by Agatha Frost
“It’s not worth it,” Julia said with a soft smile. “She probably didn’t see us.”
Julia could relate to the rage in Jessie’s eyes, but she knew for the sake of them staying out of trouble, and not being any later than they already were, it would be wise to ignore the woman.
“We’ll never see her again,” Julia said after finding another space further down the road. “She’s not from around here. In fact, I don’t recognise half of these cars.”
After climbing out, Julia looked down the street at the library. A banner advertising the release of Barker’s book hung above the door, but she knew it alone had not led to so many turning up. Johnny Watson had written a small piece about the book in The Peridale Post, but the newspaper’s circulation only reached Peridale’s borders.
She opened her boot with a creak. The shop-bought blueberry muffins looked up at her from beneath the plastic film covering. She had never wondered what a sad muffin looked like, but she knew these fit that description. They looked so unlike Julia’s real baking, and she doubted they tasted anywhere near as good.
“People are going to know after one bite,” Julia whispered to Jessie as they grabbed two trays each. “I don’t think there’s a person in Peridale who hasn’t visited my café at least once.”
“Chill out, cake lady,” Jessie growled as she hurried towards the library. “My genius plan is going to work. You watch.”
For the sake of not taking any attention away from Barker, Julia hoped so. Leaving the boot open, she walked down the street to the library. Even from ten steps away, she could hear the buzz that was happening inside. When she opened the door, she could not believe what was in front of her.
Despite it seeming like every Peridale resident had come to support Barker, she did not recognise most of the faces in the library, all of whom were clutching hardback copies of the book.
“I heard about it on a blog I follow,” a woman with an unfamiliar accent said to another as Julia walked towards the empty table in front of the non-fiction travel shelf where Jessie had left the muffins. “It’s based on a true story. Did you know that? The girl found in the basement under Julie North’s café in the book was real!”
For Julia, it was all too real. Just like ‘Julie North’, she had discovered a body in her café’s basement, which had acted as the basis for Barker’s book.
“They only say that to sell books,” the other woman replied with her nose in the air as she stared at the back cover of the book. “You were right about him being handsome though. Worth the trip just to get a look at him.”
Leaving behind the women, Julia joined Jessie at the table, her eyes darting down to the pearl engagement ring Barker had put on her finger on Christmas Day; she had never been prouder to claim the handsome author on the back of the book as her fiancé.
“What’s going on?” Jessie asked in a hushed tone as they hurried back through the packed library to retrieve the last of the muffins. “It’s only Barker. You’d think he was a celebrity.”
As they walked down the street, more people climbed out of cars and walked towards the library. Barker had said it would be an intimate event with ‘a hundred or so people’, but there was nothing intimate about it. She had planned to bake enough muffins so that everyone could have two each, but she was not sure the two hundred imposter muffins would feed even half of the group.
“Give me the keys,” Jessie said, holding out her hand. “I’ll grab these last ones and lock up so you can get them set up.”
Without arguing, Julia handed over the keys and picked up another two trays before running back to the library. She quickly got to work unwrapping the muffins, which she had hastily peeled out of their perfect cases back at the cottage to make them look less processed. The scent of blueberries that hit Julia’s nose was too sweet to be exclusively natural, and the dots of the blueberries scattered through the muffins seemed too bright a shade of blue to be real.
“Julia!” Sue, Julia’s sister, appeared behind her. “Where’ve you been? I’ve been calling!”
“Muffin emergency,” Julia replied quickly as she screwed up the plastic wrap. “I’ll explain later. Have I missed much?”
“Aside from the whole world turning up, nothing exciting has happened yet,” Sue said, an enthusiastic glint in her eyes. “Neil thinks this is the most people that have ever been in the library, and he’s worked here for years.”
