Meet Me at the Cupcake Café (23 page)

Everywhere was spotless, breathlessly spick and span; inspected, ticked off, registered and ready for action. They were set to open at 7.30 the following morning; Issy hadn’t scheduled any marketing or promotion just yet. This was to be a ‘soft’ launch, a quiet week or so for them to find their feet and get into the rhythm of how the café would work. Issy kept repeating this to herself so she wouldn’t panic too much if nobody turned up at all.

They would need another member of staff, a part-timer to cover coffee breaks and holidays. Issy was hoping they’d get someone nice and local – a young girl perhaps, or a student needing a few extra quid here and there, who didn’t mind working for the minimum wage and (she told herself off severely for even thinking this) was hopefully a bit more flexible and didn’t have to look after anyone else.

The local state nursery, Little Teds, had found a place for Louis, which was amazing (Issy had perhaps told a very small lie on the form viz-à-viz Louis’s home address – c/o the Cupcake Café, but needs must). But the nursery didn’t open till 8.30, so he would have to come and have his breakfast in the café. Issy hoped he’d be happy with a few wooden toys she’d stashed behind the counter to distract customers’ children from eating all the sugar sachets, but they’d have to wait and see.

And tonight, she was having a proper little party, a celebration to say thank you to everyone: to Pearl, for teaching her how to make coffee (she was still slightly afraid of the hissing steam pipe, but was learning); to Phil and Andreas, who’d done such a sterling job in the end; Des the estate agent and Mr Barstow the landlord; Helena, who’d chivvied delivery men and helped her with national insurance forms that had her climbing the wall in frustration; Austin, who’d patiently explained profit margins, portion control, tax accounts and depreciation to her, then explained them again when her eyes had glazed over, then explained them one more time just to check; Mrs Prescott, a slightly scary-looking local woman who did accounts for small businesses in her spare time and was clearly not someone to be trifled with. She and Austin had looked each other up and down with some understanding.

‘What do you think?’ Issy had asked Austin nervously afterwards.

‘Terrified the life out of me,’ said Austin. ‘I think she’s absolutely perfect. She makes me want to go and file paperwork.’

‘Good,’ said Issy. ‘What about Helena?’ She indicated the rather magnificent redhead who was laying into the builders one last time.

‘Very … stately,’ said Austin politely, thinking to himself that actually, with her cheeks all red from the ovens, and her soft black hair dishevelled and loosening itself from where it had been hastily tied back, and her black-fringed eyes, and her apron tied round her shapely form, the one he liked looking at in here was Issy herself. His professional client, he reminded himself sharply.

Issy glanced around nervously. Spring had been such a long time in coming this year, till the point where she’d thought it might simply never happen. Then one day it had arrived, like an unexpected gift turning up in the post; suddenly, out of nowhere, and the sun looked down as if surprised to still see people there, and people looked up as if surprised to be looking beyond the ends of their noses for the first time in months. Colour was gradually seeping back into the world, and on this late March evening soft light filtered through the plate-glass window, illuminating in shafts the gentle colours and restful tones of the Pear Tree Court café. Zac, her old friend, an out-of-work graphic designer, had painstakingly picked out ‘The Cupcake Café’ in white swirly lower-case letters on the grey-brown frontage and it looked beautiful; pretty, but still understated. Sometimes, when she woke too early in the morning, Issy wondered if they weren’t being a bit too understated. Then she remembered the look on people’s faces when they ate the Bakewell tart her grandfather had taught her to make and bit her lip. Would good ingredients and free-range eggs and good coffee be enough? (She and Pearl and Austin, who had happened to pop by that afternoon, had had a coffee-tasting session with all the wholesaler’s samples. After four espressos they’d got all wide-eyed and bouncy and a touch hysterical but in the end had settled on two blends, a mellow Kailua Kona, an all-rounder coffee, and a stronger Selva Negra, for those who needed a bit of a pick-me-up in the morning, plus a sweet decaf for pregnant mothers and people who didn’t really like coffee, just the smell.) Would they cover their rent and the power bills? Would she ever make a living wage? Could she ever stop worrying?

She phoned the home again. Were they ready?

At his desk at Kalinga Deniki, over in EC2, Graeme was puzzled. This wasn’t really what he’d expected at all, but he hadn’t heard once from Issy. Presumably her business hadn’t failed yet. Or maybe it had, and she couldn’t bear to break it to him. Well, she would, she would. He idly remembered last Saturday night, when he’d picked up a really fit blonde in a nightclub. She had spent the whole night explaining to him the concept of body brushing and why Christina Aguilera was, like, a totally incredible role model. By the morning, when she’d asked him for a carrot smoothie, babe, he was desperate to get her out of the apartment. This wasn’t like him at all.

Anyway, he had to concentrate. Work was still down, and he needed something juicy – a really big project – to impress the bosses back in the Netherlands. Something cool and cutting edge and funky, something that would attract high-net-worth buyers just like himself, something with all mod cons. He gazed at his map of London, bristling with pins to mark his current developments. His eye idly traced up from Farringdon to the Old Street roundabout, up through Islington and on to Albion Road, diverting into the tiny, barely legible Pear Tree Court. He could, he supposed, take a look at it.

