Meet Me at the Cupcake Café (38 page)

‘Nobody fights harder than him,’ said Issy defiantly.

‘Well, that’s good. I’m glad you’ve inherited his spirit. But please, please, Issy. Apply it to the modern age.’

‘Thank you for the business advice,’ said Issy.

‘You’re welcome,’ said Austin.

And they hung up, both upset, both frustrated, at opposite ends of Stoke Newington.

Telling herself she had been foolish to think that anything might have happened over the weekend, Issy took Austin’s words to heart. She submerged herself in the business; paid her bills on time, kept on top of the paperwork; used Caroline’s new hours to organize and streamline everything. She was even at risk of wringing a smile out of Mrs Prescott. She was in early to bake cupcakes – the standard favourites, orange and lemon, double chocolate and strawberry and vanilla, plus a constantly rotating menu of new recipes to keep the regulars coming back for more. Most of these were tested on Doti the postman, whose visits were almost getting embarrassing for everyone except Pearl, who smiled at him and teased him no more nor less than she did everyone else who crossed her path.

Caroline and Pearl were continuing to clash.

‘I
must
do those windows,’ Caroline murmured to Issy on her way out one day.

Pearl rolled her eyes. ‘Well, I’ll do them.’

‘No, no,’ said Caroline. ‘I’ll come in on my day off.’

So of course the windows got washed by Pearl, immediately.

‘I think we’d better tell Issy there’s too much cinnamon in the cinnamon rolls, don’t you?’ Caroline would say chummily. ‘I’ll do it of course.’

So Pearl was always left feeling like the junior partner. One day, when Pearl was alone in the shop, Kate marched in with the twins.

‘I’m here for the order.’

Seraphina was wearing a pink ballet tutu. Jane was wearing blue dungarees. Pearl tried to focus on what Kate was saying, but she was distracted by the sight of Seraphina holding open the tutu waistband and Jane attempting to climb inside, while simultaneously pushing a dungaree strap over Seraphina’s little shoulder.

‘What’s that?’ she said, pleasantly.

‘For the cakes with messages. Caroline said it was a brilliant concept and she’d get you right on it.’

‘Did she?’ said Pearl. Kate was saved from a classic Pearl snort by the two little girls suddenly falling over.

‘Seraphina! Jane! What are you doing?’

The girls were all tangled up in each other’s clothing and were rolling around the floor in hysterics.

‘
We not Jane an Sufine! We Sufijane!
’

They dissolved in giggles again, cuddling one another, the two blonde heads identical.

‘Get up,’ shouted Kate. ‘Or it’ll be the naughty step for you, Seraphina, and the naughty corner for you, Jane.’

The two girls slowly disentangled themselves, heads hanging.

‘Honestly,’ said Kate, shaking her head at Pearl.

‘They’re adorable,’ said Pearl, missing Louis. She couldn’t believe how much you could miss someone you were going to see in a few hours. Sometimes after he was asleep she had to go and look at him at night because she couldn’t wait to see him in the morning.

‘Humph,’ said Kate. ‘So, can you do it?’

‘Do what?’ said Pearl, hating the idea of Caroline subcontracting on her behalf.

‘I want letters piped on the cakes.’

‘Oh,’ said Pearl. It would be time-consuming but they’d be able to charge a premium, she supposed. Would it be worth her while?

‘I’d want it professional standard,’ said Kate. ‘None of this local amateur nonsense.’

And would it be worth having to do it to Kate’s standards?

‘Can we have cake, Mummy?’ Seraphina was asking sweetly. ‘We’ll share.’

‘We
like to share
,’ shouted Jane.

‘No, darlings, this is all junk,’ said Kate absent-mindedly. Pearl sighed. Kate took a quick phone call while Pearl stood there, cursing Caroline and all her friends, then Kate turned off her phone.

‘All right,’ she said briskly. ‘I want lemon cupcakes, orange icing, and “H-A-P-P-Y-B-I-R-T-H-D-A-Y-E-V-A-N-G-E-L-I-N-A-4-T-O-D-A-Y”.’

Pearl wrote it down. ‘I think we can manage,’ she said.

‘Good,’ said Kate. ‘I hope Caroline was right about you.’

Pearl privately thought she was not.

‘Goodbye, twins!’ She waved.

‘
Buh bye!
’ called the twins in one voice.

‘Actually it’s Seraph—’

But Pearl had already disappeared downstairs to give the good news to Issy.

They both worked late to finish, and Helena popped in for a chat and a catch-up, and they teased her unmercifully about Ashok and she refused to answer any questions, turning them round by asking Pearl repeatedly about Ben, but she ably deflected them by complaining to Issy about Caroline, when Issy was absolutely not in the mood to listen. But Helena and Pearl gradually fell silent, just watching Issy at work. It was so instinctive, what she did – she didn’t measure or weigh anything out, simply tossed, almost unthinkingly, the ingredients into a bowl, a fine, careless toss to the arm as she spun the mixture, spooning it up in the blink of an eye, twenty-four perfect measures into the baking tins she’d greased without looking at them; spinning the sugared icing then whipping it on and shaping it with a knife, every one perfect and delicious, a miniature work of art, even before she started the delicate piping of each individual letter. Helena and Pearl exchanged glances.

