A Ballad of Confetti, Cake and Catastrophes

by Helen Juliet

  Nicholas gave her a nod, then headed out of the room. He felt this was a private moment between siblings, and he didn’t want to intrude.

  Danielle was by herself in the hallway when Nicholas came back down the stairs, studying her reflection in the mirror by the front door. She had her hand on her stomach and was staring intently at herself as she turned this way and that in her newly altered bridesmaid dress. If he was honest, Nicholas felt it was hanging off her a bit where she’d lost so much weight, but she was still a very beautiful girl. “Do you like it?”

  She turned and watched him descend the final couple of steps. “Yes,” she said firmly. “It’s a little different to what we planned, obviously. But now I’m getting used to it, I do like it.” She gave him a tight smile.

  He felt like she worried about so many things at once on an average day, she must have really struggled in the run up to the wedding. Relatively speaking, he was impressed that she’d coped with this last-minute change as well as she had.

  “You look amazing,” he told her sincerely.

  The doorbell went and Nicholas said he’d get it, as he correctly predicted that Danielle wouldn’t want anyone to see her in her dress before the big day, even if it was just the postman. So once she’d scuttled off, he undid the locks from the night before and welcomed the person on the other side.

  It turned out it was the delivery of the wedding cake, and he couldn’t help the small scream he let out at seeing it. They’d got an independent cake-maker to create the three-tied masterpiece, rather than a bakery, and she was struggling under the weight of the confectionary in her arms. Goodness only knew how she’d rung the doorbell. “Come in, come in,” urged Nicholas with a wave.

  “Oh bless you, love,” said the woman.

  She looked to be in her late fifties and had a bird like frame. Her wispy dyed-brown hair was pushed back with a head scarf, and she wore a Barbour jacket and hunter boots that put her very much on trend with most of the middle-class ladies in and around St Albans. He believed her name was Peggy, although he could have totally made that up. Between the lady who was providing the chair covers, and the one who was doing hair and makeup, and the one from the council who’d sorted out the registrar, he’d lost track of all the different names Clara and Danielle had mentioned.

  “Where do you want this?” she asked.

  Nicholas showed her through to the kitchen where she placed it on the counter. It was absolutely gorgeous. Clara’s theme (under Danielle’s direction) was springtime romance, and the cake was adorned with all manner of flowers and birds and love hearts. It was all very Danielle, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t beautiful. “Are we paying you today?” Nicholas asked. He worked out by now that a lot of wedding businesses operated via cash-in-hand, especially if they were little one-man-bands like Peggy.

  “Yes please, my love,” she said with a wink.

  Nicholas directed her to the den, where he assumed his parents had gone, and explained that his dad would take care of it. “Would you like a cup of tea while you’re here?”

  “Oh that would be darling, yes it would,” she said, patting his shoulder. “Two sugars, lots of milk.”

  Nicholas busied himself at the kettle, getting her a mug sorted. They were so nearly there. The dresses had been a bit of a shock, but ultimately, they’d gone down well. The cake was here, the weather had cleared up and, according to his dad, their Aunt Sally was feeling well enough to traveling that evening. So long as Lauren could sort out her daughter’s passport and get the three of them on a plane by tonight, there was a chance this wedding might actually happen tomorrow the way it was supposed to.

  He tapped the teaspoon on the side of the mug, set it against the edge of the sink, turned around. And froze.

  Archibald had jumped up on the kitchen island where he wasn’t allowed at the best of times, but especially not when there was an enormous wedding cake sitting their vulnerably. It hadn’t seemed that close to the edge before, but now Archibald was standing next to it, staring at like he did when he stalked fish in the garden pond, it suddenly felt like it was balancing like that van at the end on The Italian Job.

  Nicholas squeezed the mug handle so tightly he thought it might seriously shatter. “No!” he hissed. “No, you fucking don’t. Scat – SCAT!”

  Archibald turned his large head towards Nicholas, and glared with his massive golden eyes. Then, without looking away, he reached a paw out and touched the edge of the cake plate.

  “No!” Nicholas’s heart rate rocket. “No, no you fucking bastard. Get away!”

  He took a step forward, but the arsehole jabbed at the lower tier again, going so far as to get a smear of icing on his paw. Nicholas instinctively stopped moving and sloshed hot tea over his hand. He winced, but the pain was nothing compared to the panic swelling in his chest.

