Cupcake Couture

by Davies, Lauren

  Equally, I had no time to dwell on my redundancy and my imminent (or at least, becoming more imminent by the day) insolvency. Which was a good thing considering that on the one occasion I had decided to concentrate on my accounts, I had worked out my money would last until approximately April fools day, at which point my house would be repossessed like the ten thousand other British people per quarter and the joke would be on me. I had been so scared at this realisation that, after talking myself out of my hiding place in the bathroom, I had vowed to temporarily ignore such grown up concerns as accounts and to try and focus on the positives. I was making two hundred cupcakes for three pounds each, plus a planning fee of one hundred and fifty pounds, which, when the ingredients and test cakes had been factored in, would very likely give me a profit of around four hundred pounds for two weeks work. It was not a fortune, admittedly, but equally it was not to be sniffed at. Unless you were Roxy who spent five hundred pounds on two cushions for her thirty grand sofa, or Carlos who spent three times that amount on a single bottle of champagne.

  Fuck it. Why did I not just fancy the footballer?

  I spent hours sitting on my window seat searching for inspiration, sketching in my notebook, flicking through the old book and scribbling down alterations to the childhood recipes to make them both workable and profitable. I also spent vast amounts of time gazing aimlessly out of the window at the comings and goings in the street. Over the course of the week, presents were delivered by the postman and parcel delivery services. I played a game with myself of trying to guess what the presents were by the size of the parcels.

  ‘Clothes.’

  ‘Tin of Quality Street.’

  ‘Picture!’

  ‘Bike!’

  I watched the snow melt by day and then refreeze into new icy shapes when the sun went down. I watched the young Chinese woman leave every morning with her baby in the buggy, returning with colourful shopping bags swinging from the handles. I watched Mr Downstairs tending to his garden, even though after weeks of freezing conditions I suspected the only living thing in the garden was the gardener. I sat and watched nervously one day while Mr Downstairs’ cat nonchalantly sauntered along the garden wall towards a merry little Robin redbreast that was unaware of his impending doom until I rapped on the window and the bird flew away. I swear when the cat narrowed its oval eyes at me, I felt a sense of dread overwhelming enough to make me close the curtains.

  I pottered around the house, I planned, I procrastinated and all the while, the clock ticked down to my deadline. I had two hundred cakes to make, two hundred imaginative, ‘exceptional’, ‘unforgettable’ and ‘fabulous’ cakes and I was too gripped by fear to actually start baking. I tried not to dwell on the possibility that Zachary had only given me the job because he felt sorry for me. He had seen me cry on more than one occasion and, in fact, the first day we met on the Metro platform I had, if I remembered rightly, asked him directly to give me a job. If this was his way of helping me out simply because he knew I had no other option and because he needed to up his good deed quotient, then my stubborn pride would get in the way. Furthermore, if that were the reason for him employing my services, then what was to say I wouldn’t fail horribly and make two hundred horrendous, inedible, disgusting cakes? As had been the case throughout my life, I was terrified of failing, of not being perfect, yet I knew if I did not start, failure was a certainty. It was a classic catch twenty-two situation.

  Towards the start of the second week, I decided to encourage the inspirational juices to flow by leaving the house, taking in the beauty of scenery, the sights, sounds and smells of the city, the feel of the snow crunching underfoot, and above all (because it was so bloody cold outside) the conversations in cafés. I observed and listened in, mingling silently, feeling like a landscape artist or a writer. I sat in Starbucks with my notebook open, hugging countless mugs of frothy coffee and praying a similar sort of inspiration would find me to the sort that had hit J.K. Rowling in her Edinburgh café. Unfortunately, I just seemed to succeed in blowing twelve quid an afternoon on coffee and muffins and in expanding my waistline with every squirt of whipped cream. I had to stop or by the time inspiration found me, I would be too poor to buy ingredients and too fat to fit in my kitchen.

