The Game (15 page)

Is it ever too late to find the love of your life?

Pru donned her dressing gown over her pyjamas, stretched the thick socks over her feet and tiptoed through the hall, closing the flat door quietly so as not to disturb her cousin Milly, who slept soundly in her bedroom further down the hall. She slipped down to the basement. This she did on occasion when the bakery was closed, usually in the dead of night when sleep proved elusive and always with the snap of excitement at her heels as she did so, covertly.

Her alarm would not pip-pip for another three hours, yet instead of resting her head on her plump, feather pillow there she was, wandering along corridors and punching alarm codes into locked doors, looking over her shoulder and tip-toeing like a thief.

Using only minimal lighting, eschewing the wealth of machinery around her and the complicated recipes that she and Milly had honed over the years, she set about doing what she always did on these night time jaunts, running up a batch of fairy cakes using a wooden spoon and a ceramic bowl, just as she had been taught.

Pru fastened the apron around her waist before laying her ingredients and tools in a row on the counter top. She felt the familiar jolt of happiness, knowing that she was about to begin and had everything she needed to execute her plan. It felt exactly the same now as it had all those years ago, casting her eye over the white flour, the bowl of sugar and the greasy lump of margarine splayed on the saucer where it sat next to the shining, clean bowl, awaiting her attention.

She smiled as she tipped the margarine and sugar together and began creaming them into a thick paste. She savoured the gritty crunch on the back of the spoon as it smashed the crystals against the crackle-glazed side of the china bowl, pushing and churning until the mixture billowed with tiny bubbles of air and her fingers ached. Next came the spoonfuls of plain flour, a drop of essence, baking powder, the egg and gradually more flour. Pru couldn’t fully describe the lift to her spirit or the bounce to her step as she watched the dry ingredients transform into a pale golden batter that passed the dropping test. There was no great science to knowing when the mixture was ready, instead she used this tried and tested method, lifting the spoon and watching to see how the cake mix fell, too quickly meant it was too thin, calling for more flour and more mixing. Whereas a blob that refused to shift from the back of the spoon, required more liquid and a light mix. The perfect consistency, meant the batter dropped slowly into the bowl with jaw clenching expectancy.

The anticipation as they baked filled her stomach with butterflies. While they cooled, she made a strong cup of coffee to go with, before decorating them true to her Nan’s instruction, sparsely, and with hundreds and thousands that sat on a tiny misshapen pond of white icing, both of which had been a luxury. She would then pop the soft, vanilla scented sponges into her mouth and allow the sugar to spread its warm satisfying sweetness across her tongue and the icing to stick to the roof of her mouth. She gobbled them greedily and quickly, all of them.

‘I know you are shaking your head and tutting at me, but don’t judge me, Alfie! I could have far worse habits.’ This she uttered into the ether with her eyes raised skyward and a smile about her mouth as she licked a stray blob of icing and a couple of sprinkles from her lip.

 As proprietor of the world renowned Plum Patisserie, Pru had access to any number of delicate, iced fancies and sweet, sugar-dusted morsels each and every day, and yet none of them came close to the sensation of eating a warm fairy cake, gobbled illicitly in the wee small hours, made to her Nan’s exacting recipe and method. The parcel of moist cake not only made her mouth water, but if she closed her eyes, she was back in their grotty kitchen in Bow, a little girl again, working diligently at their wobbly enamel-topped table. It was a time before she knew of the world beyond their front door, before drive and aspiration had yoked her to the winding upward path on which she climbed. Her nan, stood at the shallow, china sink, wearing a pink wrap-around overall which had worn thin at the seams and her brothers, with pinched cheeks and a ring of grime against the back of their necks, hovering around the large, china mixing bowl, with dirty fingers scooping at fine lines of cake mixture that they deposited into their eager mouths. The smell of the fluffy, little ingots baking would almost drive them to tears. Clustering around the stove, unusually silent, waiting.

Her Nan would then turn them out of the bun tin onto a wire rack on the sideboard. The scented steam that they gave off hypnotised them. And it would feel like an eternity before she would allow them to take one each. When they finally got one of those little cakes in their mitts, wide-eyed and with a mouthful of sweet crumbs, it was a moment of bliss in an otherwise bliss-free life and it was wonderful. For Pru, nothing represented success as much as her ability to eat a whole batch made in the kitchen of Plum Patisserie. She never told anyone about her trips down to the big kitchen, it was another little secret for her to keep.

