Meet Me at the Cupcake Café Read online

  Yep, the first Monday after Christmas had to be right up there with rotten blooming days really. The wind was raw against her face and tugging at her new Christmas hat, which she’d bought in the sales thinking its knitted stripes might be quirky and young and cute. Now she suspected it made her look more like Haggis McBaggis, the lady with all the bags she pushed along in a shopping trolley, who sometimes hung around the bus stop but never got on a bus. Issy usually gave her a half-smile but tried not to stand downwind, hugging her large tin of cupcakes.

  No Haggis today, she noted, as she glanced at the faces next to her – the same faces she stood next to in rain, snow, wind and the occasional sunny spell. Not even an old lady who pushed a trolley about wanted to get up this morning. Some of the familiar faces she nodded to; some, like the angry young man who fiddled relentlessly with his phone with one hand and his ear with the other, or the older chap who surreptitiously plucked at his flaky scalp, as if having dandruff somehow rendered him invisible, she didn’t acknowledge at all. But here they all were, every day, standing in the same places, waiting for their bendy bus and wondering how crammed full of people it would be when it finally arrived to bear them off to shops, offices, the City and the West End of London, scattering them down the arteries of Islington and Oxford Street, then scooping them up again at night, in the dark and the cold, when condensation from tired bodies would steam up the windows, and children, late from school, would draw faces, and teenagers would draw penises.

  ‘Hi there,’ she said to Linda, the middle-aged lady who worked in John Lewis, with whom she occasionally shared a greeting. ‘Happy New Year.’

  ‘Happy New Year!’ said Linda. ‘Made any resolutions?’

  Issy sighed and felt her fingers drift to her slightly uncomfortable waistband. There was something about the miserable weather, the dark, short days, that made her feel like staying in and baking, rather than going out and taking some exercise and eating salad. She’d baked an awful lot for the hospital at Christmas too.

  ‘Oh, the usual,’ said Issy. ‘Lose a bit of weight …’

  ‘Oh, you don’t need to do that,’ said Linda. ‘There’s nothing wrong with your weight!’ Linda was a middle-aged shape, with one bosom, generous hips and the most comfortable shoes she could find for standing up in all day in haberdashery. ‘You look lovely. Take a picture now and look back on it in ten years if you don’t believe me. You won’t believe how good you looked.’ She couldn’t resist glancing briefly at the tin Issy was carrying. Issy sighed.

  ‘These are for the office,’ she said.

  ‘Of course they are,’ said Linda. The other people in the bus queue were coming forward now, making enquiring faces and asking Issy how her holiday had gone. She groaned.

  ‘OK, you gannets.’ She opened the tin. Wind-chilled faces cracked into smiles showing winter teeth; iPod buds were removed from ears as the bus stop cheerfully descended on the marmalade cakes. Issy had, as usual, made twice as many as she thought she might need so she could feed the office and the bus queue too.

  ‘These are amazing,’ said the man through a mouthful of crumbs. ‘You know, you could do this for a living.’

  ‘With you lot I feel like I do sometimes,’ said Issy, but blushing with pleasure nonetheless as everyone clustered around. ‘Happy New Year, everybody.’

  The entire bus queue started to chat and perk up. Linda of course was doing nothing but worry about her daughter Leanne’s wedding. Leanne was a chiropodist and the first person in Linda’s family to go to college, and she was marrying an industrial chemist. Linda, proud as punch, was organizing the entire thing. She had no idea how difficult it was for Issy, having to listen to a mother who wanted nothing more than to put in corsetry eyelets for her twenty-six-year-old’s wedding to a wonderful man.

  Linda thought Issy had a young man, but didn’t like to pry. They did take their time these days, didn’t they, these career women? She ought to get a move on, pretty girl like that who could cook, you’d think she’d get snapped up. But here she was, still catching the bus on her own. She hoped her Leanne got pregnant quickly. She was looking forward to giving her discount card a bit of a workout in the baby department too.

