Christmas At The Cupcake Cafe Read online

‘Oh, just a bit, here and there …’ said Ben. He couldn’t quite meet her eyes.

  ‘Do you mean working properly, a proper job? Where? Was it cash in hand? With Bobby or who?’ demanded Pearl.

  ‘Oh, well, I thought you’d be pleased,’ said Ben, cross now. ‘I thought you’d be happy that we got the little man the one thing he wants more than anything … thought we could wrap it up too, you know, with a big bow, the whole works. Maybe I’ll just throw it away, huh? Just set it on fire because I haven’t got my P60 and a receipt and everything else …’

  ‘Ben,’ said Pearl, desperate not to start a fight. ‘Ben, please. It’s just it’s so expensive …’

  ‘I know how much it is,’ said Ben, his handsome face set like stone. Pearl swallowed. She wanted to believe he had a job, she did, but why couldn’t she get a straight answer out of him?

  She didn’t say anything more. Ben cursed quickly under his breath then turned to go.

  ‘Don’t you want to come in and see Louis?’ Pearl said, a little reluctantly.

  Ben shrugged, then slouched past her in through the door of the little ground-floor flat.

  ‘DADDY!’ Louis’ shout of joy, Pearl reflected, could be heard halfway down the street.

  Pearl never swore. She thought it showed an uncontrolled mind. But she got extremely close to it right then. She looked around. Someone had built a snowman from the dirty leftover snow of a few days ago. Someone else had taken the carrot off its nose and put it where a penis would be. Pearl sighed, and went back indoors, out of the freezing cold, feeling very far away from wishing goodwill upon all men.

  ‘So, Austin,’ Merv was saying, sitting back in his banquette and grumbling, presumably not for the first time, about the fact that he couldn’t smoke his cigar indoors. ‘What would you say our prospects are vis-à-vis …’

  Issy had realised that frankly there wasn’t a single thing she could contribute to the conversation – Candy was playing with her phone, like Darny would have been doing, and the director’s wife, who was called something like Vanya or Vania or something that sounded like it might be a name but wasn’t really, was making a massive point of differentiating herself from Issy and Candy by insisting on joining in with the men’s conversations in a highly technical and competitive way.

  Candy yawned every so often quietly behind her hand, but then would lean in and stroke Merv’s thigh in an affectionate manner. Issy realised that a charming waiter was refilling her glass every time she took so much as a sip of the ambrosial white wine, so she kept at it. Since neither Vanya nor Candy ate at all, Issy went at the bread basket in an almost passive-aggressive manner. Meanwhile Austin was talking about Europe and money and futures and micro-trading and other things Issy hadn’t even heard of in a way that was completely beyond her and very impressive.

  She wondered what Austin thought about her job – he saw her at work, she supposed, making coffee and baking cakes and handling the customers, but she didn’t think he found it very impressive (she was quite wrong to think this; Austin thought what she did was amazing). Meanwhile, here he was, eating a very rare steak and explaining why the future of Europe was as luxury-goods merchants to roaring emerging economies, whilst everyone nodded sagely and listened to everything he said. Suddenly Issy wished Darny were there to wind Austin up and say something cheeky.

  Cosy in the warm restaurant, drinking quite a lot of wine and eating her food without saying very much, Issy had felt herself start to slightly drift off when she heard her name.

  ‘It’s like Issy’s business model,’ Austin was saying. ‘High-end products, immaculately made and presented, not mass-market. That’s the future, because everywhere else we can’t compete.’

  The table turned towards Issy, who felt very fuzzy in the head.

  ‘What?’ she said.

  ‘Is that true, Issybel?’ asked Merv. ‘Are you the future of commerce? When you’re awake?’

  Everyone laughed as if he’d said something funny, and Issy blushed bright red and couldn’t think of a single word to say.

  ‘Well?’ said Merv.

  ‘Do you think your model is going to drive European-zone regeneration?’ snapped Vanya, as if they were in court or something.

  ‘Ha, well, hem,’ said Issy. She was bursting with embarrassment and bright red. Austin hadn’t told her this was a bloody job interview for her too. Even worse, because she hadn’t been following the conversation, she didn’t have a clue what to say. And even if she had, she didn’t know what the right answer was anyway.

