Meet Me at the Cupcake Café

by Jenny Colgan

  At 2pm, a large group of mothers entered, tentatively at first, many with huge three-wheeled buggies. The shop was so small, Issy would have liked to ask them to leave the buggies outside so they didn’t kneecap other customers, but frankly she was a little frightened of these Stoke Newington women, who were in incredible shape, despite the fact that they all had two children, and had perfectly highlighted hair and wore very tight jeans with high heels all the time. Issy sometimes thought it must be a little exhausting, having to look identical to all your friends. On the other hand, she was delighted with their business.

  She smiled a warm hello, but they glanced past her and their gazes alighted on Pearl, who looked semi-pleased to see them.

  ‘Um, hi,’ said Pearl to one of the mums, who glanced around.

  ‘Now where’s your darling little Louis?’ she said. ‘He’s usually here somewhere! I’d think a cake shop was a perfect environment for him.’

  Issy glanced up. She recognized that voice. Sure enough, with a slight stab of nervousness she saw that it belonged to Caroline, the woman who had wanted to turn the café into a wholefood centre.

  ‘Hello, Caroline,’ said Pearl stoically. She sweetened her voice considerably to talk to the serious-eyed blonde girl and small boy still in the buggy at the bottom of the table.

  ‘Hello, Hermia! Achilles, hello!’

  Issy sidled up to say hello, although Caroline seemed to be ignoring her quite competently.

  ‘Oh, don’t listen to them,’ said Caroline. ‘They have been absolutely foul all morning.’

  They didn’t look foul to Issy. Tired, maybe.

  ‘And you know Kate, don’t you?’

  ‘Well, this is just charming!’ said Kate, looking around approvingly. ‘We’re doing up the big house across the road. Something like this is just what we need. Keep the house prices going in the right direction, you know what I mean. Haw!’

  She had a sudden, expectorating laugh that took Issy slightly by surprise, and two girls who were obviously twins, sitting holding hands on the same stool. One had a short bob and was wearing red dungarees, and one had long blonde curls and was wearing a pink skirt with a puffed-out underskirt.

  ‘Aren’t your girls lovely!’ exclaimed Issy, moving forward. ‘And hello, Caroline, too.’

  Caroline nodded regally to her. ‘I’m amazed this place appears to be taking off,’ she sniffed. ‘Might as well see what all the fuss is about.’

  ‘Might as well!’ said Issy cheerfully, bending down to the little ones.

  ‘Hello, twins!’

  Kate sniffed. ‘They may be twins, but they are individuals too. It’s actually very damaging to twins not to be treated as separate people. I have to work very hard to build their separate identities.’

  Issy nodded reassuringly. ‘I understand,’ she said, even though actually she didn’t understand for a second.

  ‘This is Seraphina.’ Kate indicated the little girl with the long blonde curls. ‘And this one here,’ she pointed to the other one, ‘is Jane.’

  Seraphina smiled prettily. Jane scowled and hid her face in Seraphina’s shoulder. Seraphina patted her hand in a maternal fashion.

  ‘Well, welcome,’ said Issy. ‘We don’t normally do table service, but as I’m here, what would you like?’

  Even though Pearl had now made her way back across the room to stand behind the counter underneath the pretty bunting they’d draped on the wall, Issy could, she swore to Helena later, feel her eyes roll in their sockets.

  ‘Well,’ said Kate, after deliberating over the menu for some time, ‘now.’ Seraphina had prompted Jane, and the two girls, who must have been four, walked up to the cake cabinet, rose on their tiptoes and pressed their noses to the glass.

  ‘You two! Snot off the glass, sweethearts,’ said Pearl, firmly but kindly, and the girls withdrew immediately, giggling, but stayed mere centimetres away where they could examine the icing carefully. Hermia looked at her mother.

  ‘Please may I—’ she risked.

  ‘No,’ said Caroline. ‘Sit nicely please. Assieds-toi!’

  Hermia looked longingly at her friends.

  ‘Oh, are you French?’ asked Issy.

  ‘No,’ said Caroline, preening. ‘Why, do I look French?’

  ‘I shall have a mint tea,’ said Kate finally. ‘Do you do salad?’

