle their way in. Austin and Darny had even had a name for them: the Awws, because of the concerned expression they got on their faces and the way they said ‘awww’ when they looked at Darny like he was an abandoned puppy. Austin hated it when someone said ‘awww’. It meant that Darny was about to do or say something unspeakable.

But somehow with Issy it was different. Issy didn’t say ‘awww’. She listened. And she made them both feel that coming home to somewhere cosy and warm every evening might actually be rather pleasant, even if it did require them to start making their own beds and remembering to put the rubbish out and eating with cutlery and having fruit and stuff. Yes, there were more soft furnishings and bits and bobs about, but that was just the price you paid, Austin reckoned, for all the lovely stuff too; for something that felt not a million miles away from happiness.

Darny took off his
winter jacket and rucksack, scattering school books, hats, scarves, Moshi Monster cards and random small pieces of plastic everywhere.

‘Hello Darny,’ said Issy. He padded through into the kitchen.

‘What are you doing?’ he said. ‘I’m starving.’

‘You’re always starving,’ said Issy. ‘You can’t eat this, though.’

He gazed into the huge pans. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Oh, this is the easy bit. Just marinating the fruit.’

Darny took a sniff of the bottle she was applying liberally to the mix. ‘Phew. What’s that?’

‘It’s brandy.’

‘Can I—’

‘Nope,’ said Issy without hesitating.

‘Come on, just a taste. In France they let the kids drink wine with their meals.’

‘And they eat horses and have mistresses. When we decide to be French, Darny, I’ll be sure to let you know.’

Darny scowled. ‘What is there to eat, then?’

‘Have a couple of bananas, and I made you some fruit toast,’ said Issy. ‘And there’s a lasagne in the oven.’

‘Fruit toast? I can’t believe you run a cake shop and all I get is fruit toast.’

‘Well, learn to bake your own cakes then.’

‘Yeah, not likely,’ said Darny. ‘That’s for girls.’

‘Scared?’ said Issy.

‘No!’

‘My grandfather baked
hundreds of cream horns a day till he was seventy years old.’

Darny snorted.

‘What’s funny?’

‘Cream horns. It’s rude.’

Issy thought about it for a while. ‘It is a bit rude,’ she allowed eventually. ‘Men make wonderful bakers, though. Or they can do.’

Darny had already scarfed the fruit toast and was peeling a banana. He glanced at the phone.

‘I’m expecting him,’ said Issy. ‘Any minute.’

‘I don’t care,’ said Darny instantly. ‘He’s probably in stupid meetings anyway.’

He looked out of the back French windows that led on to the dark patio. He could see their reflections in the glass. The house looked cosy and warm. He wouldn’t admit it, but he did like having Issy there. It was nice. Not that she was … she wasn’t his mum or anything like that. That would totally NEVER happen. But compared with the drippy women Austin had brought home over the years, she was probably all right he supposed. And now she was here, well, it was almost like they had a nice house like his friends did, and everything was kind of all right when it really hadn’t been all right for a really long time. So why was his stupid brother in stupid America?

‘You know the schools in America, right?’ he asked, faux-casually, trying to steal some raisins from the mixing bowl. Issy smacked his hand lightly with the wooden spoon.

‘Yes,’ she said.
Issy had, in fact, never been to America, which made it a bit difficult to calm Darny’s fears.

‘Do they have … do they have a LOT of guns at school and things?’ he asked, finally.

‘No,’ said Issy, wishing she could be more sure. ‘I’m sure they don’t. Absolutely not.’

Darny’s mouth curled in contempt. ‘And do they sing all the time?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Issy. ‘I just don’t know.’

The phone rang.

‘Sorry,’ said Austin. ‘The meeting ran on. They wanted me to meet a few more people and pop into their board meeting …’

‘Wow,’ said Issy. ‘They’re obviously impressed by you.’

‘I don’t know about that,’ said Austin. ‘I think they just like hearing me talk.’

‘Don’t be modest,’ said Issy, cheerful, but with a slight wobble in her voice. ‘Of course they love you. Why wouldn’t they love you? You’re amazing.’

Austin heard the emotional tone in her voice and cursed internally. He hadn’t wanted to think, hadn’t wanted to even consider, what it meant if he was offered a job here – and it seemed to be shaping up to be more than that. Not just a job; a real career; an amazing opportunity. Given the state of banking at the moment, he was lucky to have a job at all, never mind a career that was going places. And the idea of making some real money for once, instead of just bobbing along … Issy had the café, of course, but it was hardly a big earner, and it would be nice for the two of them to do some lovely things … take a nice holiday … maybe even … well. He didn’t want to think about the next step. That was a bit too far in the future. But still. It would make sense, he told himself firmly. For whatever lay ahead. It would make sense to have a nest egg, to have a cushion beneath them. To be secure. Together.

‘Well, they have
been very nice …’ he conceded. ‘How’s Darny doing at school?’

Issy didn’t want to say that she’d seen him in the playground in the company of a teacher being marched quickly to the gate. She tried not to get too involved in the school, even though she worried about Darny, the smallest kid in the year, and the only one without even one parent, almost as much as Austin did.

‘Hmm,’ she said.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Making Christmas cake. It smells amazing!’

‘It smells foul,’ said Darny down the speaker phone. ‘And she won’t let me taste it.’

‘Because you said it smells foul,’ said Issy, unarguably. ‘And it’s about twenty per cent proof, so you can’t have it anyway.’

‘Austin would let
me have it.’

‘No I wouldn’t,’ came the voice down the phone.

‘When we have proportional representation,’ said Darny, ‘I’ll have more of a say around here.’