A PIECE OF CAKE

by Trisha Ashley

  A PIECE OF CAKE

  TRISHA ASHLEY

  Copyright

  AVON

  An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  77-85 Fulham Palace Road

  Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First Published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2014

  Copyright © Trisha Ashley

  Cover illustration © Dominique Corbasson 2014

  Cover design © Debbie Clement 2014

  Trisha Ashley asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Ebook Edition © 2014 ISBN: 9780007585441

  Version: 2014-07-30

  First published as a much shorter story by My Weekly in their summer special, July 2009, and is also one of the stories on the Women Aloud charity audio cd collection for the Helena Kennedy foundation.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  A Piece of Cake

  Wedding Cake

  Read on for a first look at Trisha’s brand new novel Creature Comforts …

  About the Author

  Also by Trisha Ashley

  About the Publisher

  I don’t know why girls marry footballers, because once they set eyes on the ball some kind of primal instinct takes over and everything else flies right out of their heads.

  Personally, I don’t ever want to be second best to a few bits of sewn leather and a lot of air.

  I tried telling that to my friend Laura when she was planning her wedding, but she just laughed and said, ‘Only on the pitch. Harry spends the rest of the time thinking about me. I don’t know what you’ve got against footballers anyway, Kate.’

  ‘Have you forgotten the Shapcott reception, where they wanted individual mini-football cakes for each guest?’ I asked in amazement, because I certainly hadn’t! Making bespoke celebration cakes was what I did for a living, but by the time I’d baked two hundred tiny footballs, I never wanted to see another one again. And after that wedding, I never wanted to see another footballer again either …

  ‘Of course I haven’t forgotten it!’ she said. ‘It was only because I helped you deliver the cakes, and then we got invited to stay on for the reception buffet, that I met Harry – and you seemed to be getting on like a house on fire with Wes Rufford, too.’

  ‘Yes, I did,’ I agreed, remembering the way my eyes had met his dark, bright gaze across the crowded room and how he’d come straight over to talk to me. ‘Right up to the point where the guests started pelting each other with my mini sponge cakes, and I realised just what footballers were really like!’

  ‘One of the younger ones started it,’ Laura said defensively.

  ‘Yes, but then all the rest of the team, including Harry and Wes, joined in!’

  ‘It was quite funny though,’ she suggested, grinning.

  ‘Yes, that’s what Wes said when he phoned me up to apologise afterwards and ask me out, and I expect it was funny, if you hadn’t spent days making the cakes. He didn’t seem to understand why I was cross and even accused me of not having a sense of humour.’

  ‘So you turned him down flat,’ Laura said, ‘and later when I suggested we make a foursome, which I think was just cutting off your nose to spite your face, because you did like him, admit it!’

  ‘I did before I realised what he was really like,’ I said firmly, though actually I had been tempted, even though I knew we were poles apart. ‘Anyway, it wasn’t like the double date was his idea, was it? You were just trying to match-make.’

  She stared at me, astonished. ‘But it was his idea, Kate – didn’t I say?’

  ‘No, you didn’t.’ I wondered if I would have gone, had I known, and if so, how things might have turned out …

  ‘Oh well, it doesn’t matter now, does it?’ I said, shrugging.

  ‘Maybe not, but since Wes’s going to be Harry’s best man and I want you to be my beautiful bridesmaid, you should get to know each other a bit better. Why don’t we try that dinner date again, the four of us?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I said firmly.

  ‘You’ll have to talk to him at the wedding and the reception,’ she pointed out.

  ‘I expect I will and I’ll be perfectly polite. But don’t get your hopes up about anything else developing between us, Laura, because he really isn’t my cup of tea. I’m sure you and Harry will be very happy together, but you couldn’t possibly describe me as ideal WAG material, could you? I know nothing about football, or fashion, and my idea of fun isn’t nightclubbing, but going for a long country walk, preferably with a dog.’

  I’m also small and generously curved, with dark auburn hair, whereas Laura is a tall, willowy blonde. She’s about my opposite in every way, but we’ve been friends since infant school.

  ‘I’m not your typical WAG either!’ she protested indignantly.

  ‘Oh, no? Who was it who spent a month’s wages on a pair of Manolos? Which of us has the handbag obsession and a mobile phone that expired from sheer exhaustion? I can still hear its poor, pathetic little bleeps as it slowly died.’

  ‘Oh, don’t – you’re making me feel guilty!’ she said, giggling. ‘And perhaps I am a bit more of a party animal than you, but I do work hard, so I like to play hard, too.’

  ‘Yes, you do deserve a bit of fun,’ I agreed, because she works as a special needs teacher and, although she loves her job, finds it stressful at times. ‘I think you and Harry are perfectly matched, he’s a really nice guy and you’ll be very happy, but it wouldn’t do for me: I like a quiet life.’

