Christmas At The Cupcake Cafe

by Jenny Colgan

  She noticed on her smartphone (a birthday present from Austin that Darny kept trying to show her how to use and she kept forgetting) that she also had an email. Most of her emails came direct to cafe@thecupcakecafe.com, so this was unusual. Trying to keep her cool as Pearl started firing questions at Maya as to whether she knew how to work a till and do more than one thing at once and Maya revealed that she had grown up working in her local Chinese at weekends which made her pretty undoubtedly qualified if the busy craziness of most Chinese takeaways Issy had ever been in had anything to do with it, she clicked it.

  Darling Isabel, it began.

  Only two people in her life had ever called her Isabel. Her beloved Grampa Joe, and …

  Well, here I am! Just to tell you I won’t be celebrating Christmas this year as I have met my soulmate. I now live with a collective of Orthodox Jews so we’ll be passing it just as any other normal day. However Hanukkah is upon us as I’m sure you know …

  Issy internally rolled her eyes. She did know it was Hanukkah actually: Louis had shown her the menorah he’d made at school, and everyone had finally understood after a week of trying to work out what he meant by ‘men over’ with Caroline talking pointedly about speech therapy to Pearl and Issy having to stand between them at all times.

  so I will be lighting a candle for you in the window here in Queens …

  ‘Caroline?’ said Issy in a strangled voice. ‘Where’s Queens?’

  ‘Oh, no one ever goes to Queens, darling,’ came the voice from downstairs. ‘Does that new girl know how to make royal icing?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Maya. Pearl shot her a look. ‘I learn fast,’ qualified Maya quickly.

  Issy held up her hand to quieten everyone.

  ‘Caroline,’ she said, more slowly. ‘Is Queens near New York?’

  Caroline climbed up the narrow steps with a supercilious look on her face. She loved being in the know.

  ‘Actually, it’s part of New York,’ she said. ‘There’s five boroughs … Manhattan, Brooklyn—’

  ‘Yeah, OK, all right,’ said Issy. ‘So it’s close by?’

  ‘It’s part of it. You go through Queens on the way to the airport.’

  Everyone stopped what they were doing to look at Issy, who threw up her hands.

  ‘OK!’ she said. ‘OK, I give up. The universe is conspiring against me. Maya, get down there and learn to make royal icing. I’m … I guess I’m going to New York!’

  ‘Yay!’ cheered some of the customers.

  Doti smiled. ‘This is all going to work out great.’

  ‘Thank you! Thank you!’ said Maya.

  Pearl didn’t say anything as she handed over a box of a dozen red velvet and mint icing cakes for an office party.

  ‘Don’t smoosh them in the photocopier when you’re taking pictures of each other’s bums,’ she warned the giggly girls with reindeer antlers waiting to pick them up.

  ‘No fear,’ said one. ‘We’re going to hand-feed them to the best-looking men in the office.’

  ‘Well, there’s no way that can possibly backfire,’ said Pearl as they disappeared, giggling their heads off.

  Issy’s mind meanwhile was in a whirl; half-excited, half-terrified, and trying to work out the practicalities. Pack … tell Darny’s teachers … get organized …

  ‘I’ll pick up Darny en route, he’s at his friend’s,’ she mused. ‘He’ll be delighted … No,’ she corrected herself. ‘He’ll be the exact opposite to whatever emotion I expect him to have. Pearl, you’re in charge.’

  ‘It’s a Christmas miracle!’ said Caroline. ‘This is wonderful.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Issy, nervous and excited all at once.

  ‘Hang on!’ said Caroline and disappeared back down the stairs. ‘I have something for you.’

  Pearl looked up. Spontaneous acts of generosity weren’t exactly Caroline’s thing. Two seconds later she reappeared.

  ‘It will be freezing in New York,’ she said. ‘Proper real American freezing, not a bit blowy and damp like it is here.’

  She held out, at arm’s length, her white fox-fur coat. It was cut very short, like a biker jacket, with great screeds of fur down the front and metal stud detail at the top, and a leather collar and cuffs, and was, beyond a shadow of doubt, the most hideous coat Issy had ever seen in her entire life.

