Cupcake Couture

by Davies, Lauren

  My first thought was, the thieving bastard, he stole my bag!

  I did, I believe, have time to shout – ‘Fucker!’ – before my body jerked violently and the gently accelerating train dragged me along the platform. Malachy Doyle’s brother’s expression turned to one of horror as he tugged the bag and realised I was attached to the other end by the shoulder strap I had slung across my body, ironically to protect me from thieving ragies. The train was picking up speed. I was jogging now. A woman was screaming. I think it might have been me. Malachy Doyle’s brother yanked at the bag, assisted by his fellow passengers. My feet tripped along the platform, the polluted air testing my lungs. I was approaching the tunnel wall. I would be crushed. I was about to die. I shouted for help. I banged on the door. Opposite me, separated by scratched safety glass, he did the same. The bag was too strong. Fuck, why had I bought expensive leather? Even Miss Snooty Boots was yanking at the strap. I nearly fell, my shoulder hitting the side of the train. I was bleeding. The tunnel drew closer. This was it. I was about to die in a tragic accident. What a perfect end to a perfect week. I didn’t want to die. There was so much I wanted to do. So much I had to offer. So many cakes I had yet to bake. It wasn’t fair. I screamed and gazed hopefully at my knight but his sword was sadly lacking. Then I felt a hand on my arm. A ragie. Grabbing me. His hood slipping. His hand inside his jacket. A flick knife. The flash of the blade. A slice. I bounced off the wall at the end of the platform. I landed in a heap on my young saviour’s white trainers. He glanced surreptitiously around and returned the flick knife to the inside pocket of his hoodie while my bag was whisked away with the sliced strap, still in Malachy Doyle’s brother’s shaking hands.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  120ml whole milk

  Roxy had grown up in a flat the size of a large skip (and similarly decorated) in Wallsend. It often slipped her mother’s pickled mind that her benefit cheques were intended to be used for the essentials like food and heating rather than alcohol and drugs so the flat tended to be freezing cold, damp and devoid of anything nutritious. She put her petite frame down to her formative years being spent in a constant state of hunger and hyperthermia and that she was still playing catch up. If it had been up to Faye to provide her daughter with her ‘five a day’, they would have consisted of vodka, fags, dope, speed and occasionally crack. Fortunately, Roxy fell back on Heidi’s very generous and loving parents who kept her fed and watered while agreeing not to alert the authorities, until Roxy was old enough to embark on a chain of relationships with wealthy men. In Roxy’s case, ‘old enough’ was officially fifteen, unofficially thirteen. She was petite but her knowledge of the street made her mature beyond her years.

  Inevitably some of the men had been so creepy I imagined them living in giant webs, just waiting to ensnare an impressionable beauty like Roxy. There had been the liars, the scumbags, the jazzy entrepreneurs who talked success more than achieving it, the rich, flashy ones who pretended they lived in a loveless marriage they were about to end (but never would), the dealers, the pimps and the ones with violent tempers. Heidi and I had often feared for our friend when she hugged us outside the school gates and slid into yet another car with alloy wheels to be leered over by yet another man wearing sunglasses in the winter. There had been days when she had not turned up for school and I had been terrified that the next time I would see my best friend’s stunning face would be on Crimewatch. There had also been times where Heidi and I had been called from a payphone somewhere in the city by Roxy who needed our help to escape from Steve or Larry or Grant who had promised her a life full of bling if she ‘just this once’ had sex with a stranger. Scared, clueless and ill prepared, out of the window we would climb to run to our friend’s rescue. How we all survived our teenage years intact I will never know.

  At thirteen, the men were right; Roxy, who already had the power to turn heads, was impressionable and the majority of the men tried to dominate her with their money and power. However, by the age of thirteen and three quarters, Roxy had changed, her skinny arms already becoming (in the words of Batfink) like a shield of steel. Roxy was a survivor and, even if her school report card read ‘must try harder’ on repeat, she was a fast learner. The first man who raised his hand to her left a bruise on her face the colour of the dark, marble painting she had done in Art the same day. The second man who tried it winced every time he went to the toilet for days afterwards. Roxy soon learned to identify the men who were worth taking a risk for and, as her beauty evolved in correlation to her feminine wiles, she soon gained the upper hand. By the time Roxy officially became a woman, with a learning curve behind her long enough to straddle the River Tyne, she was far from impressionable. Barbie Doll on the outside she was, but inside she was Action Man. Roxy had become the sort of woman who clicked her fingers and men came running.

