Cupcake Couture (3 page)

Margaret was the only one brave enough to bar my path.

‘This is not right,’ she sniffed, ‘they can’t do this.’

I forced a smile as a wave of agreement coursed around the room.

‘We’ll start a petition,’ said Margaret.

‘Aye,’ my team chorused.

‘We’ll get every member of staff and client and temp and cleaner to sign it.’

‘Aye!’ they cried.

‘And Cheryl Cole, Ant and Dec and little Joe what’s-his-face off of the
X-Factor
!’

‘Yeah,’ they mumbled, losing track of Margaret’s direction.

‘And we’ll march it up to Head Office. Or rather
down
on the train to Head Office, changing at Darlington and off-peak because those peak fares are a disgrace…’

‘Mmm.’

She was not one for rousing speeches.

‘And we’ll tell them, we’ll bloody well tell them…’

I placed my hand on Margaret’s shaking shoulder and she drew breath as if it were her last.

‘Thank you, Margaret, but it’s too late.’

My secretary placed her freckled hands together as if in prayer.

‘It’s the good old recession,’ I said, trying to smile.

‘Recession,’ Nigel growled. ‘When is it ever not the recession? It’s just an excuse to let the bigwigs treat the little folk like shite.’

An uncomfortable silence descended on the office. As I said, it was an open plan, strip-lighted, non-descript space painted in company colours. It was neither plush nor cosy but, all the same, I knew I would miss it dreadfully.

‘I’d appreciate it if you could send my stuff on to me at home, Margaret,’ I said, knowing if I stayed to clear my desk I would end up crying over a hole punch.

‘Of course,’ Margaret said with tremors in her voice, ‘anything you need.’

I reached across to Margaret’s desk and lifted the last remaining morsel of soggy cake from the papier mâché remnants of the bag.

‘Right now I need cake,’ I said, forcing a laugh, ‘happy birthday to me.’

I raised the sad sponge in salute to my team and shoved it in my mouth to keep the tears at bay.

They said nothing as I lifted my jacket and bag and turned to leave my secure, routine, grown-up life to enter the world the bankers had built. Like a child leaving her friends behind to move to a new school, I felt completely and utterly lost. It was a feeling I thought I had left in my past.

CHAPTER TWO

120g plain flour

The following morning, my alarm woke me at seven fifteen and again at seven thirty. In a trance, I showered, moisturised, blow-dried my blond (I’d like to say natural but I’d be lying… I often did) chin-length hair and applied the same sensible day makeup I always wore to work. When I reached out for my freshly ironed clothes, I was surprised to find the coat hanger empty but, in the daze of my routine, I opened the wardrobe and selected a pinstripe shirt in purple tones and a navy trouser suit that made me feel especially powerful. I finished with a squirt of Coco Mademoiselle that woke me enough to propel me towards the kitchen.

The aroma of freshly brewed coffee spiralled out of my pre-programmed coffee machine, our twenty-first century version of a Teasmade. I poured a large mug of sugar-free black coffee, cradled the cup at the breakfast bar and took a sip. To be honest it tasted like melted tarmac compared to a frothy Starbucks cappuccino with sugar, syrup and a dusting of chocolate, but in the name of saving liquid calories to trade for cake later in the day, it was worth it. I poured the rest into a thermal cup for my journey. Not that I was a caffeine addict but November mornings in Newcastle were not for the fainthearted. Slipping my feet into my shoes, I absorbed the news headlines almost by osmosis while staring numbly at the television. At five past eight, as always, I left the house.

It was a choreographed operation that could have won me a place on
Strictly Come Dancing
. It was precise, robotic, perfectly timed. I could do it in my sleep. Truth by told, I was usually in a dimension between asleep and awake until the winter
air hit my face. It came so naturally to me, that it was only when I was standing on the wind-whipped Metro platform clutching my coffee that my mind finally clicked into gear. The thought process went something like:
Metro platform, God it’s freezing, hope this train’s not late, not like yesterday’s train… yesterday… suicide on the line… selfish bastard… did I honestly think that? … what’s wrong with me? … poor man… poor soul… maybe he lost his job… lost everything… his job… Russell… my job… fuuu….!!

The coffee cup fell from my hands and burst open at my feet almost in slow motion.