  Issy, closing her tin and still seeing no sign of a bus, glanced behind her into Pear Tree Court. The oddly shaped shop with the grilles tightly down looked like a grumpy sleeping man in the drear grey light of a January London morning, bin bags set outside still waiting for collection.

  Over the last four years various people had tried to turn it into a business of one kind or another, but they had all failed. Perhaps the area wasn’t up and coming enough, perhaps it was the proximity of the ironmonger’s, but the little children’s clothes shop with its exquisite Tartine et Chocolat French designs – at eye-watering prices – had not lasted long, nor had the gift shop, with its foreign editions of Monopoly and Penguin Classics mugs, nor the yoga shop, which had painted the entire frontage a supposedly soothing pink, put a tinkling Buddha fountain outside by the tree and sold incredibly expensive yoga mats and Gwyneth Paltrow-style soft bendy trousers. Issy, while far too intimidated ever to set foot inside, had thought it might do rather well, considering the high numbers of local trendies and yummy mummies; but it had turned out not to be, and once again there was a For rent/enquiries board in yellow and black, clashing horribly with the pink, showing in the window. Of the little tinkling Buddha there was no sign.

  ‘That’s a shame,’ said Linda, seeing her looking at the closed-down shop. Issy hmmed in response. Seeing the yoga shop every day – and the lithe, ponytail-swinging honey-coloured girls who worked there – had just reminded her that now she was over thirty, it wasn’t quite as easy to stay a size twelve as it used to be, especially when you had Issy’s grand passion. It wasn’t as if she could ever have been a skinny minny, not in her grandfather’s house. When she came home from school, Gramps, although he must have been tired from a full day’s work already, would beckon her into the big kitchens. The other bakers would stand out of her way and smile at the little girl, while barking at each other in their rough voices. She would feel embarrassed just to be in there, especially when Gramps announced, ‘Now, your education truly begins.’ She had nodded, a round-eyed quiet child, prone to blushing and self-consciousness; feeling out of place at a primary school whose rules seemed to change on a weekly basis, understood by everyone but her.

  ‘We shall start,’ he said, ‘with drop scones. Even a child of five could make a drop scone!’

  ‘But Grampa, I’m six!’

  ‘You’re not six!’

  ‘I am! I’m six!’

  ‘You’re two.’

  ‘I’m six!’

  ‘You’re four.’

  ‘Six!’

  ‘Now here is the secret to the drop scone,’ he said seriously, after he had made Issy wash her hands and patiently scooped up the four eggshells that had fallen on the floor. ‘It’s in the burner. Not too hot. A hot burner kills pancakes. Gently now.’

  He held on to her, up on the brown kitchen stool that wobbled slightly because of the hole in the linoleum, her small face poised in concentration as she let the mixture drip gently off the wooden spoon and into the pan.

  ‘And patiently now,’ he said. ‘You can’t rush these things. A burnt drop scone is no life. And this cooker …’

  Joe had poured all his energies into his beloved granddaughter, teaching her the techniques and tricks of baking. It was his fault, thought Issy. She would definitely bake less this year, lose a couple of pounds. She realized she was thinking this while absent-mindedly licking orange buttercream off her fingers. Soon!

  Still no sign of the bus. As Issy looked round the corner, glancing quickly at her watch, she felt a heavy raindrop hit her cheek. Then another. The sky had been grey for so long now, it seemed, you could never tell when rain was coming in. But this was going to be a bad one; the clouds were nearly black. There was no shelter at the bus stop at all, unless you counted three centimetres
of guttering from the newsagent’s behind them, but the proprietor didn’t like them leaning against his windows, and often said so when Issy went in to get her morning newspaper (and occasionally a snack). The only thing to do was hunker down, cram your hat over your head and wonder, as Issy sometimes did, why she wasn’t living in Tuscany, California or Sydney.

  Suddenly a car – a black BMW 23i – squealed up to an illegal stop on the yellow lines, splashing most of the queue, some of whom groaned while some swore prodigiously. Issy’s heart lifted – and simultaneously sank. This would not make her popular with her number 73 posse. But still. The door opened opposite her.

  ‘Wanna ride?’ came the voice.