  Roxy’s current boyfriend, French national footballer and golden boy of the Newcastle team, was her richest and most successful conquest yet. Thierry Agnes was six-foot one of fast-twitch muscle fibres, perfectly wrapped in skin the colour of chocolate mousse. He buzzed his hair close to his smooth, round scalp, which made his big dark eyes pop from his handsome face. His looks were neither rugged nor chiselled. It was as if God had selected the same Plasticine used to create Morph and massaged it like a stress ball for hours before sculpting it into the most handsome man he could imagine. Add to the genetic beauty the fact that Thierry wore very expensive tailored clothes with the natural panache of a Parisian man and had a wallet containing only big notes and platinum, and Thierry was the ultimate prize for every aspiring WAG. Personally, I would never have been able to compete on the grooming front and neither did I want to, but it was fair to say Roxy had landed on diamond-encrusted Jimmy Choos.

  They had been together for eight months, which was something of a record for Roxy, and it was clear when Thierry gazed at her with his soulful eyes, that he worshipped his Geordie lass. She was wined, dined and… well, I won’t even go there, but I had it on good (and rather too detailed for my liking) authority that a man of his stature and fitness wasn’t lacking in that department. He had begged her to move in and had even offered to set her up in the fashion business she had once thought she might like to own, but work was something Roxy had resisted. She preferred to purchase the couture rather than sell it. I even had moments when I felt twinges of pity for Thierry despite all his blessings in life, because the one thing he did not have the power to do with his money and talent was to make Roxy love him. I could tell he wanted her for life. We worried he was just another link in a very long, complicated and increasingly expensive chain. It was a shame but it was, perhaps, too much to expect a girl who had never been read a bedtime story to believe in fairy tales.

  ‘Champagne for the nerves,’ said Thierry in his heavily accented English.

  ‘Thanks, Thierry,’ I sniffed, accepting the glass and taking a sip of the sort of bubbles one did not find in a bottle of Cava.

  Most people recommended a cup of tea in stressful situations but I liked his style.

  I curled my feet up beside me on the leather couch that was as soft as butter and Thierry covered me with a cashmere throw similar in colour to my bag. My lovely Tod’s bag. The one I would never see again with all my possessions inside – my diary, my purse, my cards, my phone, my keys…

  ‘My keys! My house keys!’ I cried. ‘Oh God I’m going to be violated in my bed.’

  ‘It’s about time that bed had a bit of action, pet.’

  Roxy swallowed her laughter when Thierry shook his head.

  ‘This is not a time for mickey giving, chérie,’ he tutted, ‘your friend had a terrifying experience. She must be consoled.’

  ‘It’s mickey taking, man,’ Roxy smirked, ‘but no, you’re right’ – she winked at Thierry who nodded and strode across the immense living room towards the kitchen – ‘sorry, Chloe, I shouldn’t laugh. Imagine if you’d hit the tunnel wall, what a bloody mess.’

  ‘I think the mess would ha
ve been the least of my worries.’

  Roxy patted my knee.

  ‘Thank fuck for knife crime, hey.’

  After taking the details of the young ragie (unexpectedly named Tristan) and promising to send him a reward, I had limped onto the next train, still suffering flashbacks of my near death experience. I was then forcefully ejected onto the platform at Hadrian Road by an officious and very unsympathetic male ticket inspector in a reflective jacket who had not the slightest interest in my story of how I had lost my bag, wallet, ticket and very nearly my life. His only promise was that my name would appear in the following week’s Journal newspaper in the name and shame section for ticket dodgers. While I wept outside the station with no means of getting home, I was approached by yet another ragie called Cheryl who produced a pink mobile phone from beside a pink baby in a pink buggy and asked if I needed to call someone. If my afternoon had taught me anything, it was never again to judge a book by its cover in the future when it came to ragies. Granted, the ragie in question was carrying a flick knife, but he was carrying it with a smile and even with good intentions. Probably.

