Meet Me at the Cupcake Café (35 page)

She pushed her feelings back down inside herself and worked even harder, but the day Linda pushed her way through the door, she was very close to her wits’ end.

It was a lovely Friday in late spring, and the warm air gave out the promise of a summery, light London weekend to come. People were thronging the streets looking cheerful, and they were doing a roaring trade in boxes of light lemon-scented cupcakes with a velvet icing and a little semicircle of crystallized fruit on the top; workers wanted to spread a little of the lovely day around their offices. Issy, though half bent over with exhaustion, was also taking huge pride in watching the enormous pile of cakes she’d started so early that morning – a mountain so big she couldn’t believe they would possibly all be sold by the end of the day – steadily diminish in sixes and dozens. And people were buying more cold drinks too, which took pressure off the coffee-making routine. Even though Issy could now make a flat white or a tall skinny latte with effortless grace and speed (the first nineteen times she’d usually spilled something), it was still more time-consuming than grabbing some elderflower juice from the fridge. (Issy had stuck to prettier drinks rather than fizzy ones. They fitted better, she felt, with the ethos of the shop. And also, Austin had pointed out, the profit margins were better.)

Then, best of all, at 4pm, just as they were calming down, the door pinged open to reveal Keavie, pushing her grandfather in a wheelchair. Issy rushed up and flung her arms around his neck.

‘Gramps!’

‘I don’t think,’ the old man said, heavily, ‘you quite know what you’re doing with a meringue.’

‘I totally do!’ exclaimed Issy, affronted. ‘Taste this.’

She set in front of him one of her new miniature lemon meringue tarts, the curd so thick and fondant it sank right into the thin pastry. You could scoff the whole thing in two seconds, but the memory of it would stay with you all day.

‘That meringue is too crunchy,’ pronounced Grampa Joe.

‘That’s because you have no teeth!’ said Issy, indignant.

‘Bring me a bowl. And a whisk. And some eggs.’

Pearl made a hot chocolate for Keavie and they looked on as Joe and Issy gathered together the ingredients, and Issy sat on a stool next to him. With her dark curls next to his wispy pate, Pearl could see instantly how they must have looked together in her childhood.

‘You’ve got the elbow action all wrong,’ said Gramps, even at his age cracking the eggs one-handed without even glancing at them, and separating them in the blink of an eye.

‘That’s because …’ Issy’s voice tailed off.

‘What?’ said Gramps.

‘Nothing.’

‘What?’

‘That’s because I use an electric whisk,’ said Issy, blushing, and Pearl laughed out loud.

‘Well, that proves it,’ said Gramps. ‘No wonder.’

‘But I have to use an electric whisk! I have to make dozens of these things every day! What else can I do?’

Gramps just shook his head and carried on whisking. At that moment the ironmonger passed by the window, and Joe beckoned him in.

‘Did you know my granddaughter uses an electric whisk on meringues? After everything I’ve taught her!’

‘That’s why I don’t eat here,’ said the ironmonger, then when he saw Issy’s shocked face, he added, ‘Apologies, madame. I don’t eat here because, lovely though your shop is, it’s a little out of my price range.’

‘Well, have a cake on us,’ said Issy. ‘One without meringue.’

Pearl obediently handed one over, but the ironmonger waved it away. ‘Suit yourself,’ said Pearl, but Issy pressed it on him till he relented.

‘Very good,’ he said, through a mouthful of chocolate brownie cupcake.

‘Imagine how good she’d be if she hand-whisked,’ said Gramps. Issy smacked him lightly on the head.

‘This is
industrial
catering, Gramps.’

Grampa Joe smiled.

‘I’m just saying.’

‘Stop just saying.’

Grampa Joe handed over the bowl of perfectly crested egg whites and sugar, standing up stiff and glazed.

‘Stick it on some greaseproof paper, give it forty-five minutes …’

‘Yes, I know, Gramps.’

‘OK, I just thought you might be putting it in the microwave or something.’

Pearl grinned.

‘You’re a hard taskmaster, Mr Randall,’ she said, leaning down to his wheelchair.

‘I know,’ said Grampa Joe in a stage whisper. ‘Why do you think she’s so brilliant?’

Later, after they’d eaten Gramps’s amazing meringues with freshly whipped cream and a spoonful of raspberry coulis over the top, Keavie had taken Gramps – and a huge box of cakes for the residents – off to the van, and the cleaning up was finally done.

Issy could feel a solid bone-weariness deep down, but there would be wine tonight, and they didn’t open till 10am on a Saturday, which felt like a huge lie-in, then early closing and the whole of Sunday off, and maybe it would be warm enough to push Gramps into the garden in his wheelchair (even though he was always cold, these days), and she could lie on a rug and read him bits of the paper, then maybe Helena would be around for a curry later on and a good natter. She was enjoying this little dream, and the way the late afternoon sun came through the clean panes of the windows, the ever-dinging bell of fresh customers and the happy faces of people on the brink of cake, when the door burst open, once more, in a panicky way.

Issy glanced up. At first she didn’t recognize the woman who crashed into the room. Then she realized it was Linda, haberdashery Linda, normally so composed, whose life was never upset or the least bit disorganized.

‘Hello!’ Issy said, pleased to see her. ‘What’s up?’