  “Please,” he begged. “Please don’t do this to me. I’m sorry I said you were a devil cat. I’m sure those dresses deserved to get slashed – they look better now anyway! Just leave the cake alone. For the love of Beelzebub, I swear, I’ll do whatever you want. You can destroy my room; the posters, the bed, everything. I’ll buy you that catnip you like, the one that makes you proper mental. I’ll never put you on the travel carry case again. Just – don’t fuck with that cake!”

  Archibald tilted his head, and let out a meow that sounded more like a banshee’s screech. Nicholas knew all was lost.

  He lurched forwards, ignoring the tea as it splashed up and over the rim of mug. But it didn’t matter, because he was never going to be able to move fast enough. Archibald hissed at him, displaying his pointed teeth, and leapt into the air towards the counter on the other side of the kitchen aisle. Unfortunately, he used the rim of the cake plate as his launch pad.

  Nicholas felt like time ground to a halt in front of his eyes. The cake slid just enough to the left that gravity was allowed to do its work. All he could do was scream, begging the universe to intervene on his behalf as ten pounds of sponge, cream and butter icing plummeted in a graceful arch to the kitchen tiles below.

  Time eventually caught up. The cat landed, the cake exploded, and Nicholas dropped the mug of tea so it shattered all around his feet.

  The silence was deafening.

  For a moment, he just stared. Archibald was licking the remnants of icing off his paw, as if nothing had happened. There were splatters of cake up the cabinets and against the walls, and even across the bottom of Nicholas’s jeans. Tea dripped from what remained of the mug handle, and Nicholas realised his socks were getting wet from the slowly expanding puddle on the tiles.

  He still didn’t seem to be able to move though. It was like he’d just watched six hundred quid blow out the window on a capricious summer breeze.

  Eventually, he became aware of footsteps and someone calling his name. But he didn’t look away from the carnage until a shadow darkened the entrance arch to the kitchen, accompanied by a shrill scream.

  “What the—!”

  His mum was joined by his dad, Clara, Kinny and Danielle, who were still in their bridesmaids’ dresses, and finally Peggy, the cake lady. There was a good deal of yelps, wails, and profound abuse of the English language.

  “What happened?” Clara asked tearfully. She was staring at the jagged shards of cake plate sticking out from the mess like ghoulish tombstones.

  Wordlessly, Nicholas pointed at Archibald. He was sat on the worktop, swishing his tail in a manner that Nicholas couldn’t help but interpret as being extremely proud of himself.

  “ARCHIE!” bellowed Clara. Danielle looked like she was trying not to cry, and Nicholas’s mum’s face turned thunderous. But bizarrely, she didn’t yell at her cat.

  “Nicholas,” she snapped. “Why did you let him up on the counter? You know he’s not allowed!”

  The injustice of the unfair accusation stung. “I tried to get him away!” he fired back. After all he’d done that week for this bloody wedding, he was not going to be blamed for this. “He’s
a menace!”

  Peggy was looking between the Herald family members with increasingly widening eyes, her wodge of cash for the payment clutched tightly to her breast. “Well, um. I’ll just leave you all to it, shall I?” For a lady of more senior years, she did a good job of bolting for the front door before anyone could stop her. Nicholas couldn’t fault her for it really. He’d escape if he could too.

  “Okay, everyone calm down,” said Danielle with a sniff. She delicately wiped under her eyes with her fingertips, managing not to smudge her makeup. “We’re just going to have to come up with a solution. It’s hardly Nicholas’s fault, it was just an accident.”

  Nicholas couldn’t quite believe his ears. But coming from family favourite Danielle, his mum was more likely to listen and calm down. He was still pissed off with her for turning on him, but emotions were running high and people were bound to say things they didn’t mean. At least, that’s what he hoped.

  He gave his cousin an appreciative smile, and she responded with a fraction of a nod.

  “Fuck me sideways.” Ash and Peter had obviously heard the commotion, and come down from upstairs. Ash had her hands in her pixie hair, her mouth hanging open. Peter looked like he was desperately trying not laugh. Well, thought Nicholas, it was pretty ridiculous. “What happened?” asked Ash.

