Meet Me at the Cupcake Café (39 page)

‘Thank you,’ she said to Caroline quietly, with a hesitant admiration.

‘You know,’ said Caroline, daintily sweeping up the scraps, ‘you don’t
look
like you’re the kind of person who would let anyone push you about.’

Pearl sat Louis back up on the high chair. Was he plump? He had round little baby cheeks and an adorable pot belly, and a high little round bottom and chunky kissable thighs and fat pudgy fingers. How could he be fat? He was perfect.

‘You’re gorgeous,’ she said, looking at him. Louis nodded. His mum told him this a lot and he knew how to respond in a way that normally got him a sweetie.

‘
Louis is gojuss
,’ he said, grinning merrily and showing all his teeth. ‘
Yis! Louis is gojuss! Now sweeties
.’

And he put out his chubby hand and made a beckoning gesture.

‘Mm,’ he added for emphasis, just in case anyone had missed the reference, licking his lips and rubbing his tummy. ‘
Louis does do like sweeties
.’

Caroline was rarely demonstrative even with her own children – in fact, had she stopped to think about it she would probably have categorized her mood with them as mostly peevish – but she moved towards Louis on the chair, who eyed her warily. He was universally benevolent, but this woman never gave him sweeties, he knew that much.

Caroline prodded him in his fat tummy and he giggled and wriggled obligingly.

‘You are gorgeous, Louis,’ she said. ‘But you shouldn’t have that.’

‘It’s just a baby tummy,’ protested Pearl strongly.

‘No, it has rolls,’ said Caroline, whose contemplation and understanding of human body fat in all its permutations bordered on the maniacal. ‘That’s not right. And I never see him without a cake in his paws.’

‘Well, he’s a growing boy,’ said Pearl defensively. ‘He’s got to eat.’

‘He does,’ said Caroline thoughtfully. ‘It all depends on what.’

A tap at the door alerted them to their first customers – the labourers who were working on Kate’s house on Albion Road. Now Kate directly blamed the work’s slow progress and tardy completion on Caroline selling them coffee and cakes all day and encouraging them to hang about chatting rather than getting on with the job and taking five minutes of their own time to throw down a home-made cheese sandwich underneath the roof slats. Her annoyance was making Stitch ’n’ Bitch increasingly uncomfortable.

As they handled the morning rush, and Louis sat cheerfully greeting the regulars, who found it hard to pass him without tweaking his sticky cheeks or rubbing his soft shorn head, Pearl kept sneaking glances at him in the faded antique mirror that hung over the room. Sure enough, there was old Mrs Hanowitz, who liked a huge mug of hot chocolate and a proper kaffeeklatsch, scratching his roly tum as if he were a dog – then she popped the marshmallow from the top of her chocolate into his mouth. And Fingus the plumber, with the huge belly and builder’s bum spilling out of the side of his white dungarees: he high-fived his little mate, and asked as he did every day if Louis had brought his spanner yet, seeing as he was going to be his apprentice. Issy didn’t help matters by running in from her early meeting to get started on the baking, but not without going up to Louis for her morning cuddle and announcing loudly, ‘Good morning, my little chub-chubs.’ Pearl’s brow furrowed. Was this what he was? Everyone’s plump pet? He wasn’t a pet. He was a person, with the same rights as everyone else.

Caroline caught her looking, and bit her lip. Well, quite right, she didn’t want her child to end up the same way as her, did she? And Pearl’s distress had given her an idea …

‘Well, maybe she’s right,’ said Ben, lounging against the kitchen counter. ‘I dunno. He looks all right to me.’

‘And me,’ said Pearl. Ben had ‘popped in’ on his way home, even though he was working in Stratford, which was right across the other side of town. Pearl pretended that he was just passing, Ben pretended he didn’t really want to stay the night (although Pearl’s cooking was worth it on its own. It was odd, Pearl had found. When she wasn’t working, she couldn’t really be bothered with cooking and they’d lived off chicken and fish fingers. Now, even though she was tired when she got home, she quite liked sticking Louis on the counter and putting a meal together. She was a good cook, after all), and Louis nearly expired with happiness.

The little boy bumbled past them entirely covered in a blanket.

‘Hey, Louis,’ said his dad.

‘
I not Louis. I turtle
,’ came a muffled voice. Ben raised his eyebrows.

‘Don’t ask me,’ said Pearl. ‘He’s been a turtle all day.’

Ben put down his cup of tea and raised his voice.

‘Any turtles around here who would like to
go outside and play some football?
’

‘
Yaaayyyy
,’ said the turtle, getting up without taking off his blanket and bumping his head on the cooker. ‘Ouch.’

Pearl looked at her mother in amazement as Ben led his boy outside.

‘Don’t think it,’ said her mother. ‘He comes for a bit then he goes again. Don’t let the boy get too fond.’

It might be too late for that, Pearl found herself thinking.

