Meet Me at the Cupcake Café (34 page)

Helena gave a Mona Lisa smile and kept blending.

‘What are you doing anyway? Where are you going?’

‘Out,’ said Helena. ‘It’s a kind of place and it’s not your house and not your shop. Things happen there that people talk about called current affairs and social life.’

Normally she’d have told Issy straight away what she was up to. But she was torn – partly because she felt it needed a longer conversation, but also because she didn’t want to take the teasing she would get for going against all her dearly held principles to date a nervy, sweaty-palmed, underpaid first-year junior doctor. The junior doctors had been a standing joke between them for years. They arrived in two tranches, green as grass, in February and September, and ended up so grateful for Helena and her good advice, strong leadership and magnificent bosoms that at least one of them always trailed around after her for weeks with flowers and sorrowing looks. Helena never gave in. Ever.

‘When you’re back in the social world,’ said Helena, ‘then you can find out.’

Issy reddened.

‘Oh, don’t blush!’ said Helena, genuinely surprised she’d upset her friend. ‘I didn’t mean it! In fact, I was thinking recently of how much tougher you’ve been getting.’

‘Sod off!’

‘No, really, all this running-your-own-business stuff. You have a spring in your step, Ms Randall. You are no longer the girl I met who was too scared to go see the student med ser vice about a finger wart.’

Issy smiled at the memory. ‘I thought they’d make me take my knickers off.’

‘Even if they had, was it anything to be scared of?’

‘No.’

‘And now look at you! Entrepreneur! If you were a bit more annoying and a bit of a nobber, you could go on
The Apprentice
. If they had a cake-based task. If they only had cake-based tasks.’

Issy raised her eyebrows. ‘I will take that as a semi-compliment, which coming from you is pretty good. You’re right, I have got boring though. I just never think about anything else.’

‘What about that hot scruffy bloke from the bank with the horn-rimmed glasses?’

‘What about him?’

‘
Nothing
,’ said Helena. ‘It’s just good to know you’re not sitting around waiting for Graeme to come back.’

‘No,’ said Issy suddenly, ‘no. I’m not. Hey, I know – why don’t I come with you?’

Helena started putting on mascara. ‘Um, you can’t.’

‘Why not? Shake off my working day a bit.’

‘None of your beeswax.’

‘Lena, have you got a
date
?’

Helena calmly went on layering her mascara.

‘You have! Who is it? Tell me everything.’

‘I would have done,’ said Helena, ‘if you’d stopped going on about the Cupcake Café for one second. As it is, I’m late.’

And she kissed Issy firmly on the cheek and swept out of the room in a haze of Agent Provocateur perfume.

‘Is it a greenhorn?’ said Issy, running after her. ‘Tell me. Come on. There must be some reason you’re not telling me.’

‘Never you mind,’ said Helena.

‘It is! It’s a baby doctor!’

‘It’s none of your business.’

‘Nice of him to take you out in between accidentally killing pensioners.’

‘Ssh!’

‘I hope you’re going Dutch.’

‘Shut up!’

‘I hope you’ve got a book for when he falls asleep at the table.’

‘Bog off!’

‘I’ll wait up for you,’ hollered Issy to her disappearing back.

‘Like hell you will!’ came the reply, and sure enough, Issy’s eyelids were already half closed by the end of
Location, Location, Location
.

The next morning the croissant rush was just about finished, and Pearl was making up the new boxes they’d ordered. Candy-striped, with their name blazoned across the front, they fitted a dozen cakes perfectly and were then wrapped up in pretty pink ribbon before being handed to the customer. They were absolutely lovely, but it was taking a bit of time to get the hang of folding them up, and Pearl was practising to try to make herself a wizard at it.

The doorbell went and Pearl glanced up at the railway clock; just a few minutes’ peace before the 11am sugar rush kicked off. She wiped her brow. Boy, it was lovely to be busy, but it was full-on too. Issy was downstairs, trying to make the world’s first ginger beer cupcake. The scent of cinnamon, ginger and brown sugar filled the shop, and smelled absolutely intoxicating; people kept asking to try one and then, when told they weren’t ready, camping by the stairs. One or two were striking up conversations with each other, which was nice, Pearl thought, but really right at the minute she needed everything cleared out of the way, so she could get to the leftover coffee cups. The duck-egg and teal had been joined by a very pale yellow as they’d got busier, and she wanted to stack the dishwasher. A delivery of eggs had just arrived fresh from the farm, with feathers still on them, and she had to sign for that, pick the feathers off and put them away downstairs while still serving the ongoing queue, which she couldn’t because she had no cups, and ‘
Issy!
’ she yelled. There was a clatter from downstairs.

‘Ouch! Ooh, hot hot hot!’ shouted Issy. ‘I’m just going to run my finger under a tap!’

Pearl heaved a sigh and tried to look patient as two teenage girls kept changing their minds in an agony of cake-related indecision.

Suddenly the door banged open. It was raining outside, a steady spring downpour, but still the tree was tentatively, nervously budding, tiny, furled-up little shoots just showing on its branches. Pearl occasionally sneaked some coffee grounds out and spread them round its base; she’d heard they were good for trees, and she felt quite protective of this one. Into the shop crashed someone she recognized immediately, and her heart dropped. It was Caroline, health-food Nazi of Louis’s nursery, original bidder for the Cupcake Café.

