When Only Cupcakes Will Do (22 page)

‘Won't take no for an answer,' smiled Jemima, hanging her arm around Lucie and Kate's necks for support. ‘I love what you're doing with the Travelling Cupcake Company, by the way. Thank you so much for being a part of my hen party, Lucie. Just take a look at Mum and Gran over there with Aunt Eileen!'

Lucie glanced through the kitchen to the conservatory at the back of the house where Kate's mother and her aunt were snoozing merrily on the cane furniture as shafts of sunlight slid down through the windows onto the chequerboard floor. She smiled. Another successful party. This proved she could extend her business plan to adult parties, maybe even christenings too. It felt good so why not take Jemima up on her offer and have a glass of something to celebrate? In fact, it would look churlish to refuse.

‘Okay, thanks. I'd love to.' She looked over at Jess to ask her to join them. It was her success too.

‘Actually, I can't,' she blushed. ‘I have a sort of date.'

‘Hey, why didn't you tell me?' Lucie smiled. ‘Who's the lucky guy?'

‘Well, actually, would you believe it's Matt? He's asked me to go to the cinema with him. It's not a real date, just two friends watching a film together.'

But from the shine of her eyes and the turn of her rosebud-pink lips, Lucie knew Jess hoped it was the beginning of something more.

‘Well, have a great night,' said Kate. ‘Now off you go, you two. Take that gorgeous ice-cream van home and we'll meet you, Lucie, in the Fox and Hounds in half an hour. No sneaking off and forgetting to join us. If you do I'll have to come round and drag you away from a night in front of the Food Channel. Anyway, when was the last time you went out for the night with a bunch of girlfriends?'

A sharp pang of loss invaded Lucie's chest. She missed her regular nights out with Steph and Hollie. Okay, she had Jess to gossip with, to mull over business ideas and culinary research projects. But she was her sister and she had stopped discussing her disastrous love life so as not to cause her any further worry. Jess had enough anxiety to fill a swimming pool with Lewis and Jack to bring up on her own, especially since her reliable babysitter had emigrated to her own little piece of Spanish paradise – although it did seem as though she had moved down her sister's worry-o-meter at last. And Jess had snagged a Saturday night date, which was more than could be said for her.

She thought of Ed. There had only been that brief ‘pep talk' that morning since the ‘love life' conversation, but there had been no mention of getting together for another drink, or anything else for that matter. She shoved away a stab of regret. She was grateful for his friendship, something that she certainly hadn't expected after what had happened at Francesca's. She had been amazed that something so enjoyable could come of something so spectacularly awful. Her faith in humankind had been restored.

She had wrestled with an impulse to follow every review he published on his blog, but she could resist anything except temptation. No wonder his blog had become so popular – Ed Cartolli was a talented writer who clearly knew his conchiglie from his cannelloni. But she had to get a hold of herself. Ed lived a busy life in North London and she had settled in Richmond. She had to start building a new life, one that was independent of her sister's family, and the first thing on her list was to find a place of her own. Yet everything she had looked at in the estate agents' windows was accompanied by a demand for an exorbitant level of rent. Being such a popular area with commuters, the majority of properties were let to stressed-out urbanites anxious to experience a slice of bucolic paradise in the leafy suburbs.

Nevertheless, she resolved to step up the search. Jess had done too much for her already and, although the house was as much her home as her sister's, she suspected she'd like to get her privacy back. She'd toyed with the idea of taking a brief sabbatical from her disaster-strewn life to join her mother in Andalucía for longer than the two weeks on offer – perhaps the whole summer. She could take the opportunity to study Spanish confectionery –
Magdalenas
,
tocino de cielo
,
panellets
. It was a possibility. She decided to Skype her mother again the following day to gauge her reaction.

