Paradise Fields (17 page)

‘. . . it sets pretty quickly in winter,' Sacha said a few moments later. ‘In summer I have to put it in the fridge.'

‘Wow.' Awed, Kerry Anne looked into the blue glass pot at the cleanser she had helped make.

‘When it's completely cold we'll label it.'

‘I don't know about you two,' said Nel, after a couple of hours had passed and several dozen little blue jars, plastic bottles and tiny pink potion bottles had been filled, ‘but I need a cup of something. Shall I go down and put the kettle on?'

‘That's a good idea,' said Sacha. ‘Kerry Anne, you must be gasping. I get very carried away and forget about things like meals and hot drinks. I even forget to go to the loo until I'm desperate.'

‘I can perfectly understand that,' said Kerry Anne. ‘It's so fascinating. What can we make now?'

‘Well, I'm going to make a hot drink,' said Nel, aware that the other two were operating on a different plane. ‘What would you like?'

‘Do you have 'erb tea?' asked Kerry Anne. She looked up from the bottle she was filling with a syringe. She was more precise even than Sacha with her quantities.

Sacha named several varieties of her tea. ‘I know Nel will have peppermint.'

‘It's the only one I like, apart from proper tea, and I know you don't have that.'

‘You don't use caffeine either?' Kerry Anne was ecstatic. ‘I know it wrecks the skin.'

‘I'm not sure about that, Nel gets through a fair bit of caffeine and her skin is fine.'

‘That must be because she uses your products. Which proves how wonderful they are if they work so well on an older skin.'

Nel, not sure if she should laugh, cry or throw something, looked at her watch instead. ‘Oh my God! I've got to go! I've got a cake to finish!'

‘But it won't take you long, you're good at making cakes,' said Sacha. ‘You're always making them!'

‘Not in the shape of a paddle-steamer, I'm not. I only used to do that sort of thing for the kids when they were little. It's terrific fun, but it takes hours. I must dash! Kerry Anne, do you want to come with me, or what?'

Kerry Anne looked like a child about to be dragged away from the biggest ride at Alton Towers, just before she'd reached the top of the queue.

‘I'll run you home later, if you like,' said Sacha, who was pleased with how much work she'd got through. ‘Kerry Anne is really good at this. I'd like it if you could stay a bit longer. I'll make you something to eat as well as the cup of tea Nel isn't going to make.'

‘That would be great! I haven't had so much fun in years. Thank you so much for bringing me here, Nel.'

Nel regarded Kerry Anne, who looked touchingly young and vulnerable in her white paper hat. She must warn Sacha later that she wasn't as innocent as she looked. ‘That's fine. I'm glad you're enjoying yourself.'

As she negotiated her car out into the road, Nel realised she was in danger of softening her attitude to Kerry Anne. She'd been rather sweet in her enthusiasm, much softer than the glacial beauty of the meeting in Jake's office. Yet she was clearly determined to push the building through: Nel mustn't forget that. The trouble was, she inevitably became fond of people when she got to know them better. To know all was to forgive all. But as her sons often pointed out, not many people shared this philosophy and it did tend to make you vulnerable. And look what had happened the moment she stopped hating Jake Demerand! Or had she stopped hating him? Love and hate were so closely aligned.

Oh my God! She almost swerved as she realised she
had allowed the ‘I' word into her thoughts. You may have felt in a bad way before, girl, but let that little word encroach into your consciousness, and you'll really be in trouble.

Nel had to call in at the supermarket before going home. Cake sculpture required a lot of supplementary equipment. She didn't have time to be discriminating; anything that might come in useful was hurled into her trolley. She gathered large circular biscuits; every kind of small sweet; chocolate buttons, chocolate fingers and animals; food colouring; cocktail sticks; silver balls, hundreds and thousands; sugar roses; in fact, almost everything the Home Baking department sold plus catering packs of icing sugar. She always used to have much of this stuff in her larder, but it had been years since she had last made such a complicated cake. It had been a helicopter. The dogs had eaten it while Nel was giving out party bags. Fleur had been extremely upset, but Nel had been secretly relieved; there was only so much hyperactivity she could cope with. But any dog that even sniffed at this one would be banished from the sofa for life.

