Cupcake Couture

by Davies, Lauren

  Maybe you should have listened to Chloe when she told you about frosted cupcakes before, Shirley,’ Roxy winked mischievously, ‘got ahead of the game so to speak.’

  Shirley haughtily adjusted her tabard.

  ‘This is not a game, this is business and you don’t know what you’re doing,’ she said sternly. ‘You’re amateurs and you don’t worry me because these… these dandies…’

  Dandies? I mouthed to Heidi who was smirking.

  ‘These fanciful creations are not fabulous. They’re not fabulous, Janice.’

  ‘Aren’t they?’

  Janice appeared to have lost the will to live. A sausage roll slipped from her fingers onto the floor.

  ‘Not at all. They’re over-iced, poncey, faddy and far too show offy to eat. I mean look at the toppings on them, they’re all…’

  ‘Works of art,’ Janice sighed.

  ‘No, Janice! Not works of art.’

  ‘Not works of art, Shirl’, they’re, they’re…’ her voice trailed off into the pastry offerings.

  ‘They’re over the top,’ Shirley continued indignantly. ‘People want cakes they can eat without feeling embarrassed. They want to taste it not paint a friggin’ picture of it or put it in a glass box. These are the cakes of southerners, Janice, mark my words. You’ll not be needing a float, girls, because you won’t be selling any of these, these, these monstrosities. Not in this village.’

  Shirley stepped protectively towards the till and crossed her arms again. Roxy laughed and closed the box.

  ‘No bother, Shirl’,’ Roxy said breezily, ‘we’ll just sell them six for a tenner. That way we won’t have to give change. Have a good day, ladies.’ She nodded towards the shelves of cakes lined up ready for a busy Saturday trade. ‘I hope they’ll last till tomorrow.’

  We skipped away from the bakery like the three school friends we used to be. I suddenly felt a glimmer of hope that my life was about to get better.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Beat until combined and smooth

  Tynemouth Metro Station was a beautiful, historic Grade II listed structure with an impressive glass roof propped up by ornate green pillars and red brick archways. Both sides of the train tracks housed the flea market that was already crammed with stallholders by the time we arrived. Heads down, they busied themselves setting up bookshelves, which they filled with dog-eared paperbacks. They unfolded trestle tables, covered with lacy tablecloths and filled with all manner of trinkets, antiques, crafts and (in some cases) junk. The professionals had brought attractive parasols and hand-painted signs directing buyers to their wares. They had also been clever enough to bring chairs and thermos flasks of steaming drinks to keep them alive in a station that was as much outdoors as it was indoors. The cold was already biting the end of my nose.

  The woman in charge of stall layout was Sylvia, a fiery-haired artistic fifty-odd year-old who wore layered, floaty kaftans despite the cold, far too many beads and who littered her sentences with French terms even though she was neither French nor in France. By the time we tracked her down waltzing between the stalls, the trestle tables covered the floor space like a game of Tetris. I was beginning to fear we would be turned away at the eleventh hour without doing our good deed for the kiddies and without (rather selfishly) ever knowing how well the public took to my creations.

  ‘Darlings je suis desolée but you’ll just have to squeeze in that corner between the war stall and the dolls. I’m afraid, maintenant, that’s all I have left.’ Sylvia grimaced and wafted a fleshy arm towards the darkest, coldest corner of the station. ‘People become très keen on the run-up to Christmas, trying to flog their tat to our bewildered customers, so space is as valuable as saffron. You’ll have room for your bits and bobs but’ – Sylvia covered one side of her mouth with her hand as if to share a secret but spoke at exactly the same elevated volume – ‘it’s a bit stinky poo over there I’m afraid, lovies. The war memorabilia stalls always are. I’m not exactly sure whether it’s the scent of death or just decades of dust, but it’s something unsettling I admit. The dollies carry a harmless plastic odour but you’ll find if you look too many of them in the eye you’ll have nightmares for weeks.’ Sylvia’s scarlet lips parted in a silent laugh. ‘I know it’s not ideal mes chéries but some of these stallholders have been coming here so long their DNA is part of the Grade II listing and I simply can’t rock le bateau at this late stage or there will be hell to pay. Good luck my darlings.’