  Thierry had come to save me on Roxy’s orders, speeding up to the station in a black Bentley that drew as many stares and gasps as if he had just whizzed up on a hovercraft. I could hardly remember him guiding me into the car. Only the part where a girl dressed in hotpants with thighs bursting from the ends like sausages escaping their skin tried to climb into the driver’s seat on top of Thierry while screaming – ‘Take us home and shag us!’ I had to admire his very stylish, ‘Non, merci, Mademoiselle’ – as he booted her from the car.

  I smiled at him now as he silently arranged plates of caviar and salmon-topped blinis, foie gras with fig jam on toast, green olives, sundried tomatoes, mini pretzels, pistachio nuts and a platter of fresh fruit on the designer smoked glass coffee table in front of us. His big feet sank into the lush sheepskin rug covering the floor that was so immense it either came from the world’s biggest sheep or a bleached woolly mammoth.

  ‘Thanks, Thierry, you’re really kind,’ I said with a smile. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve ruined any Friday night plans you might have had.’

  Thierry shook his head and lovingly touched Roxy’s shoulder without, I suspected, even realising he had. My heart sighed.

  ‘Not at all, Chloe…’

  My name sounded so bloody classy in French.

  ‘…pas de problème, you are always welcome chez nous and you do not interrupt. Tomorrow is match day so, you know, I have to sleep early and no sex tonight.’

  TMI, Thierry, too much information.

  ‘Mais, one night off the sex will not kill us, uh.’

  One night off the sex? Bloody hell. TMFIKMN Thierry, too much fucking information, kill me now.

  I crossed my legs and concentrated on trying to suck the filling out of the olives while Thierry snogged Roxy’s face off (or so it sounded) and then bade us goodnight. Roxy tucked her perfectly pedicured toes underneath my legs on the sofa and stuffed a blini in her mouth.

  ‘What do you wanna do?’ she said with a mouthful of salmon.

  I sighed and glanced around the designer apartment that was the size of a small aircraft hangar.

  ‘Let me see… use this second chance at life to leave this limbo behind, buck myself up, sort my life out, start living, get a job, cancel my cards and my phone, change my locks, find the man who’s got my bag.’ I paused and downed my champagne. ‘That is all very important, mature stuff I really must do as soon as possible.’ I poured us both another glass. ‘But right now what I really want to do is get absolutely mind-numbingly drunk.’

  ‘Champion!’ Roxy cheered, clinking her glass against mine before leaping into action. ‘We’ll call Heidi, she’s got your spare key, then sort you some clothes and hit that new club in town.’

  ‘Oh… I was thinking more stay in and get…’

  However, Roxy had already bounced off to her dressing room to turn herself into dance floor Barbie with a holler of – ‘We’re going out, Thierry. We’ll be late. Good luck at the match, pet!’

  After we had met Heidi and convinced her to leave the comfort of the sofa for the glitz of the town’s nightlife and allowed Roxy to doll us up way beyond the nines, the evening went something like this:

  Taxi, bar, drink, drink, laugh, walk, club, drink, drink, dance, laugh, flirt, giggle, drink, shots, drink, shots, flirt, footballers, drink, kiss, toilets, sick, stumble, kebab, taxi, home, dizzy, bed, zzzzzzz…

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  1 egg

  I often suffered the guilt of a sinning Catholic the day after drinking, even though the most I had ever been to Church was twice a year at Christmas and Easter and a couple of weddings. To be honest, the weddings felt more like fashion shows than a blessed sacrament, Easter was all about the promise of chocolate eggs afterwards and I was drunk at every Christmas midnight mass I attended, so it was fair to say I was not a practising Catholic. I was not a practising anything really, other than karma. I was a great believer in what goes around comes around. When I woke up with a crusty mouth, kebab breath, glued eyes and a pounding headache, my first thought was Malachy Doyle’s brother will get what’s coming to him for stealing my bag because what goes around comes around. Actually, that’s not strictly true. My first thought was - where the fuck am I? I was on my sofa. My second was - thank God I wasn’t violated in my bed by the man with my house keys. My third was - he’ll get what’s coming to him for stealing my bag and nearly killing me. My fourth was – admittedly there would be a lot worse men to be violated by… I know, terrible, I shocked even myself with that one.

