The Accidental Baker

by Clare London

  THE ACCCIDENTAL BAKER

  Copyright ©2019 Clare London

  Published by Jocular Press

  All Rights Reserved

  This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission. This book cannot be copied in any format, sold, or otherwise transferred from your computer to another through upload to a file sharing peer to peer program, for free or for a fee. Such action is illegal and in violation of Copyright Law.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

  Blurb and Dedication

  Donnie Watson's baking disasters are legendary, but this Easter, his mismatched chocolate eggs bring accidental but astonishing results to four downhearted gay men. The chocolate sweets spill onto the pavement of a small parade of local shops—and go on a matchmaking tour like no other! From a bankrupt and betrayed baker, to a homeless but hopeful man, to a conceited bar owner in need of a reality check, and finally to the hapless but caring Donnie himself.

  After all, Love means you can have chocolate too!

  As always, all my thanks to my office mate Sue for unflagging support and our mutual motivational chats!

  INDEX

  CHAPTER 1: Donnie

  CHAPTER 2: Simon

  CHAPTER 3: Jez

  CHAPTER 4: Henry

  CHAPTER 5: Donnie

  More by Clare London

  About Clare London

  CHAPTER 1: DONNIE

  Donnie Watson loved to bake.

  That didn’t mean he could do it properly, or well. Or without disaster, personal and menu-wise. But enthusiasm was better than nothing, right?

  This Easter Saturday morning, he pulled the baking tray out of the oven with seconds to spare—some of the edges of his signature cheese scones were already blackening—then remembered he didn’t have gloves on, bit back an imaginative curse, and tumbled the tray onto the counter with a loud clatter.

  A small column of steam from one of the scones sizzled for three more seconds, then fizzled out. Another scone made a strange squeal, like a small stuck pig in pastry, and seemed to fold in on itself.

  “Self defence, methinks.” Beside Donnie, perched on a kitchen stool and ostensibly checking email on his phone, Henry muttered barely under his breath.

  “Not another word,” Donnie warned his friend. “You wanted to sit somewhere quiet for a while. I wanted to bake for a while. So, none of your snide comments while we both get on with things.”

  “Sweetheart. I just admire your tenacity. It’s not like this is your first batch, is it?” Henry’s eyebrows quirked. “I’ve sat through three this morning already.”

  “The kids at the play group really like the savoury ones. I have to get them just right.”

  “What time’s the Easter Egg hunt? Two o’clock? I don’t think there’s enough time in the twenty-four-hour clock to achieve that, dear.”

  Henry’s mouth had that pursed look again. He often had that when he was with Donnie. Donnie would really appreciate a more supportive attitude from his friend today, but Henry had been there for him for many years, through diasters baking and non-baking, and they had an inderstanding by now.

  It was just disheartening when Henry was so bloody dismissive.

  “Having a bad day?” Donnie asked instead. Henry seemed to have nothing but, nowadays. He’d always been sharp-witted, but not always so cutting. “The bar going through a bad patch?”

  Henry frowned, though not too harshly: he often told Donnie they had to start avoiding wrinkles as early as their twenties. “Everything’s fine, It’s a difficult time for all retail businesses.”

  Donnie kept silent, partly because he knew from Henry’s staff, who were also his friends, that business was most definitely difficult for Henry’s modest pub-cum-cocktail bar in the shopping parade. And partly because he knew Henry wouldn’t admit to any failings, not even to Donnie. It was the way their friendship operated. Donnie didn’t like to see Henry miserable—and no question that he was, and that was why he was such a crotchety old bugger nowadays—but if he wouldn’t let friends help, there wasn’t much more Donnie could do. Except turn the other cheek.

  “I was just saying,” Henry continued, while Donny fervently wished he wouldn’t. “I hope those kids appreciate all the food you’re providing. For free.” His nose wrinkled as another scone split apart slowly and breathily into four pieces. “Not that you could charge for it.”

  Donnie stuck out his tongue, turned to the fridge and pulled out the other tray.