‘That is quite cool,’ said Helena finally.

Issy, engrossed in what she was doing, looked up, surprised. ‘But I do this every day,’ she said. ‘It’s like you stitching up someone’s glassed arm.’

‘I
am
good at that,’ confirmed Helena. ‘But it doesn’t look quite so delicious at the end.’

The cakes, laid out in a row, were stunning. Issy was going to pop them in on her way home.

‘They are better than that lady deserves,’ said Pearl crossly.

‘Behave yourself,’ said Issy, sticking out her tongue.

Dashing in one morning to get the temperamental coffee machine warmed up before what was rapidly becoming the morning rush, Pearl realized she hadn’t even opened yesterday’s post. ‘
Won! Doo! Free! Hup!
’ Plonking Louis on one of the high stools they’d recently got to line the mantelpiece and give people somewhere extra to sit when they were busy, she passed him a pain au chocolat and opened up the letter from the nursery. Then she stared at it in disbelief.

The doorbell tinkled. Issy was meeting a sugar rep that morning and was going to be in a little later, so Caroline was opening up.

‘
Buens deez, Caline!
’ shouted Louis, who had been learning how to say hello in different languages at nursery and thought that that was splendid.

‘Good morning, Louis,’ enunciated Caroline carefully, who thought Louis’s diction was absolutely dreadful and that she was the only person who could save him from a life of sounding lower class. She wished Pearl would be a teensy bit more grateful, not that she could see past that enormous south London chip she had on her shoulder. ‘Good morning, Pearl.’

Pearl didn’t utter a peep. Well, that was just great, thought Caroline, who was, nonetheless, used to girl-on-girl spats ever since she’d been sent to the terribly fraught and highly competitive girls’ school she planned on one day making Hermia sit the exams for. She had learned pretty much everything she needed to know about falling out with other women at that school. She could hold a sulk like nobody’s business, so this wasn’t going to worry her. She had a divorce going on, for crying out loud. Nobody cared about her.

But when she turned to hang up her Aquascutum raincoat, she noticed that Pearl wasn’t wearing her customary look of slightly hangdog suspicion. That in fact Pearl was holding a letter in her hand, staring into the middle distance – and she was crying.

Caroline felt the same instinct within her as when one of her dogs got sick. She crossed the room instantly.

‘Darling, what is it? What’s the matter?’

‘
Mamma?
’ said Louis in alarm. He couldn’t get down from the high stool on his own (the benefits being, once up there, he couldn’t get his fingers in anything either). ‘
Mamma? Booboo?
’

With some effort, Pearl pulled herself together. In an only slightly shaky voice she said, ‘Oh no, darling. Mamma doesn’t have a booboo.’

Caroline touched her lightly on the shoulder, but Pearl, hands trembling, could only give the letter to Caroline as she crossed in front of the counter to pick up Louis.

‘Come here, baby,’ she said, cradling his face into her wide shoulder so he couldn’t see her eyes. ‘There we go,’ she crooned. ‘Everything’s fine.’

‘
Me not go nursery
,’ said Louis decisively. ‘
Me stay Mamma
.’

Caroline glanced at the letter. It was formally marked North East London Strategic Health Authority.

Dear Mrs McGregor,

Your son Louis Kmbota McGregor has recently undertaken a medical test at Stoke Newington Little Teds Nursery, 13 Osbaldeston road, London N16. The results of this test show that for his age and height, Louis falls into the Overweight to Obese category.

Even from very early days, a child who is overweight or obese can suffer serious damage to their health and fitness in later life. It can cause heart disease, cancer, fertility problems, sleeping disorders, depression and early mortality. Taking a few simple steps to improve your child’s diet and exercise programme can be all that is needed to ensure that your child Louis Kmbota will grow and live to his full potential. We have arranged for you an appointment with Neda Mahet, nutritionist counsellor at the Stoke Newington Practice, on 15 June …

Caroline put it down.

‘This letter is absolutely disgusting,’ she announced, her nose twitching. ‘They’re all horrible bossyboots nanny-state socialist interfering cruel bloody left-wing idiots.’

Pearl blinked at her. Caroline couldn’t have said a better thing to cheer her up. ‘But … it’s their official letter.’

‘And it’s officially a total disgrace. How dare they? Look at your adorable boy. Well, yes, he is too plump but you know that anyway. It’s none of their business. Would you like me to rip it up for you?’

Pearl looked at Caroline with something close to amazement.

‘But it’s official!’

Caroline shrugged. ‘So what? We pay taxes. The fewer nosy busybodies they employ to do this kind of thing, the better for everyone. Shall I?’

Shocked and feeling naughty, Pearl nodded. Normally, anything official she paid very close attention to. In her world, you did what those letters said or bad things happened. They cut your benefit. They reassigned where you lived, and you just had to go, even if it was somewhere awful. They came and pawed at your children and if you didn’t like it, they could even, she was sure, take your children away. They asked you how much you drank and how much you smoked and how many hours you worked and where was the baby’s father, and if you got the answer wrong, even a tiny bit, then you weren’t going to be buying shoes in the foreseeable future. Seeing Caroline rip up the letter like it was nothing – something stupid to be ignored – worked a surprising change in her. She was still cross at Caroline for not having to care about this stuff. But she felt oddly liberated too.