  Graeme wished Issy wouldn’t do this. He knew this was where she had to get the bus but it made her look such a martyr. She was a lovely girl and all that, and there was no doubt he quite liked having her about and everything, but he needed his own space, and it just wasn’t the done thing, sleeping with someone – someone your junior – from the office. So, anyway, he was glad she understood about not staying over – that was lucky, he was busy and couldn’t have handled someone right now who would give him a lot of aggro – but then when he was heading into work, feeling pretty good in his X-series, thinking about corporate strategy, the last thing, really, he needed to see was Issy standing soaking bloody wet at the bus stop, her scarf up around her neck. It made him feel uncomfortable, like she was letting the side down somehow by being so … so wet.

  Graeme was the best-looking person at Issy’s firm. By far. He was tall, honed from the gym, with piercing blue eyes and black hair. Issy had already been working there for three years, and his arrival had caused a stir with everyone. He was definitely cut out for property development; he had an authoritative, fast-moving style and a manner that always said if you didn’t snap up what he was selling, you were going to miss out.

  At first Issy had regarded him as one might a pop star or a tele vision actor: nice to look at, but stratospherically out of her league. She’d had plenty of nice, kind boyfriends, and one or two total arseholes, but for one reason or another nothing had ever worked out; they weren’t quite the right man, or it wasn’t quite the right time. Issy didn’t feel she was in the last chance saloon just yet, but she also knew, in the back of her mind, that she would like to find someone nice and settle down. She didn’t want her mother’s life, hopping from one man to the next, never happy. She wanted a home, and a family. She knew that made her hopelessly square, but that was how it was. And Graeme clearly wasn’t the settling-down type; she’d seen him pull away from the office in his little sports car with gorgeous-looking skinny girls with long blonde hair – never the same one, although they all looked the same. So she put him out of her mind, even as he cut a swathe through the office’s younger girls.

  That was what made it such a surprise to both of them, when they were sent on a training day to the company’s head offices in Rotterdam one week. Trapped indoors by the howling rain, their Dutch hosts having retired to bed earlier than expected, they had found themselves together in the hotel bar, getting on far better than they’d have expected. Graeme, for his part, was intrigued by the cloudy-haired, pretty, curvy girl who sat in the corner and never flirted or pouted her lips or giggled when he walked by; she turned out to be funny and sweet. Issy, slightly giddy on two Jägermeisters, couldn’t deny the absolute attractiveness of his strong arms and stubbled jaw. She tried to tell herself that it meant nothing; that it was just a one-off, nothing to worry about, a bit of fun, easily explained away by the alcohol and kept a secret, but he was terribly attractive.

  Graeme had set about seducing her partly for something to do, but had been surprised to find in her a softness and a sweetness that he hadn’t been expecting, and that he really rather liked. She wasn’t pushy and sharp-angled like those other girls, and she didn’t spend her entire time complaining about the calories in food and retouching her make-up. He had rather surprised himself by going against one of his golden rules and calling her after they got back. Issy had been both surprised and flattered, and had gone round to his off-plan minimalist flat in Notting Hill and made him an outstanding bruschetta. They had both enjoyed the experience very much.

  So it had been exciting. Eight months ago. And gradually Issy had started – naturally, she couldn’t help it – she had started to wonder if maybe, just maybe, he was the man for her. That someone so handsome and ambitious could have a gentler side too. He liked to talk to her about work – she always knew who he was talking about – and she liked the novelty factor of making dinner for him, and them sharing a meal, and a bed.

  Practical Helena of course had not failed to point out that, in the months since they’d got together, not only had he never stayed over at the flat but he often asked Issy to leave before morning so he could get a proper night’s sleep; that they went to restaurants but she had never met his friends, or his mother; that he had never come with her to see Gramps; that he’d never even called her his girlfriend. And that while it might be nice for Graeme to play housie on a casual basis with some girl from the office, Issy, at thirty-one, might be looking for a little bit more.