  ‘That’s sooo kind of you,’ said Issy in agony. ‘But I couldn’t possibly. How will you get home?’

  Caroline shrugged. ‘Can’t I do something nice?’

  ‘Yes, but you know, I don’t really believe in fur …’

  ‘It’s fake,’ said Caroline. ‘I know, it doesn’t look it, it looks like the real thing. And it was practically as expensive as the real thing. But as I said to the Bastard, can’t you share a little kindness in the world? I mean, he can’t, obviously, he’s a total bastard. So that’s me rebalancing our chakras. My therapist says it’s good karma.’

  ‘Your therapist believes in karma?’ said Pearl wonderingly, but Issy was just standing there, floored by the generous gesture.

  ‘Send me lots of pictures of you wearing it,’ said Caroline. ‘I love New York so much and never get to go there any more. You can take the coat instead. It’ll be almost as good as going myself.’ Her eyes had gone a little misty.

  ‘Uhm. Thank you,’ said Issy. ‘Thank you. That’s very kind.’

  ‘Try it on!’

  ‘Yes!’ said Pearl. ‘Try it on!’

  Caroline’s narrow shoulders and thin frame meant that at least the ludicrous cut of the jacket made it look like it was done on purpose. On Issy’s soft white shoulders and large, gentle bosom, it didn’t have a hope in hell. Her arms stuck out at the sides like Buzz Lightyear’s wings.

  ‘I don’t think it fits,’ said Issy.

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Caroline, pulling and fussing with the creaking leather till it came to an approximation round her middle. The fur tickled Issy’s nose and she could feel the studs through the shoulders. ‘It’s perfect.’

  Issy risked a look at Pearl. Her face was utterly blank and she couldn’t meet Issy’s eyes, which told Issy all she needed to know. Even more when two seconds later she turned round to greet Louis coming in early from school.

  ‘Issy!’ he said, looking concerned. ‘Is your coat sore, Issy?’

  ‘Thank you, Louis,’ said Issy. She glanced at her watch. ‘Oh Lord, I’m going to have to go.’

  She searched for the words that involved taking off the jacket without insulting anyone. They would not come. Pearl, still completely straight-faced, hung her handbag off her outstretched arm. Doti and Maya clapped and waved her a cheery goodbye, and she struggled her way out of the door, heart pounding, arms wide.

  Just outside, in the chill of the courtyard, she turned back. Everyone except Caroline was, as she’d suspected, bent double with laughter at her new outfit. But that wasn’t what she was looking at.

  The little café was full to bursting with happy cheery people sharing their nut lattes and mince pies, showing each other their big bags of gifts, some with long rolls of red and green paper sticking out. Children were running around pointing at the Advent calendar, which Louis was guarding fiercely, doling out one window a day without fear or favour. The queue was almost out the door and steam was rising from the tea urn, and Issy felt, already, only a few metres away, a deep and abiding nostalgia for the place. She was on a journey now, heading somewhere else, far away, and she did not know if things would be the same when she returned.

  Chapter Ten

  Express Airlines Altitude Cookies

  If you live up very high (or are flying) you have to bake differently, because things don’t rise the same way or taste the same. In fact, hardly anything tastes of anything in the air, which is why you like to drink tomato juice even though at ground level it’s a bit nasty. Here are some airline cookies you may want to bake in advance if you have to go on a plane. They make a lot, so you can hand them out on the plane and make a lot of new friends.
r />   Altitude Cookies

  125g salted butter

  125g white sugar

  125g brown sugar

  1 large egg

  1 tsp vanilla essence

  350g sifted flour

  75g hot chocolate powder

  1 tsp salt

  1 tsp baking powder

  350g chocolate chips (whichever colour you like)

  pinch cinnamon

  Cream butter and sugar together, then add egg and vanilla essence.

  In a separate bowl combine the dry ingredients. Fold in the wet mix, then mix the chocolate chips in (yes, you can eat some; you don’t have to pretend they fell on the surfaces or anything). Chill the whole mix in the fridge for at least an hour, then preheat oven to 180 degrees.

  Cut out with a glass to about ½ cm thickness and place on baking tray covered in baking paper. Bake for around 10 minutes, or until brown (9 minutes if you prefer a softer cookie).

