Meet Me at the Cupcake Café (20 page)

‘I feel so alone,’ said Issy, who was missing Graeme more than she could admit. The shock of going from seeing him every day to never seeing him at all was one thing. To have a reconciliation, and then to have it all snatched away again … that was hard to process.

Helena sat down.

‘But you’re going to have to get staff, aren’t you? I mean, you’re going to have to pay people sooner or later. Maybe if you recruit someone now they could help you with all this stuff as well as the shop when it’s open. Do you know anyone?’

Issy thought suddenly of the bright, cheery woman she’d met on the redundancy course.

‘You know,’ she said, scrolling down her phone where she and Pearl had politely swapped numbers, never really expecting to use them, ‘there might just be something in this networking thing after all. I think she’s got catering experience.’

She started to push the number as Helena held up her hand.

‘Aren’t you forgetting something?’

Issy glanced nervously at the piles of forms.

‘Shouldn’t you wait for the bank to give you the go-ahead – and the overdraft facility?’

Suddenly, Issy felt she couldn’t wait until morning. She had been filling in forms and talking to government inspectors for three days; she needed to know. The bank was being horribly slow. She took out the card of Mr Austin Tyler and dialled the mobile number. OK, so it was after seven, but bankers worked late hours, didn’t they?

‘There’s this chap I thought you might like,’ she said to Helena. ‘He’s got a kid though. But no wedding ring.’

‘Oh lovely, married but pretending he isn’t,’ snorted Helena. ‘Just my type. I’ll be in my room, kissing my John Cusack pictures.’

Austin was bathing Darny, or rather he was attempting the equivalent of holding a squid down in the water while the squid thrashed all of its tentacles to get free. Austin was considering letting the squid go without washing his hair for the ninth night in a row when his phone rang. He retrieved it, granting Darny a temporary victory as he stood up in the bath and started parading up and down it like a soldier, kicking bubbles as he went.

‘Stop that,’ he hissed, which made Darny redouble his efforts.

‘Hello?’

Issy heard a strangulated yell from Darny as Austin attempted to make him sit down again.

‘Sorry, is this a bad time?’

‘Um, just in the bath.’

‘Oh, sorry …’

‘No, not me … Darny!’

‘
Soldiers do not sit down to your authority!
’ came clearly over the earpiece.

‘Ah. You’re bathing a soldier,’ said Issy kindly. She hadn’t thought the child would be so old; Austin seemed about her age. Which wasn’t, she reminded herself, that young any more. ‘Well, that
is
an important duty.’

‘Darny,
sit down
!’

‘
You’re not my superior officer!
’

‘Actually, I think you’ll find that I am … Sorry about this, but who is it?’

‘Oh, sorry,’ said Issy, embarrassed. ‘It’s Isabel Randall. From the Cupcake Café.’

She could hear Austin struggle to remember her. It was excruciating.

‘Oh yes,’ he said finally. ‘Uh. Yes. How can I help you?’

‘This is clearly a bad time, I’m so sorry,’ said Issy.

Normally Austin would have liked to point out sarcastically that yes, 7.30 on a school night was quite a bad time for all sorts of business enquiries, but there was something in Issy’s voice – she was, he could tell, genuinely sorry; she wasn’t just being polite but still trying to demand his attention. He groped around for his glasses, which were steamed up.

‘OK, soldier, at ease,’ he said to Darny, handing the boy a camouflage-coloured sponge and escaping out of the bathroom.

‘Right, what’s up?’ he said to Issy as cheerfully as he could manage, noticing as he stepped on to the landing that there seemed to be piles of toys and books stacked up all over the house. He wished someone would come and sort it out for him. He knew that it was his responsibility, but he was just so tired all the time. He never seemed to get round to it. And on the weekends, he and Darny liked to hang out downstairs and watch Formula 1. They both felt they’d earned it after a hard week.

‘Have you got lots of kids?’ said Issy, genuinely curious.

‘Oh, no,’ said Austin. Now he really wished she hadn’t called him at home. He had the spiel off pat, but he hated giving it to strangers. ‘Uh, Darny’s my little brother. My … uh, well, we lost our parents, and there’s a big age gap, so, um, it’s just me looking after him. Boys together, you know! We get along pretty well.’

Issy immediately wished she hadn’t asked. Austin sounded jaunty enough rolling off his spiel; he’d obviously got it down to just a few words. But of course, she couldn’t begin to contemplate the depths of agony beneath the words. There was a silence on the phone.

‘Oh,’ Issy said finally, just as Austin said, ‘So,’ to cover the gap. They both gave a little laugh.

‘Sorry,’ said Issy. ‘I didn’t mean to pry.’