  ‘So does Wes. Really, Kate, you’d be amazed if you got to know him! He wants to move out of his town centre flat and buy a place in the country, now he’s signed a new contract. He’s not one for the nightlife like me and Harry at all.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ I said disbelievingly. ‘And what about all those magazine pictures I’ve seen of him partying with lots of pretty girls draped all over him?’

  ‘He can’t help being tall, dark and handsome, can he? He probably doesn’t even know any of them, they just appear and mob him,’ she suggested.

  ‘Well, he’s not exactly fending them off, so far as I can see,’ I said sarcastically. ‘I don’t want to go out with a babe magnet and start worrying that I’m not thin enough, blonde enough or anything else enough to keep my boyfriend’s attention from straying.’

  ‘You’re hopeless! But you will still make my wedding cake for me, won’t you, Kate?’ she cajoled. ‘You said you would.’

  ‘Of course I will, as your wedding present. Do you want me to show you the photos of other cakes I’ve made, to give you a bit of inspiration, or have you already got an idea of what you want?’

  ‘My cousin in New York sent me a cutting from an American bridal magazine featuring some really spectacular cakes,’ she said, fishing in her roomy pink leather satchel handba
g and coming up with a folded glossy page. ‘One of them is just perfect.’

  She spread it out on the work surface. There was one large central picture, which seemed to be hovering in a fuzzy pink mist, and several smaller ones circling it like satellites.

  ‘Oh god, it’s not that cake in the middle, is it?’ I asked with foreboding. ‘It looks like a Barbie castle on steroids.’

  Mind you, most of the other cakes looked overblown and ornate too and one of them was shaped like a church, complete with the happy couple standing in the porch.

  ‘Of course not!’ she said indignantly, and then tapped one of the smaller photos with a turquoise fingernail. ‘It’s this one.’

  I bent over and studied it closely for a moment, and then looked up accusingly at her. ‘Laura, it’s a football!’

  ‘But a flower-studded American football, while I’d want a round one, without any markings – just a simple big ball of white roses.’

  ‘Oh … more like an old-fashioned pomander?’ I said slowly, turning the idea over in my mind.

  ‘A pomander?’

  ‘An Elizabethan scented ball. They made them by sticking cloves all over an orange and then tying a ribbon round so they could loop it over their wrist.’

  ‘That sounds pretty,’ she said.

  ‘Yes … and I think something similar, but using rosebuds and on a large scale, would work well. I do hate making round cakes, because they’re so fiddly to ice, but I’ll do it for you.’

  ‘Thank you, Kate,’ she said gratefully. ‘I did want something different, a cake that everyone will remember.’

  ‘But you’ll still have to have at least one conventional tier of wedding cake too, or there won’t be enough to go round when it’s cut,’ I told her, then fetched a drawing pad and began to sketch.

  ‘Say you have a large, deep, circular base cake …’ I drew one, added a swirl of roses around it and then decorated the top with a pair of stilettos and a bulging handbag.

  ‘Something like that. Then poised above it will be the large ball of flowers, topped by the bride and groom figures.’ I added those in and then held it up for her to see properly.

  ‘Oh, it’s lovely – you’re so clever! But how will the top tier stay up, with just that one central column? If it’s fruit cake, then it’s going to be really heavy, isn’t it? Especially with all that icing.’

  ‘You can get a special stand that screws together and they’re very strong. The supporting rod goes right through the base cake and then the flower ball sits on a little disc – you won’t see it.’

  ‘It’ll be perfect,’ she sighed happily.

  ‘And what’s even more perfect is that at least this time I won’t have to watch a lot of morons pelting each other with my lovely cakes!’

  ‘I suppose they might pelt each other with the bread, instead?’ she suggested.

  ‘I don’t care if they pepper each other with gherkins, so long as it’s not my cakes,’ I said. ‘Now, tell me about this wonderful wedding dress that you and your mum have found and swear to me that you’re not going to make me wear taffeta with puffy sleeves!’

  *

  Making the traditional dark, rich fruit cake lower tier of Laura’s cake was straightforward enough and then I baked the trickier ball cake in a spherical mould to the same recipe.

  You can keep a proper wedding cake for months, if not years, and it will taste just as good, if not better. Couples often used to keep a tier of their wedding cake to bring out at the christening of their first child, which was rather a nice idea. I don’t think anyone does that now, though one or two of my customers still post bits of cake off in special boxes to friends and relatives who couldn’t be at the wedding. And apparently, if you put the piece of cake under your pillow, you will dream of your future husband! I love all these old stories and traditions.

  Anyway, I soon had both tiers baked, marzipanned and iced, and then decorated the lower part with moulded icing stiletto shoes and a handbag that had come open and was spilling its contents across the top of the cake. Then I added a long swirl of roses spiralling up the sides and that was the base layer done. But I was making sugar-paste rosebuds to cover the ball in every spare minute I had.

  Then came the day when I finally finished it and invited Laura round to look. I made her close her eyes and steered her into position right in front of it.

  ‘Okay – you can open your eyes now,’ I said.