  ‘Well, gee, it’s nice to have a hobby,’ said Vanya with a large fake smile, turning back to her salad and mineral water.

  Austin took Issy’s hand under the table and gave it a sympathetic squeeze. This made things worse as far as Issy was concerned; she didn’t need his sympathy: she needed not to be put on the spot. The conversation moved on to real-estate prices, but Issy still sat there, burning up with crossness and feeling stupid and inferior.

  Finally, when the pudding menu was coming round and Vanya and Candy were holding their hands up against it as if it were a list of poisons (which, Issy reflected, taking it, was probably exactly what they did think), Issy was ready. She launched in.

  ‘The thing is,’ she said, ‘if you make stuff that’s really good, people realise it’s a superior product. Well, most of the time. They still sell lots of squirty cream in cans. Anyway, that’s not important. The important thing is that even if people have less money, they’ll still buy themselves small lovely things as a treat. Sometimes even more because they’re staying in a lot, trying not to buy too much, so they’ll have a little reward …’

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Vanya, sounding bored. ‘But what does that mean on a macroeconomic level to you?’

  Issy spluttered. ‘It means … I’ll tell you what it means,’ she said, drunker than she’d realised, and suddenly sick of being patronised and talked down to and ignored and treated as the uninteresting dumpy girlfriend of the brilliant and fascinating man by these stupid, annoying glamorous Americans. ‘It means I wake up every day and I do a real thing. I get my hands dirty. I create something from scratch, with my bare hands, that I hope people will love, and they do, they really do; and I turn out something perfect and beautiful, that is meant to be enjoyed, and people realise that, and they do enjoy it and they pay me money for it and that is the best job in the bloody world and we should all be lucky enough to do something like that and that’s where we should be focusing our efforts. What did you create today, Vanya? Did anyone pick up one of your reports and smell it and give you a big smile and tell you it was absolutely bloody amazing?’

  She paused to savour the open mouths round the table.

  ‘No, I didn’t think so.’

  She turned to the waiter.

  ‘Does the gateau de fôret noire come with fresh cherries or marinated? Tell the chef fresh if he can, it’s far better; the acidity balances out the sweetness instead of making it cloying and overbearing. Of course, I’m sure he already knows that. On a macro level. So I’ll take it.’ And she shut the menu with a triumphant snap.

  The party headed out rather mutedly, except for Merv, who had suddenly found Issy a bit of a one and asked her lots of cake-based questions and whether she could make a decent kugel, which actually she’d never heard of, then described his grandmother making it in their little Long Island kitchen and complaining that she couldn’t get kosher sugar and that the base wasn’t right, and Issy tried to talk him through it to see if she could figure it out.

  No one else spoke to her at all; even Austin seemed stiff, and Issy, through her slightly drunken haze, started to worry that in fact rather than putting her point in a cool and measured way, she had perhaps shouted at everybody else at the table completely unnecessarily. Oh well. She couldn’t worry about that now.

  As they got to the door, the beautiful waitress brought them their coats. Issy shrugged herself into Caroline’s now even tighter ridiculous white jacket. Candy st
opped short. Then she leaned closer.

  ‘Oh. My. God,’ she said, the first direct thing she’d said to Issy all night. ‘Is that … is that the new Farim Maikal?’

  Issy didn’t have the faintest clue who it was, but the name definitely rang a bell. And actually, now she thought about it, Caroline had gone on and on about the coat when it had arrived and been really smug about it and how she’d got one over on her friends and this would show them and all sorts of other stuff that Issy hadn’t really understood. But Farim she thought she remembered.

  ‘Hmm,’ she said non-committally.

  ‘It IS!’ breathed Candy. ‘Can I touch it?’ She held out her hand, reverently stroking the ridiculous white fur and collar studs. ‘Wow, the wait list at Barneys for this was like … wow.’

  Even Vanya was looking at it with a touch of jealousy.

  ‘Shame they didn’t have your size,’ she said.

  ‘Oh man, that doesn’t matter, she looks amazing,’ said Candy. ‘Anybody would who got their hands on one. This is THE hot coat this winter.’

