Meet Me at the Cupcake Café (6 page)

The rain got heavier, if anything, as they turned into the street near Farringdon Road that housed the offices of Kalinga Deniki Property Management, or KD as it was known. It was a sharp chunk of modern glass, six storeys high, that looked out of place among the lower-set red-brick flats and offices. Graeme slowed the car.

‘Would you mind … ?’

‘You’re not serious, Graeme.’

‘Come on! How would it look to the partners, me driving in in the morning with some office clerk?’

He saw Issy’s face.

‘Sorry. Office manager, I mean. I know it’s you. But they won’t know what to think, will they?’ He caressed her cheek briefly. ‘I’m sorry, Issy. But I’m the boss and if I start condoning workplace romances … all hell will break loose’

From a moment Issy felt triumphant. It was a romance! Officially! She knew it. Even if Helena did occasionally imply she was an idiot, that it was just a convenient thing for Graeme to have a spare ear around.

As if reading her thoughts, Graeme smiled at her, almost guiltily.

‘It won’t be for ever,’ he said. But he couldn’t deny the slight relief he felt when she stepped out of the car.

Issy stumbled through the puddles. It was hosing it down so hard that only a few minutes’ walking up Britton Street were enough to render her as completely soaked as if she’d never had a lift at all. She ducked into the ladies’ loos on the ground floor, which were cutting-edge (so guests could never figure out how to turn on the taps or flush the loos) and usually empty. A few blasts of the hand dryer were all she could muster for her hair. Oh great, it was going to look like a complete frizzathon.

When Issy took the time and properly blowdried her hair and used lots of expensive products, it made beautiful shiny ringlets that fell in tinkly twists round her neck. When she didn’t, which was most days, she ran a huge risk of frizz, especially in the wet. She looked at herself and sighed. Her hair looked like she’d knitted it. The cold wind had put some colour in her cheeks – Issy hated her propensity for blushing at everything but this wasn’t too bad – and her green eyes, fringed with lots of black mascara, were fine, but the hair was undoubtedly a disaster. She scrabbled around in her bag for a clip or hairband but came up empty-handed except for a red elastic band dropped by the postman. That would have to do. It didn’t quite go with her floral print dress and tight black cardie, worn with thick black tights and black boots, but it would have to do.

Slightly late, she said good morning to Jim, the doorman, and hopped the lift up to the second floor, which was accounts and admin. The salesmen and the developers had the floor above, but the atrium was made of solid glass, which meant it was always easy to see who was around and about. Up at her desk she nodded to her workmates, then realized with a start that she was late for the 9.30 meeting she was meant to be minuting; the meeting where Graeme would talk about the results of the board meeting to staff lower down the chain. She cursed under her breath. Why couldn’t Graeme at least have mentioned it to remind her? Crossly, she grabbed her laptop and ran for the stairs.

In the meeting room, the senior sales team were already seated round the glass table, trading banter with one another. They glanced up uninterestedly when she walked in, muttering apologies. Graeme looked furious. Well, it was his fault, thought Issy mutinously. If he hadn’t left her to wade through a flood she’d have made it on time.

‘Late night?’ sniggered Billy Fanshawe, one of the youngest, cockiest salesmen, who thought he was irresistible to women. It was annoying how often his sheer persuasive belief in this proved it to be true.

Issy smiled without showing her teeth at him and sat down without grabbing a coffee, even though she desperately wanted one. She sat next to Callie Mehta, the only senior woman at Kalinga Deniki. She was director of Human Resources, and looked, as ever, immaculately groomed and unperturbed.

‘Right,’ said Graeme, clearing his throat. ‘Now we’re all finally here, I think we can start.’

Issy felt her face beam red. She didn’t expect Graeme to give her any special favours at work, of course she didn’t, but she didn’t want him thinking he could pick on her either. Fortunately nobody else noticed.

‘I spoke to the partners yesterday,’ said Graeme. KD was a Dutch international conglomerate with branches in most major cities in the world. Some partners were London-based but spent most of their time on aeroplanes, scoping out properties. They were elusive, and very powerful. Everyone sat up and listened attentively.

‘As you know, it’s been a bad year here …’

‘Not for me,’ said Billy with the self-satisfied look of a man who’d just bought his first Porsche. Issy decided not to minute that.

‘And we’ve been hit hard in the US and the Middle East. The rest of Europe is holding up, as is the Far East, but even so …’

Graeme had everyone’s attention now.

‘It doesn’t look like we can continue as we are. There are going to have to be … cutbacks.’

