Meet Me at the Cupcake Café

by Jenny Colgan

And those were Issy’s last thoughts before she fell asleep: he did love her. He did care for her. She lived with him, she was meeting his family. Helena was wrong about him.

  Graeme lay awake a little longer. He had meant to tell her about the development tonight – he’d pitched it in the office and they’d gone mad for it. A keen landlord with an eye for a sound deal, apparently, and no problem tenants – the whole thing was going to be perfect. Too easy.

  This is too easy, thought Pearl, as Ben’s hand brushed hers on the short walk back from the pub. Too easy. And it was what had got her into too much trouble before.

  ‘Let me stay,’ said Ben, wheedlingly.

  ‘No,’ said Pearl. ‘We’ve only got one bedroom, and that’s Nan’s. It’s not right.’

  ‘Well, come to my place. Or we could get a hotel.’

  Pearl looked at him. In the light of the streetlamp, he was even handsomer than she remembered. His broad shoulders, his beautiful curly hair, his handsome face. Louis was going to be so like him. He was the father of her child; he should be the centre of their family. He leaned forward, very gently under the streetlights, and kissed her, and she closed her eyes and let him. It felt so familiar and yet so strange at the same time; it had been a while since she’d been touched by a man.

  Issy rolled out of bed with the sun the next morning, confusedly pulling clothes out of bags.

  ‘What’s the rush, babes?’ said Graeme, sleepily.

  Issy squinted at him. ‘I’m going to work,’ she said. ‘Those cupcakes don’t bake themselves.’

  She stifled a yawn.

  ‘Well, come give me a cuddle anyway.’

  Issy nestled into his hairless chest comfortably. ‘Mm,’ she said, mentally ticking down how much time she had, now she needed to cross north London to get to the café.

  ‘Why don’t you skip work today?’ said Graeme. ‘You work too hard.’

  Issy smiled. ‘You of all people, saying that!’

  ‘Yes, but wouldn’t you like to slow down a bit? Work a bit less? Go back to a nice cosy office with sick pay and lunch breaks and office parties and someone else doing all the paperwork?’

  Issy rolled on to her stomach and clasped her hands under her chin.

  ‘You know,’ she said. ‘You know, I really don’t think I would. I don’t think I could go back to working for someone else for all the tea in China. Not even you!’

  Graeme looked at her in consternation. He would tell her later, he thought. Again.

  Pearl was actually humming coming in the doorway.

  ‘What’s with you?’ said Caroline suspiciously. ‘You seem oddly cheerful.’

  ‘Can’t I be cheerful?’ said Pearl, getting out her broom as Caroline polished the temperamental cappuccino machine. ‘Are only middle-class people allowed to be cheerful?’

  ‘Quite the opposite,’ said Caroline, who had received a particularly nasty solicitor’s letter in the post that morning.

  ‘Quite the opposite to what?’ said Issy, coming up the stairs to greet Pearl and grab a coffee, with her eyebrows covered in flour.

  ‘Pearl thinks middle-class people are jolly.’

  ‘Not now I don’t,’ said Pearl, reaching out her finger to dip it in Issy’s bowl.

  ‘Stop that!’ said Issy. ‘If the health inspector saw you he’d have a fit!’

  ‘I have my plastic gloves on!’ said Pearl, showing her. ‘Anyway, all chefs taste their own produce. Otherwise how would you know?’

  Pearl tasted Issy’s concoction. It was an orange and coconut cream sponge, soft, mellow and not too sweet.

  ‘This tastes like a pina colada,’ she said. ‘It’s wonderful. Amazing.’

  Issy stared at her, then glanced at Caroline.

  ‘Caroline’s right,’ she said. ‘What’s up with you? Yesterday you were miserable, and today you’re Rebecca from Sunnybrook Farm.’

  ‘Can’t I be happy once in a while?’ said Pearl. ‘Just because I don’t live in your neighbourhood and have to take the bus?’

  ‘That’s not fair,’ said Issy. ‘I am a bus connoisseur.’

  ‘And I’m going to have to move out of the neighbourhood,’ said Caroline. She sounded so gloomy, the other girls looked at her in some amazement as she too dipped her finger in Issy’s bowl.

  ‘Fine,’ said Issy, exasperated. ‘I’ll throw this lot out and make a new batch, shall I?’