  Attempt to avoid eating them till you get on the plane – warning, they are VERY rich for ground level!

  Issy was dashing about the house in a panic. Helena had agreed with frankly surprising alacrity to take her to the airport, muttering something about getting out of the house, but time was running short. Issy had no idea what to take – cocktail dress? Ballgown? Five hats? – and Darny was point-blank refusing to pack anything apart from his usual hoodie and fifteen DS games. He scoffed at every hat she held up as if it were for a five-year-old and couldn’t seem to get his head around the fact that they were going to a different climate, which, since the only place he’d ever been to was Spain on a package trip, where it had rained every day, was possibly not that surprising but was infuriating Issy.

  ‘Why are we even going?’ he had grumbled. ‘Doesn’t Austin want to come back here? Why can’t he come and see us?’

  Issy had tried to come up with a good explanation. She wasn’t doing very well.

  ‘Hello!’

  Kelly-Lee was delighted to see the rumpled-looking Englishman again. Now that he wasn’t half asleep, she noticed how handsome he was, with a distracted look about him which implied his mind was on higher things. Austin was in fact wondering what exactly to say to Merv if Issy and Darny simply didn’t arrive. He knew on one level that it was his fault for making everything so tricky; on another level, there was a bit of him, more childish, that said it was unfair that he didn’t have anyone – truly anyone – around to say, wow, Austin, that’s just so amazing! Even his PA, Janet, who was normally his biggest cheerleader, had got very sniffy about the whole thing and was making pointed remarks about how wonderful it was for people who got to go and work in America and how there wasn’t much call these days for old washed-up PAs who got put out of work, and Austin had tried to laugh it off and explain that he wasn’t going, and she sniffed loudly and he remembered how many more things Janet seemed to know than he did and felt guilty.

  So no, nobody was happy for him, not really. He did like to think that his mother would have been pleased. But would she? She hated bankers; both his parents had been totally unreconstructed old socialists. She had absolutely adored him going off to study marine biology, had loved the concept of him travelling the world and diving. And if she hadn’t only gone and been hit by a bloody nineteen-year-old driver – well, then he might have been doing just that. At least he was doing the travelling the world bit.

  He had a few photos of his parents, but not many; developing pictures was expensive in those days, and they were mostly of him and Darny, which as far as Austin was concerned was pointless and completely unnecessary. Sometimes they were with his dad – tall and with the same mop of unruly red-brown hair as Austin – but there were very few of his mother. He guessed it was always her behind the camera. He tried to conjure up her image, but he still found it hard to believe how young she had been. It became worse the older he got. Sometimes he would imagine her in the kitchen cooking up something nice, but this was a complete fallacy; his mother hated to cook and would dole up sad-looking vegetable stews or lentil hotpots under sufferance. The fact that Issy actively enjoyed being in the kitchen was something he could never quite understand; his mother used to mutter a lot about Germaine Greer and slavery. He saw so much of her in Darny. He missed her such a lot.

  ‘You look like you’ve lost a dollar and found a nickel,’ said Kelly-Lee. Austin smiled weakly.

  ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Sorry, lost in thought.’

  ‘Ooh, a thinker!’

  ‘Well, I don’t know about that,’ said Austin, as she made him a cup of burnt-tasting coffee large enough to sail the QE2 in.

  ‘So,’ she said in a conspiratorial tone of voice. ‘Did your girlfriend love the cupcakes?’

  Austin frowned. ‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘Not exactly.’

  Better and better, thought Kelly-Lee.

  ‘Oh no! That’s too bad. Is she on a diet?’

  ‘Issy? On a diet?’ Austin grinned at the thought. ‘Uhm, no.’

  Kelly-Lee had been on a diet since she was thirteen years old, though she always claimed she wasn’t and was just lucky she could eat what she liked.

  ‘So what was the problem?’

  ‘Well, she’s a baker, so …’

  ‘They’re all made to the highest of standards.’ Kelly-Lee picked up a coconut cookie wrapped in cellophane. ‘Here, try this.’

  ‘Actually,’ said Austin, ‘I’m not that crazy about sweet things.’

