Meet Me at the Cupcake Café (40 page)

And there were two good effects immediately: Caroline was absolutely right about one thing. There was a market for ‘healthy’ cupcakes.

‘Caroline’s cupcakes’, as amended by Issy, little apple sauce, raisin and cranberry muffins in tiny baking cases with fire engines or pink umbrellas on them, were an instant hit with mothers who were anxious to avoid their children getting stuck into icing once a day, and Issy faithfully added a kilo of carrots to their stock order every week then took some home each night. Caroline genuinely believed they had gone into the recipe. Helena and Ashok, who appeared to have practically moved in (Helena explained that the doctor’s single-person digs left a lot to be desired and would leave a lot to be desired even if one were a dog, ferret or rat), ate a lot of soup. But Issy never did find a use for the rennet.

The second good result was that Louis became entirely suspicious of every cupcake in the shop and refused to eat a second breakfast there. It did him no harm at all, and with Caroline working more hours and Louis skipping to the bus stop with his mum every day, his second weigh-in went without a hitch. Which didn’t matter to Pearl and Caroline, who cheerfully tore up the health authority’s letter regardless.

Three weeks later, Pearl came in to find Caroline bent over the counter, stock still.

‘What’s up?’

Caroline couldn’t answer. She was stiff as a board.

‘What’s the matter, sweetheart?’

‘I’m … I’m fine,’ stuttered Caroline.

Pearl gently but firmly turned her round.

‘What’s happened?’

Caroline’s usually immaculately made-up face was tearstained and tragic, mascara pouring down.

‘What is it?’ said Pearl, who was familiar with how the pain, sometimes, of losing your man could come in and hit you at the most unexpected moments, even when you hadn’t thought of him in days. Like she’d gone past Clapham Common on a bus and remembered a picnic they’d had there, when she was just pregnant with Louis and enjoying looking pregnant, rather than just big, although her boobies had grown utterly gigantic (Ben had liked that). They had sat in the park and eaten chicken as Ben talked about what his future son would do and what he’d grow up to be, and she’d looked at the blue sky above and felt as safe and happy as she could ever remember. She never went to the common now.

Caroline choked and indicated her trouser zip. She was wearing a pair of very closely draped cigarette pants, clearly expensive. The zip, however, had burst and pulled off a button at the top to boot.

‘Look!’ she wailed. ‘Look at this!’

Pearl squinted and examined it.

‘You’ve bust the zip … Are you scarfing ginger cookies in secret when we’re not looking?’

‘
No!
’ said Caroline emphatically. ‘No, definitely not. It caught on a door.’

‘If you say so,’ said Pearl, who found Caroline’s obsession with self-denial quite amusing. ‘So, what’s the problem?’

‘These are D&G Cruise 10,’ said Caroline, a sentence which meant absolutely nothing to Pearl. ‘I … I mean, they cost hundreds of pounds.’

Pearl thought she could easily get a pair down Primark for a tenner, but didn’t say.

‘And I won’t … I won’t be able to buy any more now. That’s it for me. The Bastard says he’s not paying for my lifestyle.’ Her voice tailed away in sobs.

‘I’m going to have to wear … high street.’ Caroline’s sobs grew louder. ‘And colour my own hair!’

She dropped her head in her hands.

Pearl couldn’t see the problem. ‘Well, there’s nothing wrong with that. You know what they say, as long as you have a roof over your head and enough to eat …’

‘I never have enough to eat,’ said Caroline defiantly.

‘Let me take a look at it,’ said Pearl. ‘It’s only a busted zip. Can’t you fix it in your Stitch ’n’ Bitch?’

‘Ha!’ laughed Caroline. ‘No. That’s just for patchwork and gossip, not real sewing.’

‘Well, I can fix it for you,’ said Pearl. Caroline blinked her wide blue eyes.

‘Really? You’d do that for me?’

‘What would you do otherwise?’

Caroline shrugged. ‘I suppose … just buy another pair. In the old days. Of course I’d give them to the charity shop.’

‘Of course you would,’ said Pearl, shaking her head. Hundreds of pounds for a pair of trousers, thrown out because of a zip. The world made no sense.

The doorbell rang and Doti the postman came in, with his normal hopeful smile.

‘Hello, ladies,’ he said politely. ‘What’s going on here?’

‘Caroline is out of her trousers,’ said Pearl, unable to help herself.

‘Oh good,’ said Doti.

‘
Why
is that good?’ spluttered Caroline.

‘You need a bit of meat on your bones,’ said Doti. ‘Skinny women look … sad. You should eat some of these delicious cakes.’

Caroline rolled her eyes. ‘I do not look
sad
. Does Cheryl Cole look sad? Does Jennifer Aniston look sad?’

‘Yes’ said Pearl.

‘I don’t know who they are,’ said Doti.