  Issy couldn’t bring herself to meet Pearl’s eyes.

  ‘No. No, at the moment we don’t do salad,’ she said. ‘Cakes mostly.’

  ‘What about, you know, organic flapjacks?’

  ‘We have fruit cake,’ said Issy.

  ‘With spelt flour?’

  ‘Um, no, with real flour,’ said Issy, wishing she was out of this conversation.

  ‘Nuts?’

  ‘Some nuts.’

  Kate let out a long sigh, as if it was unbelievable what kind of hardship she had to go through on a regular basis.

  ‘Can we have a cake, Mummy? Pleeease!’ begged Jane from the counter.

  ‘It’s can I have a cake, Jane. I.’

  ‘Can I have a cake then please?’

  ‘Me too! Me too!’ yelled Seraphina.

  ‘Oh darlings … ’

  Kate looked on the brink of giving up. ‘You don’t … you don’t have any little boxes of raisins, do you?’

  ‘Um,’ said Issy, ‘no.’

  Kate sighed. ‘Well, that’s a shame. What do you think, Caroline?’

  Caroline’s face didn’t move – her eyebrows were very pointy – but Issy still got the sense she was disappointed. She glanced at Hermia, who was gazing at her friends, one tear dripping slowly down her face. Achilles sorted it for her.

  ‘Mummy! Cake! Now! Mummy! Cake! Cake! Mummy!’ He went red-faced while wrestling with the buggy straps. ‘Now!’

  ‘Now darling,’ Caroline said, ‘you know we don’t really like cake.’

  ‘Cake! Cake!’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Kate. ‘I’m not sure we’re going to be able to come in here again.’

  ‘Cake! Cake!’

  ‘They do say the sugar makes them hyperactive.’

  Issy didn’t want to point out that everything in her shop was all-natural, and that they hadn’t even had any yet.

  ‘Fine,’ said Caroline, desperate to stop her son screaming. ‘Two cakes. I don’t care which ones. Hermia, little bites please. You don’t want to blow up like—’ Caroline immediately stopped.

  ‘Yes!’ shouted the twins by the counter.

  ‘I want pink! I want pink!’ they both yelled simultaneously, in voices so similar Issy wondered how you really did tell them apart.

  ‘You can’t both have pink,’ said Kate absent-mindedly, picking up the Mail. ‘Jane, you have the brown.’

  Later, Caroline came over to chat.

  ‘This is actually quite quaint,’ she said. ‘You know, I love to bake too … obviously, much healthier than this, and mostly we eat raw of course, but I was like, now I must have a central island for my little messes … In fact, you know,’ she peered down the stairwell, ‘I think my oven is probably bigger than yours! My main oven of course, I have a steam oven and a convection oven too. But no microwave. Terrible things.’

  Issy smiled politely. Pearl let out a snort.

  ‘I am dreadfully busy with everything now … I’ve taken on a lot of charity work, my husband’s in the City, you know … but maybe one day I could bring you one of my recipes! Yes, I create recipes … Well, it’s hard when you have a creative side, isn’t it? After children?’

  She looked at Issy as she said this, and Issy tried to look polite to a customer, even an idiot, and even an idiot who was clearly implying that Issy looked old and dumpy enough to have loads of children. Caroline of course weighed about the same as a fourteen-year-old.

  ‘Well, I’m sure that would be fascinating,’ said Pearl, before Issy’s mouth drooped open any further. ‘Uh, Caroline, is that your son taking off his nappy and putting it in your Hermès bag?’

  Caroli
ne turned round with a squeal.

  ‘They’re all like that?’ asked Issy after they’d left, Achilles screaming, Hermia sobbing quietly, and the twins having perfectly cut their cakes into two halves, swapping them then squeezing them together again, so their cakes would be exactly the same, to Kate’s voluble disgust.

  ‘Oh no,’ said Pearl. ‘Lots are miles worse. One says she won’t potty-train till the child decides to do it himself.’

  ‘Well, that makes total sense,’ said Issy. ‘Keep them in nappies till eleven. Saves a lot of time. Does she let the child do the cooking too?’

  ‘Oh no, Orlando only eats raw vegetables and sprouting things,’ quoted Pearl. ‘Except when I caught him stealing Louis’s Mars bar.’