  Issy tended to stick her fingers in her ears at this point and sing lalala. The thing was, well, yes, she could break it off – although there was hardly a line of eligible suitors, and certainly none as hot as Graeme in view. Or, perhaps, she could make his life so pleasant and lovely that he would see how awful things would be without her, and propose. Helena thought this plan very over-optimistic, and did not keep this thought to herself.

  Graeme grimaced to himself in his BMW and turned down Jay-Z to pick up Issy. Of course he’d stop on a rainy day. He wasn’t some kind of bastard.

  Issy folded herself into the low-seated car as gracefully as she could, which wasn’t very. She was conscious that she’d just exposed her gusset to the bus queue. Next to her, Graeme, before she’d had a chance to arrange herself or put her seatbelt on, was already nudging into the traffic, without bothering to signal.

  ‘Come on, you arseholes,’ he growled. ‘Let me in.’

  ‘Do I wanna ride?’ asked Issy. ‘Have you gone American?’

  Graeme glanced at her and raised an eyebrow. ‘I can let you out if you like.’

  The rain pounded hard on the windscreen as if answering the question for her.

  ‘No, no thank you. Thanks for picking me up.’

  Graeme grunted. Sometimes, she thought, he really hated being caught out in a good turn.

  ‘Well, we can’t really go public, because of the office,’ Issy had said to Helena.

  ‘What, even after all this time? And you think they don’t already know?’ Helena had countered. ‘Are they all idiots?’

  ‘It’s a property developer’s,’ Issy said.

  ‘OK,’ said Helena, ‘they’re all idiots. But I still don’t see why you can’t stay over at his house once in a while.’

  ‘Because he doesn’t want us walking into the office together,’ Issy had said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. And it was, wasn’t it? It wasn’t as if eight months was terribly long. There was plenty of time for them to formalize things, decide when to take it to the next level. It just wasn’t the right time at the moment, that was all.

  Helena had sniffed in a characteristically Helena way.

  The traffic getting into town was terrible, and Graeme growled and swore a bit under his breath, but Issy didn’t care – it was just so nice to be in the car, cosy and warm, with Kiss FM blaring out on the radio.

  ‘What are you up to today?’ she asked conversationally. Normally he liked dumping the stresses and strains of the office on to her shoulders; he could trust her to be discreet. Today, though, he glanced at her.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Nothing much.’

  Issy raised her eyebrows. Graeme’s days were never nothing much; they were full of jockeying for position and being the Billy Big Bollocks. Property development was a profession that encoura
ged that sort of behaviour. That was why, she sometimes had to explain to her friends, Graeme could appear a little … aggressive. It was a façade he had to keep up at work. Underneath it all she knew, from their many late-night chats, from his moods and occasional outbursts, that he was a vulnerable man; sensitive to the aggression in the workplace; worried, deep down, about his status, just like everybody else. That was why Issy was so much more confident of her relationship with Graeme than her friends were. She saw the soft side of him. He confided to her his worries, his hopes and dreams and fears. And that was why it was serious, no matter where she woke up in the morning.

  She put her hand on his on the gear stick.

  ‘It’ll be all right,’ she said softly. Graeme shrugged it off, almost rudely.

  ‘I know,’ he said.

  The rain got heavier, if anything, as they turned into the street near Farringdon Road that housed the offices of Kalinga Deniki Property Management, or KD as it was known. It was a sharp chunk of modern glass, six storeys high, that looked out of place among the lower-set red-brick flats and offices. Graeme slowed the car.

  ‘Would you mind … ?’

  ‘You’re not serious, Graeme.’

  ‘Come on! How would it look to the partners, me driving in in the morning with some office clerk?’

  He saw Issy’s face.

  ‘Sorry. Office manager, I mean. I know it’s you. But they won’t know what to think, will they?’ He caressed her cheek briefly. ‘I’m sorry, Issy. But I’m the boss and if I start condoning workplace romances … all hell will break loose’

  From a moment Issy felt triumphant. It was a romance! Officially! She knew it. Even if Helena did occasionally imply she was an idiot, that it was just a convenient thing for Graeme to have a spare ear around.

  As if reading her thoughts, Graeme smiled at her, almost guiltily.