Her back was aching, her teeth felt ready to fall out she'd tasted the icing so often, and the kitchen floor was encrusted with sugar, but it was a masterpiece, even if she shouldn't think so herself. She even went so far as to photograph it.

Because it had to feed a lot of people, and be a centrepiece for the party, it had to be on quite a large scale. Nel had used her largest square tin to make the base, and cut it into a boat shape. With another square of cake, she had built a cabin. The paddle wheels were
huge chocolate biscuits with dismantled liquorice all-sorts for the flaps. It was surrounded by a sea of blue icing, each wavelet topped with a wiggle of foam. The river didn't often get rough enough for white horses, but what the hell, she was an artist!

She was only sorry that none of her children were home to admire her creation. The boys were of course at university and Fleur was with her girlfriends in town. Of course she should have been at home, working, but since the clubbing fiasco, Nel had decided not to nag. Fleur might decide to ask her mother a few pertinent questions, and Nel was not only hopeless at lying, but blushed far too easily for a grown woman.

With the utmost care, she put the cake on a high shelf in the larder, having scrutinised the ceiling above for cobwebs. Then she laid a sheet of tissue paper delicately on top of it. She decided to put off washing the kitchen floor until tomorrow, and retreated upstairs to the bath. The dogs would give the floor a good lick, after all.

The following morning, Nel decided that making the cake had been the easy part; getting it to the meeting at the hospice would be the tricky bit. But at least her car had nothing much else in it. As the party itself was on the following day, when she would be loaded to the gunnels with bran tubs, prizes to go in the bran tubs (which she had not yet wrapped), cloths to cover trestle tables, a tombola machine, oversized dice and a million other things not yet on her list, she decided to take the cake early.

She laid it on the back seat as if it were a newborn baby. She had great difficulty in preventing herself putting a seatbelt round it, and had to content herself
with packing it round with cardboard boxes, so if she had to brake sharply, it wouldn't budge.

It was a pity it was a formal meeting. Most of what went on at the hospice was casual and fun, in spite of the very serious reason for its existence. But occasionally, and this was one of the occasions, all the patrons and bigwigs were invited, and Nel and Vivian always put on their best clothes accordingly. It was possible there would be news about getting a new director. Nel and Viv had wanted a woman, but they were not sure any had applied.

The building did look dreadfully tatty, thought Nel, as she opened the back door of her car to retrieve her high-heeled shoes. And the drive was as muddy and pot-holed as any farm track. Perhaps instead of raising money so the children in wheelchairs could get to the jetty, and therefore the boat, they should have had the drive retarmacked. But they always put the needs of the children before things like that. Even now a group of them were kicking a football around near the basketball hoop.

Very carefully, she drew the cake out of the back of the car and put it on the bonnet. If the big cheeses didn't appreciate that work of art, they didn't deserve her. Except that she didn't do it for the big cheeses, she did it for the children.

She was debating whether to carry the cake in before she changed her shoes, and then come back out, or put on her heels and risk falling over in the mud when she became aware that the group of children was coming nearer. For the first time she wondered what they were doing there. It was term-time, none of the committee members would be likely to bring their children to kick
a ball around, not in winter. She became aware that they were wearing a sort of football strip, so their presence must be official in some way. There was a man with them, saying goodbye, but he was being followed.

‘OK, take this on your head,' he called.

The ball missed its target, landed badly, ricocheted off a stone and landed in the cake.

‘Oh shit!' said someone.

NEL WAS TOO
shocked to react instantly. It was too much, looking at a muddy football resting in the middle of her paddle-steamer. And the fact that she was covered in mud herself didn't register until she automatically put up a hand to wipe her eye and realised why she couldn't see properly.

‘I'm most terribly sorry.'