  Pearl and Caroline took this as an invitation to get stuck into the batter in earnest, and with a sigh Issy put down the bowl, pulled up a chair and joined them.

  ‘What’s up?’ said Pearl.

  ‘Oh, my evil bloody ex-husband,’ said Caroline. ‘He wants me to move out of the home. The home that, by the way, I renovated almost all by myself; furnished all eleven rooms including his study, managed the building of the all-glass back wall and oversaw the construction of a fifty-thousand-quid kitchen, which by the way is no picnic.’

  ‘Although it comes with, obviously, an integrated picnic unit,’ said Pearl, before realizing from Caroline’s face that this was no time for levity. ‘Sorry,’ she added, but Caroline had hardly heard her.

  ‘I thought if I got a job, showed willing … But he says it means I obviously can work, so I can manage by myself! It’s so unfair! I can’t possibly keep my staff and the house and everything on what I earn here! This barely keeps me in pedicures.’

  Issy and Pearl concentrated on the cake mix.

  ‘Sorry, but it’s true. So I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.’

  ‘He wouldn’t force you to move out with your children, surely?’ said Issy.

  ‘There’s probably room on my estate for you,’ said Pearl, at which Caroline choked back a sob.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘No offence meant.’

  ‘Oh, none taken,’ said Pearl. ‘I’d like to live in your house too. Or maybe just your kitchen.’

  ‘Well, the letter says “steps may be taken”,’ said Caroline. ‘Oh God.’

  ‘But surely he can see you’re trying?’ said Issy. ‘Doesn’t that count for anything?’

  ‘He doesn’t want me to try,’ hissed Caroline. ‘He wants me to disappear. For ever. So he can keep getting it on with Annabel fucking Johnston-Smythe.’

  ‘How does she even get that on her credit card?’ wondered Pearl.

  ‘Anyway, let’s change the subject,’ said Caroline testily. ‘Why are you so happy, Pearl?’

  Pearl looked embarrassed and said a lady never kissed and told, which made both of them squeal so much Pearl got quite cross, particularly when Doti the postman turned up and told her she was looking particularly beautiful this morning, and they realized there was a queue of punters at the door, looking hungry and anxious, but unwilling to intrude on the girls’ morning catch-up.

  ‘I have work to do,’ said Pearl stiffly and got up to leave.

  ‘You take it nice and easy,’ said Issy, heading downstairs hastily as the first client of the day asked to try out the coconut and orange she had already chalked up on the specials board.

  ‘Soon, soon,’ she said to the customer.

  ‘Don’t you deliver?’ said the woman. The girls looked at each other.

  ‘We should do that,’ said Pearl.

  ‘I’ll put it on the list,’ said Issy.

  She felt cheered by Pearl’s good humour – the fact that she wouldn’t admit to the identity of the chap made Issy wonder if it wasn’t Louis’s dad, but she would never dream of asking something so personal. She worried about Caroline’s divorce, partly for her and partly for selfish reasons, because she didn’t want to lose her. She was prickly and snobbish, but she also worked hard and had an ability to present the cakes in the most beguiling of styles; she’d also improved the room in ways that were hard to pinpoint – tiny floating candles that emerged after dusk; cosy cushions in awkward corners that softened the place. She had an eye, there was no doubt about it.

  But, mixing a new batch of cakes, sprinkling the coconut with a light hand and swi
tching the white sugar to brown to intensify the depth of flavour, she couldn’t help thinking about Helena. They’d never fallen out, not even when she’d asked Helena to save that one-legged pigeon. They’d always just got on; she couldn’t bear the idea of not sharing with her what Pearl was up to and all the other gossip. She thought about phoning, but you couldn’t phone Helena at work, it was awkward, she always had her hand up someone’s bottom or was holding a severed toe or something. She’d go round. And take a gift.

  Issy met Helena on the way.

  ‘I was just coming over …’ said Helena. ‘I’m so, so so—’

  ‘No, I am,’ said Issy. ‘I’m happy for you, honestly,’ said Helena. ‘I just want you to be happy.’

  ‘Me too!’ said Issy. ‘Please, let’s not fight.’

  ‘No,’ said Helena. The two girls embraced in the street.

  ‘Here,’ said Issy, handing over the piece of paper she’d been carrying about all day.

