Meet Me at the Cupcake Café

by Jenny Colgan

  ‘Are you coming for lunch?’ asked Darny, before haring off to chase some pigeons. ‘Cool!’

  They stood and watched him go, smiling.

  Issy looked at Austin, eyes wide.

  ‘Wow,’ she said.

  ‘Well, thanks,’ said Austin, looking embarrassed. Then he looked at her again. ‘Christ,’ he said urgently, ‘come here. I feel like I’ve waited bloody ages for you.’

  He kissed her hard, then stared at her so intensely she felt like her heart might burst.

  ‘Stay,’ he said, fiercely. ‘Please stay as sweet as you are.’

  Chapter Nineteen

  Simnel Cake

  6 oz butter

  6 oz soft brown sugar

  3 eggs, beaten

  6 oz plain flour

  pinch salt

  1 tsp ground mixed spice (optional)

  12 oz mixed raisins, currants and sultanas

  2 oz chopped mixed peel

  zest of 1 lemon

  1–2 tbsp apricot jam

  1 egg, beaten, for glazing

  Buy almond paste from the supermarket. You can make it yourself, but we are not crazy people.

  Knead the paste for one minute until it is smooth and pliable. Roll it out to make a circle 18cm in diameter.

  Preheat oven to 140°C/gas mark 1. Grease and line an 18cm cake tin.

  For the cake, cream the butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy. Gradually beat in the eggs until well incorporated and then sift in the flour, salt and mixed spice (if using) a little at a time. Finally, add the mixed dried fruit, peel and grated lemon zest and stir into the mixture.

  Put half the mixture into the prepared cake tin. Smooth the top and cover with the circle of almond paste. Add the rest of the cake mixture and smooth the top, leaving a slight dip in the centre to allow for the cake to rise. Bake in the preheated oven for 13/4 hours. Test by inserting a skewer in the middle – if it comes out clean, it is ready. Once baked, remove from the oven and set aside to cool on a wire rack. Top the cake with another thin layer of almond paste.

  ‘He’s taken a turn for the worse,’ whispered the nurse; but Issy had known that already – there had been no letters, no recipes. Not for weeks.

  ‘That’s OK,’ said Issy, even though it wasn’t, dammit. It wasn’t fair. Her grandfather had lived so long, was everything to her, and surely he deserved to see her happy.

  The room was hushed, with one or two machines ticking in the corner. Grampa Joe had lost even more weight, if that were possible. There was so little left of him now, just a fine layer of skin on top of a pale, hairless skeleton. Austin had wanted to come, of course; over another of their long nights of wine and shared experiences and a conversation that didn’t seem able to stop, he’d told her about his mother and father, and the crash that had ended his lazy, easy student lifestyle and turned him into the carer of a bumptious four-year-old, infinitely lovable, but who’d made Austin put on a shirt and tie before he’d been quite ready for it.

  It was all she could do not to say it right then. The more she got to know him, Issy realized, the more she … well, she wasn’t going to say the L-word just yet. It wasn’t appropriate at all. But he made every other man she’d ever known seem like pretty small beer in comparison. All of them. And now she was sure, she wanted it to spill off her tongue; to shout it to the world. But not until it was time. And now she wasn’t even sure she had time.

  ‘Gramps,’ whispered Issy. ‘Gramps! It’s me! It’s Isabel.’

  Nothing.

  ‘I’ve got cake!’ She rustled the wrapper. For once, she’d made his favourite rather than hers; the hard, flat simnel cake his own mother had made for him, decades and decades ago when he was a small boy.

  She hugged him, and talked to him, telling him all her wonderful news, but he didn’t respond to her voice, or to her touch, or to her moving around. He was breathing, it seemed, but only just.

  Keavie put her hand on Issy’s arm. ‘I don’t think it will be long now,’ she said.

  ‘I wanted … this will sound stupid, but I so wanted him to meet my new boyfriend,’ said Issy. ‘I think he’d have liked him.’

  The nurse laughed.

  ‘It’s funny you should say that,’ she said, ‘but I wanted him to meet my new boyfriend too. He’d have approved.’

  ‘What’s he like?’ asked Issy.