Linda rolled her eyes. She glanced around the shop and Issy realized with a slightly annoyed pang that this was the first time Linda had ever been in. She’d thought she might have been a bit more supportive, seeing as she was local and everything, and they’d stood together in rain and shine.

Issy’s irritation was swept away in an instant, however, when Linda stopped and took a breath.

‘Oh dear, it’s lovely in here. I had no idea, I thought it was just a little sideline. I’m so sorry! If only I’d known.’

Pearl, who’d leafleted her at least three times, harrumphed, but Issy nudged her to stop it and Pearl went back to serving the postman, who came in after his rounds far too often. (Issy was worried eating cupcakes twice a day wasn’t terribly good for him. Pearl reckoned he was just after her. They were both right.)

‘Well, you’re here now,’ she said. ‘Welcome! What would you like?’

Linda looked anxious. ‘I have to … I have to … Can you help me?’

‘What is it?’

‘It’s … it’s Leanne’s wedding – tomorrow. But her cake company … A friend said she would make her cake and then she got it all muddled up or something and anyway Leanne’s paid hundreds of pounds but she doesn’t have a wedding cake.’

Issy later realized what it must have cost Linda to utter these words about her perfect daughter who never put a foot wrong. She looked close to breaking down.

‘No cake on her wedding day! And I still have five hundred things on my checklist.’

Issy remembered that this was the wedding to end all weddings, the wedding Linda had been talking about for over a year and a half.

‘OK, OK, calm down, I’m sure we can help you,’ she said. ‘How many are we talking about? Seventy?’

‘Um …’ said Linda, and mumbled something so quietly Issy missed it.

‘What’s that?’

‘…’ said Linda again.

‘That’s odd,’ said Issy, ‘because it sounded like four hundred.’

Linda raised her red-rimmed eyes to Issy.

‘It’s all going to fall apart. My only daughter’s wedding! It’s going to be a disaster!’ And she burst into sobs.

By seven thirty, when they’d only got the second batch in, Issy already knew they weren’t going to make it. Pearl was a saint, a hero and an absolute trooper and had stayed on without a second thought (and Issy knew the overtime couldn’t hurt), but they couldn’t use today’s cakes. They had to start absolutely afresh, as well as designing some kind of structure to hold the cupcakes in the shape of a wedding cake.

‘My arm hurts,’ said Pearl, stirring in ingredients for the mixer. ‘Shall we have the wine first then get started?’

Issy shook her head. ‘That would turn out very poorly,’ she said. ‘Oh God, if only I knew someone who wants to …’ She stopped short and looked at Pearl. ‘Of course I could phone …’

Pearl read her mind instantly.

‘Not her. Anyone but her.’

‘There’s nobody else,’ said Issy. ‘Nobody at all. I’ve called them all.’

Pearl sighed, then looked back at the bowl.

‘What time is this wedding?’

‘Ten am.’

‘I want to cry.’

‘Me too,’ said Issy. ‘
Or
, phone someone who might be a bit of a time-and-motion specialist.’

Pearl hated to admit it. But Issy had been right. The scrawny blonde woman had marched in in an immaculate professional chef’s uniform – she’d bought it for a week’s cooking in Tuscany, she informed them, a gift from her ex-husband, who’d celebrated her absence by spending the entire time with his mistress – and immediately organized them into a production line, timed with the dinging of the oven.

After a while, once they were in the swing of things, Pearl put on the radio and they found themselves, suddenly, dancing in a row to Katy Perry, adding sugar and butter, baking and icing, tray after tray after tray without missing a moment’s heat, and the pile in front of them steadily grew. Caroline improvised a cake stand out of old packaging and covered it beautifully with wedding paper they picked up from the newsagent, all the while telling them about the £900 cake she’d had specially made for her wedding by an Italian patissier from Milan, which in the end she didn’t get to eat because she spent the entire day talking to one of her dad’s friends who wanted to know how to get his daughter into marketing, while the evil ex got drunk with all his college friends, including his ex-girlfriend, and didn’t even bother to come and rescue her.

‘I should have known it was doomed,’ she said.

‘Why didn’t you?’ asked Pearl, quite shortly. Caroline looked at her.

‘Oh Pearl. You’d understand if you’d ever been married.’

And Pearl growled at her, quietly, behind the dairy fridge.

The cupcakes they smothered in a pure creamy vanilla icing, seemingly whipped effortlessly by Issy to perfection, with silver balls marking out the initials for Leanne and Scott, her groom-to-be. This was the worst job. By 11.30, Pearl was dotting the balls on anyhow and insisting they spelled L/S. But still the cakes grew and balanced and turned into, indeed, a magnificent wedding cake dusted with pink sparkly icing sugar.

‘Come on, chop chop,’ shouted Caroline. ‘Stir like you mean it.’

Pearl glanced at Issy. ‘I think
she
thinks she works here already.’

‘I think maybe she does,’ said Issy quietly.

Caroline beamed and momentarily stopped production.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Thank you. This is … this is the first good thing that’s happened in a while.’

‘Oh good,’ said Issy. ‘I was a bit worried about you, you’re looking terribly thin.’

‘OK, the second good thing to happen,’ said Caroline. Pearl rolled her eyes. But when they finally got to go home just after midnight, she knew they couldn’t have done it without her.