  I wandered through Newcastle city centre, through crowds of shoppers. I watched the Christmas lights in Grey Street that hung like giant blue droplets of rain and flickered prettily from the top of the droplet to the bottom. I queued with families and old people to see the elaborate window displays in Fenwicks department store. Stuffed sheep sang carols to a smiling baby Jesus while a multi-racial choir of angels, kings and shepherds looked on. In the next window, Oliver Twist asked – ‘Please, Sir, can I have some more?’ - while Fagan tap-danced on the roof of a miniature building. Following on, I watched mermaids and princesses dancing amongst cuddly sea horses and dragons. The music, the animated figures and the lights put a smile on the faces of the people around me in the queue as we shuffled along the conveyor belt of entertainment. Some sang along, others laughed, one old lady shed a tear and one little girl said loudly – ‘Mam, does baby Jesus have a willy?’ There was a sense of togetherness and happiness in that cold queue outside Fenwicks. It wasn’t quite Disney but it was the closest we had and we were happy. Christmas was coming, that magical day when we would all be merry. Apparently.

  The closer Christmas, and my deadline drew, the more society seemed to be gluing itself together in blocks of two. Heidi had Hurley, as long as she ignored the advice of a late con artist with purple hair. Roxy had Thierry, an enormous Christmas tree bigger than the one in the city and a very long, expensive shopping list, not to mention a little person they had created growing inside her. All around me couples shopped together, their arms interlinked, gazing at each other as they thought of surprise gifts and romantic Christmas dinners. Even the people shopping alone seemed to be shopping with a purpose. I have a loved one at home who is also buying gifts for me because I am loved, I read into their purposefulness. Men peered anxiously into the windows of jewellers, their hands in their pockets, jangling change while they tried to decide between the earrings or the necklace, the very small diamond or the more impressive but cheaper cubic zirconia. Women went into shops they would never usually go into, bypassing party dresses and sparkly shoes to go in search of gadgets, tools and car accessories. The more I observed, the more I saw the city centre as being like the set of Love Actually. Love was all around and I was on the outside looking in.

  In past years, I had been too busy at work in the run up to Christmas trying to seal deals before the holidays and wining and dining clients that I had not really had time to dwell on what it meant to be single at a time for celebrating togetherness and family. I had also had Heidi in my single gang and Roxy, who, even when she wasn’t single, had always been up for a girl’s night out (or seven). This year seemed so different, I felt out of place. It was ridiculous of course. I still had plenty of people I could blow money on… if I wasn’t unemployed that is, and I had family… who were all completely bonkers and now included a Sri Lankan refugee and who could have very well decided to celebrate Christmas in March just to be anti-establishment.

  I meandered sadly through Eldon Square shopping centre, glancing in windows for inspiration but seeing only the silhouette of a single person staring back at me. Aware that the clock was ticking, largely because I was standing outside a watch shop, I headed for the Metro to take me back home to my kitchen and back to work. As I walked, I tried to tune out of the thoughts rushing around my head and concentrated on the music playing in the shopping centre.

  ‘We wish you a Geordie Christmas, we wish you a Geordie Christmas, we wish you a Geordie Christmas and a Geordie New Year!’

  I hummed along under my breath.

  If I remembered rightly from Zachary’s observation at the flea market, Geordie Bells would be next.

  ‘Geordie Bells, Geordie Bells, Geordie all the way!’ rang out the all-male voices a co
uple of minutes later.

  I grinned and quickened my pace to match the song.

  ‘Oh what fun it is to ride on a black and white Geordie sleigh,’ I sang.

  I felt warmer inside and out the faster I walked and the more I sang. By the time I reached the stairs down to the Metro, I was wearing a smile. Zachary would laugh if he were here, I thought and at that moment I knew I would very much like it if he were.

  ‘Chloe Baker, you have a crush on one of your best friends’ boyfriend’s brother,’ I said to myself. ‘Pathetic.’

  It was a crush and I was never going to do anything about it, especially now Hurley was dating Heidi and I was effectively Zachary’s client and he had shown no interest in me other than in a business sense when push came to shove. I had invited him into my flat and he had declined. He had seen me with a cheesy footballer on two separate occasions, which had clearly put him off and then when we had met on the bridge, he had talked cakes and little else. Anyway, I had never been depressed over being single before so why start now? I was fine on my own. In fact, my flat was far more fragrant without a man lolling around the place. However, there was nothing to say we couldn’t be friends. Friends who shared in-jokes about Christmas Carols and the like. Friends and colleagues.