Bran and Carrot Cupcake Surprise

1
½ cups wholewheat pastry flour

½ tsp baking soda

2
¼ tsp baking powder

¼ tsp salt

¾ cup oat or wheat bran

egg replacement for 2 eggs

1 cup rennet

½ cup brown rice syrup

¼ cup apple sauce

¼ cup safflower oil

1½ cups grated carrot

4–6 ounces crushed dates

½ cup raisins

½ cup chopped walnuts or pecans

‘I just wanted to try out something new,’ said Caroline, trying to look suitably humble and helpful the next morning when she turned up with a Tupperware box. ‘It’s nothing really, I just tossed them together.’

‘What the hell is brown rice syrup when it’s at home?’ said Pearl, glancing down the recipe. ‘Safflower oil?’

‘They’re perfectly easy to source,’ lied Caroline.

‘Don’t call it “surprise’’,’ said Issy over her shoulder. ‘Every child knows that “surprise” means hidden vegetables. Call it “white sugar chocolate toffee delight’’.’

‘It’s simple, wholesome fare,’ said Caroline, trying to make a Jamie Oliver face. In fact, it had taken her five hours slaving over her Neff faux-aged pale cream country kitchen table and much cursing to get the mixture right and make the cupcakes stick together. How did Issy make it look so damn easy, throwing ingredients together to produce cakes that tasted light as air and melted in the mouth? Well, of course she was using evil refined ingredients that would send her to an early grave. But as she’d mixed and reworked them, Caroline had had an image in her head – of her wholesome treats outselling the sugary rubbish and becoming famous; eclipsing the Cupcake Café with Caroline’s Fresh Cooking; converting children all over the world to the benefits of a healthier, slenderer lifestyle … She wouldn’t be the part-time member of staff then, no siree …

Pearl and Issy looked at one another, their hands wavering by their mouths.

‘Well?’ said Caroline, still half-demented from lack of sleep. Her cleaner was going to have a lot of scrubbing to do that morning. ‘Give one to Louis.’

‘
Iss please!
’

Pearl put her hand down. ‘Yes, in a minute.’

Issy fought an urgent desire to scrape the bits of raw carrot off her tongue. And what was that custardy aftertaste that hinted at broccoli?

‘Here, little man.’ Caroline took the box over to him.

‘Um, he’s not hungry,’ said Pearl desperately. ‘I’m trying to cut down, you know.’

But Louis had already cheerfully stuck his fat little paw in the box.

‘Ta, Caline.’

‘Thank you,’ said Caroline, unable to help herself. ‘Don’t say ta, say thank you.’

‘I don’t think he’ll be saying either in a minute,’ muttered Pearl to Issy, who was surreptitiously slurping coffee and rolling it round her mouth to try to remove the taste. Pearl had simply scarfed some of Issy’s brand new batch of Victoria sponge cupcakes to change the taste and Issy didn’t blame her for a second. Caroline fixed her eyes on Louis expectantly.

‘This is
much
nicer than your normal silly old cakes, darling,’ she said insistently. Louis bit into the cupcake-shaped object confidently enough, but gradually, as he started to chew, his face took on a confused, upset expression, like a dog chewing a plastic newspaper.

‘There we go, darling,’ she said encouragingly. ‘Yummy, huh.’

Louis signalled his mother with his eyes desperately, then simply, as if it wasn’t connected to him in any way, let the lower half of his jaw drop open so that the contents of his mouth started to fall out and crumble to the floor.

‘Louis!’ shrieked Pearl, dashing over to him. ‘Stop doing that immediately.’

‘
Yucky, Mummy! Yucky! Bleargh bleargh bleargh!
’

Louis began frantically shoving his hand over his tongue to scrape off any remaining pieces of the cake.

‘
Yug, Mummy! Yug, Caline! Yug!
’ he cried accusingly, as Pearl gave him a drink of milk to calm him down and Issy fetched the dustpan and brush. Caroline stood there with a pinkish blush at the top of her very high cheekbones.

‘Well,’ she said, when Louis was quite himself again, ‘obviously his palate has been completely ruined by junk.’

‘Hmm,’ said Pearl crossly.

‘
Caline
,’ said Louis seriously, leaning over to make his point. ‘
Bad cake, Caline
.’

‘No, yummy cake, Louis,’ said Caroline tightly.

‘
No, Caline
,’ said Louis. Issy hastily got in the middle before it turned into a genuine argument between a forty-year-old and a two-year-old.

‘It is,’ she said, ‘a brilliant idea, Caroline. Absolutely great.’

Caroline eyed her beadily. ‘Well, I still own copyright on the recipe.’

‘Um, well …’ said Issy. ‘But obviously, well, yes. Of course. We could call them Caroline’s cupcakes, would that work?’

Caroline was reluctant to hand over the rest of the cakes (Issy didn’t want her sneaking them to a customer; she trusted Caroline absolutely with money, stock and hours but didn’t trust her one iota in terms of thinking she knew best when it came to their clients’ tastes) but Issy insisted she needed them for an experiment, and, well, it was true that they hadn’t stuck together as well as Caroline had hoped. Rennet wasn’t quite as good for making delicious firm cakes as the all-natural cookbook had assured her it would be. Issy wasn’t even sure the cakes would be all right for the compost she’d started handing over to the Hackney City Farm, but subtly got rid of them anyway.