Of course it was Jake. Of course it would be him who caused this catastrophe. And of course he would be looking immaculate while she was covered in mud. Sod's law (and whoever Sod was, he seemed to have too many laws and they were all very unfair) stated that the person who least deserved to be covered in mud and have her cake ruined would suffer those disasters, and that the man who had caused them would end up mud-free and proud.

Or would he? Nel didn't swear, shout, or even speak. She just removed the football, covered now not only with mud, but with chocolate, butter cream (made with real butter) and brightly coloured sweets, then she aimed it very carefully at Jake Demerand's silk tie.

‘Ooh, sir! We're so sorry, miss!' said a voice, anxious, yet keen to see what would happen.

‘Gorr! Look at that cake! It's ruined!' said another.

‘It were a boat, wunnit? Look at them sweets!'

Looking down, Nel saw that all the children who had been playing football now surrounded her. They were looking back and forth between Jake and her with pleasurable anticipation: there was going to be a fight.

Which meant there couldn't be. Nel would have to think of a revenge which could be performed without witnesses, but soon. She didn't hold the popular opinion that revenge was a dish best served cold; if she wanted her own back, she wanted it back immediately, with heat.

He was laughing. He was obviously trying to hide it, but he was definitely laughing, possibly because he realised what Nel had intended and knew she couldn't go through with it.

A tiny part of Nel was laughing, too, only it was swamped by the part that had spent so long making the damn cake.

‘It's OK, you guys,' she said breezily. ‘I can knock up another cake in a brace of shakes. You go off and finish your game. Find your teacher,' she added somewhat acidly. Carefully, she put the cake down on a low wall which supported the balustrade, then she threw the football as far as she could. She watched the boys chase after it, and spotted a young man in a tracksuit with a whistle round his neck run up and meet them.

‘I'm so sorry, Nel, that must have taken you hours. Is there anything we can do to save it?'

Nel didn't answer; she just looked him steadily in the eye and picked up a handful of cake. Then she smeared it all down the front of his tie. ‘I should make you eat it all, with your hands,' she said, wiping her own on the bit of tissue paper which had been covering the cake.

To his credit, he went on laughing. A beautiful silk
tie deliberately ruined, and he laughed. Some part of Nel gave him massive brownie points for this. After all, the cake thing, although far more serious, had been an accident. It was a shame he spoilt it by putting his hands on her shoulders.

‘Nel, I'm so sorry!'

‘Don't you “sorry” me!' She dragged herself free, felt behind her for another handful of cake, and let him have it, down his face, his collar and shirt, so it wasn't only his tie he needed to worry about. Then she stalked into the building, leaving the cake and Jake behind. Just as she opened the front door she heard a car drive up, and Vivian calling out of the window.

‘What on earth has happened? Who are you, and why are you covered in cake? Oh my God! It's you!'

Nel was wearing her old and muddy shoes, and a fair amount of mud had splattered over her face. There was no way she could go straight into the meeting without doing something about it.

‘Don't ask me why I look like this,' she said to Karen on reception as she signed in. ‘Ask the next man to come in what happened. I'm off to the Ladies. I hope there's no one in there?'

‘Don't think so. Most of the kids seem to be in the art room, and the volunteers are with them.'

‘I don't know,' said Nel seriously. ‘Some people think they're just here to have fun.'

Karen laughed, and Nel went down the corridor.

Her reflection in the mirror was not encouraging. Her white silk shirt, the one she always wore for committee meetings, would take an awful lot of washing to get clean. When the boys first played rugby, she had learned there was something about mud which made it cling
like no other stain. Her navy jacket, part of a suit she had bought at a charity shop for just these occasions, responded rather better to being scraped at with a paper towel, as did the skirt. It was a shame that half her eye make-up came off with the mud on her face. After rummaging in her bag for a bit of kohl pencil for a few moments, she gave up and hoped mud would have the same effect as eyeliner and mascara. Then she blotted her hands on more paper towels, pulled her hair about for a bit and went to take her place in the boardroom, murmuring apologies for her lateness.

‘You're not late, Nel,' said a woman in her seventies, a stalwart of the hospice and a good friend of Nel's. ‘We're waiting for Vivian, and of course our consultant.'