  It would be rather inappropriate to trail around the shops buying my friend and colleague gadgets and novelty boxer shorts but I could bake him two hundred ‘fabulous’ cakes. He had done me a great favour offering me the cake-baking contract and he had been kind to me from the moment we met. He even had the ability to put a smile on my face from a distance, so I owed it to him to do a good job.

  Refreshed and feeling more flushed with the Christmas spirit, I skipped down the stairs towards the platform. I had no idea what cakes I was going to design but it was definitely time to focus, which was a talent I had always had in business. Something would come to me if I finally let go of the fear and just had fun with it. After all, everyone else appeared to be having fun, so why shouldn’t I?

  It was a lovely idea. I just hoped it would work because by the end of the week, Zachary Doyle required two hundred cupcakes baked by my fair, shaking hands.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  2 drops vanilla extract

  Julian’s observation had been that I excelled in flavours. It was certainly true that a cupcake had to deliver a taste sensation to match its attractiveness, otherwise customers would be left disappointed and would never come back for more. There was nothing more exasperating, I found, than spending two pounds on a stunning looking cupcake loaded with buttercream and sparkles only to bite into it and discover it tasted like polystyrene. It was, therefore, the sponge recipe I concentrated on first before I decided how I would decorate Zachary’s two hundred (yikes!) cakes.

  I made a half-batch of vanilla cupcakes. It was a simple, fluffy sponge and far from ground-breaking but simple could often be best, especially when the toppings were extravagant, which, at this early stage I imagined they would be. The half dozen perfect domes emerged from the oven fifteen minutes later, filling my kitchen with the aroma of sweet vanilla. I placed them on the wire rack on the work surface and replaced them in the oven with half a dozen moist dollops of chocolate sponge mixture.

  By lunchtime the following day, the vanilla and the chocolate sponges had been joined by sticky gingerbread cakes, peanut butter and banana, lemon, cranberry, cookies and cream, dark chocolate and raspberry, molten centred chocolate and finally vanilla and strawberry with a hot strawberry jam centre. Ten distinct flavours, sixty cupcakes, the majority of which I was happy with. However, four had overflowed their cases morphing into mutant cupcakes and two had stuck together inside the oven, to form conjoined cupcake twins, which I had then kindly separated by eating them both. The cookies and cream were also verging on the burnt side of ready. I blamed Roxy who had called just at the inopportune moment to scream down the phone that the button on her twenty-four inch waist jeans had just popped and flown across the till at the hair salon where she had been getting her extensions done. The poor girl was hysterical.

  I hadn’t worn jeans with a twenty-four inch waist since primary school so what the hell was she complaining about?

  And my cakes were now burnt.

  Bitch.

  Judging by my current rate of success, twelve out of the sixty cakes did not reach my high standards, giving me a twenty-percent margin of error. I therefore had to factor in the possibility that I would have to bake twenty percent more cakes for Zachary’s do than I had originally planned. Two-hundred and forty instead of two-hundred. Which was great news.

  Shit.

  I felt like a Masterchef judge as I sat cross-legged on the rug with the plate of cake samples in front of me and my notebook and pen by my side. I worked my way through ten half sponges, one of each flavour, and made notes about their appearance, feel, smell and taste. I suggested changes to myself and rated each cake according to its overall performance. I then took small sips of water, which I swirled and popped around my mouth to cleanse my taste buds. I was approaching my task with a business-like attitude and taking it seriously. So seriously that by the tenth flavour, when I then looked at the scores and realised six were tied for first place, I refilled the plate with the ten remaining halves and started again.

  Those twenty-four inch jeans were getting further away by the second.

  ‘If you don’t get over here now and help me taste these cakes and decide on the final flavours, you will have to lift me out of my flat with a crane. Come and help me, Roxy. I promise you free cake until it comes out of your ears.’