  Issy raised her eyebrows but didn’t say anything. Neither had she asked about Pearl’s distracted demeanour all day. If Pearl wanted to tell her, she would.

  By 4.30 that Friday, after their busiest week ever, they were utterly exhausted. Issy locked the door and turned the sign to Closed. Then they went downstairs to the cellar and Issy took from the catering fridge their now ritualistic end-of-the-week bottle of white wine. Saturday was a quiet day – although it too was picking up, especially around lunchtime – so they could indulge a little on a Friday without suffering too badly.

  As had also become a habit (and would be severely frowned upon by health and safety, Issy knew, if they ever found out), after counting up the day’s takings they would slump down on the big flour sacks in the cellar, using them like gigantic bean bags.

  Issy poured Pearl a large glass.

  ‘That,’ she said, ‘was our best week so far.’

  Pearl wearily raised her glass. ‘I’ll say so.’

  ‘Compared, obviously, to not very much,’ said Issy. ‘But projection-wise …’

  ‘Oh,’ said Pearl, ‘I forgot to say. I ran into your fancy bloke at the bank.’ Pearl did the banking.

  Issy’s interest was piqued. ‘Oh yes? Austin? Uh, I mean, really? Who?’

  Pearl gave her a very Pearlish look. Issy sighed.

  ‘OK. How is he?’

  ‘Why are you asking?’ said Pearl.

  Issy felt herself colour and buried her face in her glass. ‘Just politeness,’ she squeaked.

  Pearl sniffed, and waited.

  ‘Well?’ said Issy after a minute.

  ‘Ha!’ said Pearl. ‘I knew it. If it really was politeness, you wouldn’t be that bothered.’

  ‘That is not true,’ said Issy. ‘It’s an entirely professional … relationship.’

  ‘So it’s a relationship?’ teased Pearl.

  ‘Pearl! What did he say? Did he ask about me?’

  ‘He was surrounded by about fifteen lingerie models and getting into a jacuzzi, so it was hard to say.’

  Issy harrumphed until Pearl relented.

  ‘He was looking quite smart. He’d had a haircut.’

  ‘Oh, I liked his hair,’ said Issy.

  ‘I wonder who he got his hair cut for?’ mused Pearl. ‘Maybe it was you.’

  Issy pretended not to be pleased with that remark, but men like Austin always had girlfriends. She was probably really pretty too, and really, really nice. That tended to be how it worked. She sighed. She just had to come to terms with it now; she was a career girl for the moment. She would worry about it later. Shame though. She found herself imagining, just for one second, gently stroking the back of his neck, where a wisp of hair had been left behind, and …

  ‘And,’ said Pearl loudly, noticing Issy had vanished into a reverie and assessing, correctly, that she was fantasizing about the handsome young banking adviser, and not for the first time; ‘and he said he had a message for you.’

  ‘A what?’ said Issy, startled.

  ‘A message. Just for you.’

  Issy sat bolt upright on her sack.

  ‘What was it?’

  Pearl tried to get it exactly right.

  ‘It was … “Tell her, ‘You showed ’em’.”’

  ‘You showed them? I showed them what? … Oh,’ said Issy as she realized he meant the other café owners of Stoke Newington. ‘Oh,’ she said, going pink. He had thought about her! He was thinking about her! OK, maybe only from the point of view of his business investment, but still …

  ‘Oh, that’s nice,’ she said.

  Pearl was looking at her.

  ‘Private joke,’ said Issy.

  ‘Oh is it?’ said Pearl. ‘Well, on the plus side, I suppose you’re keeping him sweet.’

  Issy glanced at Pearl. ‘What about you?’ she said. ‘How’s your love life?’

  Pearl grimaced. ‘Is it that obvious?’

  ‘You cleaned the same toilet four times,’ said Issy. ‘I don’t want you to think I’m not grateful, but …’

  ‘No, no, I know,’ said Pearl. ‘Ach. Well, Louis’s dad … he came round.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Issy. ‘And is that good, bad, fine, terrible, or all of the above?’

  ‘Or e) I don’t know,’ said Pearl. ‘I think e) I don’t know.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Issy. ‘Is Louis pleased?’