  Sylvia clapped her hands to signal the end of the discussion and span on her Birkenstock to waft away and deal with a territorial issue between a man selling miniature china dogs and a lady flogging terrifyingly real looking stuffed cats. I looked at Heidi and Roxy who both stared dumbly at our allocated ‘stinky poo’ corner.

  ‘Come on then darlings,’ I trilled, ‘let’s get to work.’

  ‘Kill me now,’ said Roxy.

  Heidi set to work unfolding our table and covering it with a red and white polka dot plastic tablecloth. We screwed together the cake stands. By ‘we’ I mean Heidi and I. Roxy filed her nails, chewed gum and glanced intermittently at the lifelike dolls staring back at her from the neighbouring stall. They had prissy faces with painted red lips and Shirley Temple-like curls set under bonnets tied beneath pointy chins. The seller, who was herself dressed head to toe in Laura Ashley florals, arranged their Sunday best dresses and chatted away as if they were her children.

  ‘Ee now, Jessica, don’t be showing your bloomers to the boys. Lilly will you ever keep those socks pulled up. A lady never has wrinkled stockings in public.’

  ‘Weird,’ Roxy muttered under her breath. ‘Maybe they are her kids, turned into freaky dolls and frozen in time by a wicked witch.’

  She did a double take at ‘Jessica’ and blew a bubble.

  ‘What the fuck are you looking at?’ she growled.

  ‘Roxy, stop talking to the dolls and come and help will you?’

  Roxy reluctantly acquiesced and began to unpack her designer clothes and handbags from the holdall.

  ‘This is a nightmare. We’re going to have loads of screaming bloody kids hanging around here wanting dolls.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ I said with a glance sideways at Jessica et al, ‘I’d only buy one of those for someone I really didn’t like.’

  Roxy shrugged.

  ‘Exactly. My mam would have bought me one just to show she hated me, or robbed one more like. Who’s to say all parents like their kids?’

  I raised my eyebrows at Heidi who shook her head and carried on silently setting up.

  Our other neighbour was a friendly old man named George who had been decorated in World War II. He told us how he had sold his own medals on his first stall to pay for his wife’s care after she had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. By the time he had finished telling us about Doreen’s demise, I was blowing my nose on one of our dotty serviettes and Heidi was cupping George’s hands and telling him he was an undervalued treasure. I even heard Roxy sniff a couple of times but, not one to show emotion in public, she quickly wiped any evidence away and blamed her sniffing on the ‘rank smell’ emanating from George’s stall. He was a lovely man but I had to admit the air around us appeared to be thinning by the second as George’s ancient camouflage coloured offerings sucked out the oxygen and replaced it with a gassy stench of a bygone era and a depressed one at that. As much as I admired George trying to supplement his pension, his less than fragrant stall and our evil doll neighbours did nothing to add to the atmosphere of our makeshift cake shop. A feeling of dread crept over me as Sylvia appeared like Mickey Mouse in Fantasia, spread her winged sleeves and wished us all ‘bonne chance’ for the day’s trading.

  As if by magic, a faint sun crept above the glass roof, lighting the stage for our performance. The traders attached smiles to their frozen faces, Sylvia flew to the entrance, the wings of her many kaftans flapping behind her and cranked up the volume on her unexpectedly jazzy red ghetto blaster. Chris Rea started singing abo
ut his bloody long drive home for Christmas again and the first early birds entered the market twittering about what delights they would find this week.

  ‘Good luck, girls.’ Heidi gripped our wrists and smiled nervously. ‘This is for the children.’

  ‘Don’t start singing,’ Roxy groaned.

  Children, it was safe to say, was a touchy subject.

  I glanced at my cakes, imagined blowing out a candle and made a wish.

  By ten o’clock we had sold precisely nothing. Every time a customer saw our colourful cakes and Roxy’s designer gear and dared approach our ‘stinky poo’ corner, they were suddenly hit by the smell, which would make any normal human being crave anything except cake. I say ‘normal’ because the customers who did linger were either the ones looking for war medals to pin on their chests and pretend they had single-handedly run through the enemy with a rusty bayonet, or those who favoured the company of scary dolls over human contact. These customers were not the sort, we soon discovered, who also sought intricately decorated cupcakes. The only one of George’s customers who did reach out for a Christmas cupcake, promptly stuck his finger in the icing and declared it a – ‘Poncey fairy cake for Southerners with more money than sense. Have you no respect for war rations?’