And Kate was right. She did need to get out more, make some new friends, until she'd worked out which direction her path would take. In fact, she found herself looking forward to joining Jemima's hen party guests for a celebratory drink. It had been an age since she'd been out socialising with a crowd of people. Steph and Hollie still called her regularly to invite her to parties, shows and bars and she joined them as often as her finances allowed. But it was always just the three of them, putting the world to rights with the assistance of something cool and refreshing – apart from the time last week when Elliott had joined them briefly so that Hollie could show him off. Lucie was happy for her friend who had developed an inner glow since her love affair with the man of her dreams had debuted.

Fleetingly she thought of the nights out she'd had with Alex in the company of his colleagues and their partners – all of whom were professionals of some sort in the City. If she were honest, she'd usually felt like an outsider, always playing catch-up, whatever the subject of their conversation. But she had enjoyed being a part of a young couple with their life's roadmap spread out before them, planning the next stage of their lives from all the infinite possibilities. She thought of Yolande and Greg. She had seen Yolande's Facebook update announcing they were to become parents in the autumn. She'd sent a message of congratulations and received a smiley emoji for her trouble.

But she was no longer part of their world and she had to move on. Yet the circumstances of her split with Alex still rankled. How had she got it so wrong? Everything had seemed perfect in their relationship. They had been happy or so she had thought. Alex had given her no clue whatsoever that he was intending to bring their relationship to an end. If she hadn't taken matters into her own hands, would they still have been together?

Despite the hours of internal turmoil when her insomnia had bitten hardest, those ever-circling questions continued to churn through her brain. She had come to the conclusion that she couldn't begin to accept what had happened until she extracted an explanation from Alex. She needed to hear the reasons for his rejection so she could work on achieving some sort of closure. Even if he had confessed to seeing someone else – yes, she would have been devastated, but with the support of her family, she could have come to terms with the fact that it happens and made an effort to move on as well. She just didn't know what she had done wrong and this caused her to continually scour through their time together, trying to seek out the most inconsequential of issues or incidents that might have caused his reaction to her proposal.

Had it been the time she had berated him for leaving her waiting at the Tate Gallery for over fifty minutes while he finished a work project without even an apologetic text to tell her he was on his way? Was it because she had insisted on spending at least one night a week at Bart's wine bar with Steph and Hollie? She knew Alex was wary of Steph; the two of them had never quite gelled despite being in the same profession, which to her mind was strange. Was it that she struggled to engage in the complicated conversations his friends engaged in with relish? But why did they have to talk about work stuff when they were socialising – surely they had enough of that during the day? Or was it some character trait she possessed that irritated him? She wasn't perfect. She knew she had a tendency towards neatness bordering on the obsessive. Was that enough to ditch someone without a second thought?

She had no answers to these questions whirling around her brain on a never-ending line of ticker tape – so much so that it was making her dizzy. She resolved to try to contact Alex one last time, and if he didn't respond she would gather up all her willpower and forget about him as Jess and Steph and Hollie had constantly advised.

She daubed her lips with a slick of pearly pink lipstick and ran her fingers through her fringe, which was now tickling at her eyelashes. It annoyed her so she grabbed one of Jess's diamante hair clips to pin her hair away from her face before adding a thick layer of mascara. She loathed her pale eyelashes and rued the fact that Hollie wasn't around to dispense her usual cosmetic artistry for her impromptu night out.

Unbidden, her thoughts spun to Ed and the thick curly lashes any girl would have given their favourite Jimmy Choos for, and her stomach gave a swift contraction of desire.

Chapter Twenty-Four

The evening was mild as she trotted down the road to the Fox and Hounds. As she made her way to the front door a group of men spilled out, pints in hand, making their way to the bleached wooden benches of the beer garden, laughing raucously at their own jokes. She wondered if they were the remnants of Harry's stag party.

The pub was as welcoming as ever. She ordered a glass of sauvignon blanc and stood on her tiptoes to search the Saturday night throng for Kate and Jemima. She spotted them. They had commandeered the corner next to the impressive stone fireplace and already the table was scattered with ice buckets and half-finished cocktails.

A burst of hilarity erupted followed by a very unladylike snort from Jemima as she gestured extravagantly with her hand.