Pru laughed to herself as she perched on the edge of her bed and applied the Crème de la Mer moisturiser to her face and throat. It was six a.m. but she had the speed of movement and alertness of someone who had been up for many hours, fancy. She touched her fingers to her temples where at the age of sixty-six, her once lustrous locks had now thinned, it was a habit she had acquired along with pushing up her eyebrows with her finger as if she could for a second or two, re-create the wide eyes of her youth, before gravity had done its job and they had taken on their hooded appearance.

‘I was lovely once wasn’t I? Not that I really thought so at the time, despite what Trudy said. I never had her confidence, blimey, who did? She was something else wasn’t she? So, so long ago. I don’t know why I’m thinking about that, Alfie, our little flat in Kenway Road, my life in Earls Court. We had some fun, tough times, but happy times. A lifetime ago. You’re the only one I tell everything, but I know you’re a secret keeper, aren’t you my love?’

This she addressed to one of several silver framed photographs on her bedside table. This particular snap was of a man astride a moped, he was looking over his shoulder, with a roll up hanging from his bottom lip, it was black and white and even though had been taken decades later, could have come straight out of the sixties, he had an air of James Dean about him or maybe that was how just she preferred to think of him, an anti-hero rather than a hopeless, addicted drop-out.

He smiled back at her with eyes that crinkled into laughter, peeping from behind black-framed Raybans that with his head tilted down towards the camera, had slipped down to the end of his nose. Pru loved this photo. There weren’t that many flying around of her family, owning a camera was never a priority, but his smile and the setting on what looked like a bright, sunny day, meant that she knew he had this one good day or more specifically, this one good moment on this one good day. She hoped that when things got bad for him, the memory of this might have sustained him. As usual, he didn’t reply.

Pru meandered around the flat in her soft grey, jersey pyjamas and dressing gown, with a cup of hot, black coffee balanced on her palm; she hummed and walked room to room, finding it calming to walk around and see that everything was just as she had left it the night before, harvesting reassurance from the order in which she lived and gaining confidence from knowing she was the owner of so many lovely things. The pictures were straight, cushions plumped and object d’art positioned just so. Although she had to admit that barring a messy burglary or natural disaster the likelihood of it not being were extremely slim.

She sat on the chair at the little walnut desk in the corner of her bedroom and let the bank statement flutter in her palm. She no longer paid heed to the black figures and their commas, lined up in neat rows, it was more of an inquisitive glance to see that payments had gone through and a reminder of where she was in the month. Gone were the days of shuffling balances and debts around to keep suppliers happy, juggling dates and orders to ensure enough money sat in the accounts for wages. The business had reached a point a couple of decades ago where the takings had significantly outweighed their costs and once the scales had tipped in their favour, they had never looked back. She unscrewed the lid of her Montblanc fountain pen and placed a tiny cross by the payment that was referenced CM – one thousand pounds had gone through on the fourteenth, just as it did every month and had done for the last ten years. If she did the maths, it caused a ball to knot in her stomach and a tide of panic to rise in her throat, so it was better that she didn’t. Pru folded the paper sheets and clipped them into the leather file that she stowed back in the drawer.

After showering and blow-drying her auburn hair into its blunt bob, Pru sat down at her dressing table where she applied the merest hint of taupe lip stain and one wand-slick of mascara. She rubbed her fingers over her temples. She had never thought she would become this older lady. Any imaginings she had in her youth, placed her in her mid twenties, old enough to know best and still young enough enjoy herself. And yet there she was, hardly recognising the face in the mirror and it had happened in a heartbeat. She sighed and pulled her lower teeth over her top lip in the mirror, making her neck and chin taut, the way it used to look. A liberal spritz of Chanel number five and she was set for the day. She accessorized her navy trousers with a white silk blouse and two rows of pearls that hung in differing lengths against her small, high chest. She slipped her feet into navy penny loafers; her foot wear of choice on days like these.

