Christmas At The Cupcake Cafe (3 page)

She had driven him to the airport. ‘And then you’ll come back and it’ll be nearly Christmas!’

Austin smiled. ‘Do you really not mind doing it the same way as last year? Truly?’

‘Truly?’ said Issy. ‘Truly, last year was the best Christmas I’ve ever had.’

And she had meant it. The first time Issy’s mother had left – or the first time she remembered clearly, without it getting muddled in her head – she was seven, and writing out a letter to Santa, being very careful with the spelling.

Her mother had glanced over her shoulder. She was going through one of her rougher patches, which usually corresponded with a lot of complaining about the Manchester weather and the dark evenings and the sodding leaves. Joe, Issy’s grampa, and Issy had exchanged looks as Marian paced up and down like a tiger in a cage, then stopped to look at Issy’s list.

‘My own piper? Why would you want a piper? We’re not even Scottish.’

‘No,’ explained Issy patiently. Her mother had no interest in baking and relatively little in food, unless it was mung beans, or tofu – neither of which were readily
available in 1980s Manchester – or some other fad she’d read about in one of the badly mimeographed pamphlets about alterative lifestyles she subscribed to.

‘An icing piper. Gramps won’t let me use his.’

‘It’s too big and you kept ripping it,’ grumbled Grampa Joe, then winked at Issy to show that he wasn’t really cross. ‘That butterscotch icing you made was pretty good, though, my girl.’

Issy beamed with pride.

Marian glanced downwards. ‘My Little Pony oven gloves … My darling, I don’t think they do those.’

‘They should,’ said Issy.

‘Pink mixing bowl … Girl’s World … what’s that?’

‘It’s a doll’s head. You put make-up on it.’ Issy had heard the other girls in her class talking about it. That was what they were all getting. She hadn’t heard anyone wanting a mixing bowl. So she’d decided she’d better join in with them.

‘You put make-up on a plastic head?’ said Marian, who had perfect skin and had never worn make-up in her life. ‘For what, to make her look like a tramp?’

Issy shook her head, blushing a bit.

‘Women don’t need make-up,’ said Marian. ‘That’s just to please men. You are perfectly fine as you are, do you understand? It’s what’s in here that counts.’ She rapped Issy sharply on the temple. ‘God, this bloody country. Imagine selling make-up to small children.’

‘I don’t see too much harm in it,’ said Grampa Joe mildly. ‘At least it’s a toy. The others are all
work tools.’

‘Oh Lord, it’s so much stuff,’ said Marian. ‘The commercialisation of Christmas is disgusting. It drives me mad. Everyone stuffing themselves and making themselves ill and trying to pretend they’ve got these perfect bloody nuclear families when everybody knows it’s all a total lie and we’re living under the Thatcher jackboot and the bomb could go off at any moment …’

Grampa Joe shot her a warning look. Issy got very upset when Marian started talking about the bomb, or made noises about taking her to Greenham Common, or forced her to wear her CND badge to school. Then he went on calmly buttering the bread they were having with their turnip soup. (Marian insisted on very plain vegetables; Grampa Joe provided sugar and carbohydrates. It was a balanced diet, if you included both extremes.)

Issy didn’t bother sending the letter after all, didn’t even sign her name, which at that point had a big love-heart above the ‘I’ because all her friends did the same.

Two days later Marian had gone, leaving behind a letter.

Next to the card was a brand-new,
unwrapped, shiny-boxed Girl’s World.

Issy became aware, later in life, that it must have cost her mother something to buy it – something more than money – but it didn’t feel like that at the time. Despite her grandad’s efforts to interest her in it, she left the box unopened in the corner of her bedroom, unplayed with.

They both woke early on Christmas morning, Joe from long habit, Issy from excitement of a kind, although she was aware that other children she knew would be waking up with their mummies and probably their daddies too. It broke Joe’s heart to see how she tried so hard not to mind, and as she unwrapped her new mixing bowl, and her lovely little whisk, all child-sized, and the tiniest patty pans he could find, and they made pancakes together before walking to church on Christmas morning, saying hello to their many friends and neighbours, it broke his heart all over again to see that some of her truly didn’t mind; that even as a small child she was already used to being let down by the person who ought to be there for her the most.

She’d looked up at him, eyes shining as she flipped over a pancake.

‘Merry Christmas, my darling,’ he had said, kissing her gently on the head. ‘Merry Christmas.’

Austin had his own reasons for hating Christmas. He’d never really bothered since that first one after their parents died, when a tiny Darny hadn’t cried, hadn’t yelled, hadn’t moaned, had simply sat in silence, staring
bewildered at the ridiculous number of presents from everyone he had ever met cluttering up the corner of the room. He hadn’t wanted to open a single one. Austin hadn’t blamed him. In the end, they’d unplugged the phone from the wall (after Austin had turned down endless invites, everyone rang to coo pitying noises at them, and it was unbearable) and gone back to bed to watch
Transformers
on the computer whilst eating crisps. Somehow, watching ludicrous gigantic machine robots smashing lumps out of everything was as close to their mood as they could get, and they’d done something similar every year since.