‘Hey, it's Lucie! Our very own Cupcake Countess! We're over here. Lucie, darling, I want you to meet the most handsomest, the most gorgeous, the most fabulous man in the whole wide world,' she slurred, slinging her arm around her fiancé's neck as the tall, chestnut-haired guy smiled indulgently at his bride-to-be with such adoration that a faint ripple of envy filtered into Lucie's chest.

Could this have been her and Alex if he hadn't decided to reject her proposal?

‘Hello, Harry, pleased to meet you. And congratulations.' She stepped forward to shake his hand but he pulled her into an exuberant bear hug, causing her to spill her drink down the front of her cardigan. Thank goodness she'd decided on white wine.

‘Hi, Lucie. My fiancée tells me the Travelling Cupcake Company is your creation? I've seen your transport and it's a fabulous idea. Great marketing move – I love it!' He went to pull her into another rib-crushing hug, but this time she was ready for him and sidestepped the assault.

‘Thanks, Harry. And I hope you had fun at your afternoon sporting activities?'

‘We've had a fantastic time. I think I might even take up archery as a hobby.' He rubbed his chin with the palm of his hand and glanced around the bar. ‘Where have the lads got to?'

‘Oh, I think I saw them go outside to the beer garden,' she offered.

‘Right – oh.'

Harry grabbed his pint of Guinness from the table and sauntered to the door, his face wreathed in the satisfied smile of a groom-to-be and the serene mantle the copious infusion of alcohol provides.

‘Come on, Lucie, you've got some catching up to do,' said Kate, pushing a glass of Prosecco rosé towards her.

‘Oh, by the way, Mum's talking about asking the head teacher at the village school where she's a classroom assistant if she'll agree to a demonstration from the Travelling Cupcake Company for the children's food tech class. Would you be up for that?'

‘I'd love to – as long as it's in the next couple of weeks. I'm thinking of maybe going out to stay with Mum in Spain for a while in the summer.'

‘Really?'

‘Yes, I…'

Lucie froze, her chain of thought severed. Her next breath caught in her throat.

‘Lucie? What's the matter?'

She swallowed and refocused her eyes but they weren't sending false information to her brain.

‘Lucie? Are you okay? You've turned a funny colour.'

‘Erm, I…'

She ducked her head to the table to collect her handbag, which had fallen on the floor, and once again checked to see if she had made a mistake.

But there was no doubt. Leaning over the bar to retrieve a tray of drinks was Alex. He hadn't seen her, but it was only a matter of seconds before he turned round and passed by her table. She contemplated diving underneath the table, but that was just plain ridiculous.

Kate was staring at her as though she were crazy. ‘Do you know that guy?'

‘I, yes, I….'

‘Lucie? Is that you? Oh my God, what are you doing here?'

Chapter Twenty-Five

‘Hello, Alex,' she managed to whisper.

Her heart pounded so hard against her ribcage it hurt. She inhaled a steadying breath and tried to calm the whirlwind of emotions that was churning through her veins. She felt lightheaded, strangely detached from her surroundings, as though she were floating a few feet above the scene looking down on the characters' reactions below.

Why was Alex having a drink in her sister's local pub? And why that weekend?

‘Yes, we know each other, Kate,' confirmed Alex, flicking his eyes across to the exit, clearly desperate to extract himself from the awkwardness and deliver the tray of drinks to his friends. But they were not destined to be so lucky.

‘Hey, Alex!' exclaimed Jemima. ‘Lucie, this is Alex Morgan. He's one of Harry's stag weekend friends. He's gorgeous, isn't he? And Harry tells me he's currently unattached. Alex, this is Lucie Bradshaw, all-round Cupcake Countess and proprietor of the wonderful Travelling Cupcake Company. Hey, why don't we leave you two to get to know each other?'

Kate had been watching the exchange and seen the mortification written clearly across Lucie's face. She got up from the table, her hand outstretched, to steer her sister away to the ladies'. ‘Come on, Jem darling. I think a splash of water and a breath of fresh air will do you good. Will you be okay for a few minutes, Lucie? Want to come with us?'

‘I'm okay, thanks.'