  ‘Well, he’s strong … and good, and he’s nobody’s pushover … and he doesn’t take any shit, and he’s so funny, and he’s like totally hot, and, wow, he’s just amazing, and every time he calls and I see his name on my phone I just think I’m going to pee my pants, I’m so excited,’ said the nurse. ‘Oh, sorry. Sorry. That was totally uncalled for.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t,’ said Issy. ‘Finally, finally in my life, I’ve met someone I feel that about too.’

  The two women smiled at each other.

  ‘Worth the wait, isn’t it?’ said Keavie.

  Issy bit her lip. ‘Oh yes,’ she said.

  The nurse glanced at Grampa Joe.

  ‘I’m sure he knows … Don’t tell him mine’s a butcher.’

  ‘Mine’s a banking adviser!’ said Issy. ‘Even worse.’

  ‘That is worse!’ said the nurse, then hurried away as her beeper went off.

  Issy tweaked the flowers she’d brought, and sat down, not knowing what to do. Suddenly the door creaked open. Issy looked up. There stood a woman both incredibly familiar and almost unknown. She had long grey hair, which might have looked strange but actually made her look like Joni Mitchell, and she wore a long cloak. Her face was serene, but Issy noticed the wrinkles settling deeply into her face, lines that spoke of sun and long, hard days. But it was a kind face too.

  ‘Mum,’ she said, so softly it was almost a sigh.

  They sat together, the three of them, almost not talking at all, although her mother held her grandfather’s hand and told him how much she had always loved him, and how sorry she was, and Issy said, honestly, that her mother had nothing to be sorry for, everything had worked out all right in the end, and both of them, mother and daughter, were sure they felt a press on their hands from Joe. Issy felt her throat go tight every time she had to wait agonizingly long for a breath.

  ‘What is this?’ her mother asked softly, picking up the bag with a plain-looking, flat-baked cake in it. She stuck her nose in it.

  ‘Oh Issy,’ she said, ‘my grandma used to bake this for me when I was little. It smelled exactly like this. Exactly! Your grandfather adored it, used to eat it by the ton. It was his very favourite thing.’

  Issy had known this already. She hadn’t known her mother knew too.

  ‘Oh my, this takes me back.’

  Her mother was sobbing now, tears running down her lined face. She went forward and sat on the bed, then opened the bag. She put the entire bag over his nose, so that he could inhale the spicy scent. Issy had heard somewhere that when all other senses had gone, smell lingered; a direct line to the heart of consciousness; to emotion, to childhood and to memory. But how much of her gramps remained?

  Both of the women heard him take a deep, rattly breath. Then suddenly, giving them a start, his eyes popped open, weak and watery, a film across the pupil. He breathed in again, smelling the cake; and once again, deeper, as if he were trying to inhale its essence. Then he blinked a few times and tried, and failed, to focus. Then suddenly his eyes were focused – out front, gazing hard at something Issy couldn’t see.

  ‘She’s here,’ he said, in a gentle, childish, wondering tone. ‘She’s here!’ And then he half smiled and closed his eyes again, and they knew that he was gone.

  Epilogue

  February

  ‘I wouldn’t have believed your boobs could get any bigger than they are,’ Pearl was saying to Helena. ‘When you stand next to the window, nobody can see. They’re better than mine now.’

  The pale afternoon light was falling through the windows of the Cupcake Café – they’d put the awning away in the autumn
when it turned windy and cold – and spreading in soft pools over the tables and the cake stands piled high with baby cupcakes in pink and blue, and the wrapping paper, cards and baby gifts strewn all across the floor. Helena sat, a huge, imperi ous ship in full sail, her tight brown dress stretched unashamedly across her enormous bump, and her splendid bosom emerging over the top of it; Titian hair cascading down her shoulders. Ashok, dwarfed beside her, looked like he was going to burst with pride. Issy thought her friend had never looked more beautiful.

  Outside, Ben was running around with Louis. One didn’t, Pearl reflected, get everything. But if ever a boy loved his father … He wasn’t always there. But when he was, Louis glowed and blossomed and there was nothing, nothing she would ever do to upset that. It wouldn’t be her. She caught sight of Doti passing the entrance to the alleyway. They looked at each other for a long moment. Then they both cast their eyes away.