  To rid myself of the guilt of being a drunken waster, I performed my usual trick of pretending the floor was not spinning and winding myself up like the Tasmanian Devil to hurtle around the flat in full domestic goddess mode. I went from the sofa to the shower, where I squirted potions and smeared on lotions until the air smelled like a battle between Lush and the Body Shop. Opting for the relaxed, girl-next-door, fresh-faced look, I towel dried my hair and pushed a sparkly white Alice band over it, letting a few loose tendrils hang over my forehead. A bit of tinted moisturiser, a coat of mascara and a dab of nude lip-gloss and I was ready to face the world and the mirror.

  Holy fuck! I looked shocking.

  It always worked for the romantic heroines in books.

  A generous smear of dream satin foundation, a second coat of Mac studio fix powder, a giant blusher brush of bronzing powder, a touch of aquadisiac eyeshadow, a few smudges of black kohl pencil and waterproof liquid liner, a second coat of mascara and a careful application of nude lipstick and gloss… and I was ready to face the world and the mirror. I was hungover, mid-thirties and a real human being… who was I trying to kid?

  I dressed in my spare room that doubled as my dressing room, choosing a white T-shirt, a grey V-neck sweater and my most comfortable black skinny jeans. I am using skinny in the loosest sense of the word. They read ‘skinny’ on the label, which might well have applied to the sizes four to eight but, let’s face it, once in the thick of the double figures, skinny was something my jeans could only fantasise about in the drawer before they had my legs squeezed into them. Nevertheless, when I looked in the mirror, I was pleased with the results. The casual observer would never guess I had been out till all hours, drunk enough alcohol to power a substation, eaten a pitta bread stuffed with elephant leg (this I only knew because half of it was stuck to my coat lying in a heap at the front door) and done goodness knows what else because my memory failed me. I had let my hair down and now I was back to sensible me. Guilt extinguished. Let the neighbours come knocking. Let anyone come. Let them eat cake. It had been one of my last vivid thoughts in what I thought were my final moments, which showed how much it meant to me. It was time to bake!

  I didn’t bother with an apron as I found half the fun of baking was getting covered in flour and the occasional dollop of icing that I could eat off my jumper later. It was, in fact, the only time I enjo
yed being messy. After slipping The Best of Wham! into the CD player (I was a child of the Eighties) and turning on the fairy lights around the windows, I gathered together scales, spatulas, silicone cupcake cases and my favourite red polka dot mixing bowl. I then placed all my ingredients together on a tray and set to work.

  I say work but if only work could be this much fun. While singing loudly to Club Tropicana, I beat together butter, sugar and vanilla extract until the mixture was light and fluffy. Everything She Wants accompanied the cracking of four large eggs, each of which I beat well before sifting the flour and folding into the mixture along with a few tablespoons of milk. The flour dust rose into the air, sparkling in the winter sunlight flooding past the twinkling fairy lights and into the kitchen. During Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go, I jitterbugged around the room, wiggling my hips as if trying to keep up an imaginary hula-hoop and I spooned the mixture into twenty-four cases lined up on two baking trays like orderly soldiers. I sang into the spatula between scoops and occasionally licked the mixture until I realised I only had enough mixture for twenty-two of the cases. The remaining two silicone cases, I slipped inside my jumper like two pert implants. By the last squeal of – ‘Jitterbug, yeah, yeah, yeeeaah’ – I was sliding the baking trays into the pre-heated oven.

  I loved making butter icing. How something so deliciously sweet and eye-catching could be so easy to make was magical. In a second mixing bowl, I beat the remaining softened butter and a generous amount of icing sugar to the rhythm of Wham! Rap. The fine sugar wafted out of the bag and settled on my jumper like glitter. I separated the mixture into two bowls then added a couple of drops of blue colouring to one and drops of red to the other. The droplets looked too brash in the creamy mixture until, with a few turns of my spatula, they dissipated and the icing turned baby blue in one bowl and as pink as Cheryl’s baby buggy in the other. I dipped one index finger deep into the folds of each bowl and licked off the sweet icing. Closing my eyes, I sang happily to The Edge of Heaven as my taste buds reacted to the sweetness.