  He didn’t even care for sweets. This was perfect, thought Kelly-Lee. They might as well have broken up already. He was moving here, she wasn’t here, she didn’t like his present, he didn’t like her cakes … No court would convict her.

  She quickly glanced at herself in the reflecting side of the cake cabinet. She looked pretty good, her wide mouth painted a nice delicate pink and her teeth very straight and sparkly white. She blinked whilst looking at the floor – an old trick, but a good one, she’d found – then glanced up at Austin through her lashes.

  ‘Well, if you don’t want anything sweet …’ she said tentatively, pretending to be nervous, ‘maybe a drink later?’

  ‘Uhm.’ Austin furrowed his brow in confusion. ‘I don’t …’

  ‘I just thought a friendly thing when I finish my shift … nothing more. Sorry. I’m just … I’m new in town too. I’m sorry, I just … I mean, I just get lonely sometimes.’

  ‘You?’ said Austin, genuinely surprised. ‘But you’re so pretty! How can you be lonely?’

  ‘Do you really think so?’

  Austin was starting to feel this conversation was getting out of his control.

  ‘Anyway, I have to go to the airport tonight. My girl-friend is … well, at least I think my girlfriend is arriving.’

  ‘Oh, great,’ said Kelly-Lee. ‘You must come on by, show her the place!’

  ‘I will,’ said Austin, relieved.

  ‘But you don’t know if she’s coming for sure?’

  Austin winced a bit. ‘Well, it’s hard for her to get away, you know; she runs a business and everything …’ He checked his phone, instinctively, then put it away when it showed nothing.

  Too busy to look after her man, thought Kelly-Lee without a qualm.

  ‘Well,’ she said. ‘If she decides not to come, you come here and get me and I’ll take you to this little Manhattan watering hole I know where they serve Jack Daniel’s and play jazz. You’ll like it.’

  ‘I’m sure I will,’ said Austin, gulping down as much coffee as he could handle – about an eighth of the gigantic cup – and heading for the door.

  ‘Hang on,’ said Kelly-Lee. She grabbed a notepad and pen and jotted down her number. ‘Just in case,’ she said, popping it in his top pocket.

  There was a letter on the hall table that looked official. Even though Helena was honking furiously outside in the car and a pair of tights were trailing out of Issy’s gigantic bag like they were attempting to escape, she stopped to pick it up. Darny was wearing shorts, mismatched socks, a hoodie and nothing else. Iss
y threw one of Austin’s coats at him – very briefly she caught Austin’s comforting smell of cologne and printer ink – and banged open the door with a clang. Helena was gesticulating wildly, Chadani Imelda howling her head off in the back seat. Behind them, a large white van was also honking, trying to get past on the narrow road that was lined both sides with parked cars.

  ‘DARNY!’ called Issy in frustration. Darny slouched out as slowly as he dared, pretending to read The God Delusion in one hand as he went.

  Helena stopped honking when she saw what Issy was wearing.

  ‘What …’ Her mouth dropped open.

  ‘Shut up. It’s a favour to a friend,’ said Issy. ‘An acquaintance. Someone I don’t like. Whatever.’

  She tried to throw her bag in the boot of the car, but Chadani’s gigantically oversized turbo buggy was already in there taking up all the room, so eventually, crosser and crosser, she laid it on the back seat and made Darny sit on it.

  ‘We’re going to miss this flight,’ she grumbled.

  ‘We won’t,’ said Helena, cheerily flicking a V at the irate van caught behind her. ‘And if you do, you can catch the next one, and if you don’t want to, you can come home and have some wine with me and I’ll show you all of Chadani’s new photographs and finger paintings.’

  Issy sighed. ‘Hello, Chadani,’ she said to the back seat. To her horror, Chadani was wearing a white fake fur coat not unlike Issy’s own, except Chadani’s was huge and had big pompom buttons. She looked red-faced, hot and cross.

  ‘WAORGH!’ she cried, then opened her mouth and started screaming again, and Issy began to think that paying a fortune to take the Heathrow express might not have been so bad after all.

  ‘Hello, baby,’ said Darny in a conversational tone.

  Immediately Chadani stopped hollering and looked at Darny with huge chocolate-brown eyes.