  “Ah, now. That’s something different. And what are those?” Henry shifted on the stool, putting down his phone, suddenly more interested. Pavlov’s dogs must have reacted in a similar, instinctive way.

  “They’re chocolate Easter eggs.” Donnie paused, because he wasn’t sure that was actually an accurate description. He’d used a mixed set of moulds this morning, basically whatever he’d found in his cupboards, and the results were obvious.

  He lived in one of the flats over a small parade of local shops—a bakery, a hairdressers, a small supermarket branch, a vet’s surgery, a closed hardware store where the owner had gone on holiday four months ago and hadn’t returned since, and Henry’s Bar de Bijou, as he’d rather bizarrely re-named The Dirty Dog. There was enough there to keep Donnie and his neighbours in daily supplies without having to struggle into town too often. Over many years of bakery experimentation, Donnie had collected a wide and frighteningly diverse set of kitchen equipment, but when he’d first planned his Easter menu, he’d hoped to borrow professional moulds from the bakery downstairs. However, the shop had gone bust a month ago and closed its doors until a new owner could be found—as per Emma at the hairdressers, who kept Donnie up on all the gossip. So, he’d had to use whatever he could find.

  Most of his creations were traditional Easter egg-shaped, but others were rabbits and chicks, though he reckoned they were also season-appropriate. Maybe a few of the other shapes weren’t, but he didn’t think anyone would mind the occasional Stormtrooper or the Christmas reindeer. After all, chocolate was chocolate. He reached for the sheets of foil he’d piled on the kitchen counter and started wrapping them so they’d look like the Easter eggs in the supermarket downstairs. During the week, Donnie worked in a cramped industrial unit next to a rather shabby housing estate, where he packaged up printing supplies for despatch. He’d borrowed the foil from work, though he’d tried to “borrow” from the pile of discards rather than the main store. It meant he had to use more than one bit for some of the larger shapes.

  Henry’s dig at him giving food for free had hurt. Donnie spent a lot of his spare time helping others, because he liked to. For several months, he’d been helping out at the local playgroup in the community centre. Most of the kids on the housing estate couldn’t afford a lot of treats, and he wanted his contribution to the Easter festivities to at least look like the expensively-packaged, commercial ones. Yes, chocolate was chocolate, but in his experience, kids were neither blind nor stupid and knew the difference, even while gorging happily on the contents.

  The Stormtrooper, who had a sharp edge that kept tearing the foil, was a bit of a struggle. Donnie pressed hard on the edges of the wrapping and decided just to hope for the best.

  Henry was watching the exercise closely: he still had a slightly glazed expression. He’d sworn off chocolate for Lent apparently, not that he’d ever been a religious person. It was more a case of his continual complaint that just looking at a calorie put his belt on the next notch.


  “Done! I’ll be in time to help them set up the hall as well.” Donnie tipped the scones into a bag, and laid the chocolate goodies back in the shallow tray. “Help me take them down to the car and I’ll let you have one.” He hung the bag over one arm and tucked the tray under the other. Awkward, but not impossible to carry downstairs, though another pair of hands would be useful. His front door was sandwiched between the bakery and the abandoned hardware store and, in a stroke of rare luck, he’d been able the night before to grab a parking space right outside on the street. “I’ve got four bags of homemade sweet potato crisps to take as well.”

  “Whatever.” Henry’s eyes followed the tray in some kind of cocoa-induced trance, but he didn’t pick up the other bags by the fridge. With a sigh, Donnie slung them over his arm as well. Henry wasn’t known for heavy lifting, unless it was a double gin and tonic.

  “Are you having a celebration at the bar?” he asked.

  Henry snorted. “I won’t be dressing up as an Easter bunny, if that’s what you mean. And my clients aren’t interested in hot cross buns. Maybe another kind of bun, in leather trousers.” He smiled at Donnie, sharing a brief and more friendly moment. Henry was very proud of attracting a broad and eclectic clientele.