Sue nodded over to her husband, Neil, who was fiddling with his glasses as he looked into the pram containing their four-month-old twin girls, Pearl and Dottie. Julia and Sue’s grandmother, Dot, was hovering behind him while she flicked through the pages of Barker’s book with squinted eyes. Brian, Julia and Sue’s father, was holding their five-month-old brother, Vinnie, while his young wife, Katie, also flicked through the book, her mouth slightly parted and her tongue hanging over her bottom lip as she slowly followed the words.
“They look a bit squashed,” Sue said as she reached for a muffin. “Did you use Mum’s recipe?”
“I thought you were trying to cut out sugar?” Julia barked, slapping her sister’s hand away without realising. “They’re full of the stuff. Your teeth will rot right out of your head, and you’ll gain so much weight from eating one. I don’t want that on my conscience.”
Sue rubbed the back of her slapped hand as she stared at Julia with a perplexed look. She reached out and rested her hand against Julia’s forehead, her expression growing concerned.
“You’re heating up,” she whispered, her voice full of worry. “Are you feeling alright? You do look a bit pale. I thought it as soon as I saw you. I didn’t want to say anything, but -”
“I’m fine,” Julia replied quickly, batting Sue’s hand away when she noticed Jessie weaving through the crowd. “I skipped breakfast, that’s all.”
“My personal trainer says you should always skip breakfast,” Sue said with a knowing tap on the side of her nose. “It makes your body fast.”
“Personal trainer?”
“Found him online,” Sue replied giddily. “Don’t tell Neil. Well, he found me. He commented on my profile telling me how good I looked, but he said with a little training, I could tone up and get my pre-baby body back.”
“Men will tell you anything if they’re getting something out of it,” Jessie said as she dumped the trays on the table in a way she would not have if Julia had baked them. “Is he asking for dirty pictures?”
“No!” Sue exclaimed, her cheeks blushing as she glanced back at Neil. “I’m a happily married woman, thank you very much. I’m just paying him twenty-nine ninety-nine a month, and he’s sending me personalised diet and exercise plans. It’s all legitimate. He’s always available if I need a confidence boost or some tips, even though his English isn’t that great.”
“Will you give me money every month if I give you tips?” Jessie asked with a sigh as she unwrapped the plastic.
“What do you know about diet and exercise?” Sue asked, folding her arms and popping her hip. “You’re seventeen and as thin as a rake.”
“Eat less, exercise more,” Jessie said before holding her hand out. “And I’ll give you that half-price for the first month if you sign up to a twelve-month rolling contract.”
Julia suppressed a giggle as she quickly unwrapped the remaining trays. Sue swatted Jessie’s hand away before tossing her caramel locks over her shoulder.
“You don’t need a trainer,” Julia interjected. “You already have your pre-baby body back.”
There were only six years between Julia and Sue, and despite only having given birth to twins four months ago, Sue had a body Julia had not had since she was Jessie’s age.
“You may mock, but you wait until you get to your thirties,” Sue exclaimed, her finger extended at Jessie. “I can feel the scales going up just being this close to that many muffins.”
Jessie picked up the nearest muffin and wafted it under Sue’s nose. Her tongue poked out of her lips, her eyes widening as she st
ared at the blueberry splotches. Her lips parted, but before she could take a bite, Jessie opened her mouth like a shark about to eat a school of fish and pushed the entire muffin inside.
“You wait,” Sue hissed. “The middle-aged spread is coming for you!”
“You’re thirty-three!” Julia said with a chuckle. “Wait until you get to my age. Every pound gained feels like ten.”
“But you suit it,” Sue said, wafting a finger up and down Julia’s pale blue 1940s-style dress. “I wouldn’t.”
“Thanks?” Julia replied. “I can’t tell if that’s an insult, or –”
Before Julia could finish her sentence, one of the twins started crying, which sparked the other one. Without saying a word, Sue whipped around and ran back to dive into the pram before Neil even had a chance.
“Wow,” Jessie mumbled through the mouthful of muffin. “This is really good.”
“What?”
“The muffins,” Jessie said after forcing it down. “I want another one!”
She scooped up another muffin and bit into it, her eyes fluttering like they did when Julia gave her a sample of a new cake.