  Helena patted her bump complacently.

  ‘Darling baby, I do love you,’ she said. ‘But you can come out now. I can’t get up.’

  ‘You don’t have to get up,’ said Issy, leaping forward. ‘What do you need?’

  ‘A wee,’ said Helena. ‘Again.’

  ‘Oh. OK. Maybe I can’t help you with that.’ Issy offered her arm anyway, which Helena took with gratitude.

  Pearl crossed the courtyard with more cakes. They had outfitted the new building as a shop in no time, and now Pearl did a roaring trade – helped by Felipe the violinist, who turned out to be quite nifty in the kitchen when he wasn’t practising in the forecourt. Even Marian had chipped in quite a lot on the weekends, before the call of the road had grown strong again, and she’d taken off to see Brick – although not before a lot of chatting with her daughter, and Issy teaching her to use email.

  Meanwhile Issy had employed two young, cheerful Antipodean girls who were doing wonderfully in the café with Caroline, and the entire enterprise seemed to be nearly running itself. Recently Issy had found herself wondering, in a roundabout way, whether there might not be room for another café somewhere … maybe some little out-of-the-way spot in Archway. It had certainly crossed her mind.

  Des’s wife Ems, a tight-skirted, tight-faced woman, was encouraging Jamie to stand up on his own against the sofa, and lavishing Helena with advice. Helena, who’d handled more babies than Ems had had hot dinners (by the looks of her, Ems had never had a hot dinner), was nodding noncommittally. Louis was standing in between Helena’s legs, holding a whispered conversation between himself, Helena’s bump and a small plastic dinosaur clutched firmly between his fingers.

  ‘But a frenly dinosaur,’ he was explaining. ‘This dinosaur not eat babies.’

  ‘I wan eat bayee!’ said the dinosaur.

  ‘No,’ admonished Louis gravely. ‘That naughty, dinosaur.’

  Pearl glanced at him fondly as she came into the shop. She hadn’t wanted to tell Issy and she certainly couldn’t bear the ‘I told you so’ glances she was going to get from Caroline, but it would come out sooner or later, she supposed.

  ‘So I, uh, put in a letter,’ she said. ‘Looks like we might be moving.’

  ‘Moving where?’ said Issy, delighted.

  Pearl shrugged. ‘Well, now I’m manager, it looks like I can afford a place off the estate … and we thought … well, maybe Ben and I thought …’

  ‘So it’s official?’ said Caroline gleefully.

  ‘It is what it is,’ said Pearl heavily. ‘It is what it is.’

  ‘But what?’ said Issy. ‘What are you doing?’

  Caroline, pink as ever from another night at the very talented hands of the very talented builder – and did it ever annoy her ex to know who was shacked up in his front room, it was the gossip of the school gates – guessed immediately.

  ‘You’re moving up here.’ Then, ‘No … no,’ she said, putting her hand to her forehead in the manner of a soothsayer. ‘You’re moving to Dynevor Road. Or thereabouts.’

  Pearl looked utterly exasperated. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘Well …’

  ‘What!? What’s in Dynevor Road?’ asked Issy, getting desperate.

  ‘Only William Patten, the best school in Stoke Newington,’ said Caroline smugly. ‘The mothers fight tooth and nail to get their children in there. It has a pottery barn, and an art centre.’

  Caroline glanced at Louis, who was now making the dinosaur kiss Helena’s bump lovingly.

  ‘He’ll probably pass the interview,’ she said.

  ‘But that’s great!’ said Issy. ‘What? It’s not betraying your roots to put your kid in a good school.’

  ‘No,’ said Pearl, looking unconvinced. ‘The problem is with Louis, you know, I think he might be gifted and need, like, special help, and that’s just not always available in other schools …’

  Caroline threw an arm around her shoulder.

  ‘Listen to you!’ she said, beaming with pride. ‘You sound like a Stoke Newington mother already.’

  Helena gathered everyone round.

  ‘I can’t wait for Austin,’ she announced. ‘He’s always late. And thank you for all my gorgeous presents, we’re completely delighted, and thank you so much for letting us hold the baby shower here, Issy.’

  Issy waved a tea towel modestly.