‘Fired!’ I shrieked.

‘Jesus, will you stop doing that?’ cursed the same man in the jaunty Trilby hat standing beside me.

I clutched the arm of his coat with one hand and my chest with the other. My heart clattered like the approaching Metro train against my ribs.

‘I lost my job,’ I wheezed as the man tried to extricate himself from my grasp, ‘I don’t have anywhere to go. How could I forget that? Why am I here? What am I doing? I must be going mad.’

‘I think you’ve already gone,’ said the man, wide-eyed as he wrenched himself free from the sobbing misery of a woman he had inadvisably stood beside two days in a row. Without glancing back, he threw himself onto the train.

The other passengers followed, their chorus of sympathetic clucking and bewildered tutting resounding in my ears.

‘I blame the recession,’ said one as I sank to my knees.

‘Hope she’s one of them bankers,’ said another before the doors hissed shut.

As the train slid away taking its passengers off to their purposeful jobs, I felt as if I had been excluded from a private club. My tears mixed with the cold coffee staining the platform.

‘
This is a passenger announcement, I’m sorry to announce all trains will be subject to lengthy delays due to a suicide on the line…’

The previous day’s sombre announcement came rushing back into my head, pricking and pricking at my conscience until it felt like a colander through which my guilt flooded. How could I have been so cold? What had I become? When life was chugging along merrily it had been so easy to dismiss the person whose life was in crisis, who may have been made redundant, perhaps faced homelessness, and who had taken what they felt was the only way out, as Naomi had ungracefully put it, splattering themselves all over the front of the 8.15 to Monument. A sadly permanent solution to what may well have been a temporary problem but which had felt insurmountable. Only yesterday it had been so easy to think –
but that would never happen to me
. Yet how many people had gone to work as usual in the morning to find their factory closed or an empty cardboard box waiting to be filled on their desk? How many of my neighbours were one month’s pay away from having to sell up? I had no idea because I was always too busy working or coming and going to converse with my neighbours about anything more profound than the weather. I had heard a startling statistic about house repossessions on the news but I hadn’t bothered to commit it to memory because I had thought it simply didn’t apply to me. Yet here I was, suddenly unemployed and single to boot. Yes I had been sensible enough to put by savings for a rainy day (largely because I had been working my arse off too much to spend what I was earning), but my life as I knew it had been derailed and I hadn’t even seen the sharp bend in the tracks ahead.

‘There are easier ways to wash the floor you know.’

A smooth-skinned hand appeared in front of my face. Suddenly noticing the intense pain in my knees, I shakily accepted the hand and let myself be pulled to my feet. I tried to focus through my tears but it was like trying to peer through a rain-soaked window. He had shiny hair as black as Guinness, swept across a trouble-free brow and resting on neat black eyebrows. Underneath were the most striking green eyes I had ever seen. They seemed to glow like plutonium hotspots. His features grew distinct through the mist. I watched him tilt his head against a shoulder broad enough to sit on.

‘I was going to ask if you were OK but I can clearly see that you’re not. Unless, of course, you make a habit of kneeling on the ground whilst waiting for the train. For all I know you might be a station cleaner, but no you’re far too well dressed for that. And attractive too I might add. Not that I’m saying all cleaners are mingers but you know, going by the stereotype. Perhaps you were praying for it to come early or for two trains to come at once. Wouldn’t that be nice? Rather than waiting in this wind tunnel just hoping you get to work with your extremities intact.’

The smile that had been creeping across my lips during his nervous monologue suddenly vanished at the mention of the word ‘work’. A guttural sob exploded between us accompanied by a rather unattractive (I’m guessing from the expression that flashed across his handsome face) stream of tears and mucus.

‘Oh no, I’m so sorry, did I say something wrong? I did, I said something wrong. Forgive me, I have a habit of doing that. Especially with women as it turns out. Or so I realised last night when… well never mind. What did I say? Was it train?’

I shook my head, still sobbing.

‘Tunnel? You have a fear of tunnels? No?’

I shook my head again.

‘Extremities? Work?’

A second cry burst from my throat. I couldn’t control myself, or the nasal snorts resounding from my face.

The man riffled through every pocket in his smart jeans and grey wool coat as if looking for change and then held out a packet of tissues. I accepted them silently and squeezed one against my eyes to hide my shame.