  Issy bit her lip and suddenly felt a terrible wave of homesickness.

  Chapter Twelve

  Kugel

  220g medium-wide egg noodles

  65g butter

  220g cream cheese

  100g sugar

  1 tsp vanilla

  4 eggs

  200ml milk

  150g frosted flakes or corn flakes mixed with sugar

  2 tbsp butter, melted 2 tsp sugar

  2 tsp cinnamon

  Cook noodles according to package directions.

  In a large bowl, mix butter, cream cheese, sugar, vanilla, eggs and milk. Stir until smooth.

  Drain noodles, and add to mixture, then pour into a large square pan, cover and refrigerate overnight.

  The next day, about two hours before the meal, preheat the oven to 180°C/gas mark 4.

  In a small bowl, crush the cereal and mix with melted butter, sugar and cinnamon. Sprinkle the cereal mix on top of the cold kugel, and then bake for 1¼ hours. Cool for 20 minutes before serving.

  Issy fell asleep in the car, then sank into the beautiful bed, which made her feel like she was sleeping on a cloud, and even though she was woken incredibly early by both the jet lag and Darny banging hard on the connecting door, she already felt much better. She had been too tired even to give Austin a proper kiss, but as she turned over in the bed, she saw he was already up and in the shower.

  ‘Hey,’ she said as he came out with a towel wrapped round him and opened the door for his brother. Darny grunted at them, then headed into his own bathroom.

  ‘Hey,’ Austin said, without quite looking her in the eye.

  Issy immediately panicked and sat up in the big soft bed. Last night was a bit of a blur.

  ‘Was I …’ Her voice sounded weird, a bit husky. ‘Sorry, was I really bad last night?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ said Austin, but his tone was a little distant.

  ‘Well, you put me on the spot,’ said Issy, looking round for something to drink. She picked up a bottle of Evian, then saw a sign next to it indicating that it was $7.50, which even she with her poor arithmetic skills could tell was outrageous, so she put it down again.

  ‘Just drink it,’ said Austin crossly, when he realised what she was doing.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ said Issy. ‘What did I do?’

  ‘You were just … you were just a bit aggressive, that was all.’

  ‘I was aggressive? That Vanya girl wanted to bite me on the leg!’

  Austin still looked unhappy.

  ‘Austin,’ said Issy, imploring him. ‘Look, if you wanted me to behave in a certain way or dress like a tart and keep my mouth shut like that Candy girl … you should have said so.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ said Austin. ‘I just wanted you to be yourself.’

  There was a terrible silence.

  ‘Maybe that was me,’ said Issy quietly.

  Austin looked as if he wanted to say something, then bit his tongue and didn’t. Instead he glanced at his watch.

  ‘Look …’

  ‘You have to go. I know. Me and Darny will go out and explore.’

  ‘Good,’ said Austin, looking relieved to be on safer ground. ‘OK, cool. I’ll text you. I should be able to get away this afternoon after five. I know this cool café we can meet at.’

  ‘Well, we might need an afternoon nap,’ said Issy. ‘But definitely. OK.’

  Austin came over and kissed her. ‘We could do with some time, just the two of us,’ he said. At exactly the same moment, Darny started up singing a loud and extremely tuneless version of a Bruno Mars song, whilst clattering loudly in the rainforest shower. Issy rolled her eyes.

  ‘Mm,’ she said. Then she smiled. ‘Have a good day.’

  Austin smiled back at her, but still, when he left the hotel room she felt a terrible anxiety in the pit of her stomach. Something wasn’t right, and she didn’t know if she could fix it. She didn’t know the recipe for this.

  ‘Well, fix it,’ Pearl was saying, as patiently as she was able. Maya tried yet again, but her shaky hand meant that more of the latte slopped over the top of the glass.

  It was Maya’s first day, and Pearl had never had to be someone’s boss before, especially not someone who was pretty, sweet, young, and appeared to have caught the eye of a person Pearl would never admit in a hundred years she had a bit of a soft spot for.

  It was proving tricky for both of them. Maya was trying her best, but Pearl was so quick and efficient, she couldn’t quite follow what she was doing; not only that, but she was nervous. Pearl seemed to have taken against her for some reason, and she couldn’t work out why. And she’d been up since five on her post round and had been too anxious to eat any breakfast.