  ‘I cannot, Chloe man, I promised I’d meet Thierry at the training ground. He wants to go and look at new cars for the baby.’

  ‘Does a baby really need a new car, Roxy? Wouldn’t it be happy with a cot and a buggy?’

  ‘Aye well a baby seat won’t fit in the Bentley. Ugh, listen to me, I’m fucking boring myself.’

  ‘You’re being practical, that’s good.’

  ‘No, I’m being dull. I’m already talking about the baby and baby seats and buggies and frigging cots and the thing hasn’t even been born yet.’

  I sniggered when she called her baby ‘the thing’.

  ‘Look, man, why don’t you come and meet me at training? There’ll be a team of sweaty, hungry professional footballers all willing to try your cakes for you.’

  Fifty freshly baked cakes, a team of sweaty, hungry professional footballers just waiting to try them; tell me what woman in their right mind would say no?

  I rushed to the bedroom to get ready and, while trying to squeeze myself into my slim-fit Seven For All Mankind jeans, tried not to dwell on the fact that I had just consumed ten cupcakes probably containing enough calories to power up the entire football team. This was business and I was a dedicated, self-employed, non-delusional businesswoman; I would live for it and, if need be, grow fat for it. Fatter.

  I met Roxy half an hour later in the car park of the Newcastle United Darsley Park training ground. She knew everyone by name and we were swiftly waved through towards the indoor training facility that the club used when the ground was under ice and snow, as it was today. We passed a crowd, eighty percent of whom were young girls dressed up as if they were queuing for a nightclub. Blue skin on chubby legs was a reason not to wear a mini-skirt in December in Newcastle.

  ‘Roxy, over here, it’s me, Rara!’ screeched one of the girls.

  She waved enthusiastically, her waist-length side-ponytail that did not match the rest of her hair, swinging into the eye of the girl beside her.

  ‘Roxy,’ I chuckled, nudging her in the side, ‘I think your friend Rara is trying to get your attention.’

  Roxy dipped her chin to glare at me over the top of her enormous sunglasses (even though the sun had not made an appearance in the Northeast for several months). She looped her black leather studded bag over her left arm and strutted up the stairs towards the double doors of the training centre building.

  ‘That
little whore bag shagged eight of the top eleven and Thierry is next on her list, which is the only reason she wants to be my friend. And she did actually write a list. Carlos saw it.’

  ‘Carlos? Did he…?’

  Roxy nodded.

  ‘Several times I think, but don’t let that make you feel dirty.’

  Her mouth turned up at the corners when she saw my obvious discomfort.

  ‘Would you believe she knitted booties for us the other day and gave them to Thierry, the freak?’

  ‘Eugh,’ I said with a grimace, ‘that is a bit weird.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Roxy as she nodded politely to the man at the door, ‘I mean hand-knitted booties? You must be fucking joking. This baby will have style, just like its mother.’

  I smiled and followed her inside, while taking a moment to note that it was the first time I had heard my friend describe herself as a ‘mother’.

  Training had finished within the hour so most of the men had showered and changed by the time we tracked them down in the dressing room. Sweaty football shirts hung from pegs around the room and boots lay discarded on the floor. The air was thick with steam and the scent of manly shower gels and Deep Heat. Men with broad shoulders and tree trunk thighs pulled on jackets and shoes while shouting banter at each other through the dense atmosphere. Some sipped tea from plastic cups while others drank blue sports drinks and munched on muesli bars. I recognised a few faces either from the television and magazines or from some of the nights out I had been on with Roxy and Thierry since they had been dating. The unmistakeable orange glow of Carlos’ skin and the glint of the chain around his neck hit me from across the room. He waved while, I noticed with some embarrassment, kneading his penis into his shiny black trousers before zipping them up. When he approached me with the same hand outstretched, I gripped my box of cakes with both hands and let him kiss me on both cheeks. The offending hand then touched my shoulder and slid down my arm, probably leaving a snail trail of baby oil dotted with pubic hair on my sleeve. Thierry followed with the air kisses, while he kept a protective hand on Roxy’s shoulder. His skin smelled of cocoa butter and expensive fragrance. He smiled and nodded at the box.