Cupcake Couture (31 page)

It was Roxy and Thierry’s child’s first paparazzi shot of many and it wasn’t even born yet.

After the photographer had filled his memory card, Heidi and I emerged from the shadows. Roxy yawned. Being adored was so tiring.

‘So, we’ve just told the whole bloody world I’m going to get fat,’ she said, ‘and Heidi has admitted she’s got a BF, but you were the one who called the meeting, Chloe, so what was your news?’

‘Oh God, pet, I’m so sorry, I was so wrapped up in myself I forgot to ask,’ Heidi gasped.

I wrapped my arms around my two best friends and smiled.

‘Don’t worry, it was nothing important. I’ve just had a good day, that’s all. One of those days where you start seeing life in a whole new light. You know what I mean?’

They both looked at me and nodded.

‘There must be something in the air,’ said Heidi.

The two recruitment women, now barely able to stand, stumbled past us. One fell over the chair and the other tripped over Roxy’s foot and landed in a heap on the floor with her tailored mini dress up around her hips, displaying a rather unflattering nude coloured thong.

‘There must be something in the vodka,’ Roxy snorted.

‘And for once, it’s not us,’ I said with a smile. ‘You know girls, I think this could be the first night of the rest of our lives.’

Heidi’s eyes lit up and she hugged me before ushering us to lift our glasses.

‘To new adventures!’ she said raising hers towards the ceiling.

‘New adventures!’ I agreed, raising mine.

Roxy raised her glass of Bloody Shame and grimaced.

‘I feel like the Famous fucking Five and you’re not supposed to toast without alcohol it’s bad luck or something.’

‘Bad luck for you being preggers,’ I sniggered.

Roxy pursed her lips then, whether consciously or not, ran her hand over her stomach and smiled to herself. She clinked her glass against ours.

‘New adventures,’ she said, raising an eyebrow and allowing the smile to linger on her lips, ‘or some shite.’

Ten minutes later, I kissed them goodbye on the banks of the River Tyne. It was nine o’clock and the Quayside was busy with weekend revellers spilling out of the bar. I pulled on my woolly hat and zipped up my puffa jacket to keep me warm on the snowy walk back to my car. I watched as Roxy sashayed away, elegant as ever in heeled clogs, beside Heidi who skipped along in her wellies, her arms swinging from side to side like a child. I smiled and turned away. I then opened my bag and glanced at the notebook nestling inside before I rummaged for my phone and my wallet. From inside the wallet’s credit card slots, I pulled a business card. My eyes drifted over the lettering, reading it twice. I took a deep breath, read it for the third time, typed the number into my phone and made the call.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

250g icing sugar

‘Meet me now. Where are you?’

‘Now? But it’s nine o’clock on a Sunday night,’ I said.

And I’m not dressed up
, I thought but didn’t say.

‘If we don’t meet now, you’ll change your mind and I don’t want you to do that, so tell me where you are in town and I will come and find you.’

It was business, that’s all. Granted, I would never have dreamed of doing business in a puffa jacket, Uggs and woolly hat a month previously but then a lot had changed since then.

‘I’m by the Millennium Bridge.’

‘Stay warm, I’ll be there in five,’ said Zachary before he hung up.

I leaned on the railing and peered down into the water of the Tyne that was as black as an oil slick dotted with the reflection of the stars in the clear night sky. The temperature had plummeted and snowflakes fell slowly and stiffly, as if falling through custard. I shivered and shoved my hands under my armpits.

‘Sorry to keep you waiting.’

I glanced at my watch. It had been exactly five minutes.

‘Wow, did you come by helicopter?’

I turned to look at him and caught my breath. Why did he insist on looking so bloody gorgeous and well groomed all the time? Zachary smiled and brushed a gloved hand through his hair.

‘I’m glad you called,’ he said, his breath visible between us.

‘I wasn’t going to, it being Sunday. I hope you don’t mind.’

‘Not at all. I always have time for a business deal.’

I pressed my lips shut and nodded.

Zachary paused and then rubbed his hands together. ‘I do love this city but it is bloody freezing. They had the right idea when they named that.’

He nodded up at the Baltic art museum, where we had met on my disastrous date with Carlos.