But last year, he and Issy had been so new together, so wrapped up in one another, and it had been thrilling. He’d thought for ever about what presents to get her, and she had been utterly delighted: a going-out dress from her favourite little Stoke Newington vintage shop, and a fancy pair of shoes that she couldn’t walk in. Oddly, it wasn’t the fact that he’d bought them so much as what they represented: nights out, and fun, which could be hard to come by when you were working all hours.

‘I thought you’d get me a pinny,’ she’d said, trying on the blue dress, which made her eyes a vivid bluey-green and fitted her perfectly. ‘Or a mixer or something. Everyone else always does! If I get one more cupcake jar, I’m going to start selling them on the side.’

And in the bottom of the bag, bought with his bonus
– he had been the only person in the entire bank to get a bonus that year, he seemed to recall – a small, but immaculately cut, pair of diamond earrings. Her eyes had gone all big and wide and she had been completely unable to speak.

She had worn them every single day since.

And they had spoiled Darny horribly with games (Austin) and books (Issy), and watched telly in their pyjamas and had smoked salmon and champagne at eleven, and the weather was too disgusting outside for anyone to mention a walk, and Issy had cooked an amazing lunch … Issy had … she had made it all right again. She had made it fun; made it their own Christmas. She hadn’t tried to gussy it up, or push them into party games or silly hats or church or long walks, like the aunties would have done. She understood and respected entirely their right to watch
Transformers
all day in their pyjamas and had sweetly been there with them whilst they did so.

‘I can’t wait till Christmas,’ said Austin at the airport. ‘But I wish you were coming to New York.’

‘One day,’ said Issy, who longed to visit more than almost anything. ‘Go and be clever and impressive and wow them all, and then come straight back home to us.’

And now here he was in the middle of Manhattan, Darny back in London with Issy. A year ago, the idea of leaving his headstrong, hyper-intelligent, super-cunning eleven-year-old brother with anyone other
than an armed response team and a team of vets with tranquilliser guns would have seemed utter madness. Darny had bounced from school to school and run rings around his elder brother since their parents’ death in an accident. Austin had immediately given up his college course and taken a banking job in order to keep a roof over their heads and prevent his brother being taken away by social services, or any number of well-meaning aunties. Darny had not repaid this by being particularly grateful.

Yet somehow, after being frankly abominable to all Austin’s other girlfriends – girls who had cooed over Darny and gone all mushy-eyed at tall, handsome Austin, which made Darny want to vomit – he had really taken to Issy. Indeed, the fact that Darny had liked her so much had been one of the first things that had attracted Austin to her in the first place – along with her large eyes, generous mouth and easy laugh. Now when he thought of them together in the little house that had been, frankly, a bit of a midden when it was just the two boys together, but that under Issy’s auspices had become cosy and welcoming, he got the sudden urge to ring her. He was on his way to a meeting and, not trusting himself to make his way around the subway system, had decided to walk. He checked his watch: 11 a.m. That meant 4 p.m. in London. Worth a shot.

‘Hey.’

“Hey,’ said Issy, struggling up the stairs with
five kilo bags of finest milled Ethiopian blend. People were queuing for their afternoon pick-me-ups, or their post-school treats, but she was still delighted to hear from him. ‘Wassup?’

‘Are you stuffing plum pudding in your gob, by any chance?’ teased Austin. ‘You want to watch for wastage.’

‘I am
not
,’ said Issy, outraged, letting the coffee drop on the counter. ‘Yes, hello, can I help you?’

‘Do you have any Christmas cake?’

Issy arched her eyebrows at Pearl. ‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘Apparently the little baby Jesus starts to cry if we start celebrating ten seconds before the official beginning of Advent.’

‘That’s a shame.’

‘It
is
.’

‘Don’t disrespect my beliefs,’ sniffed Pearl.

‘So, anyway, here I am, hanging on the unbelievably expensive mobile phone from New York,’ said Austin.

‘Sorry, my love,’ said Issy as the customer pointed, slightly disappointed, to a cherry-topped cupcake instead. They wouldn’t be, Issy thought, when they got to the glacé cherries hidden inside. ‘How is it?’

‘Oh, it’s amazing!’ said Austin. ‘I mean, just fantastic. The lights everywhere, and they’re skating down at the Rockefeller Center … that’s this huge building with an ice rink outside it, and it’s full of skaters and they’re really good, and there’s music playing around the street corners, and Central Park is all lit up with these amazing
lights, and you can take a horse and cart ride through it with a blanket and mistletoe and … well, it’s just fantastic and amazing and wow.’

‘Ooh, really. Bugger. Argh, I wish I was there so much. Stop having such a good time without me!’

A thought struck her.

‘Is it super-brilliant? Are they all being dead nice to you? They’re not going to offer you a job, are they?’