“You’re just trying to make me feel better,” Julia said sceptically as she watched Jessie gobble down another bite. “Let me try.”
“Get your own!” she cried, pulling it away from Julia. “There’s a hundred and ninety-seven for you to eat.”
“A hundred and ninety-eight,” Julia corrected her as she looked at the middle tray of muffins, which was missing one along the top edge. “What happened to that one?”
“I – lost it,” Jessie said unconvincingly as she stared down her nose. “I should call Billy to see if he’s got through to Alfie yet. Don’t want the whole village knowing your oven was broken when you were supposed to be baking the best muffins of your life.”
After grabbing another muffin and pulling out her phone, Jessie disappeared into the crowd of people. Julia looked down at the muffins as they started to vanish one by one as the passing guests grabbed them without a second thought. She watched them carefully as they took their first bites, the same eyelid fluttering happening with all of them.
“So fresh!” Amy Clark, the church organist, exclaimed as she wandered past squeezing a muffin, a copy of Barker’s book wedged under her arm. “These might be your best yet, Julia!”
Julia grabbed one of the muffins from the table, but a hand on her shoulder stopped her from tasting it. She spun around, relieved to see Barker, who had a grin spread from ear to ear.
“Can you believe this?” Barker asked, excitement evident from the shake in his voice. “My hand keeps cramping from signing so many books. I feel like Clint Eastwood, if Clint Eastwood wrote books. Oh, are those the muffins?”
Before Julia could say anything, Barker plucked the muffin from her hand and took a bite. She observed his reaction carefully, hoping at least Barker would detect that they were not up to her usual standard. Instead, his eyelids fluttered as he licked the blue crumbs from his lips.
“Wow!” he whispered through half-closed eyes. “Did you change the recipe? They’re so much better than the sample batch you made!”
Julia felt her cheeks blush as embarrassment surged through her. She looked around as people ate the fake muffins, and they all seemed to be enjoying them. She had not wanted them to notice she had not baked them, but now that they were being devoured as though she had, it suddenly made her question her baking skills.
“I made a few tweaks,” Julia said with a tight smile. “Are they really that good?”
“You haven’t tried them?”
“Of course!” Julia lied quickly with an awkward laugh. “I meant, are you really enjoying them that much?”
“So much that I think I’ll grab another before they all vanish.” He reached around Julia, his aftershave tickling her nostrils in the way she liked. “If I’d have known so many people would turn up, I would have asked for double the amount.”
“How did you pull this off?” she asked as she looked around the full room. “It’s incredible.”
“I can’t take any of the credit for it,” Barker said as he searched the crowd for someone. “Ah! There she is. Come with me. There’s someone I want you to meet.”
Barker looped his free hand around Julia’s and pulled her deeper into the library.
“Julia, this is the publicist I told you all about,” Barker said as he presented her to a woman who was tapping on a phone away from the rest of the party, next to a shelf of audiobooks. “Izzy, this is Julia, my fiancée.”
The publicist finished typing out her message before looking up and whipping her sleek ponytail over her shoulder, the ends almost lashing Julia in the face.
“We’ve met,” Julia said with a forced smile. “Sort of.”
“We have?” Izzy asked as she dropped her phone into her large black bag. “I don’t recall, but Barker has told me so much about you I feel like we’ve already met.”
Izzy held out her perfectly manicured nails for Julia to shake, the slight arch of her brow letting Julia know the publicist recognised her from when she had stolen her parking space.
Izzy shook Julia’s hand firmly. Under the bright strip lights in the ceiling, Julia noticed the lace edge of a pink and white bra through her blouse, the kind Julia had only seen in catalogues. When Barker had spoken of ‘Isabella’, the publicist from the publishing company, she had visualised an older lady in a tweed skirt who chain-smoked behind a desk while barking orders down a phone. She had not envisioned a twenty-five-year-old beauty queen who took parking spaces as though she was entitled to them.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Julia said as she let go of Izzy’s unusually soft hand. “Barker didn’t mention that you were so – beautiful.”