  “It seems Archibald is feeling like he’s not getting enough attention,” said Nicholas’s dad sagely. Archibald flicked his tail as people looked over to him. “Okay, let’s leave this be for now. Nicholas, come on through, try not to step on anything. We’ll go back to the den.”

  Everyone else had found a place to sit or stand by the time Nicholas made it to the front of the house, and they were all looking to his dad for answers. Peter was hugging Clara, and Kinny was pulling off her high heels and rubbing her feet.

  “So,” said Nicholas, signalling his entrance. “We just pop into town and buy another cake, right?”

  “We won’t get a wedding cake at such short notice,” Clara said thickly. She rubbed her nose and hiccupped. “I didn’t even get to see it,” she added in a tiny voice.

  “No,” said Nicholas firmly, looking to his dad and Danielle for backup. “It’s just a cake, right? People do all kinds of wacky things nowadays, it could look like anything.”

  “I went to a wedding where it was a cupcake station,” piped up Kinny. She leaned over a squeezed Clara’s knee. “There were all different flavours cakes, even gluten free ones, and you added whatever toppings you wanted.”

  Nicholas’s dad’s eyes lit up. “I like the sound of that.”

  “Or something even simpler,” suggested Danielle. “We have so much to do before tomorrow, let’s not go for something overly complicated now.”

  “Who are you?” asked Ash dryly. “And what have you done with Danielle?”

  Thankfully, that got a laugh out of people, and the tension lifted a little in the room. “She’s right,” said Nicholas. “Simple is good, although I do like the cupcake idea. You can get those stands, can’t you? We could make a big cupcake mountain. That way it would look like the same sort of shape as a wedding cake.”

  “That could work,” said Clara with a nod. She rubbed her forehead and let out a sigh. “It’s such a waste of money though.”

  Their mum threw her arm around her. “Oh don’t you worry about that, love,” she said. “What matters is that you like it. We could go get any kind of cake, but it would be nice if it matched the theme, if it was personal to you two.”

  “Oh!” said Nicholas. Everyone turned to look at him. He quickly evaluated the idea that had just popped into his head, and decided that it wasn’t totally preposterous. “I, um, have a suggestion.”

  “I’m open to anything right now,” Danielle assured him.

  “Well,” said Nicholas. He pushed his glasses up his nose, just to give him another second to think. “You guys met at Krispy Kreme, right?” Danielle opened her mouth, probably to try and remind him that they met ‘online’. But Clara and Peter nodded, so Nicholas ploughed on. “Right, so, what if instead of a cupcake tower…we made a doughnut tower?”

  He was met with blank stares. That was, until Peter clapped his hands. “I love it, I bloody love it.” He jabbed a finger at Nicholas and clapped his hands again. “Genius.”

  “But, for a wedding?” Nicholas’s mum asked dubiously. “It’s, um. Well it’s not exactly classy, is it?” Nicholas was tempted to tell her she should have trained her menace of a cat to behave better, then they wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place. But he held his tongue. Because Clara was smiling.

  “It is where we met,” she said, looking between Peter and Nicholas.

  Ash stuck her hand in the air, then pointed at her brother. “Just FYI. Peter absolutely hates cake. So, there’s that too.”

  Danielle’s head swung around to stare at the groom. “How can you hate cake?” she demanded, horrified.

  He grinned sheepishly. “I don’t hate it, exactly,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “I just wasn’t going to eat any. Doughnuts though? I love doughnuts.”

  “They come in all the pretty coloured glazings, don’t they?” added Kinny. “We could get a mad selection. I have loads of tiered cupcake holders, pretty china ones, I bet they’d look lovely.”

  “We could decorate them with sugar flowers too,” suggested Clara, tapping her fingers on her cheek as she thought. “And little hearts. It could look very nice.”

  “And it’s personal to you,” said Nicholas’s dad, saluting the couple with his tea. “I think it’s a fab idea mate,” he added towards Nicholas.

  Danielle bit her lip, then glanced at Nicholas’s mum. They were both obviously not quite convinced, but eventually, Danielle nodded. “Let’s go now, so we can clean out the store. We’re going to need about a hundred doughnuts, so maybe we should ring them beforehand.”