‘These are pink,’ I sniffed, ‘and they smell of strawberries.’

‘I know, embarrassing. I grabbed them in a hurry. I made the mistake of thinking all tissues are unisex but apparently not these days. I love the smell of strawberries though, and the taste. Probably my favourite of the red fruits, in fact I’d go so far as to say of all fruits, but these definitely scream ‘gay pride’ or ‘I am a girl underneath this stubble’!’

I surprised myself by laughing. He laughed too, his hand coming to rest on his – now he had mentioned it – deliciously stubbly chin.

‘Not that there’s anything wrong with gay pride of course. My brother’s gay and he’s great.’ He held up both thumbs. ‘Malachy Doyle has got the enthusiasm and energy of three men and he’d think nothing of handing out strawberry scented pink tissues just to add a bit of sweetness to someone’s day. Mind you it did come as a bit of a surprise. Nearly finished my dad off. He was an Irish Catholic so he never understood it. Blamed it on the fact that my mum had made him listen to Cliff Richard while they had sex.’

He pressed his lips shut and finally took a breath. His lips were soft and beige, I noticed, like fudge. He raked a hand through his floppy fringe.

‘I do apologise again. Here I am droning on about myself and my entire bloody family and you’re the one in tears on the Metro platform.’

I smiled and waved the pink tissue.

‘Don’t worry about it, it’s better we don’t concentrate on my life right now to be honest.’

‘Right, get it, oh dear. Is there anything I can do?’

‘Give me a job. Find me a direction.’

He opened and closed his mouth.

‘Well I…’

I interrupted before he launched into another rambling tale.

‘I’m joking. You’ve already helped just by being kind. It’s rare these days for someone to be kind to a stranger.’

‘Is it? Well that’s a sad indictment on our world isn’t it? If we all did a good deed a day the world would be a better place.’

‘It would, you’re right, but I’m no better than most. You know somebody jumped in front of my train yesterday and I swear the majority of us on the platform were too busy stressing about it making us late for work to care about the poor suicide victim. As if that matters now. Maybe I should have been late for work more often. I might have had more of a life to fall back on when I was made redundant.’

He watched me blow my nose.

‘Well at least you’re honest. That’s a start.’ I jumped when he made a fist and knocked on my head as if rapping on a door. ‘There’s a conscience in that pretty head somewhere.’

Taken aback, I smoothed down my hair where his hand had been and tilted my head up to look at his face. I guessed he was in his mid to late thirties but beyond that
he was difficult to pigeonhole, which was unusual for me because my job was to read people, assess them and place them in the right job.

Was I already losing my touch?
My mind began to drift.

I closed my eyes as the next train bound for the city centre blew a cloud of dirt across the platform. When I opened them again he was standing between the open doors, his hand outstretched for a second time.

‘Jump in or you’ll be standing there all day.’

His smile and my feet drew me towards the train, but I stopped at the painted yellow line on the edge of the platform.

‘This one is for Monument via Percy Main and Byker,’ he said, ‘where are you going?’

I swallowed and blinked at him, my jaw frozen.

‘
Stand clear o’ the dooors please,’
said the heavily accented Geordie train announcement.

I had heard it every day for years and had never paid much attention before, but today it was as if the voice was talking directly to me.

‘
You there in the pinstripe shirt and swanky suit, where the hell do you think you’re going trussed up like that? Stand clear o’ the dooors please and let the good working folk of Newcastle get to their jobs
.’

‘I’m… I’m not going anywhere,’ I croaked.

A buzzer sounded and the doors slid shut between us, barring me from entering the going-to-work club. The train slowly departed, taking Malachy Doyle’s brother, whoever he was, with it.

CHAPTER THREE

1 ½ tsp baking powder

Over the course of the day I visited every café in the village. Hugging endless cups of coffee, I spent long enough to pass the time, but not so long that I might be mistaken for someone with nowhere to go. Which of course I was, but I was not ready to admit it, even to myself. While passing the bakery, my stomach rumbled to let me know I had missed lunch. I paused and considered popping in for a comforting, hot, flaky sausage roll, until Shirley spotted me while she was busy scraping frozen chewing gum from the front step.