Beside Issy, Callie Mehta nodded. She must have known already, thought Issy, with a sudden beat of alarm inside her. And if she knew, that meant ‘cutbacks’ would be staff cutbacks. And staff cutbacks meant … redundancies.

She felt a coldness grip at her heart. It wouldn’t be her, would it? But then, it certainly wouldn’t be the Billys of the operation, they were too important. And accounts, well, you couldn’t do without accounts, and …

Issy found her mind racing ahead of her.

‘Now this will be strictly confidential. I don’t want these minutes circulated,’ said Graeme, looking at her pointedly. ‘But I think it’s fair to say they’re looking for a staff reduction of round about five per cent.’

Panicking, Issy did the figures in her head. If they had two hundred staff, that was ten redundancies. It didn’t sound like a lot, but where did you trim the fat? The new press assistant could go, probably, but would the salesmen have to get rid of their PAs? Or would there be fewer salesmen? No, that didn’t make sense, fewer salesmen and the same amount of admin support was a stupid business model. She realized Graeme was still talking.

‘… but I think we can show them we can do better than that, aim for seven, even eight per cent. Show Rotterdam that KD is a twenty-first-century lean, mean business machine.’

‘Yeah,’ said Billy.

‘All right,’ said somebody else.

But if it was her … how would she pay the mortgage? How would she live? She was thirty-one years old but she didn’t really have any savings; it had taken her years to pay off her student loan and then she’d wanted to enjoy London … She thought with regret of all the meals out, all the nights in cocktail bars and splurge trips to Topshop. Why didn’t she have more put by? Why? She couldn’t go to Florida to live with her mum, she couldn’t. Where would she go? What would she do? Issy suddenly thought she was going to cry.

‘Are you getting this down, Issy?’ Graeme snapped at her, as Callie started discussing packages and exit strategies. She looked up at him, almost unaware of where she was. Suddenly she realized he was looking back at her like she was a total stranger.

Chapter Three

Issy hadn’t had enough cakes left over from the bus queue for the office the day before, and anyway she would have felt hypocritical handing them out in a jaunty fashion after what she’d overheard in the meeting. However, the entire team had gathered round, demanding a treat after the break, and were horrified.

‘You are why Ah come to work,’ François, the young ad designer, had said. ‘You bake like aha, the patissiers of Toulon.
C’est vrai
.’

Issy had blushed bright red at the compliment, and searched among the recipes her grandfather posted to her for something new to try. And although she felt slightly sneaky doing it, she wore her smartest, most businesslike navy dress with the swingy hem, and a neat jacket. Just to look like a professional.

It wasn’t raining quite so hard today, but a chill wind still cut through the bus queue. Linda, concerned about Issy’s anxious expression – she was developing a little furrow between her eyebrows, Linda had noticed – wanted to suggest a cream, but didn’t dare. Instead she found herself babbling about how haberdashery had never been so busy – something to do with everyone taking on a huge dose of austerity and starting to knit their own jumpers – but she could tell Issy was barely listening. She was staring at a very sleek blonde woman being shown the outside of the little shop by a man she vaguely recognized as one of the many local estate agents she’d met when she bought her flat.

The woman was talking loudly, and Issy edged a little closer to hear what she was saying. Her professional curiosity was piqued.

‘This area doesn’t know what it needs!’ the woman was saying. She had a loud, carrying voice. ‘There’s too much fried chicken and not enough organic produce. Do you know,’ she said earnestly to the estate agent, who was nodding happily and agreeing with everything she said, ‘that Britain eats more sugar per head than any country in the world except America and Tonga?’

‘Tonga, huh?’ said the estate agent. Issy clasped the large Tupperware carton of cupcakes closer to her chest, in case the woman turned her laser gaze on her.

‘I don’t consider myself to be a mere foodie,’ said the woman. ‘I consider myself to be more of a prophet, yah? Spreading the message. That wholegrain, raw cooking is the only way forward.’

Raw cooking? thought Issy.

‘Now, I thought we’d put the cooker over here.’ The woman was pointing bossily through the window into the far corner. ‘We’ll hardly be using it.’

‘Oh yes, that would be perfect,’ said the estate agent.

No it wouldn’t, thought Issy instantly. You’d want to be near the window for good venting, so people could get a look at what you were doing and you could keep an eye on the shop. That far corner was a terrible place for the oven, you’d have your back to everything the entire time. No, if you wanted to cook for people, you needed to do it somewhere you could be seen, to welcome people in cheerfully with a smile, and …

Lost in her reverie, she barely noticed the bus arriving, just as the lady said, ‘Now, talking about money, Desmond …’

How much money? wondered Issy idly, climbing in the back door of the bus, as Linda wittered on about cross-stitch.