  Donnie grinned back. “We’re not all perverted kink merchants like you.”

  “I know. Humankind continues to disappoint me.”

  It was a typical Henry comment, but Donnie couldn’t help noticing that Henry’s heart wasn’t really in it. Henry hadn’t dated for some time now. He was good-looking enough—though not Donnie’s type, good grief no, because Henry made it clear he needed someone brittle-sharp and glossy like him, and Donnie knew he needed someone who was definitely not Henry’s high level of maintenance—but somehow Henry couldn’t seem to keep hold of a man.

  “You could offer a special Easter cocktail,” Donnie suggested. He hovered at his front door, arms laden, until Henry realised that break time was over and they were meant to be leaving, and came to open it for him. “Or an Easter bake and take, during the day at least.”

  “Or in your case, bake and run.” Henry was sneering at the bag of scones, which was gaping open under the weight.

  Donnie knew he should have put them into a sealed container, but he’d run out of those after packaging the sweet potato crisps. He’d needed every container he had—the crisps had baked to the size and crinkled shape of poppadoms, rather than the handy, uniform circles he’d planned. It was all very well having a recipe book, but the illustrations were so often unrealistic. For his attempts, anyway.

  Donnie descended the stairs to the front of the building, Henry on his heels. He grabbed the handle of the door out to the street with difficulty, steadying himself against the wall and wriggling the bags of food farther up his arm. “Henry? You could be more helpful. I need to move some stuff in the back of my car to fit all this in.”

  “Is that the time?” Henry made a big show of looking at his phone, not that he hadn’t been glued to it all the time he’d been drinking Donnie’s coffee and casting aspersions on Donnie’s baking. “I must be off, sweetheart, I’ll be late for lunch time opening. I can’t trust Debbie and Stuart to clean properly to the back of the shelves, and I have a new guy still on probation behind the bar.”

  Henry nudged up behind him, apparently trying to push past Donnie and be first out into the street.

  “Henry, back the hell off, will you?”

  There was a sudden squash as they jammed shoulders in the narrow doorway. Donnie gave a yelp as he felt the tray of chocolate goodies start to slip from under his arm. “Help!”

  “What?”

  The tray tilted, stuck at waist level between them as they stood wedged in place. Donnie wriggled, Henry panted and pushed.

  “Catch hold of it!” Donnie moaned.

  “Catch hold of what?”

  Then Henry wrenched his way free, stepped out into the street, and the whole tray fell to the ground with a crash.

  “Oh noooo!” Donnie wailed.

  “I have to rush, sweetheart.” Henry was backing away, barely looking. Had he even realised what had happened? “You’ll manage!”

  Donnie ignored him. He dropped immediately to his knees to survey the damage. A lot of the chocolates had broken—though he wasn’t entirely sure they weren’t that shape to start with—but much worse, oh my fucking God! A handful had bounced out of the tray and were rolling across the pavement towards the shops.

  He reached for the nearest escapees. Luckily there were few shoppers around to tread on him or his eggs, but panic tightened his chest. The chocolates weren’t round like tennis balls, so why the hell did they bound away so quickly? The odd shapes seemed to have their own, innate mischief—they rolled erratically, like a rugby ball would bounce at an angle, like a sheet of paper would dart in the wind away from your foot no matter how quickly you stamped. He grabbed for a rabbit that was rolling toward the pedestrian crossing, then at the last minute its trajectory faltered, it wobbled, then set off again at right angles in the direction of the bakery. And Donnie, off balance and in a blind fright, crashed face down onto the pavement, his palm closing over thin air. “Oof!”

  “Oh my God. Are you hurt?”

  A shadow loomed over him. Had Henry returned to help out? No, the shadow was larger than his friend, and the cologne wasn’t as overpowering. Donnie sat up with an effort. His palms were scraped and bleeding and both his knees hurt. He felt that unique embarrassment of falling like a child when you were actually twenty years past toddler-hood and should have known better. “I’m okay. Sort of, thanks.”