‘I look in shape, that’s all.’

‘Well, you look nice,’ said Doti.

‘Thank you,’ said Caroline. ‘Although I’m not sure about taking fashion advice from a postman.’

‘We postmen don’t miss much,’ said Doti, completely unoffended and putting their few letters down on the counter, as Pearl simultaneously handed him an espresso. They smiled at one another.

‘You, on the other hand,’ said Doti, necking his espresso as if to give himself courage. ‘
You
look beautiful.’

Pearl smiled and said thank you as Doti left, and Caroline’s mouth fell open.

‘What?’ said Pearl, still pleased enough by Doti’s compliment not to be too bothered by Caroline’s unflattering amazement. ‘You don’t think he meant it?’

Caroline looked her up and down, taking in, Pearl knew, her rounded hips, her large bosom, the curve of her back and her hips.

‘No,’ she said, in a humbler voice than Pearl had ever heard before. ‘No. You are beautiful. It’s my fault. I didn’t even notice. I don’t,’ she added, her voice becoming more mournful, ‘I don’t always notice much.’

So Pearl took Caroline’s trousers home and replaced the zip, and the button, and turned up a trailing hem and was slightly disappointed, actually, at the quality of the rest of the sewing on trousers that cost hundreds of pounds, and Caroline was so genuinely grateful she wore them twice in a week, which was a record for her wearing anything, and didn’t pick Louis up on his pronunciation for almost four full days, until he said ‘innit’ and she absolutely couldn’t help herself.

Chapter Fourteen

Best Birthday Cake Ever

4 oz Breton soft butter, first churn

8 oz white caster sugar, sifted

4 large fresh free-range eggs, beaten

6 oz self-raising flour

6 oz plain flour

1 cup fresh milk

1 tsp vanilla essence

Icing

4 oz Breton soft butter, first churn

16 oz icing sugar

1 tsp vanilla essence

2 oz milk

2 tsp essence of roses

Grease three small cake pans. Cream the butter until as smooth as a child’s cheek.

Add sugar
very gradually
. No dumping like you normally do, Isabel. This has to be fluffy; properly fluffy. Add a grain at a time through the whisk.

Add the eggs
slowly
. Beat well at all times.

Mix the sifted flours and add a little milk and vanilla; then some flour, then some milk and vanilla and so on. Do not rush. This is your birthday cake for you, and you are very special. You deserve a little time.

Bake for 20 minutes at 350°F/gas mark 4.

For the icing, add half the icing sugar to the butter. Add milk, vanilla and essence of roses. Beat thoroughly, adding sugar till the icing reaches the desired consistency.

Ice layers and top of cake.

Add candles. Not too many. Add friends. As many as you can.

Blow candles out while making a happy wish. Do not tell anyone a) your wish, b) your recipe. Some things, like you, are special, my darling.

Love, Gramps

Issy put the birthday card up in the window. The sun came through the shop so strongly on 21 June, Issy felt herself turn almost pink and wondered if you could get a suntan through glass. It was, undoubtedly, the only way she’d get a suntan this year.

‘It’s burst into summer without me noticing,’ she said.

‘Hmm,’ said Pearl. ‘I always notice. I hate weather where I can’t wear tights. My wobbly bits don’t know what they’re doing and start moving in different directions. I hope we get another freezing summer.’

‘Oh no you don’t!’ said Issy in dismay. ‘We want to be outside, all our clients sitting about for ages. It’s a shame we can’t get a licence.’

‘Drunks as well as sugar addicts,’ said Pearl. ‘Hmm. Anyway, it wouldn’t be right.’ She indicated a table by the window, currently occupied by four old men.

‘Oh yes!’ giggled Issy. It had been the oddest thing. One day two old men had trudged in the door, quite late in the day. They had looked, frankly, a bit like drunken tramps. They already had a local tramp, Berlioz, who came by most days for a couple of bits and bobs to eat and a cup of tea when it was quiet (Pearl also let him empty the RSPB charity tin by the till, but Issy didn’t know about that and Pearl had justified it to her pastor and they had decided to keep quiet about it), but these chaps were something new.

One came shuffling up.

‘Um, two coffees, please,’ he asked in a croaky, cigarette-ruined voice.

‘Of course,’ Issy had said. ‘Do you want anything with them?’

The man had dragged out a brand new ten-pound note and Austin’s card had fallen out too.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Oh, but we’re to tell you Austin sent us.’

Issy squinted for a minute, then remembered. They were the all-day drinkers from the pub Austin had taken her to.

‘Oh!’ she said in surprise. She had been avoiding Austin completely; she was still embarrassed about having thought he was interested in her rather than just her business, and things were going so much better there was no reason for the bank to complain. She did think of him sometimes though, wondering how Darny was doing. She hadn’t used the dinosaur moulds yet. And she wasn’t sure about her new customers.