Meet Me at the Cupcake Café (48 page)

Across town, Pearl was staring at Ben.

‘This isn’t fair,’ she said.

‘What?’ he said. Louis was happily playing with his trains at his feet. ‘I just came over to get your mother to stitch on a button.’

‘Hmm,’ said Pearl. The fact that Ben was sitting there shirtless, lit only by the newly acquired reading lamp her mother was using to pore over the sewing which Ben’s own mother could easily have done, or in fact Ben himself if he wasn’t so damn lazy … She knew his game.

‘Why don’t you two go out for a drink while I finish this,’ said Pearl’s mother, managing to smoke a cigarette and stitch a shirt at the same time, quite a feat. ‘Louis will be fine.’

‘
Louis come have drink
,’ said Louis, with one of his emphatic nods.

‘Bedtime,’ said Pearl, who would not have admitted it in a million years, but had been taken aback by Caroline’s shock that Louis normally went to bed at the same time as she did and was trying to improve matters.

‘
No no no no
,’ said Louis. ‘
No no no no
. Fanks,’ he added as an afterthought. ‘
No bed, fanks, Mummy
.’

‘You go,’ said her mum. Louis looked like he might work himself up into a state if they hung about while he had to lie quietly in the corner. ‘I’ll see him off.’

‘I’ve got a T-shirt in my bag,’ said Ben. ‘Or I could just go like this.’

‘You can’t just go hot and cold on me all the time. And I have other options, you know!’

‘I know,’ said Ben. ‘Put that red dress on. The one that makes your hips sway.’

‘I will not,’ said Pearl. The last time she’d worn that dress out with Ben … well, she already had one extra mouth to feed.

He offered her his arm when they left the little flat. Pearl’s mother’s eyes were on them all the way, Louis vocalizing very loudly and clearly why he didn’t think his parents should be going out without him. Pearl didn’t take any notice.

‘What’s up, princess?’ said Graeme, as Issy got home. Issy looked at the ground.

‘Oh, girl stuff,’ she said.

‘Oh,’ said Graeme, who didn’t have the faintest idea what to do about girl stuff, and didn’t really care either. ‘Don’t worry about it. Come to bed for some boy stuff.’

‘OK,’ said Issy, although she hated to think of her friend going back to her house and the two of them having fallen out. Graeme stroked her dark curly hair.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Oh, and I thought … now we’re shacking up and everything … want to come and meet my mum some time?’

And those were Issy’s last thoughts before she fell asleep: he did love her. He did care for her. She lived with him, she was meeting his family. Helena was wrong about him.

Graeme lay awake a little longer. He had meant to tell her about the development tonight – he’d pitched it in the office and they’d gone mad for it. A keen landlord with an eye for a sound deal, apparently, and no problem tenants – the whole thing was going to be perfect. Too easy.

This is too easy, thought Pearl, as Ben’s hand brushed hers on the short walk back from the pub. Too easy. And it was what had got her into too much trouble before.

‘Let me stay,’ said Ben, wheedlingly.

‘No,’ said Pearl. ‘We’ve only got one bedroom, and that’s Nan’s. It’s not right.’

‘Well, come to my place. Or we could get a hotel.’

Pearl looked at him. In the light of the streetlamp, he was even handsomer than she remembered. His broad shoulders, his beautiful curly hair, his handsome face. Louis was going to be so like him. He was the father of her child; he should be the centre of their family. He leaned forward, very gently under the streetlights, and kissed her, and she closed her eyes and let him. It felt so familiar and yet so strange at the same time; it had been a while since she’d been touched by a man.

Issy rolled out of bed with the sun the next morning, confusedly pulling clothes out of bags.

‘What’s the rush, babes?’ said Graeme, sleepily.

Issy squinted at him. ‘I’m going to work,’ she said. ‘Those cupcakes don’t bake themselves.’

She stifled a yawn.

‘Well, come give me a cuddle anyway.’

Issy nestled into his hairless chest comfortably. ‘Mm,’ she said, mentally ticking down how much time she had, now she needed to cross north London to get to the café.

‘Why don’t you skip work today?’ said Graeme. ‘You work too hard.’

Issy smiled. ‘You of all people, saying that!’

‘Yes, but wouldn’t you like to slow down a bit? Work a bit less? Go back to a nice cosy office with sick pay and lunch breaks and office parties and someone else doing all the paperwork?’

Issy rolled on to her stomach and clasped her hands under her chin.

‘You know,’ she said. ‘You know, I really don’t think I would. I don’t think I could go back to working for someone else for all the tea in China. Not even you!’

Graeme looked at her in consternation. He would tell her later, he thought. Again.

Pearl was actually humming coming in the doorway.

‘What’s with you?’ said Caroline suspiciously. ‘You seem oddly cheerful.’

‘Can’t I be cheerful?’ said Pearl, getting out her broom as Caroline polished the temperamental cappuccino machine. ‘Are only middle-class people allowed to be cheerful?’

‘Quite the opposite,’ said Caroline, who had received a particularly nasty solicitor’s letter in the post that morning.

