Meet Me at the Cupcake Café Read online

  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.

  Chapter Eight

  Hello, my darling Issy. You know, not every time is right for a big, full-on cake. Sometimes, you want a little essence of sweetness that is more like a kiss, or a friendly word on a sad day. And also, you know what pears are like. Ripe for ten seconds then you’ve missed it. Whereas this works very well with pears you’ve just missed, or the hard ones that go all powdery. Cake is a very forgiving mistress to bad pears.

  Pear Upside-Down Cake

  3 pears, peeled, halved and cored

  7 oz butter

  7 oz caster sugar

  3 eggs

  7 oz self-raising flour, sifted

  3 tbsp milk

  1 tbsp icing sugar

  Arrange the pear halves evenly over the bottom of a buttered pudding dish and set aside. Using a wooden spoon (not the mixer. I know you think the mixer, but I say to you, did I build three bakeries in Manchester with electric mixers? Well, eventually, yes. But at first we did it with the wooden spoon, and so should you), cream the butter and sugar together in a large bowl until the mixture is light and fluffy.

  Beat in the eggs, adding them one at a time and mixing well after each addition. Add the flour to the bowl, gently folding it into the mixture, then stir in the milk. Spoon the cake mixture evenly over the pears and smooth the surface.

  Cook in a preheated oven at 350°F/gas mark 4 for 45 minutes, until the surface is firm when gently touched and the cake comes slightly away from the sides of the dish.

  Remove from the oven, let it cool for five minutes, then turn out on to a serving plate. Dust the top of the cake evenly with icing sugar and serve immediately. Congratulate the pears on a job well done.

  Love, Gramps xx

  Issy was getting up just as Helena was coming in from night shift, weary but slightly hysterical from the unit’s success in saving all four teenagers from a joyriding smash-up on the A10.

  ‘Hey,’ she said, noticing Issy grinding fresh beans for coffee. ‘You’re perking up!’

  ‘Want one?’ said Issy. ‘I am go go go today.’

  ‘No thank you. I have enough problems sleeping off night shift as it is.’

  ‘Well, try and catch up. I think I’ve found a man for your list.’

  Helena raised her eyebrows. ‘Does he have penetrating brown eyes and an offbeat smile?’

  ‘No, Helena. That’s John Cusack again.’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘He’s called Austin. He’s got reddish-brown hair and works in a bank and—’

  ‘Stop right there,’ said Helena. ‘Two gingers? It’s a calamity waiting to happen.’ She smiled at her flatmate. ‘It’s good to see you on form again.’

  ‘I got the loan and I’m going to meet a potential member of staff.’

  ‘Well, that is just great,’ said Helena. ‘Pretend you’re always this upbeat.’

  Issy kissed her and left the flat.

  Across town, Pearl McGregor turned over in the bed. Something – someone – was kicking her. Hard. It was like being bombarded by a very small elephant.

  ‘Who is that elephant in my bed?’

  It wasn’t really a bed, it was a mattress on the floor. She had a fold-out sofa for their little two-room flat – her mother had the bedroom – but it was just too uncomfortable so they’d got an old mattress and propped it up against the wall during the day. Pearl had tried to smarten it up by sewing a patchwork bedspread and some cushions. Louis was meant to sleep in with her mum, but he always gravitated towards her in the night, and woke her up bright and early.

  ‘Coco Pops!’ came a tiny voice from deep under the duvet. ‘Coco Pops, Mummy!’

  ‘Who said that?’ Pearl pretended to search the bed. ‘I thought I heard a voice, but there can’t be anyone in my bed.’

  There were stifled giggles from down by her feet.

  ‘Nope, no one is in my bed.’

  Louis went silent till all she could hear was his excited breathing.

  ‘OK, good, I will go back to sleep and forget about all those elephants.’

  ‘Noooo! Mummy! Is me!! Wan Coco Pops!’

  Louis flung himself into her arms and Pearl buried her face in his neck, sucking in the warm sleepy smell of him. There were a lot of drawbacks to single motherhood, but the alarm clock wasn’t one of them.

  With the curtains open (also one of Pearl’s needlework creations), Louis propped up by the breakfast bar and her mother enjoying a cup of tea in bed, Pearl looked down at her notebook. Today the two of them could maybe go to the drop-in centre while she went round the shops. It was absolutely freezing outside but she’d tell her mum that she and Louis should stay as long as they could at the centre, so they could turn off the heating in the flat. Tea was fifteen pence there, she could handle that. Then the freezer shop was doing a deal on sausages so she’d buy as many as she could manage. A bit of her felt bad at not budgeting for more fresh fruit for Louis – she watched his adorable baby tummy spill over the top of his cheap pyjamas. And nappies. She dreaded buying nappies. She’d tried potty-training him but he was barely two, he didn’t have a clue what was going on. She just ended up spending more down the laundrette, it didn’t make sense. Then she’d go back to Tesco. They must have something coming up soon, they must do. And she’d heard that you could work around your childcare … Suddenly, groggily, she remembered. It was today! She was going to see that scatty girl. Something about a coffee shop! She rushed to turn the shower on, just as Louis put his hands up round her neck.

