by Lindy Dale
Things organised for the day, I spent a few minutes contemplating whether it was worth digging into my savings for a new pair of trainers. The budget was healthy this month and now that I’d decided to take up jogging, investing in a good pair of shoes would be an extra incentive to get out there. Plus, if I had cute sandshoes, people were less likely to notice that my body wobbled in the wrong places when I ran.
By the time I managed to do a few mental calculations and plug my Weight Watchers points into my phone, the queue outside Death By Cupcake had doubled. It was snaking its way past Jim’s Butchery and towards the chemist. I frowned as I looked out the window and across the road. What on earth was going on in there? The shop had only been open for a day. Yes, the façade had been something of a talking point but even Mrs Tanner and my mother couldn’t gossip enough to get a line that long outside a shop. I hadn’t noticed anything but a small ad in the paper the previous Wednesday so where were these people appearing from and why were the majority of them women? Well, obviously women liked cake more than men but what the hell?
Mystified by this turn of events, I watched as the clock ticked over, registering ten o’clock. A figure reached up to unbolt the lock and the doors to Death by Cupcake opened. A steady stream of women began to enter and leave the building carrying the most divine boxes filled with cake. They were chattering to each other in an excited fashion and giggling as if Bruno Mars himself had indeed served them.
Then, as I was about to log on to the Internet and order a new pair of runners, the freshly baked scent of cake began to waft across the road and in the open door. I felt a pull of longing like I hadn’t felt since I’d begged Graeme to buy me that boxer puppy with its gorgeous velvety ears and big chocolate coloured eyes. My heart began to pound. My mouth went dry. If this kept up I’d be across the road with my purse in hand buying dozens of those cupcakes and I couldn’t allow that to happen. Since the cake binging disaster of the other night, I was more determined than ever. I had a problem with sweet things. I couldn’t be near them or even smell them, not if I wanted to achieve my goal. My only hope was that diverting myself with new runners would crush the craving.
I searched for a while and then, unable to concentrate, returned to gazing across the road. Every single person leaving the shop had an enormous pink and black box filled with cupcakes and decorated with sparkly silver ribbon. Maybe I could sneak a peek through the window? See the cakes but not buy anything? Adore from afar?
Yeah. Right. Maybe Queen Elizabeth would take up Ice Hockey.
If there was one thing I knew about myself, it was my weaknesses. And my biggest one was my ability to consume my bodyweight in cake within ten minutes. If I went within twenty metres of the shop, my diet would be lost forever and the self-confidence that I was slowly rebuilding would be gone for good. No. What I needed was a bigger distraction and what better distraction was there than Christmas? Beside cake, Christmas was like my second biggest obsession. Okay, so it was only September but that was beside the point.
Racing into the back of the shop, I grabbed two boxes of decorations from the shelf and began to lay them out on the floor, deciding on what to put where. That was the thing about Christmas decorations. You put them out of sight when Christmas was over and got on with life. Then, when you got them out again you found things you’d completely forgotten you had. It was like, well, Christmas. You got excited over cute sparkly things that you’d never have in your house at any other time in case people would think you insane. At Christmas it was acceptable for wadding filled angels to be flying over your front door and weird looking elves to be sitting on your shelf. It was the one time of year you could be utterly over the top and nobody would say a thing.
As I took a fluffy strand of red tinsel from the box and hopped up onto the ladder, attaching it in a scalloped effect along the cornice, the doorbell tinkled. I turned from the window to greet my first client of the day, Mrs Di Marco and her grossly overfed schnauzer.
“Morning Olivia.”
“Morning Mrs Di Marco.”
Mrs Di Marco stared up the ladder towards me. Her eyes travelled along the trail of tinsel towards the huge red poinsettias I’d already hung and stopped at the six-foot tall nutcrackers on either side of the front door. “What on earth are you doing?”
I would have thought it would have been obvious.
“Putting up Christmas decorations.”
“Why?”
And I would have thought that was obvious too but when I thought about it, I guess it was only September. A little early for decorating, even if the big shops in Perth had theirs up. They seemed to do it straight after Easter these days.
“Ah. Um, I thought I might have an Ausmas special, so I’m decorating the shop.”
“A what?”
“You know, Christmas in July, Ausmas?”
“Oh, yes. Of course. But its not July.”
“Minor detail.”
“What sort of specials will you be running? I might book Dippy in for something.”
“Not sure yet.” Possibly because I only came up with the idea to cover up the fact that I am a complete nutcase. “I’ll send out an email later in the week with the details. You’re on the list, aren’t you?”
“I am.”
I got down from the ladder and walked over to take Dippy’s lead from his owner.
“Lovely day, isn’t it?” she said, looking out the window. “Pity it’s being spoilt by that kerfuffle over the road.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
“What’re they doing over there, anyway?”
“It’s a cupcake shop.”
“And that’s brought every woman within a fifty kilometre radius into town? You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Nope.”