Caroline marched straight to the front of the queue. As she got closer, Pearl noticed she wasn’t her normal immaculate-looking self. Her blonde hair had greyish roots showing through. She wasn’t wearing make-up. And she had lost weight, taking her always very slender form into the realms of extreme thinness.

‘Can I speak to your boss please?’ she barked.

‘Hello, Caroline,’ said Pearl, trying to give this incredibly rude woman the benefit of the doubt in case she just hadn’t recognized her.

‘Yes, hello, em …’

‘Pearl.’

‘Pearl. Can I speak to your boss?’

Caroline glanced around the shop, wild-eyed. On the sofa were camped a group of young mothers cooing over each other’s babies while clearly preferring their own; two businessmen with laptops and papers spread everywhere were having a meeting near the big window; a young student reading an old grey Penguin Classic was having trouble concentrating on it and was instead eyeing up another student by the fireplace, who was scrawling notes on a pad while tossing her long lusciously curly hair over her shoulders, presumably on purpose.

‘
Issy
,’ bellowed Pearl down the stairwell, with such force it made Issy jump. She came up the stairs sucking her burnt finger. Caroline propped herself against the wall, tapping her foot anxiously.

She leaned in towards Pearl. ‘You know, my son is going to school in September. He’s got all these cast-off clothes I was just about to get rid of, but I wonder if your wee chap would like them? He’s about the right age, and it’s nice stuff – lots of White Company, Mini Boden, Petit Bateau.’

Pearl recoiled behind the counter.

‘No thank you,’ she said stiffly. ‘I think I can clothe him, thanks.’

‘Oh, OK,’ said the blonde, completely unperturbed. ‘Just thought I might save myself a trip to Oxfam! Not to worry.’

‘I don’t need any charity,’ said Pearl, but the woman had turned to see Issy coming up the stairs, and her hands erupted in a flurry of nerves.

‘Oh … oh, hello!’

Issy wiped her hands warily. Caroline and Kate hadn’t been back to the café since that first day; Issy had taken it rather personally. Still, local business was local business.

‘You know,’ said Caroline. ‘Uh, you know when I didn’t get the site?’

Pearl went back to serving the other customers.

‘Yes,’ said Issy. ‘Have you … did you find anywhere else?’

‘Um, well, obviously I weighed up lots of offers. It’s like totally an idea whose time has come …’ said Caroline, her voice trailing off.

‘Oh. Right.’ Issy wondered where this was leading. She needed to get back down to check on that ginger beer cupcake. ‘So, nice to see you again,’ she said. ‘Would you like a coffee?’

‘Actually.’ Caroline lowered her voice as if this was a terribly funny secret of some kind. ‘No. Er, OK. Well, here’s the thing. Ha, I know this will sound absolutely crazy and everything but …’ Suddenly, her haggard but still beautiful face seemed to crumple. ‘That bastard. My bastard husband has finally left me for that stupid bint in the press office – and he’s told me that I need to get a bastard
job
!’

‘No way,’ said Pearl afterwards. ‘No no no no no.’

Issy bit her lip. Of course it had been an unorthodox approach. But on the other hand, without a doubt Caroline was a smart cookie. She had a degree in marketing, and had worked for a prestigious market research outfit before giving it all up for the children, she’d sobbed bitterly, while her husband nobbed some twenty-something publicist. But once she’d stopped bawling, over about a pint of tea and some hazelnut tiffin, it transpired that she did in fact know loads of people in the area; she could turn the café into the place to get your baby-shower cakes, your birthday icing; she could work just the hours they were looking for, she lived round the corner …

‘But she’s
horrible
,’ Pearl pointed out. ‘That’s really important.’

‘She’s maybe just a bit wrapped up in herself right now,’ said soft-hearted Issy. ‘It’s awful when someone leaves you,’ her voice tailed off momentarily, ‘or things don’t work out.’

‘Yes, it makes you really rude and selfish,’ said Pearl. ‘She doesn’t even need the job. It should go to someone who needs it.’

‘She says she does need it,’ said Issy. ‘Apparently her husband told her if she wants to keep the house without a fight she needs to get off her arse and start working.’

‘So she wants to swan about here being snobby to people,’ said Pearl. ‘
And
she’ll want to introduce wholemeal flour and raisins and wheatgrass juice and talk about BMIs and yap on and on all day.’

Issy was torn. ‘I mean, it’s not like we’ve seen loads of wonderful candidates,’ she argued. ‘No one we’ve had in has been right at all. And she’d be covering a lot of your time off, it’s not like you’d have to see her that much.’

‘This is a very small retail space,’ Pearl said, darkly. And Issy sighed and put off making the decision for a while.

But things didn’t ease off – which was fantastic, but also brought its own problems. Now it was phones constantly ringing, and lists, and Issy falling asleep during dinner, and Helena being out all the time, and she hadn’t seen Janey since she’d had the baby, and Tom and Carla had moved into their new place in Whitstable and she hadn’t even made it to their housewarming, and God, when she had five minutes she was still missing Graeme, or even just missing someone, anyone, to hold her hand occasionally and tell her that everything was going to be all right, but she didn’t have time for that, didn’t have time for anything, and everything was just building up and up.