‘Not at all,’ said Austin. ‘Perfectly normal question. Sorry the answer is a bit odd. I used just to say yes, he was my little boy …’

Austin didn’t know why he was telling her this. It was strange, but there was something warm and friendly about her tone.

‘But then I’d get lots of people saying he was so like me, and where was his mum and so on, so it just got more complicated in the end.’

‘Maybe you should print it on your business cards,’ said Issy, then bit her tongue in case that was in bad taste.

‘Oh, I should,’ said Austin, smiling. ‘Definitely. Austin Tyler, dad-stroke-brother. Stroke animal wrangler.’

Issy found herself smiling down the phone. ‘I’m sure the bank would be fine with that.’

There was a silence.

‘So anyway,’ she said, getting hold of herself, ‘I know we have to wait for the official letter and everything, but I’ve got the keys now and I’m really anxious to start hiring staff and I’m sure it’s totally confidential and you’re not allowed to tell me so I’ll have interrupted your bath time for nothing so …’

‘Are you going to apologize again?’ said Austin, amused.

‘Uh … well, yes I was.’

‘Come on! What kind of a hard-headed businesswoman are you?’

Issy smiled. For a banker, he was almost flirtatious.

‘OK,’ she said. ‘Could you possibly give me a heads-up as to whether the bank is going to take my account?’

Of course he knew he wasn’t supposed to, and it wasn’t officially rubber-stamped yet. But she’d caught him at a vulnerable moment, and he could already hear a lot of noise coming from the other side of the door. And he could never resist a nice-sounding girl.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘I’m absolutely not supposed to tell you this. But seeing as you asked very nicely, I can say that yes, I have recommended that we open an account for your business with our business.’

Issy jumped up and down and clapped her hands.

‘The board just have to take my recommendation.’

Issy calmed down.

‘Oh. Will they do that?’

‘Do you doubt me?’

She smiled down the phone.

‘No.’

‘Good. Congratulations, Miss Randall. It appears you’re in business.’

Issy hung up after thanking Austin a million times, and danced around the room, emboldened once more. Austin hung up and looked slightly quizzically at the phone. Was he imagining things, or had he just quite enjoyed taking a business call? That wasn’t like him at all.

‘
Austin! Austin!!! My infantry thinks it might need to do a pee in the bath!’

‘Wait!’

Pearl was sitting under the blankets with Louis. It was freezing outside; freezing. A tiny hint of spring at the end of February had proved to be a cruel chimera. Now a howling gale was blowing, the wind funnelling down the tunnels and blowing across the wide open spaces of the estate, making an unsettling amount of noise. Their last combined electricity/gas bill had been absolutely dreadful, so they were huddling together in front of a plug-in fire. Louis had a temperature – he fell sick so easily. She didn’t know why. He was mildly asthmatic and seemed prey to absolutely every bug that came along. In cheerier moments she suspected it was because he was so convivial and social; he hugged everyone and caught whatever they had. At other times she wondered, deep down, if he ate enough of the right foods, was outdoors in enough fresh air and greenery to build the proper immunities, or if he just spent too long inside, breathing stale air. She’d told her mum not to smoke indoors, and she did her best, but when it was as cold as today, it felt cruel to make her stand on the stoop, exposed to the passing gangs of teenage boys who would shout and holler at anyone standing alone and looking even remotely vulnerable.

Her phone rang, with a number she didn’t recognize. Pulling Louis’s sweaty brow to her and giving him a swift kiss, she answered it, turning down the volume on the television.

‘Hello?’ she said, as cheerily as she could manage.

‘Uh, hello,’ came a timid voice on the other end of the phone. ‘I don’t know if you remember me …’

‘Patisserie Valerie!’ said Pearl, pleased. ‘Of course I remember you. And that course was so awful, did you go back?’

‘I didn’t,’ said Issy, happy to hear Pearl so glad to hear from her. ‘In fact, though, the course did work. Because it inspired me to go and do something quite different and actually, you know, network. So, uh, this is me. Networking.’

There was a long pause.

‘Pearl,’ said Issy, ‘this may sound like a stupid question. It’s just an on-the-off-chance kind of a thing. But I’m slightly up to my neck in it, and I just wondered if you knew the answer to a question. Do you know how many kilos of coffee a coffee shop should be getting through in a week?’

Not only did Pearl know the answer to this (‘One kilo is about a hundred cups, so you’d look to start with about six, move up to eight’), but, having being trained by a major coffee chain as a barista (she’d had to give it up though; she couldn’t find childcare to cover the antisocial hours), she knew lots of other coffee-related stuff too. She knew how to tell whether coffee was overripe or burnt, what beans worked best at different times of day, how long you could store coffee and how,
and
she had her food hygiene certificate. The more she talked – and she could certainly talk – the more excited Issy became. They agreed to meet up the next day.