“Are they iced with twenty-four carat gold?”
I smiled. “Not that I know of. I think they’re plain old cupcakes.”
Muttering something about never seeing the likes, Mrs Di Marco opened the door with a pronouncement that she’d be back in a couple of hours.
I led Dippy to the grooming area and lifted him onto the table. I clipped his leash to a fastener so he’d stay put and reached over to switch on the electric shears. Again my thoughts went back to the cupcakes over the road. How was I ever going to survive the temptation? The decorations had been a quick fix, but only a Band-Aid and now I was stuck with having to come up with a Christmas themed promotion, when I’d only recently had one in the newspaper. If I kept giving my services away I was going to end up broke. Broke and still wanting a cake.
From the way I saw it, there were only two choices. I either had to black out the windows of my shop or have my lips stapled together, and neither seemed like a viable option.
*****
The morning passed quickly and at half past eleven, after Dippy had been returned to his owner, Alice and Ethan arrived. A cardboard tray containing two take-away cappuccinos balanced on the hood of Ethan’s pram as Alice pushed her way through what could only be described as the flurry of photographers that had set up camp outside the door of Doggie Divas.
Alice paused, her eyes bulging at the Christmas tree I’d now put in the corner and decorated with doggie treats and pet-shaped baubles. “Looking for a distraction, are we?”
She knew me too well.
I nodded. “It’s not working. Those paparazzi outside the door aren’t helping either. They keep taking photos of people going in and out of the cupcake shop.”
“What’s with them?”
I closed the door to shut out the noise from out on the street. I’d managed to dull the cake craving by finishing the decorations and singing loudly to the radio whilst clipping Dippy. Oh, and drinking four litres of water — which had had the adverse effect of sending me to the toilet every fifteen minutes for the past hour. Understandably, I wasn’t keen to have the cravings return because of stray wafting smells.
“They’re reporters from the city. They’ve come to do stories on the
cupcake shop.”
“What? Real reporters? Sixty Minutes type reporters?” Alice grabbed a brush from her Mummy bag and ran it through her hair, following up with a quick swipe of lip-gloss.
“Yep.”
“You’d think they’d be over the road then. You know, like at the shop.”
“Have you seen the crowd over there? The guys outside are the second wave. They got here too late so they’ve set up camp in front of my shop. They’re in for the long haul. One of them even has an Esky filled with food and drink.”
The footpath opposite was stacked so full of near hysterical women it was bordering on being a health hazard. It had to be a publicity stunt to drum up business. No cake in the world could be that good.
“I’ve never seen so many people,” Alice said.
“I know. And the reporters are blocking my doorway. I’ve asked them to move twice already but they just shrug and eat more cake. It’s bad for business if my customers can’t get past the mountain of men eating cupcakes to get in the door. They might go down the road to Pet Pals to get their worm tablets.”
“It doesn’t look like its affecting business to me,” Alice whispered, indicating the women who were scattered in twos and threes around the display window of the shop.
“They’re not here to buy anything,” I hissed back. “They’re waiting for the line to get short enough so they can hop on the end. I wish they’d go away so we can get back to normal.”
“You think having a stuffed Santa sitting behind your counter in the middle of the year is normal?”
“It’s Christmas in July.”
“Yeah. Right. Instead of wasting time making the shop pretty you should be using this to your advantage.”
I would have been offended if I hadn’t known Alice was right. Again. “How?”
“Give the reporters an interview. It’s a golden opportunity, Livvy. Free publicity. If you get your shop mentioned on TV who knows where it could lead. You might need your own velvet rope and security guard.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Why? You used to be on TV. You look super on camera.”
“Because I only just came in from yelling at them to leave. I can’t go back out there and suck up to them.”
“Sure you can. It’s a woman’s prerogative to change her mind. Blame it on hormones or something. I’ll mind the fort for a couple of minutes. Here, pop a bit of lip-gloss on and run the comb through your hair.”
I dutifully did as I was told.
“Now, scoot.”
“I don’t know why I’m bothering,” I threw over my shoulder as I pushed my way out the door from one throng into another. “They don’t want to talk to me. They want the owner of Death by Cupcake.”
“Bat your eyelashes at them and titter. I’m sure they’ll change their minds. You know what reporters are like.”
I did. That was why I gave it up.
As I talked to the reporters, giving my opinion from everything beginning with the interesting façade and ending with the menace the women in the line were causing to traffic, it occurred to me that there must be someone very special behind the counter of that shop. Like Mrs Di Marco said, it couldn’t be some old Nanna in a checked apron or a gay man with cute hair that was drawing every woman in the shire like stray cats to a feed. It had to be a hot guy. Women didn’t line up like that for cake — well, not unless the owner had invented a cake that made you lose weight without trying. Now that would be worth the wait.
