Meet Me at the Cupcake Café (59 page)

‘Um, yes,’ said Issy, although she had already had far too much caffeine that morning. But this little Aladdin’s cave felt completely unreal. The man directed her to a floral-upholstered armchair.

‘Please, sit down. You’ve made my life very difficult, you know.’

Issy shook her head. ‘But I’ve been passing by this alleyway for years, and this shop has always been here.’

‘Oh yes,’ said the man. ‘Oh yes. I’ve been here for twenty-nine years.’

‘You’ve lived here for twenty-nine years?’

‘Nobody’s ever bothered me before,’ said the man. ‘That’s the beauty of London.’

As he spoke, Issy noticed his accent again.

‘No one knows your business. I like it like that. Until you came of course. In and out, leaving me cakes, wanting to ask me things. And customers! You’re the first person ever to bring people into the alley.’

‘And now …’

‘Now we have to go, yes.’ The man looked at the notice to quit in his hand. ‘Ah, it would have happened eventually. How’s your gramps?’

‘Actually, I was going to go and ask him.’

‘Oh good, is he up to having a conversation?’

‘Not really,’ said Issy. ‘But it makes me feel better. I know that’s selfish.’

Chester shook his head. ‘It’s not, you know.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ said Issy. ‘I brought the developers here. I didn’t mean to, but I did.’

Chester shook his head.

‘No, you didn’t,’ he said. ‘Stoke Newington … you know, it used to be considered half a day’s ride from London. A lovely village, nice and far out of town. And even when I arrived, it was always a bit raffish and run down, but you could do what you wanted here. Have things your way. Be a bit different, a little off the beaten track.’

Chester served up the coffee with cream in two exquisitely tiny china cups and saucers.

‘But things get sanitized; gentrified. Especially places with character, like round here. There’s not much of old London left really.’

Issy cast her eyes down.

‘Don’t be sad, girl. There’s lots good about new London too. You’ll go places, look at you.’

‘I don’t know where though.’

‘Hmm, that makes two of us.’

‘Hang on, are you squatting?’ said Issy. ‘Can’t you just claim residency?’

‘No,’ said Chester. ‘I think I have a lease … somewhere.’

They sat there sipping their coffee.

‘There must be something I can do,’ said Issy.

‘Can’t stop progress,’ said Chester, setting down his coffee spoon with a light tinkle. ‘Believe me, I should know.’

Austin was early for once. And smartly dressed, or as smart as he could manage while not letting Darny get a glimpse of where he kept the iron. He ran his hands through his thick hair nervously. He couldn’t believe he was doing this. He could risk everything. And for what? Some stupid business that would probably move anyway. Some girl who wouldn’t look at him.

Janet was there of course, bright and efficient as ever. She’d been at the birthday party too, and she knew what was on his schedule. She glanced at him.

‘It’s horrible,’ she said, with unusual ferocity. ‘It’s horrible what that man wants to do.’

Austin looked at her.

‘To that nice girl and that lovely shop and to turn it into more featureless rubbish for more stupid executives, it’s horrible. That’s all I want to say.’

Austin’s mouth twitched.

‘Thank you, Janet. That’s helpful.’

‘And you look nice.’

‘You’re not my mum, Janet.’

‘You should call that girl.’

‘I’m not going to call her,’ said Austin. Issy wouldn’t touch him with a bargepole now, and he supposed, with a sigh, that she had good reason.

‘You should.’

Austin reflected on it, drinking the coffee Janet had gone all the way down to the Cupcake Café to get for him. It was cold, but he fancied he could still smell the sweet essence of Issy clinging to it somewhere. Checking no one could see into his office, he inhaled it deeply, and very briefly closed his eyes.

Janet knocked.

‘He’s here,’ she said, then led Graeme in with an uncustomary frostiness of manner.

Graeme didn’t notice. He just wanted to get this over and done with. Stupid local micro-financing, he hated local banking and piddling mortgage snarl-ups more than any other part of his business.

Fine. Well, he needed to rubber-stamp this money, call Mr Boekhoorn and get the hell out of it. Maybe take a holiday. A lads’ holiday, that’s what he needed. His mates hadn’t been very sympathetic when he told them he was single again. In fact a lot of them seemed to be settling down and getting all boring and cosy with their girlfriends. Well, fuck that. He needed somewhere with cocktails and girls in bikinis who could respect a guy in business.

‘Hey,’ he said, scowling, as he shook Austin’s hand.

‘Hi,’ said Austin.

‘Shall we keep this short?’ said Graeme. ‘You hold the existing mortgages on the extant properties, and we need to combine them so you can give me a new rate on the amalgamated loan. Let’s see what you can do, shall we?’

He scanned through the documents quickly. Austin sat back and took a big sigh. Well, here went absolutely nothing. It would probably ruin his career if his bosses took a proper look at it. It shouldn’t really matter to him one way or another whether his corner of the world got more and more corporate and homogeneous and white-bread. But it did. It did. He liked Darny having lots of different friends, not just ones called Felix. He liked being able to buy cupcakes – or falafel, or hummus, or mithai or bagels – whenever he felt like it. He liked the mixture of hookah cafés, and African hair-product shops, and wooden toy emporiums and diesel fumes that made up his neck of the woods. He didn’t want to be taken over by the stuffed shirts, the quick bucks, the Graemes of this world.