‘Shall we walk and talk in case we freeze to death on this bridge?’ he suggested. ‘Which way is home for you?’

‘My car’s up that way.’

I fell into step beside him and we headed along the river towards the famous Tyne Bridge past the Law Courts and towards my old office.

‘So, you’re going to take my advice and go into business, Chloe?’ he said, shoving his hands deep into his pockets.

‘Not exactly, Zachary. I’m sure you’re aware that fifty percent of small businesses fail within the first year, especially in this financial climate.’

‘Which also means that fifty percent succeed,’ he said, his eyes finding mine over the upturned collar of his coat, ‘and something tells me you’ve always been the sort of woman to be in that statistical group.’

I smiled and we stepped around a couple who were kissing passionately against the railings running along the river. Our pace quickened.

‘Granted I have been successful in business up until recently but I was part of a big, powerful recruitment company, I wasn’t a lone soldier. Who’s to say I wouldn’t desert at the first sign of war?’

‘You wouldn’t.’

We separated to let two fashionable young men who seemed to be attached at the hip, not to mention the lips, pass by, then we fell back into step. The heels of his boots clicked purposefully on the cobbles that rose up from the snow like steppingstones.

‘Thanks for the vote of confidence.’

‘You’re welcome. So, if you’re “not exactly” going into business, how
exactly
can I help?’

I stopped, he stopped and I turned to face him. Only when I glanced past his shoulder at a couple kissing on a bench did I realise I had come to a stop directly across the street from my old office. It was as if my feet were pre-programmed to this destination on the Quayside path and couldn’t walk past it. Zachary looked over his shoulder, his eyes only seeing the couple who were so engrossed in their heavy petting, they seemed to have no idea we were there.

‘What is it with everyone tonight?’ Zachary laughed. ‘Does no-one have to get up for work on a Monday anymore?’

‘I don’t,’ I said with a sigh.

‘Sorry, I wasn’t thinking.’

‘It’s fine, I’m over it now. As they say, everything happens for a reason, right?’

‘Right,’ he nodded, his eyes following a glamorous couple who strode past wrapped in each other’s arms.

‘This river must be some sort of aphrodisiac. Is there something in the water?’ he said.

A drunken girl who clung to a man twice her age stumbled between us. As they carried on walking and she licked the man’s neck like a lollypop, I saw her skirt was tucked into her knickers.

‘Or something in the vodka,’ I laughed, stealing Roxy’s line from earlier.

Zachary laughed too and then we fell silent. An awkwardness threatened to descend on us as the sounds of enthusiastic snogging and groaning emanated from the couple on the bench just a few metres away. I coughed and flicked my eyes back up to the neon
BLUNTS RECRUITMENT AGENCY
sign on the building behind them.

Focus, Chloe, focus
.

Inside my brain, I blew dust off the circuit board marked ‘business’ and plugged it in.

‘Zachary,’ I said boldly, ‘I would like to take you up on the offer of making the cakes for the upcoming event you mentioned. Of course, that is, if we can agree a suitable price for my services. They are, after all, the best cupcakes in the world.’

Zachary stared at me for a moment, his eyes competing with the moon in terms of brightness. I swallowed, my brain flitting between wanting to convince this man to effectively give me a job and wanting to grab his face and stick his lips to mine. The same lips that now slowly parted into a warm smile.

‘I see. So you’re not exactly committing to going into business as a posh cake designer, but you are going to commit to baking me some cakes for my event in return for’ – he cast his eyes towards the snowy sky – ‘I’m guessing a quite substantial fee just to see how it goes. Am I right?’

I wriggled my nose as a hefty Geordie snowflake landed on its tip.

‘Er, yes, that sounds right.’

‘Even though,’ he continued, shoving his hands deep into his pockets and tipping his upper body towards me like a television detective coming to the conclusion of his investigation, ‘the one and only time you tried to sell said cakes, you sold two, one of which was to me at a hugely inflated price and then you basically ended up wearing the rest.’

I popped my lips.

‘Yes, that would be right too.’

This was the funniest, most enjoyable and quite frankly the most ridiculous job interview I had been to in my life. Considering I used to interview people for a living, I had been to many.

‘Hmm,’ said Zachary, taking one hand out to catch snowflakes, ‘so in effect you are using me as your business guinea pig.’