Chapter 17
Cole stood behind the old-fashioned glass fronted counter surveying the — at last — empty space in front of him. Screwed up patty pans overflowed from the rubbish bin near the door and cake crumbs littered the counter where customers had been taking advantage of the free samples. Inside the display cases, a few lonely cupcakes decorated the paper-lined shelves. Only a few. Unbelievably, they’d sold out of nearly every single cake in the shop. A week’s worth of baking had disappeared quicker than you could say ‘frosting.’ Cole supposed he should be happy about this but he was so knackered all he wanted to do was sit down with a beer and fall asleep in front of the telly. Opening the shop was meant to be a new start, a pulling back on the pressures of life, but right at that moment, the only thing he felt was an overwhelming tiredness. Oh, and a massive urge to tell those reporters who’d set up sleeping bags across the road to bugger off. Jesus, he wished they’d go back to the city and leave him in peace.
It was 6.25pm and Cole and Adelaide were supposed to shut up shop an hour and a half before but Cole, never one to turn down money when it was being thrown in his face, had been unable to turn the customers away. The hands on his watch had ticked over, announcing 5pm but the footpath outside had still been three rows deep with women wanting cupcakes. And when he’d calmly made his way though the sea of perfume and hair products to close the doors, he’d been met with a type of abuse he’d never before witnessed from a lady. Those women not only wanted cupcakes, they were not leaving until they got them. One slightly irate customer had gone so far as to wedge her wedge heel into the door so he couldn’t lock it. For a cake.
He’d created a nightmare.
But now they were gone and he and Adelaide were left to tidy the mess they’d left behind.
They worked in a sort of stunned silence for a while, both unable to believe what had happened on only their second day of trading. Then Adelaide, who’d been wiping down the counters, stopped mid swipe and looked over to Cole, who was staring out the window with a goofy look on his face.
“Reliving your day of glory?”
“I don’t understand, Addie,” Cole said. “Those women were feral today. It’s like they’ve never seen a cupcake before.”
Adelaide finished wiping the counter and put the spray back in the cupboard. She tossed the dirty cloth into a plastic tub to be washed later on and delved into the fridge, rummaging in the tubs of fondant and butter cream icing Cole had premade.
“You have no idea, do you? Today wasn’t about cupcakes.”
What the devil was she on about?
“I know you make the most stupendously delicious cupcakes in the world and the new flavours you’ve been working on sold faster than I could unpack them from the trays. But those women didn’t come to sample your cakes, Cole. They were after a lot more than that. One look at their lust-crazed eyes was enough to confirm it. The word’s gotten out about the hunky guy in the cake shop and every single woman in the district came to check you out. The cupcakes were an added bonus.”
“Adelaide!” She had to be joking.
“It’s a small town, Cole. News travels fast. I mean look at what happened with those shorts of yours,” she said, producing a bottle of champagne and two chilled glasses. “Want one?”
Cole hoisted his bum onto the counter. It felt good to be off his feet at last. Even if it was only a brief rest before they finished the last of the cleaning for the day.
“But the reporters? Where the hell did they appear from? Not that I’m knocking a bit of free publicity, but I don’t understand. I thought we were rid of them.”
“I overheard one of them saying it was something to do with Phoebe being the Telethon child. They were following up on her story. I guess you being a good looking, manly man adds another dimension to the fact that you’re making cake for a living and fulfilling your daughter’s dying wish.”
Cole nodded. She was probably right. Not about the good-looking part but the bloke baking cakes in honour of his daughter’s memory was a twist on a story. If people were still thinking of Phoebe that was a good thing.
It had started after Phoebe’s diagnosis at age nine. Being a gorgeous looking kid with a great smile and intelligence to boot, she’d caught the eye of the people who ran the Telethon foundation and in the year she went into remission was asked to be their special ‘kid’ for the season of fundraising. Phoebe had become the subject of ads, she’d been interviewed on TV, had her photo taken at fundraising events where she spok
e about how Telethon helped kids like her who were ill and their families. Cole had never expected that her flippant comment about wanting her dad to start a cupcake shop would ever be remembered. But it seemed Western Australia hadn’t forgotten Phoebe and now they were coming to see if Cole had granted his daughter’s wish.
“So they didn’t remember me from the ad, then?”
“Oh, they remembered. You Tube is a powerful medium.”
Shit. Cole wondered if he could contact them and have that video taken down. It was practically pornography.
“Mum said she overheard them discussing it when she went out to the bank. They’d been wondering what happened to the Reno King.”
Jesus. This was a nightmare. Was there no place he would be able to have a nice quiet life?
Adelaide handed Cole a glass of champagne and he took a rather large gulp. It wasn’t a beer but it’d do. It was cold and wet and alcoholic.
“What’s this in aid of, then?”
“I was going to give it to you yesterday, seeing as how it was the grand opening, but I figured we should get our heads around things first. I wanted you to enjoy the moment.” She handed him a card. On the front red cartoon letters jumped around the page reading, “CONGRATULATIONS.”