  ‘Dear God, Shirley was right,’ I wailed and consoled myself with a football cupcake while Roxy sneakily punched one of the dolls in her smug dolly face.

  By midday, we had lost all feeling in our extremities and had sold one cake to Sylvia who, to be fair, looked like she was not in the habit of passing the food stalls untouched. She evidently felt guilty for allocating us the worst possible pitch for a cake stall but not guilty enough to stop her asking for a discount. Four hours and we had made one pound.

  ‘I’m sure this après-midi will pick up for you, darlings,’ Shirley chirped, smiling under a moustache of buttercream frosting.

  ‘Have you not seen Location Location Location?’ I said through gritted teeth. ‘Kirsty and Phil would have a field day with us. It’s like opening a cake shop next to a sewage treatment plant.’

  ‘Don’t lose faith, lovies, it’s just a bit of fun and there’s always next week.’

  ‘Fuck that,’ said Roxy, ‘if we survive this week I will pay a million pounds of my boyfriend’s entire salary not to be here next week.’

  But Sylvia had already swanned off to test the wares on the samosa stall primely located next to the train ticket machine. I suspected favouritism when she greeted the dashing Indian owner with a kiss on his nose.

  At one o’clock, we sold two of Roxy’s clutch bags to a girl who was so full of cold she had no sense of smell, but who also declared there was little point in her buying a cake because she had lost her appetite due to – ‘the river of mucus running down the back of my throat’. Her unnecessarily detailed description managed to put off the only other customer we had attracted that hour. Heidi looked close to tears, Roxy pocketed the cash and I punched a doll in the face.

  By mid afternoon, we had all lost not only the feeling in our entire bodies but also the will to live as we watched doll woman sell her freaky comatose children one by one and George part ways with bullet casings and dented helmets to a variety of weirdos while our stall remained resolutely full. Our chance to make any sort of useful profit was fading faster than the winter daylight.

  ‘I’m a failure,’ I groaned.

  ‘What?’ Heidi sighed. ‘You are not a failure, pet.’

  ‘I am. I’m jobless, I’m single and the one thing I thought I was good at other than being a boring old recruitment manager turns out to be a myth. I always prided myself on being able to bake cakes. I looked down on Shirley and Janice. I criticised their bakery. I even boasted about my cakes at work. But look’ – I pointed at the depressingly full cake stands – ‘they’re obviously crap, otherwise people would be queuing up to buy them.’

  Heidi gently rubbed my arm.

  ‘But they haven’t even tried them so they don’t know how great they taste. It doesn’t mean they’re crap.’

  ‘It might do,’ said Roxy.

  ‘Roxy, you are not helping,’ Heidi hissed. ‘Why don’t you go and cheer yourself up somewhere else?’

  Roxy scowled like a teenager.

  ‘Alreet, there’s no need to get arsey like, Heidi, I was only trying to give both sides of the argument.’

  ‘Well don’t.’

  Roxy blew a bubble and pushed over a doll.

  ‘Sorry,’ she shrugged to the shocked stallholder.

  The mood was so strained, I gripped my head, which was starting to pound.

  ‘Oh God, I’m like one of those contestants on X Factor who’s been told by all her family and friends that she can sing like an angel just because they are either too tone deaf to know otherwise or they feel sorry for her. Then when she starts singing, she sounds like a cat being pushed through a shredder and the judges start laughing hysterically and Simon says - “Listen, darling, singing is not your thing” in that really condescending manner and she is gobsmacked as her dreams of being the next Mariah Carey go up in smoke. I’m her, I’m the Mariah Carey wannabe who can’t sing for toffee.’

  A sob erupted from the back of my throat. I felt the air in ‘stinky poo’ corner close around my nose, smothering me until I was gasping for breath. Heidi grabbed a Fendi clutch bag and fanned my face while Roxy handed me a paper napkin to breathe into, which was not altogether effective.