  ‘What’s that?’ said Helena. Then, as she stared at it, she understood. ‘The recipe! No way! Oh my God!’

  ‘Well,’ said Issy. ‘Now you have your heart’s desire.’

  Helena smiled. ‘Come back,’ she said. ‘Come and have a cup of tea. It’s still your flat.’

  ‘I should get back,’ said Issy. ‘Got to see my man, you know.’

  Helena nodded. She did know. Which didn’t make it any less odd, as they hugged tightly once again and parted, for them to head off home, but going in different directions.

  Helena had given her her mail too. And Issy’s heart had sunk. More recipes; but they were ones she’d already had, or things that didn’t make sense. She’d spoken to Keavie on the phone, who’d said yes, he had been on good form when she’d seen him, but overall things weren’t good, and to pop in whenever she could, which she did the next day.

  To her surprise, when she reached the hospital, someone was already in the room; a short man with a hat on his knee, sitting on the chair next to the bed, chatting away. When he turned round she realized she knew his face but for a second she couldn’t place him. Then she did: it was the ironmonger.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she said, rushing over to kiss Gramps, so very pleased to see him.

  ‘A darling girl!’ said Gramps. ‘I am mostly but not completely sure which one. This delightful man has been keeping me company.’

  Issy eyed him shrewdly. ‘Well, that’s kind of you.’

  ‘Not at all,’ said the man. He put out his hand. ‘Chester.’

  ‘Issy. Thank you for the keyring,’ she said, suddenly shy. The man smiled back, shy too.

  ‘I met your grandfather through your shop. We’ve become good friends.’

  ‘Gramps?’ said Issy.

  Her grandfather smiled weakly. ‘I just asked him to keep an eye on you.’

  ‘You asked him to spy!’

  ‘You use a microwave! What next, margarine?’

  ‘Never,’ said Issy vehemently.

  ‘It’s true,’ said Chester. ‘She has never had a margarine delivery.’

  ‘Stop spying on me.’

  ‘All right,’ said Chester. There was that trace of a Middle European accent she couldn’t place. ‘I won’t.’

  ‘Or … well, if you must,’ said Issy, who rather liked the idea of having someone looking out for her. It hadn’t happened before. ‘At least come in and try one of the cakes.’

  The man nodded. ‘Your grandfather warned me off eating your profits. He said you were too kind not to feed me for nothing and that I wasn’t allowed to ask for anything.’

  ‘It’s still a business,’ said Grampa Joe weakly from the bed.

  Keavie popped her head in. ‘Hi, Issy! How’s the love life?’

  ‘So you know everything too!’ said Issy, stung.

  ‘Give over! Anyway, he does your grandfather a power of good. Perks him right up.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Issy.

  ‘And I like it,’ said the ironmonger. ‘Selling spanners is a lonely road.’

  ‘And we both know the shop trade,’ said Gramps.

  ‘All right, all right,’ said Issy. She’d been used to being the only person her gramps would turn to for so long, she wasn’t sure about him having a friend. Now, though, Gramps was looking around, confused.

  ‘Where is this?’ he said. ‘Isabel? Isabel?’

  ‘I’m here,’ said Issy, as Chester made his goodbyes and left. She took Gramps’s hand.

  ‘No,’ he was saying. ‘Not you. Not Isabel. That’s not who I meant. That’s not who I meant at all.’

  He grew more and more agitated, and his grip on Issy’s hand grew stronger and stronger, till Keavie came in with a male nurse and they persuaded him to drink some medicine.

  ‘That’ll calm him down,’ said Keavie, looking straight at Issy. ‘You understand,’ she went on, ‘that calming him down, making him comfortable … that’s all we can really …’

  ‘You’re saying he’s not going to get any better,’ said Issy miserably.

  ‘I’d say his lucid moments are going to get fewer and further apart,’ said Keavie. ‘And you need to prepare yourself for that.’

  They looked at the old man settled back into the pillows.

  ‘He knows,’ Keavie whispered. ‘Even patients with dementia … Everyone is so fond of your grandfather here, you know. They really are.’

  Issy squeezed her hand in gratitude.

  Two Saturdays later, Des, the estate agent, popped his head round the door. Jamie was squawking his head off.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said to Issy, who was enjoying the Guardian Guide before the Saturday shoppers’ lunchtime rush arrived. Her Cupcake Café keyring was sparkling in the summer sunlight through the polished windows.