  She blinked. ‘Wow! It looks even more wonderful than I ever imagined!’ she gasped. ‘Oh, look at all the things spilling out of the handbag – lipstick, pound coins … how did you make those?’

  ‘It’s gold leaf over the icing. And silver leaf for the handbag mirror,’ I explained.

  ‘Those shoes look wicked, too, with the Louboutin red soles!’

  ‘On the whole, it’s a very feminine, girly cake,’ I said, eying it critically. ‘I suppose the shape of the top layer is a sop to Harry’s job, but otherwise, the only masculine thing about it is the little figure of the groom next to the bride on top.’

  ‘Harry won’t mind. He wants me to have the wedding of my dreams, though if it was left to him, we’d have a quick ceremony in a register office. I don’t want a huge wedding, but of course he’s had to invite his teammates …’

  I groaned.

  ‘He couldn’t very well not invite them, but he’s going to warn them to behave themselves – they’ll have to, because we had a real search on to find somewhere for the reception at such short notice, so it’s in a posh country house hotel, not a marquee. If they start throwing food about, I don’t think the staff are going to be very pleased about it.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re right,’ I agreed. ‘And you don’t want to be landed with a huge bill for cleaning up the mess, either.’

  ‘That’s true. I’ve tried to keep the costs down, but even a small wedding seems to be super-expensive these days.’

  ‘Well at least your cake didn’t cost anything, because it’s my present to you both,’ I said. ‘I’m so glad you like it.’

  ‘I don’t just like it, I adore it … but how on earth will you get it to the reception in once piece?’

  ‘I won’t – I’ll pack the ball of flowers up separately, on a bed of bubble wrap, and I have special boxes for transporting tiers of cake, because I always assemble them at the venue. I even carry a repair kit with me, just in case, though so far I’ve never needed to use it.’

  ‘The venue for the reception is a bit of a drive from here. When will you take the cake over there?’

  ‘Since I’m your one and only bridesmaid, it will be easier for me if I can take it the day before. Otherwise, it would have to be the crack of dawn, so I can dash back and change.’

  ‘I’ll phone them and ask, but I’m sure they’ll be fine about you delivering it the day before – and I’ll come and help you,’ she offered, then paused and asked, hopefully, ‘I don’t suppose you’re free for the next couple of hours?’

  ‘I suppose I am between jobs at the moment, because I’ve just baked the cakes for my next commission. Why?’ I asked suspiciously. ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Nothing much, it’s just that I’ve got hundreds of little silver organza wedding favour bags in the boot of the car, and boxes of stuff to go into them, and I hoped you might give me a hand …? It would be much more fun if we did them together.’

  ‘Fetch them in,’ I said resignedly, and actually it was fun filling them with foil-wrapped chocolate hearts, balloons, bubble-blowing bottles in the shape of three-tiered wedding cakes and silver and gold-covered dragées, especially since afterwards we ate all the leftover chocolates.

  *

  We’d arranged that Laura would come over on the afternoon before the wedding, to help me take the cake to the reception venue, but instead, to my surprise, when I opened the door I found Wes Rufford standing on the doorstep, looking like an advert for expensive aftershave.

  I thought I’d imagined him for a couple of minut
es, for I have to admit that he’d haunted my dreams a few times since I’d met him, though of course I’m not responsible for what goes on in my unconscious.

  But it really was him and today he didn’t look so much tall, dark and handsome, as tall, dark and anxious.

  ‘Hi Kate,’ he said nervously, ‘it’s me, Wes.’

  ‘Yes, I remember you,’ I said. ‘In fact, given what happened last time we met, I’m hardly likely to forget you, am I?’

  ‘Probably not,’ he agreed and then offered me a tentative smile. ‘Laura had a few last minute things to do, so she rang me to ask if I’d mind giving you a hand with the cake, instead.’

  ‘I suppose you’d better come in, then,’ I said, grudgingly. ‘I don’t suppose you know the way to the venue, do you? Only that would be really useful, because my sat nav thinks it’s hundreds of miles away in the south of England, but Laura said it was barely over the county border into Cheshire.’

  ‘Actually, I do know, because I went there to suss it out with Harry when they were first searching for somewhere to have the reception. It’s a lovely old house, but well off the beaten track. I could drive you there?’ he offered.

  ‘I’d rather take my van, because I can secure the cake safely in it. It’s already packed up and ready to go with everything I need to assemble it when I get there.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ he said.

  I became conscious that I was still wearing my sugar-frosted pinny and holding an icing bag in one hand. ‘Come through. I wasn’t expecting Laura for half an hour or so and I was just finishing off a cake for another customer.’

  ‘I know I’m a bit early,’ he apologised. ‘I hope I’m not in the way.’

  I pointed the nozzle at a kitchen chair and said, ‘Just sit there while I do this and don’t distract me.’

  He made a gesture of zipping his mouth closed and meekly sat where I’d told him.

  Luckily there were just finishing touches to add to the smallest tier of the horseshoe-shaped cake I’d been icing, so I did those and then put it under a cover, next to the other two layers.