“Thank you,” Izzy said, accepting the compliment without a shred of modesty. “It’s lovely to meet you too. You’re just as I’d pictured.”
Izzy smiled, her eyes creasing at the edges as she looked Julia up and down. Julia always tried not to let her insecurities rule her, but Izzy’s glare had the ability to make her feel like a troll who had crawled out from under a bridge to attend a party with the humans.
“Izzy is the one who pulled this off,” Barker said, his enthusiasm too great to notice the awkward vibe between the women. “She’s a genius.”
“I’m sure,” Julia replied.
“Oh, it was nothing,” Izzy said with a waft of her hand before picking a fleck of fluff off Barker’s shirt. “I just created a social media campaign, which I cross-promoted with the blogs and the groups. A newsletter blast here, and a paid promotion there, and voila! Easy when you know how.”
“Sounds it,” Julia said as she felt her eyelids blinking more than usual. “It’s quite the turnout.”
“It’s easier to sell an author when they’re so handsome,” she said with a stiff giggle, her eyes drifting up to Barker. “Most readers are women, and a face like that will always sell books. Are those muffins?”
“Do you want one?” Barker offered the spare muffin. “Julia baked them. They’re her best yet.”
“No, thanks,” Izzy said, her eyes narrowing on Julia. “I’m gluten intolerant. You wouldn’t happen to know how a blueberry muffin ended up being wiped all over my windshield, would you, Julia? I went back to my car to get my phone. It seems someone has made quite the mess. Looks like it will need cleaning by hand.”
Julia pretended to think about it for a second as she looked over at the bright entrance of the children’s section where Jessie was grinning like a clown. Barker pursed his lips at Julia, clearly having a theory about what had happened.
“No idea,” Julia said with wide eyes and a shake of her head. “I must have dropped one when I was bringing them in. You know what kids can be like. You’re lucky they didn’t scratch your car. There’s been a lot of that going on around here recently.”
Izzy smiled and blew air through her nostrils as she tilted her head at Julia, seeing right through he
r story. She looked as though she was going to tell Julia exactly what she thought of her, but a creak in the ceiling above made them all look up. There was a patch of black mould on one of the tiles, which looked like the mineral fibre ones used in office buildings.
“Picture for the paper?” Johnny Watson exclaimed, appearing as they looked down. “I think our readers would love to see the author and his real-life inspiration.”
Johnny smiled awkwardly at Julia as he fiddled with his glasses with one hand and held his camera up with the other. He was a reporter for The Peridale Post, but Julia had known him since they were children. Despite professing his love for her when they were teenagers, they had managed to stay friends after Julia had told him she did not see him that way. She had hoped Johnny would grow out of his crush, but she could still reluctantly see it in his eyes even though they were both almost forty.
“Let me get on your left side, Barker,” Izzy said, nudging her way between them and pushing Julia out of the way. “It’s my good side. I have a dimple. And try not to get that black patch on the roof above us. It doesn’t paint a good picture.”
Julia reluctantly moved to Barker’s right side as they stepped back from the patch of mould in the ceiling. Even though Johnny was still playing with the settings, Izzy was already stiffly posing, her pearly white teeth showing the perfect amount between her plump lips as though she had practised in the mirror. With a shake of her head, Julia reached to put her arm around Barker’s waist, but her fingers met Izzy’s cold manicure. She peeled them off and pulled Barker in close, but it only made Izzy’s hand go lower.
“Say ‘cheese’!” Johnny announced. “Julia? Look at the camera!”
With her jaw loose and her brows heavily over her eyes, Julia looked at Johnny, and then at Izzy. The camera bulb sparked, blinding her. Julia looked behind Barker again, stunned to see Izzy’s hand resting lower than even Julia would dare to put it in public. Julia looked up at Barker, who was smiling at the camera as though he was oblivious to the whole thing.
“Smile, Julia!” Johnny urged again. “You look like you’ve just seen a dead body.”