  ‘Oh, that’s all right,’ said Issy, jumping up. ‘I was just enjoying a quiet moment. Hang on, what can I get you?’

  ‘I wondered if you’d seen Mira?’ said Des.

  Issy glanced at the sofa. ‘Oh, she normally comes in around this time,’ she said. ‘She should be here any moment. They’ve got a proper flat now, and she’s got a job.’

  ‘That’s brilliant!’

  ‘I know! I’m trying to persuade her to send Elise to the same nursery as Louis, but she’s having none of it and keeping her in a Romanian crèche.’

  ‘I didn’t even know they had such a thing,’ said Des.

  ‘Stoke Newington has everything … Aha,’ said Issy as Mira and Elise arrived. ‘Speak of the devil.’

  Mira immediately took Jamie off Des and, as was his wont, he stopped howling to regard her with his large round eyes.

  ‘Ems has kicked me out the house … for a bit,’ added Des hastily, in case they imagined she’d kicked him out once and for all. (It was rather worrying, Issy thought, if you had to correct people’s impression of your marriage like that.) ‘He’s been right as rain, Mira, since he got over that colic, absolutely a splendid … he’s a great wee man.’ His voice grew slightly emotional as he regarded his son. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘anyway, right. The thing is, the last couple of days have been just awful, just terrible.’

  Mira raised her eyebrows.

  ‘The doctor said it’s nothing, just teething.’

  ‘So you brought him to the baby-whisperer!’ said Issy cheerfully, lining up a tea, a babycino for Elise and a large cappuccino with plenty of grated chocolate. Jamie, previously content, was now opening his mouth in preparation for a huge wail, as Mira poked her fingers in his soft gums.

  Des looked sheepish. ‘Uh, well, something like that.’

  Mira gave him a stern look as Jamie screamed.

  ‘In this country they think it is so hilarious that nobody knows anything about babies, and the grandmothers, they say, “Oh, I will not interfere with the babies,” and the aunties, they say, “Oh, I am too busy to help with the babies,” and everybody ignores the babies and buys stupid books about the babies and watches stupid television about the babies,’ she said fiercely. ‘Babies are always the same. Ad
ults, not so much. Give me a knife.’

  Issy and Des looked at each other.

  ‘Uh, what?’ said Issy.

  ‘Knife. I need a knife.’

  Des put up his hands. ‘Honestly, we can’t take much more of this at home. Ems is sleeping at her mum’s as it is. I’m going bananas. I’ve started to see ghosts out of the corner of my eye.’

  ‘You’re not having a knife,’ said Issy. Somewhat nervously, she handed Mira a serrated knife. Quick as a flash, Mira stuck Jamie down on his back on the sofa, pinned down his arms and made two little darts inside his mouth with the knife. Jamie screamed the place down.

  ‘What … what have you done?’ said Des, grabbing Jamie up from the sofa and cradling him in his arms. Mira shrugged. As Des glared at her he noticed that Jamie, once the initial shock and pain had passed, was gradually calming down. His great heaving gulps of air grew slower and slower, and his tense, infuri ated little body started to relax. He nestled his head lovingly into his father’s chest, and once again, no doubt utterly exhausted from his painful, sleepless nights, his eyelids started to droop.

  ‘Well,’ said Des. ‘Well.’

  Issy shook her head. ‘Mira, what did you do? How did you do that?’

  Mira shrugged again. ‘He has teeth coming. They are pushing through the gum. Very painful. Now I cut through the gum. Teeth through now. Not sore. Not rocket science.’

  ‘I have never heard of that,’ said Des softly, so as not to disturb his now snoozing baby.

  ‘Nobody here has heard of anything,’ said Mira.

  ‘You should write a baby book,’ said Issy, admiringly.

  ‘It would be one page,’ said Mira. ‘It would say, ask your grandmother. Do not read a stupid baby book. Thank you.’

  She accepted the tea, and Elise, who had been sitting very quietly with a book, murmured a little thank-you for the babycino. Des rushed to pay for them.

  ‘This has saved my life,’ he said. ‘Actually, can I have mine in a takeaway cup? I’m going to go straight home and attempt a nap.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Issy.