  ‘Three lattes, a hot chocolate and four mince pies,’ said Pearl, smiling nicely at the customer. ‘Just ring it up like this.’

  Her fingers flew deftly amongst the buttons and the till dinged open. Maya tried to remember what she’d done, but it didn’t seem like it would be possible. She sighed, then went back to the coffee machine. Grind, pressurise – the big orange Rancilio terrified the life out of her. Even Pearl admitted it was temperamental, and likely to give you a steam burn at any moment. Steam the milk but not too much (skin) and not too little (freezing). Then combine, spoon the foam on the top, and powder a little cupcake shape with chocolate and a template Issy had had made up. Repeat a hundred times an hour, serve up with a smile … Maya was getting panicked.

  ‘Hurry up!’ said Pearl, keeping a fixed grin on her face. Where the hell was Caroline? She’d been late the day before, too. When Pearl had called her on it, she’d shrugged and said, come on, the boss was away, and anyhow it was too cold to leave the house in the morning without her coat. Now she’d done it to her again. Pearl gritted her teeth. Sometimes it drove her beyond endurance to have to work with someone who only turned up as a sop to her ex-husband’s divorce lawyer, and thought she was hard done by at that.

  Maya turned round too fast and knocked the entire metal jug of milk on to the floor. Gasping apologies, she jumped to it, but Pearl was there before her.

  ‘Please take these mince pies with our compliments,’ she hissed, handing the customer back her money. ‘I’ll bring the coffees over when they’re ready.’

  Pearl got out the mop whilst Maya spluttered apologies that Pearl wasn’t really in the mood to accept, particularly when they smelled burning and she realised she’d missed the oven beeper going off because she’d been crouched down cleaning up milk, and they’d lost an entire tray of Christmas cake cupcakes and the beautiful warm-scented ambience of the shop had gone, giving it instead a charred edge that was going to do nothing for business.

  ‘This place smells awful,’ said Caroline, wafting in twenty minutes late. ‘Good lord, look at that disgusting pile of dirty dishes all over the tables. Yuck, who’d want to eat here?’

  ‘Can you keep your voice down?’ sai
d Pearl, wiping sweat off her forehead. ‘And get cleaning up.’

  ‘Can’t the newbie do that?’ sulked Caroline. ‘I just got my nails done.’

  ‘The newbie is trying to learn how to make a cup of coffee without exploding anything,’ said Pearl.

  ‘Oops,’ said Maya.

  ‘Maybe try again when we’re a bit quieter,’ said Pearl through gritted teeth, getting her to start on the dishwasher, which she figured even Maya couldn’t mess up. Wrongly, she discovered, half an hour later, when Maya tried to refill the soap dish with dishwasher cleaner and managed to somehow scoop the overflowing foam over an entire tray of fresh lemon slices.

  ‘Oops,’ said Maya, again.

  There was a queue out the door, but not a good queue – it was a grumbling bunch of freezing people who’d waited far too long for watery coffee and nothing-like-as-good-as-usual cakes, being served up by three grumpy, stressed-out people instead of being soothed by the normal gentle smile and greeting from Issy. If one more person said ‘Boss on holiday, then?’ to Pearl, she was going to scream.

  Just as one of their everyday regulars was looming up to the counter bearing a cake with teethmarks in it and an ominous expression, the phone rang. Pearl ducked down the stairs with the handset, leaving Maya to put on an apologetic look and try to explain why the strawberry tart tasted a bit soapy.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘PEARL!’

  ‘Oh, well, you don’t have to shout.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Issy. ‘I’m not used to phoning from abroad. Wow, it’s good to hear your voice. How are things?’

  Pearl paused. As she did so, she heard the tinkle of falling crockery.

  ‘Uhm, fine,’ she said quickly.

  ‘Really? You’re all doing great without me?’

  Issy’s voice sounded slightly disappointed. She had rather hoped they would find it difficult to struggle on without her being there. Mind you, Pearl was so capable and had reassured her so many times that she could manage on her own. It was hardly rocket science. She thought back to that snooty woman at dinner last night. Maybe she was right after all.