  ‘We have something for you. It’s taken for ever as Zac has been so overwhelmed with work.’

  ‘Thanks to you,’ said Zac, smoothing down his currently lime-green Mohican modestly. ‘But we have a little gift for you.’

  Issy stepped forward as Helena gave her a large flat parcel. Opening it up, she gasped. In the familiar pretty pink pear-blossom livery of the Cupcake Café was a book that simply said Recipes. And inside were page after page compiled from the scraps of paper, the letters and typed notes, the screwed-up envelopes; everything Gramps had ever sent her – well, all the ones that worked as recipes – typeset and printed guidelines to every single cake in the Cupcake Café repertoire, all with Zac’s lovely floral designs down the margins.

  ‘So you can stop leaving them lying around the flat,’ explained Helena helpfully, handing back the originals too.

  ‘Oh,’ said Issy, too touched to speak. ‘Oh. He would have loved it. And I do too.’

  The party continued late into the evening; Austin was late (Janet had warned her about this, when she had listed Austin’s bad points to her in what she said was a PA’s duty and Issy had felt much more resembled a delighted mother-in-law’s little chat), and they had a lovely baby carrier for Helena that they wanted to give her together. Issy had felt a complete fraud as they had wandered round John Lewis looking for something gorgeous, but once she’d got used to people saying, ‘Is that your boy climbing up there?’ she had quite enjoyed that too. Anywhere she found herself arm in arm with Austin, she realized, made it enjoyable. They’d even had quite good fun taking Darny in for that tetanus booster. She missed him, she thought impatiently. She missed him at the end of every day, and the second he left every morning, and she wanted to show him her beautiful book.

  As the moon rose behind the houses, she finally caught sight of his tall, scruffy silhouette, and her heart jumped with love, as it always did.

  ‘Aus!’ she shouted, rushing outside. Darny shot out from behind him, yelled a hello to Issy then charged in to see Louis.

  ‘Darling girl,’ Austin said, somewhat absent-mindedly, holding her close and kissing her hair.

  ‘Where were you? I need you to see something.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ he said. ‘I’ve had some news.’

  He held up the carrier, which he’d clearly wrapped in the dark. ‘Shall we hand over the gift first?’

  ‘No!’ said Issy, forgetting about her own present. ‘News is news!’

  The timer Austin had fixed to the fairy lights came on. Chester got up to close the shop curtains and waved at them. They waved back. The stumpy little tree glowed and became beautiful.

  ‘It’s the office,’ said Austin. ‘They’ve … well, apparently I’ve done quite well r
ecently in one thing or another …’

  It was true. Sometimes it was as if his handling of Graeme and the snatching of the girl of his dreams had acted like a wake-up call to Austin; a reminder to stop sleepwalking through his days; to get on and achieve something before it was too late. That, plus some subtle and not-so-subtle rearranging of his affairs by Issy, who preferred things neat and cosy at home, and had moved in in all but name, had given him a spring in his step and a sudden huge appetite for new deals and new opportunities.

  ‘Anyway … here’s the thing. They wanted to know if I’d like to go, um, abroad. Away.’

  ‘Away?’ said Issy, a cold fear clutching her guts. ‘Where?’

  Austin shrugged. ‘I don’t know. They just said “overseas posting”. Somewhere near a good school for Darny.’

  ‘And an A&E,’ said Issy. ‘Oh gosh. Gosh!’

  ‘You know,’ said Austin, ‘I haven’t travelled that much.’ He looked at her expectantly.

  Issy’s pretty face was grave, her brow a little furrowed.

  ‘Well, I suppose …’ said Issy, finally, ‘it could be time to expand the empire … internationally.’

  Austin’s heart leapt.

  ‘You think?’ he said, delightedly. ‘Cor!’

  ‘Somewhere,’ reflected Issy, ‘where the bank managers are very receptive to bribes.’

  They smiled at one another. Issy’s eyes were shining.

  ‘God, though, Austin. I mean, it is huge. Scary, and huge.’

  ‘Would it help,’ said Austin, ‘if I told you that I love you?’

  ‘Would you kiss me under the fairy lights while you say it?’ whispered Issy. ‘Then I think I’d follow you anywhere. Please let it not be Yemen.’