‘Yes,’ I said boldly.

Either Julian had put something in that banana cake or the mad as a box of frogs/throw caution to the wind vibe of my parents’ home had finally rubbed off on me.

‘And this event of mine, which incidentally is one of the biggest dates of the year on our business calendar and which requires a cake that is second to none, could go tits up, pardon my French, if I put all my eggs into your mixing bowl and if I have got you all wrong and you let me down.’

‘Um, yes to that too,’ I shrugged.

If you give me this job, you’re crazier than I am
.

‘OK,’ said Zachary, a mischievous grin flashing across his face, ‘I admire your honesty, you’ve got the job.’

I resisted the urge to throw my arms around him by interlinking my fingers behind my back.

‘For the right fee,’ I said.

‘For the right fee,’ he agreed.

I shivered and let my eyes wander back to the Blunts sign. Standing here on a Sunday night in my Ugg boots in the snow talking about baking cakes for a Christmas do, I felt like a completely different Chloe Baker to the one who, not so long ago, used to strut confidently through those doors day after day in a power suit and heels with a briefcase in my hand and a fire in my belly. Tonight, I had something stirring in my belly but I wasn’t entirely sure whether it was a fire or fear.

Did agreeing to give this cake thing a go mean I was, right at this moment, accepting the old Chloe had gone forever? After just a few short weeks of trying and failing to find a job that compared to my old one, would I be forsaking the sharp suits and briefcase for a sharp knife and flour-covered apron? Would my salary be limited to the small profit margin I could realistically add to the cupcakes I succeeded in flogging? Would all my future business be done not with board members and hotshots seeking six figure sums, but with neurotic mothers wanting cupcakes for Little Bluebell’s third birthday and Bridezillas who didn’t care what the damn thing tasted like because they had been dieting for a year to squeeze into an overpriced meringue as it was? I swallowed, the neon sign of the company I had considered to be like my family before they had turfed me out onto this street, blurring before my eyes. I shook my head and thought back to the days I had spent calling my old business contacts and one man’s words came to my mind.

‘Mr A was right,’ I said almost to myself, ‘I have the opportunity to change my life and I have to do it before it’s too late. So I’m doing it. Tonight. Which is why I called you at nine o’clock on a Sunday.’

‘I don’t know who Mr A is but I thank him all the same. And don’t worry about the time, I was working anyway.’

‘Really? On a Sunday night? Was it a party?’

He shook his head.

‘No, just business, you know, fairylight management and the like,’ he laughed.

I raised an eyebrow. Now I came to think of it, I didn’t actually know anything about Zachary and Hurley’s ‘events’. I could just have committed to baking cupcakes for Swingers Anonymous.

Well, at least then my parents would get to taste them.

‘I’m sorry if I called you away from your work, I wasn’t really thinking straight.’

‘On the contrary, I think you were. And don’t worry I’ll happily go back to work now. Since my dad passed away, I’ve never been afraid of a bit of hard graft.’

‘I’m not afraid of that either,’ I assured him. ‘I used to love working hard but then I suppose in the past few weeks I’ve realised I didn’t have a whole lot to fall back on.’

He blinked and lowered his eyes and I felt a pang of guilt. Just because my work situation had been forced to change, did not mean I had to push my new ethic on everyone else.

‘I suppose we’re all afraid of that,’ he said towards the cobblestones.

‘Well I’m not afraid,’ I said confidently.

‘Good,’ he nodded, raising his eyes to look at me, ‘I’m glad to hear that and I’m sorry if I ever doubted you.’

‘And I’m not scared of branching out on my own because I’m independent.’

‘You are. Very. I gathered that much when, last time we spoke outside your flat, you basically advised me stick my business advice up my a…’

‘And if nothing comes of it well, at least I’ve tried,’ I interrupted.

‘I couldn’t agree more and I’m very glad you’re trying because I really need cakes.’

‘And I like cakes,’ I continued, staring at the pavement, lost in thought, ‘I love making them but they’re never going to make me rich. People don’t become rich from baking a fluffy sponge do they?’

‘I don’t know, look at…’

‘Mr Kipling being the obvious exception.’

‘… Mr Kipling.’

‘As much as I like cakes, I like being able to pay my mortgage more.’