  The man who’d spoken hunched down beside him. Yes, definitely not Henry, who would have been flapping about getting dirt on his designer trousers from the ill-swept pavement. “Just sit there for a moment., It’s a shock when you fall. Do you feel dizzy?” He was older than Donnie, stocky and broad shouldered, with silver in his hair, worried eyes, and glasses balanced crookedly on his nose as if he’d bent one of the arms. Donnie did that a lot with sunglasses.

  At the corner of Donnie’s eye, silver foil glinted in the morning sunlight.

  “Fuck. My eggs!” Now he sounded like a manic chicken. “I’ve got to catch them!”

  “Um.” The guy looked somewhere between bemused and scared. “Sure. I mean, let me help you. Do you mean these?” He shifted the fallen tray to Donnie’s side, then looking quickly from side to side, he rescued a chick that had almost rolled into the gutter. “That’s all I can see. I think you caught the rest.”

  Donnie did a quick inventory check, which was pretty pointless when he couldn’t remember how many he’d started with. “I don’t know.” He wasn’t going to cry, was he? “They’ll all be broken now.”

  “Well. Let’s not panic.” The guy tapped an egg gingerly with the tip of his finger. “This one seems to have got off unscathed.”

  And as they both stared, the foil peeled away, a slow, ugly split crawled from its tip to its base, and it broke apart in at least eight pieces.

  “Okay. So, not that one, then.”

  “None of them! None of them. This is a disaster!” They weren’t much to start with, were they? Sitting on the pavement with his creations all jumbled up in the tray, Donnie could see quite how pathetic the mis-shapes were.

  “Hey, don’t worry,” the man said softly. He had one of those nice voices, the ones that could go soft without sounding like he was talking to a baby. “Baking accidents happen.”

  Donnie opened his mouth, then clamped it shut again. How did he explain that every fucking baking project he ever did was an accident?

  “Thanks anyway.” He had to be brave. After all, kids, we’ll always have the sweet potato frisbees. He struggled his way to his feet. At the last minute, the man caught his arm and helped with a confident, very steady hand. Donnie had rarely felt less like either of those in his life.

  “Can I offer you a cup of tea? You should sit still for a while.”

  Donnie�
��s head felt too big and too slow as he shook it. “I have to drive these over to—”

  “And definitely not drive straight away. Look, just for a few minutes, until you’ve recovered. You don’t have to go far—I’m your neighbour actually.”

  The nice man smiled self-consciously. The skin around his eyes crinkled in a sexy way that gave Donnie more comfort than he’d found all morning. “You’re a hairdresser?” The guy’s hair was cut too severely, hiding most of that attractive grey, and it looked like he’d maybe trimmed his beard in the dark because there was a tiny bald patch on the left side…

  The man laughed, loud enough for Donnie to smile in return, and surely, no, definitely too loud for public politeness, according to Henry’s social rules. “No way, I don’t think Emma would have me. I’m the new vet. Surgery doesn’t open until twelve today, so you can sit in the quiet while I look after you.” He blushed, very appealingly. “Sorry, is that too weird? I’m not trying to force myself on you, just wanted to help.”

  “No, not weird at all.”

  Forcing himself? Far from it. Donnie felt an irresistible urge to be forced upon by this cute man, no problem. He felt slightly dizzy in the face of that blush. Surely you couldn’t get concussion from a blow to the knees?

  And he let the man take his hand.

  CHAPTER TWO: SIMON

  A few yards away from the bakery, Simon Machin and his sister Cara paused as something rolled out from the shadow of the shop fronts and hit the wheel of her double buggy.

  “What’s that?” Cara asked.

  “Eeeeaster egg!” One of the toddlers squealed happily, waving his grabby hands as Cara picked up the silver-covered item.

  “Bunny!” The other toddler strained out of his restraining straps at a ludicrous angle, also reaching.

  “A lump of dog crap,” Simon muttered, barely looking.