‘Quite the opposite to what?’ said Issy, coming up the stairs to greet Pearl and grab a coffee, with her eyebrows covered in flour.

‘Pearl thinks middle-class people are jolly.’

‘Not now I don’t,’ said Pearl, reaching out her finger to dip it in Issy’s bowl.

‘Stop that!’ said Issy. ‘If the health inspector saw you he’d have a fit!’

‘I have my plastic gloves on!’ said Pearl, showing her. ‘Anyway, all chefs taste their own produce. Otherwise how would you know?’

Pearl tasted Issy’s concoction. It was an orange and coconut cream sponge, soft, mellow and not too sweet.

‘This tastes like a pina colada,’ she said. ‘It’s wonderful. Amazing.’

Issy stared at her, then glanced at Caroline.

‘Caroline’s right,’ she said. ‘What’s up with you? Yesterday you were miserable, and today you’re Rebecca from Sunnybrook Farm.’

‘Can’t I be happy once in a while?’ said Pearl. ‘Just because I don’t live in your neighbourhood and have to take the bus?’

‘That’s not fair,’ said Issy. ‘I am a bus connoisseur.’

‘And I’m going to have to move out of the neighbourhood,’ said Caroline. She sounded so gloomy, the other girls looked at her in some amazement as she too dipped her finger in Issy’s bowl.

‘Fine,’ said Issy, exasperated. ‘I’ll throw this lot out and make a new batch, shall I?’

Pearl and Caroline took this as an invitation to get stuck into the batter in earnest, and with a sigh Issy put down the bowl, pulled up a chair and joined them.

‘What’s up?’ said Pearl.

‘Oh, my evil bloody ex-husband,’ said Caroline. ‘He wants me to move out of the home. The home that, by the way, I renovated almost all by myself; furnished all eleven rooms including his study, managed the building of the all-glass back wall
and
oversaw the construction of a fifty-thousand-quid kitchen, which by the way is no picnic.’

‘Although it comes with, obviously, an integrated picnic unit,’ said Pearl, before realizing from Caroline’s face that this was no time for levity. ‘Sorry,’ she added, but Caroline had hardly heard her.

‘I thought if I got a job, showed willing … But he says it means I obviously can work, so I can manage by myself! It’s so unfair! I can’t possibly keep my staff and the house and everything on what I earn here! This barely keeps me in pedicures.’

Issy and Pearl concentrated on the cake mix.

‘Sorry, but it’s true. So I don’t know
what
I’m supposed to do.’

‘He wouldn’t force you to move out with your children, surely?’ said Issy.

‘There’s probably room on my estate for you,’ said Pearl, at which Caroline choked back a sob.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘No offence meant.’

‘Oh, none taken,’ said Pearl. ‘I’d like to live in your house too. Or maybe just your kitchen.’

‘Well, the letter says “steps may be taken”,’ said Caroline. ‘Oh God.’

‘But surely he can see you’re trying?’ said Issy. ‘Doesn’t that count for anything?’

‘He doesn’t want me to try,’ hissed Caroline. ‘He wants me to disappear. For ever. So he can keep getting it on with Annabel fucking Johnston-Smythe.’

‘How does she even get that on her credit card?’ wondered Pearl.

‘Anyway, let’s change the subject,’ said Caroline testily. ‘Why
are
you so happy, Pearl?’

Pearl looked embarrassed and said a lady never kissed and told, which made both of them squeal so much Pearl got quite cross, particularly when Doti the postman turned up and told her she was looking particularly beautiful this morning, and they realized there was a queue of punters at the door, looking hungry and anxious, but unwilling to intrude on the girls’ morning catch-up.

‘
I
have work to do,’ said Pearl stiffly and got up to leave.

‘You take it nice and easy,’ said Issy, heading downstairs hastily as the first client of the day asked to try out the coconut and orange she had already chalked up on the specials board.

‘Soon, soon,’ she said to the customer.

‘Don’t you deliver?’ said the woman. The girls looked at each other.

‘We should do that,’ said Pearl.

‘I’ll put it on the list,’ said Issy.

She felt cheered by Pearl’s good humour – the fact that she wouldn’t admit to the identity of the chap made Issy wonder if it wasn’t Louis’s dad, but she would never dream of asking something so personal. She worried about Caroline’s divorce, partly for her and partly for selfish reasons, because she didn’t want to lose her. She was prickly and snobbish, but she also worked hard and had an ability to present the cakes in the most beguiling of styles; she’d also improved the room in ways that were hard to pinpoint – tiny floating candles that emerged after dusk; cosy cushions in awkward corners that softened the place. She had an eye, there was no doubt about it.

But, mixing a new batch of cakes, sprinkling the coconut with a light hand and switching the white sugar to brown to intensify the depth of flavour, she couldn’t help thinking about Helena. They’d never fallen out, not even when she’d asked Helena to save that one-legged pigeon. They’d always just got on; she couldn’t bear the idea of not sharing with her what Pearl was up to and all the other gossip. She thought about phoning, but you couldn’t phone Helena at work, it was awkward, she always had her hand up someone’s bottom or was holding a severed toe or something. She’d go round. And take a gift.