And, more than anything, he couldn’t get out of his head the image of Issy’s face, sparkling and flushed and joyous in the fairy lights. When he’d thought she was one of them, out for herself and anything she could get, it had upset him so much. Now he knew that she felt the same as him, that she believed in the same things he did … now he had finally realized that mixing business with pleasure was exactly what he wanted to do, he found it was all too late.

Ah, fuck it, thought Austin to himself. There was one thing he could do for her. He leaned over his desk.

‘I’m sorry, Mr Denton,’ he said, trying not to sound too pompous. ‘We have a local community investment guidance programme’ (they did, although no one from the bank ever read it), ‘and I’m afraid your scheme goes against that. I’m afraid we won’t be able to unbundle the mortgages.’

Graeme looked at him as if he couldn’t believe what he’d just heard.

‘But we’ve got planning,’ he said sullenly. ‘So it obviously is in the interests of the community.’

‘The bank doesn’t think so,’ said Austin, mentally crossing his fingers and hoping the bank never got to hear of him turning down an absolutely sound investment. ‘I’m sorry. We’re going to continue to hold on to the mortgages as they stand.’

Graeme stared at him for a long time.

‘What the hell is this?’ he burst out suddenly. ‘Are you just trying to screw with me? Got the hots for my girlfriend or something?’

Austin tried to look as if he’d never heard of such a thing.

‘Not at all,’ he said, as if offended. ‘It’s just bank policy, that’s all. I’m sorry, you must understand. In the current financial climate …’

Graeme leaned over. ‘Do. Not,’ he enunciated very slowly, ‘Tell. Me. About. The current financial climate.’

‘Of course, sir,’ said Austin. There was a silence. Austin didn’t want to break it. Graeme lifted up his hands.

‘So you’re telling me I’m not going to get this loan here.’

‘That’s right, sir.’

‘That I’d have to bring in another bank and pay them commission to take on and untangle all your stupid loans which have probably been packaged in with some bunch of junk and sold up some untraceable river somewhere?’

‘Yup.’

Graeme stood up.

‘This is bullshit.
Bullshit
.’

‘Also, I’ve heard there’s actually quite a lot of late opposition to the planning. Enough that might even make them go back on their decision.’

‘They can’t do that.’

‘Planning officers can do whatever they like.’

Graeme was turning pink with fury.

‘I’ll get the money, you know. You’ll see. Then you’ll look the fricking idiot in front of your bosses.’

Austin reflected that he did already, and was surprised to find he wasn’t too fussed. Maybe it didn’t always matter what your bosses thought, he figured. He wondered who had taught him that.

Graeme eyed Austin one more time before he left.

‘She’d never go for you, you know,’ he sneered. ‘You’re not her type.’

Well, neither are you, thought Austin mildly, as he filed the paperwork in the bin. But he felt a tugging sadness in his heart.

There was no time for that, however. He grabbed the phone and dialled the number he had in front of him on the desk. He sent his instructions through as soon as he was connected. A chorus of swearing reached him from the other end. Then a pause, and a sigh, and a barked command that he had fifteen minutes to stop arsing around and go back to spending time on serious businesses.

Then he had to make the other call. He used the bank phone to call Issy’s mobile. She’d have to pick up now. Fingers crossed.

His heart racing, he tapped in the numbers … numbers he realized he’d actually memorized. What an idiot he was. Issy picked up straight away.

‘Hello?’ she said, her voice sounding unsure and nervous.

‘Issy!’ said Austin, his voice coming out rather strangulated. ‘Um, don’t hang up, please. Look, I know you’re angry and stuff, and I know, and I think I rather slightly fucked that up, but I think … I think I might be able to do something. For the café, I mean, not you. Obviously. But I think … argh. I don’t have time for this. Listen. You have to go out on to the street right now.’

‘But I can’t,’ said Issy, panic in her voice.

She had hardly recognized the old man on the bed; he was a wraith. Her beloved grandfather; so strong, his huge hands pushing and kneading and moulding great lumps of dough; so delicate when shaping a sugar rose, or intricate when cutting a long line of Battenburg. He had been, truly, mother and father to her; always there when she needed him; a safe haven.

Yet now, at her lowest ebb, when Issy felt her dreams about to slip through her fingers, he was powerless. As he lay on the bed while she told him her story, his eyes had widened, and Issy felt a terrifying clutch of guilt around her heart as he tried to sit up.

‘No, Gramps, don’t,’ she’d insisted, in anguish. ‘Please. Please don’t. It’s going to be fine.’

‘You can do it, sweetheart,’ her gramps was saying, but his breathing was ragged and laboured, his eyes rheumy and bloodshot, his face an awful grey.

‘Please, Gramps.’ Issy rang the bell for the nurse, holding on to her grandfather with all her might, trying to calm him down. Keavie came in, took one look at him and her normally stolid face grew intent and she immediately called for back-up; two men came in with an oxygen cylinder and struggled to get a mask over his face.