  ‘Ecstatic,’ said Pearl grumpily. ‘Can we change the subject?’

  ‘Yes!’ said Issy. ‘Um. OK. Right. OK. Well, here we are having wine, so I might as well go for it. I hate to ask a delicate question, but … are you losing weight?’

  Pearl rolled her eyes.

  ‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘Not on purpose,’ she added defiantly.

  ‘You know I don’t mind you eating stock,’ said Issy, worried she’d offended.

  ‘You know,’ said Pearl, ‘don’t tell the customers, and you are a baking genius, but …’

  Issy looked at her. There was a glint of mischief in Pearl’s eyes.

  ‘I seem to … I seem to have gone off sweet things altogether. I’m sorry, Issy! I’m sorry! It’s not you! Don’t sack me!’

  Issy opened her mouth and started to laugh.

  ‘Oh God, Pearl, please, please don’t.’

  ‘What?’ said Pearl.

  ‘I haven’t eaten a cake in six weeks.’

  They both made horrified faces, then burst into fits of laughter.

  ‘What are we like?’ said Pearl, helpless. ‘Next time, can we open a chip shop?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Issy. ‘Chips and crisps.’

  ‘I am dreaming about this place,’ said Pearl. ‘Every second of every day. I’m not saying it’s not great, Issy, honestly. But the hours … the hours are filling me up.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Issy. ‘Me too. For me to admit I don’t like eating cake any more … it’s a complete denial of me. As a person.’

  ‘This is bad,’ said Pearl. ‘Could be bad for quality control.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Issy. ‘Maybe we need a new member of staff.’

  Pearl made a quiet fist of triumph underneath the sack.

  ‘Hmm,’ she said non-commitally, as if she wasn’t fussed one way or the other.

  Of all things, Issy hadn’t expected finding someone else to help out the least bit difficult. Times were hard and people were desperate for jobs, weren’t they? As soon as she’d put a sign up in the window, she figured she’d get the whole thing organized in ten seconds flat – in fact a little bit of her wondered whether she might manage to poach a top patissier down on their luck a bit from one of the big hotels, who didn’t want to work nights and, er, didn’t mind minimum wage plus tips.

  Instead, the stream of people who responded to the card – and later, the ad they took out in the Stoke Newington Gazette extolling the success of the café and thanking the supportive community – were all unsuitable. (As she drafted the ad, Issy couldn’t help the faintly spiteful gleam in her eye when she thought of the other cafés reading it. It was mean of her, she realized, and tried to suppress it immediately. But it was a lovely ad, beautifully designed; she would absolutely have to start paying Zac one of these days.) Finding a new member of staff wasn’t anything like as easy as she’d expected. Some people came in f
or a chat and did nothing but slag off their last employers; one person announced they would need Tuesday and Thursday afternoons off to visit their therapist; one asked when the salary would be going up and at least four had never baked in their lives but didn’t think it could be that difficult.

  ‘It’s not that difficult,’ Issy had explained to Helena, who was putting on make-up. ‘It’s that they can’t even be arsed to pretend they love cakes. It’s like me expecting them to be even vaguely interested in the job is somehow uncool. God, it’s been weeks.’

  ‘You sound five thousand years old,’ said Helena, smoothing some thick, shimmery greeny-gold stuff on her eyelids that made her look goddess-like rather than tarty. Not that Ashok wouldn’t treat her like a goddess anyway. Madly, it was Issy being so busy that had finally swayed her in his direction. She missed her best mate and having someone to go out with. It was all right both of them being single together. It was rubbish sitting watching America’s Next Top Model repeats every night by herself.

  One day Ashok, looking very dashing in a pink shirt under his white coat that set off his huge dark eyes, had casually sidled up to her in A&E while she was clearing up a pile of sick. (There were meant to be cleaners to do that kind of thing, but finding one meant phoning central services and being put on hold for half an hour while they connected you to the contracted-out team, and frankly it was easier just to do it yourself before someone slipped on it and broke their coccyx, plus it gave a good example to the junior nurses.) He had said, ‘Now I suppose you are very busy on Thursday evening. However, just in case you aren’t, I took the liberty of reserving a table at Hex, so do let me know.’