Issy smoothed down her new dress, which had tiny sprigged flowers on it. What she’d started off feeling was terribly twee, like she was an extra from some American set show about housewives in the fifties, had suddenly come into vogue, and everyone was wearing floral prints with tight waists and little skirts sticking out. She felt slightly better knowing she was on trend, and after all, what was she doing but baking cupcakes? The florals felt right somehow, like their dainty little aprons and the faded Union Jack pillows, Scotchgarded to death of course, that she’d bought to go on the new grey sofa they’d put along the far end of the shop; the sofa was a lovely thing, as hardwearing as they came but as soft and old and homey-looking as a sofa could be.

It was a sofa for curling up on; for children to climb, or couples to perch on. You could watch the shop in motion, or the quiet courtyard outside. Issy was delighted with it.

So that was the back wall, with the sofa underneath a large station clock. On the right was the fireplace, with books above, and then several small tables for two, with mismatched pale grey chairs set at companionable angles. The tables themselves were square; Issy had a hatred of wobbly round tables that hardly held anything. The room opened up as you got closer to the counter – obviously once it had been two rooms, and the outline of the dividing wall remained. Closer to the counter the tables weren’t so close together, so you could get a buggy in and people could (hopefully) queue, although it was still quite cramped. Cosy, that’s what she meant, cosy. There was one long table near that room’s fireplace, for larger groups, with a large, faded pink armchair at its head. At a push you could have a board meeting there.

The counter was lovely, curved, shining and spotless, with a polished marble top and cake trays stacked high, ready to be filled the following morning. The small-paned windows on this side of the shop were balanced out by the huge floor-to-ceiling windows of the sofa section, which meant that when it got sunny, they’d be flooded with light. The coffee machine behind the counter, next to the door to the cellar, bubbled and hissed rather erratically, and the smell of fresh cakes filled the air.

Issy moved through the shop, saying hello to Mr Hibbs, the crusty fire officer, who was eyeing the doorway just in case he’d forgotten where it was, and to the salesman from the kitchen shop, whose name was Norrie, who had been delighted when his young client who’d bought the pink kitchen had returned to buy an industrial oven, although she’d driven just as tough a bargain as before. (Issy couldn’t believe how much she loved that oven. She’d taken a picture of it and sent it to her grandfather.) Norrie had brought his plump wife and they were absolutely adoring the little cakes and pies piled around the room for them to sample. Austin’s secretary Janet was there too, pink and pleased. ‘I never get to really see what the bank is doing,’ she confided to Issy. ‘It feels like just pushing paper around sometimes. It’s so lovely to see something real happening.’ She squeezed Issy’s arm and Issy made a mental note not to give her any more of the cheap but tasty sparkling wine Pearl had sourced. ‘Not just real. Good. Something good.’

‘Thank you,’ said Issy, genuinely gratified, and went on filling people’s glasses, keeping her eye on the door. And sure enough, at six o’clock, close to his bedtime, as he’d pointed out several times, when the last rays of sun were hitting the close, a car backed up, completely illegally, into the close and a large wheelchair-friendly door pinged open at the back. Keavie jumped down from the front seat to attend to it and out came Grampa Joe.

Issy and Helena rushed to open the door, but Gramps indicated that he didn’t want to come in just yet. Instead, he halted the chair in front of the shop. Issy worried about the cold getting to his chest, then watched Keavie tuck him in with a warm tartan blanket that had obviously been ready in the car. He stared at the shop frontage for a long time, his blue eyes turning a little watery in the cold. Well, Issy thought it was the cold.

‘What do you think, Gramps?’ she said, going out and kneeling down to take his hand. He stared at the delicately painted frontage; in at the softly lit, cosy-looking interior, where you could see the counter with beautiful, ornate cake stands loaded with delicacies and the coffee machine steaming happily; up at the old-fashioned script above the door. He turned his face to his granddaughter.

‘It’s … it’s … I wish your grandmother were here to see it.’

Issy grabbed his hand tight. ‘Come in and have a cake.’

‘I would love to,’ he said. ‘And send some nice ladies to talk to me. Keavie’s all right, but she’s a bit plump.’

‘Oi!’ shouted Keavie, not in the least bit insulted, and already with a cupcake in her hand and a steaming latte.

‘Of course, I’m waiting for you, my dear,’ he said to Helena, who had bestowed a kiss on his cheek as he was wheeled inside. Issy put his chair next to the gas fire that looked real and danced merrily in the original tiled fireplace.

‘Well, well, well,’ said Gramps, gazing around him. ‘Well, well, well. Issy, this French cake needs a pinch of salt.’

Issy stared at him in affectionate irritation.

‘
I know!
We forgot to get salt in this morning. Why are you even in this place? There’s nothing wrong with you.’

Austin glanced around for Darny to make sure he wasn’t creating mischief somewhere. Seeing other people’s happy families – he knew nothing of Issy’s, of course – always made him a little forlorn. To his surprise, he found Darny sitting with a fat little two-year-old, teaching him how to toss stones. The two-year-old, unsurprisingly, was terrible at it, but seemed to be having a great time.