  ‘Cuggles!’ he shouted joyously, Coco Pops finished, as he launched himself at her again. Pearl hugged him back.

  ‘You are so damn cute,’ she said.’

  ‘TV on,’ said Louis happily. He knew how to get his mother in a good mood.

  ‘No way,’ said Pearl. ‘We have things to do today.’

  It was a bright, frosty Friday morning when Pearl and Issy met outside the Cupcake Café. Their breath showed over the steaming cups of takeaway coffee they’d had to buy four hundred metres up the road. Pearl was dressed in a large pinafore and holding Louis by the hand.

  Louis was an exquisite-looking child: roly-poly and caramel-coloured, with wide, sparkling eyes and a ready grin. He immediately took the proffered cake from his fond mother and sat down with two racing cars under the spindly tree.

  Issy, having left the house in such a positive mood, suddenly felt a bit nervous; this was almost like a blind date. If this worked out, they would be spending eight, nine, ten hours a day together. If it didn’t, that could be a disaster. Was it a huge mistake to be planning a business relationship with someone she’d only met once before? Or should she follow her gut instinct?

  Her doubts, though, began to fade as she showed Pearl the shop, and took in her obvious excitement. Pearl could see absolutely what Issy saw in it; could envisage it finished. She even insisted on going down into the cellar. Why do you want to go down there? Issy had asked and Pearl had pointed out that before they agreed to do anything they might as well check that she could actually fit into the narrow stairway and Issy said of cour
se she could, she wasn’t that big, and Pearl had snorted good-naturedly, but Issy did mentally plan to build out the counter another couple of inches, just for ease of use.

  The more Pearl saw, the more she liked it. It had character, this place. And Issy’s pear cake had been frankly amazing; lighter than air and lingering. If the venue scrubbed up right – and here in north London, where there were enough people who didn’t see anything wrong with paying over two pounds for a cup of coffee, she couldn’t see why it wouldn’t work – she’d love to work here. Issy seemed nice – a bit naïve in the ways of business, obviously, but everyone had to start somewhere – and a warm, cosy, scented café with friendly hungry people and reasonable hours would be a lot nicer than most of the places she’d worked, that was for sure.

  But there was one problem. She loved him to bits but he was, undeniably, a problem.

  ‘What opening hours were you thinking of?’ she asked.

  ‘Well, I was thinking eight am. That’s the time most people are heading for work and might want to grab a coffee,’ said Issy. ‘If that works well we could do croissants too, they’re not hard to make.’

  Pearl raised her eyebrows.

  ‘So the hours would be …’

  ‘I was thinking, to begin with, seven thirty till four thirty?’ said Issy. ‘We’ll close after lunchtime cakes.’

  ‘How many days a week?’ said Pearl.

  ‘Uh, I thought see how it goes. If it works well, I’d like it to be only five,’ said Issy. ‘But including Saturdays to begin with.’

  ‘And how many staff are you going to have?’

  Issy blinked. ‘Uh, well, I was thinking maybe just us to begin with.’

  ‘I mean, if one of us is sick or on holiday, or on a break, or …’

  Issy felt a bit prickled. Pearl hadn’t even started yet and already she was talking about time off.

  ‘Well, yes, I thought we could work that out as we go.’

  Pearl frowned. She was sad; this was by far the best, the most interesting opportunity that had come along for ages. It would be exciting trying to get a little fledgling business off the ground; she could almost certainly make herself useful here and there was nothing involved in the job that she hadn’t done before. Whereas Issy, she surmised, had done quite a lot of sitting in a nice office checking her Facebook status and might well find all the hard work something of a surprise. Louis was running up to the cellar steps, checking the dark depths with delighted terror and hopping back to his mother’s skirts again.

  Issy was looking at her, troubled. When she’d thought of Pearl it had seemed like the answer to all her problems. But here was the woman now, not jumping at what Issy had assumed would be a fantastic opportunity for her. She swallowed hard. Pearl didn’t even have a job. Why was she quibbling about this one?

  ‘I … I’m so sorry, Issy,’ said Pearl. ‘I don’t think I can.’

  ‘Why not?’ said Issy, sounding emotional without meaning to. It was her dream after all, nobody else’s.

  Regretfully, Pearl indicated Louis, who was trying to catch dust motes between his fingers.

  ‘I can’t leave him alone with my mother every single morning. She’s not that well and it’s not fair on her, or me, or Louis. We live in Lewisham, it’s a long way away.’

  Issy was stung, even though she knew it wasn’t fair. What a thing to be getting in the way. How did mothers work? she wondered. She’d never really thought about it before. All those nice women who were on the tills at Tesco at 7am, or cleaned offices, or worked on the tube lines. What did they do with their children? Did they have children? How was it done? She remembered the mums at KD, always looking harassed, like they’d left something on the bus; trying to sneak out early on end-of-term days; jumping when the phone rang.

  ‘Oh,’ she said. She glanced at Louis, who was making tracks in the dust with his cars. ‘Oh, but couldn’t you bring him in? He’s no trouble. Just a couple of days a week or something?’

  Pearl’s heart leapt. Around here – playing safely out in the courtyard … warm and safe and not in front of the TV … Well, no. It was stupid.