  “And we can also go to the big Sainsbury’s,” said Clara excitedly. “They’ve got a whole baking aisle, we can get pretty little decorations.”

  “I’ll go to my flat and get the stands,” said Kinny.

  Nicholas didn’t want to jinx anything, but he felt like they had a plan.

  Luckily, between everyone running around to get ready to leave the house, he thought to check his phone. Surprisingly, a text was waiting for him from Fynn, and he was glad he was alone in his room because he broke into the goofiest grin.

  ‘Hey Nicholas. Any chance we can meet up today?’

  Nicholas crossed over to his bedroom door and pushed it to. Then he bunched up his fists, closed his eyes, and let out a high-pitched whine of jubilation. Fynn wanted to see him again already. Whatever else this nightmare of a week had laid at his feet, he would be forever grateful that it had brought the two of them together.

  Sadly, a bootie call was not on the cards for today though. ‘Ahh, I’m so sorry, it’s manic here! Believe it or not we’ve just had another catastrophe, but we’re all pulling together to fix it. I don’t think I’ll be able to slip away :( I’ll see you tomorrow though! Xxxx’

  He was surprised when he got a reply right away. ‘Could we meet halfway in town? I need to talk to you.’

  Nicholas’s happy spirits immediately dropped like a stone in water. That sounded horribly ominous. He read it again and again, trying to put a positive spin on it, but all he could think was that he was about to get dumped. He wasn’t even sure if they’d been in a relationship yet. He was probably just being silly.

  ‘Is everything okay?’ he hastily typed. ‘I’m actually just heading into town, so we could meet if you needed to have a chat. But you can tell me over text if something’s wrong. I hope you’re alright xxx’

  He was aware of everyone bustling outside his door, but he stared at his screen until the little dots started dancing to indicate that Fynn was typing. ‘Where in town?’

  That was it. But Nicholas physically shook himself. There was no reason to jump to pessimistic conclusions. What if Fynn wanted to ask how they wer
e going to present themselves tomorrow – maybe he wanted to officiate things between them and be there as a couple. Perhaps he felt that was too important a conversation to have via text. Nicholas made up his mind that Fynn wanted to hold his hand when he asked him to be his boyfriend, and that’s why he was being particular.

  Almost entirely convinced by his theory, he made himself smile, and started typing a response back. ‘I’m going to Krispy Kreme,’ he explained. They’d decided he and his dad would go, so his dad could pay, and Nicholas could help with the carrying. ‘If you get there within the hour, I might treat you to a doughnut ;)’

  He chewed his lip, waiting for the response. But it was worth it when it came. ‘See you there gorgeous xxx’

  Ha! Nicholas had been right. He’d wound himself up over nothing. Fynn just wanted to see him, because he liked him. And who knew? Maybe his boyfriend theory was right? He tapped out a few kisses and sent them back, then headed out the door.

  He was sure it was going to be fine.

  Chapter Twelve

  As it transpired, the manager at Krispy Kreme St Albans was both very helpful and, Nicholas suspected, a little bit bored. Once she’d spoken to Danielle over the phone and understood what they’d wanted, she’d become energetic to say the least, nattering on about how romantic it was, and how she never dreamed she’d be able to make someone’s wedding cake for them. Danielle had been able to place an order for an assortment of doughnuts with pink and white toppings, and some even in the shape of love hearts.

  While Kinny went back to her place to get her cupcake stands, Clara and their mum went off to Sainsbury’s to get the sugar flowers as well as any other decorations they could lay their hands on. Peter and Ash stayed home to clean the kitchen, and to wait on any news from Lauren. That way, they could jump in Peter’s car to go collect them if they suddenly got on a flight. Plus, Nicholas was sure that everyone felt better leaving someone behind to guard the rest of the wedding paraphernalia from Archibald while they all went out.

  Nicholas’s dad had a sporty Mercedes Benz that he only really got to play with on weekends, so he was more than happy to drive into town with Nicholas. Traffic was a nightmare, so once they got close enough, Nicholas suggested that he hop out and go on ahead to Krispy Kreme. It probably wouldn’t have made a difference if the store manager had had to wait another twenty minutes or half an hour for them both to arrive together, but the way his week had gone, Nicholas didn’t want to risk anything to chance. He’d rather sit and wait, and pick up the order as soon as it was finished.