Pru held her breath and pulled the blind. She watched a white transit van pull up on to the curb with its hazard lights flashing, delivering to Guy all that they might need for a day of baking and trading. On the opposite side of the street, two young men in dinner jackets, with ties loose about their necks and a wobble to their saunter, walked arm in arm. No doubt homeward bound at this early hour. She smiled; there it was, Curzon Street, just as she had left it.

She worried that one day she might pull the blind and see the traffic of the Kenway Road a few miles across town in Earls’ Court, as if she had dreamt her success, her home in Mayfair, her Italian marble flooring, espresso machine and walk-in closet and was still there, living that life. Back then, although her surroundings had been drab, she had herself been full of life: a young girl with a defiant stare and a gut full of determination.

The day that she and Milly had arrived at the six-storey terrace in Kenway Road, they had thought they were invincible, immune to the regret and recrimination that came with old age. It was the last of a long line of places that she and Milly had painstakingly ringed in the small ads, and from the moment they arrived, they knew it was the place for them. A statuesque, elegant woman opened the door wearing a silk kimono and smoking a thin cigar in an ivory cigarette holder. She introduced herself as Trudy; she lived in a flat on the top floor. Pru walked to one of two deep-set sash windows on the landing that gave her the most incredible view across the London skyline, all the way out to Fulham and beyond. She let her eyes skim the horizon and red brick chimney pots. This would be the start of their journey, here among the west London rooftops, living with this elegant worldly woman. Pru followed Trudy down a narrow hallway, noting the way she swept along on her high heels, which made her look refined and sophisticated, sexy. She was going to practise that walk and when she had enough money, buy herself a pair of high heeled, red patent leather shoes, just like Trudy’s.

‘Who’s David Parkes?’ Milly asked. She had stopped at a framed certificate that hung on the wall and pointed to it.

‘David was my brother.’ Trudy sighed, ‘He died a couple of years ago.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Pru offered as she rolled her eyes at Milly who was always jumping in feet first.

Pru and Milly told Trudy how they wanted to open their own bakery with a shop and a café, where they would make the most delicious cakes and bread that London has ever tasted. Trudy didn’t laugh or mock the way others had when she shared this, instead she nodded and blew large O’s of cigar smoke, before pressing her full, carmine painted lips together.

 ‘I think people without dreams are only living half a life and that’s a life I wouldn’t want to live.’

Pru had been impressed, Trudy sounded like a poet.

‘But it’s no good dreaming unless you are prepared to work really hard. You have to dream it and set yourself a path to make it happen. A dream won’t put food on the table or money in your purse.’ Pru subconsciously patted the purse in her pocket, which contained their first weeks rent, bus fair and a lucky coin with a hole drilled in it. It was the sum total of their combined wealth. Pru nodded, wondering what they would need to do to clear their path – the one that led straight to the shiny, glass window of Plum’s Patisserie.

‘What’s your dream then?’ Milly asked over Pru’s shoulder.

Trudy gave the younger girl her full attention, and drew on her cigar, ‘To have a little love in my life,’ she offered as she turned her back and walked forward, ‘I think that’s everyone’s dream, really.’ Dear, dear Trudy.

Pru closed her bedroom door and popped her head into the kitchen where she spied Milly, clad in a tiger onesie.

‘What are you wearing?’ Pru shook her head.

‘It’s new and quite possibly the cosiest thing I have ever owned. I might never take it off.’

‘That’ll be nice in the front of house.’

 Milly dipped a large croissant into her coffee before lowering the soggy mess into her mouth.

‘Gross.’ Pru commented.

‘It’s what they do in France!’ Milly spoke with her mouthful.

‘Maybe, but you’re not French, Mills.’

‘What? You are kidding me! Mon Dieu! I had no idea. I thought I’d imagined growing up in Bow and I was actually from a fashionable little suburb of Paris!’ She winked at her cousin.

Pru grinned as she left the flat and trotted down the stairs, taking a deep breath she opened the door of the café. She and Milly took it in turns to do the early check on the bakery and it was her turn this week. In truth, after two decades in these premises, and with the celebrated, Guy Baudin at the helm of a trusted team, it was more a cursory nod to all that she was around, a reminder of who was boss and the chance to monitor quality rather than get her hands stuck in.