  ‘I think health and safety might have something to say about that,’ she said, smiling to show Issy how sorry she was.

  ‘No, but … we wouldn’t tell them!’ said Issy.

  ‘Do you think that’s the way to start a business?’ said Pearl. ‘Lying to health and safety? And don’t even get me started on—’

  ‘Fire officers. Yes, so I heard,’ said Issy. ‘Terrifying hell fiends.’

  She glanced at the shop.

  ‘I mean, the ovens will be downstairs … more out of the way. I’ve decided just to keep the coffee machine up here.’

  ‘With superheated steam,’ said Pearl sweetly.

  Issy smiled. ‘Oh Pearl, I could really do with you.’

  At that moment there was a commotion outside the shop. Two men in dirty overalls had wandered up and were finishing off cigarettes and giving them enquiring glances.

  ‘Oh shit, the builders are early,’ said Issy. She was quite nervous about this; she had no room in her budget to employ an architect or bring in a professional shopfitter so she had to trust that she could explain what she wanted sufficiently clearly. She hadn’t been entirely convinced of her ability to do so when she’d called a firm in a whirl of positive activity the day before. Pearl raised her eyebrows.

  ‘Don’t go,’ pleaded Issy. ‘Let’s have another chat anyway, afterwards.’

  Pearl folded her arms and stood back as Issy opened the door to the builders. She caught them eyeing her up in a not entirely encouraging way as they introduced themselves as Phil and Andreas. Phil did most of the talking as Issy took them through, trying to explain what she was after – all the old shelving units stripped out, the whole place rewired, the counter moved and opened up, fridges and display cabinets put in, but not to touch the windows or the fireplace; shelving and a storage fridge for downstairs too. As she listed it, it seemed like an awful lot. Now they had their loan, and she had her redundancy payment too of course, but it was a lot of money to put into something before it had even opened.

  Phil looked around and sucked his teeth a lot.

  ‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘They’re a nightmare, these old buildings. Ain’t it listed?’

  ‘No!’ said Issy, delighted to be asked a question she could actually answer. ‘Well, I mean, yes, the outside is, grade II, but the interior is all right as long as we don’t pull down any walls or put anything up or brick up the fireplace, as if we would.’

  ‘Well, your problem here is we’ll have to thread the wiring through the walls, then there’ll be a lot of replastering to do, and that’s before you even look at the flooring.’

  ‘What’s wrong with the flooring?’

  There were simple wooden boards on the floor, and Issy had been planning just to clean them up and leave them.

  ‘Nah, you can’t do that, see,’ said Phil. Issy didn’t see at all. She started to feel embarrassed and uncomfortable. It was awkward being in the presence of people who knew so much more than she did about something that concerned her. She had the sinking sensation that it was a feeling she would get to know well.

  Phil was proposing something complicated about lifting the skirting and putting in heating and wiring underneath then basically rebuilding the walls from the bottom up. Issy was looking at him helplessly, feeling out of her depth and nodding slightly, wishing as she did so that her accent wasn’t quite so posh. Andreas was groping in his pocket for his cigarettes. Phil took out a camera and a notepad and started to jot down measurements, until Pearl, standing in the shadows, couldn’t take it for one more single second.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said. Everyone turned to look at her quizzically. ‘You’re a good builder, right?’ she said to Phil, who looked slightly wounded.

  ‘I can do anything,’ he said proudly. ‘Jack of all trades, me.’

  ‘That’s great,’ said Pearl. ‘We’re glad to have you aboar
d. But I’m afraid we can only pay you for the work that Miss Randall mentioned before. No floorboards, no skirting, no plastering. Just get the units in, get this place squared up – and you know what I mean – and you’ll get paid straight away, no messing. Do one iota more of stuff you aren’t asked for, or overcharge us – and you’re the fifth quote we’ve had in – and I’m sorry, but there simply won’t be the money to pay you. Do you know what I mean?’

  Pearl fixed Phil with a beady eye. He smiled nervously, then cleared his throat. He’d known a few Pearls growing up at school, and he had them to thank for being in a trade now, instead of prison like half of his mates.

  ‘Absolutely. Totally. Not a problem.’

  He turned back to Issy, who was speechless but happy.

  ‘We’ll sort this place out for you, love.’

  ‘Great!’ said Issy. ‘Uh, want some upside-down cake? Seeing as you’re going to be turning this place upside down?’

  ‘You were brilliant,’ said Issy, as they headed up towards the bus stop, each with one of Louis’s hands in theirs. He was swinging as he went, insisting on more with a count of ‘Won-doo-free!’

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ said Pearl. ‘You’ve just got to ask for what you want, he wasn’t going to bite you. He’s in a selling job too.’

  ‘I know,’ said Issy. ‘The time for being timid really isn’t now, is it?’

  ‘Not if you want to make it,’ said Pearl thoughtfully. Issy looked back at the building. She’d just agreed to put a sizeable chunk of all the money she’d ever had in her entire life, and possibly more money than she’d ever see again, into this thing. Pearl was right. She was beginning to suspect that Pearl might be right about a lot of things.