  ‘I can’t bake the best cupcakes in the world. I was only trying to help raise some bloody money for charity and I can’t even do that. What’s happened to me? In three weeks I’ve gone from successful, confident businesswoman to complete no-hoper.’ I said tearfully.

  Heidi stroked my arm again and said softly, ‘I’m so sorry, I wish I’d never asked you to do this for me now. It was supposed to be fun.’

  Roxy helped herself to a Christmas cupcake and lifted it towards her lips.

  ‘Aye says the girl who thought Chemistry was a hoot at school. I could have told you it would be a shite way to spend a Saturday. Oh no, wait a minute, I think I actually did.’

  ‘Roxy, can you click out of this mood? You’re really not helping.’

  Heidi lifted her mitten covered hands in a questioning manner and spun around to look at Roxy but, as she did so, her right hand connected with the cupcake and propelled it straight into Roxy’s face. Her button nose vanished into the vanilla buttercream and a juicy Moreno cherry leapt off on a snowboard of chocolate sprinkles and slid down the beautiful fabric of her Armani jacket, leaving a snowy trail of frosting. We watched it descend in slow motion, our mouths dropping open. It carried on sliding down one leg of her leggings and then came to rest on the toe of her expensive boot.

  There was a moment of suspended animation before Heidi clasped her hand over her mouth, Roxy cried out as if in pain and I exploded with laughter.

  ‘Oh, Roxy I didn’t mean to…’ Heidi began, before a rose petal cupcake thrown by Roxy bounced off her bobble hat, splattering pink buttercream across the wool.

  ‘What the…?’

  ‘At least it matches,’ I laughed, ‘Roxy looks like she’s been run over by a giant snail.’

  ‘Shut it, Mariah!’ said Roxy.

  I stopped laughing when a fondant sausage hurtled towards my face. I dodged it and instead came into contact with a well of strawberry jam in the centre of a breakfast cupcake that was still attached to Roxy’s fist. I gasped and almost inhaled a fondant bacon rasher. Roxy sniggered while wiping cream from her face. Heidi had taken off her bobble hat and was trying to suck icing from the pompom. I looked at both of them and they looked at me. Roxy had a glint in her eye and Heidi’s mouth twitched at the corners. There was a beat and a brief glimmer of hope that we would be far too mature to do what we were about to do, before we all dived for the cupcakes, armed ourselves and went into battle.

  Intricately decorated cakes that I had spent hours proudly making flew through the air, exploding on the table, the wal
ls, each other and neighbouring stalls like George’s unexploded grenades. A direct hit with a football cupcake sent Jessica the doll flying, landing legs akimbo and bloomers on view upside down in her owner’s packed lunch. Roxy launched a football cupcake at Heidi who, with surprising panache, kicked it with her left welly and sent it whizzing past George’s head, scoring a direct hit in an upturned gas mask. George immediately reverted to his past battle glory, donning a helmet and arming himself with a hardback book of warplanes as a shield. With a grin visible through his beard, he advanced on our stall, helped himself to some sugary ammunition and went into battle himself. His first target was Lilly the scary ginger doll, followed by her floral owner, who let out a shrill exclamation when a rose cupcake bounced off her ear, scattering crystallised rose petals across her décolletage. This led to a momentary stunned ceasefire until it became clear that George had been trying to woo the doll owner for some time. The way she smiled coyly at him while removing a white sugar flower from her cleavage, I had the feeling we had witnessed the first throes of romance.

  We hooted, hollered and hurled cakes at each other until our ammunition dwindled. Heidi giggled uncontrollably and reached out for the table to take a rest but slipped on a Santa cake and almost did the splits. She toppled over into a mound of mushy sponge, still laughing as she lay on the station floor and tried to catch her breath. Roxy doubled over with laughter then reached out to try and pull Heidi up. I lifted my gunk-covered hands to my face and gingerly tried to wipe the globules of frosting that hung from my eyelashes.

  ‘Well, I think our profit margin just vanished, girls,’ I chuckled, squeezing my eyes shut as icing congealed in my tear ducts.