When Only Cupcakes Will Do (10 page)

‘But it's too soon! We've got the buttercream dispensers to sort out, the bunting to sew and the paper pom-poms and tassels to make. We're not ready!' Despite the years of working in five-star establishments across Europe, Lucie was surprised to experience a coil of panic. Clearly her run-in with Edmundo Cartolli had had a bigger impact on her self-confidence than she'd thought. What if the children's mothers realised who she was? Would they even allow their children to eat her cakes? Would they think she had sprinkled them with chilli powder? ‘I can't do it.'

‘Yes,
we
can,' urged Jess. ‘It's ten little girls decorating their own cupcakes. Come on, Lucie – didn't you say we were a team? No one's expecting you to do this alone – we can do this together. Erm, in fact, I've already sorted out a trestle table and a dozen old Sunday school chairs. And I wasn't going to tell you until the first party but' – she reached into her shopping basket and extracted a brown paper parcel – ‘I've got these too.'

Lucie stared at the parcel, frightened to touch it. She looked at Jess, then Rosa who nodded and smiled. Clearly she'd been in on it. She ran her finger under the flap and extracted the contents. Two dozen white paper chef's hats in a variety of sizes.

‘Awesome!' she exclaimed, grabbing one and opening it out. ‘It's so cute!'

‘I thought the children could write their names on them with glitter pens and that way we'd know their names. We have the kids' aprons already, and I've invested in a box of paper table cloths and napkins that they can decorate with their names too.'

Jess shot her a look of such hope that Lucie felt her heart contract. She consciously shoved all negative thoughts into the attic of her brain for later dissection in the privacy of her bedroom – now was not the time. Today was the start of her new life, her new business venture and this was her first booking. Jess was positively bouncing with excitement.

‘So we're doing it?'

‘Yes! We'll do it!'

‘Oh, thank goodness,' gasped Rosa, the relief written clearly across her face. ‘So I can expect you at the village hall at three o'clock on Saturday, yes?'

‘Yes,' they chorused.

‘Thank you so much. With Paolo away there's no way I could have coped with keeping ten five-year-olds occupied with party games. Pass the parcel and musical chairs can only hold their interest for a short time before all hell breaks loose and they start climbing the walls. Remember Martha's party last month, Jess?'

The two women shivered at the recollection. ‘My brother has promised to come down from London to help. I haven't seen him for a couple of months and I'm useless at keeping up with his life. He keeps telling me to sign up to Facebook so I can stay in touch with what's happening in the family, but who has the time? None of our relatives, or Paolo's in Italy, bother with social media so it would be pointless. It'll just become another voracious devourer of my time. Anyway, I prefer to see my baby brother face-to-face so I can see the whites of his eyes when I'm cross-examining him on his love life. Gabriella adores him too. Oh, the children are going to love the Travelling Cupcake Company and I don't have to worry about the party bags or the cleaning up afterwards! Perfect.'

When Rosa and Gabriella left – Gabriella clutching a frog cake pop wrapped in cellophane and tied with a scarlet ribbon – Lucie smiled at Jess as they got stuck in to the tidying up. She looked happier than she'd seen her for a long time and she realised it couldn't be easy bringing up two boisterous boys on her own. Making relationships work was tough and maybe there was no such thing as everlasting love. The debacle with Alex had confirmed that.

Despite the wriggle of nerves in the pit of her stomach over the forthcoming party, she sent up a missive of thanks to her guardian angel for all her numerous blessings, most of all her family – and especially her mother who, despite her indisputable talents overshadowing those of her children, had instilled in her a creative passion that would see her through life.

If the Travelling Cupcake Company ended in disaster she knew she could always find work as kitchen staff, even if it had to be a washer of dishes – in all well-run restaurants, every cog in the machine was an essential part of the whole. She truly hoped that her new business would flourish, but if it didn't she could trawl the streets of West London and find something to bring in an income.

So why had she allowed her recent experience in the capital to smother her confidence?

The answer to that question zapped into her unsuspecting brain accompanied by a picture of Ed Cartolli's face, complete with his familiar smirk. Okay, his review had probably been published before he realised that the person who had served him smoked chilli-flavoured tiramisu was his old Le Cordon Bleu rival, but there was no getting away from the fact that his visit to Francesca's had been the catalyst to her losing her job.

But she took a deep breath and shoved the unwelcome interruption deep into the crevices of her mind. Yes, the first children's party would be a challenge, but what worthwhile enterprise wasn't? She grabbed one of the paper chef's hats and on the front scrawled ‘Chef Jess' and stuck it on her sister's head and did the same for herself.

It felt good.

Chapter Eleven

The day of Gabriella's fifth birthday party dawned clear and bright. Late spring was Lucie's favourite time of the year. A light breeze wafted through the streets, licking the eaves and tickling her spirits to elicit a smile. The sunshine had drawn the residents of Richmond out in force, mowing their lawns, sweeping their paths in a rhythmic workout to a symphony of birdsong. Traffic was light and she could even see a family of ducks floating serenely on their neighbour's pond, its surface a mirror to the infinite sky, broken only by the occasional silhouette of a lone magpie.

It was a short stroll to the village hall where the party was being held, but there was a lot to carry and, as the ice-cream van wouldn't be ready until the next day, it took her three trips in Jess's ancient Mini Cooper to transport the many plastic containers and cardboard boxes containing the tablecloth, napkins, chef hats and baked goodies to the venue.

‘Look, Jess, there's a parking bay right next to the front door. It'll be an ideal spot to park the ice-cream van when we've done it up. Great publicity, too, with the Travelling Cupcake Company logo emblazoned along the side. It's such a warm, sunny day, it's a shame we don't have it already – we could offer ice cream!' laughed Lucie.

‘No ice cream, but we've got oodles and oodles of buttercream icing!' smiled Jess from behind a tower of Tupperware boxes. ‘Are you sure ten cupcakes per child will be enough to go round?'

Lucie unlocked the door to the hall with the key she'd collected from the vicar's wife the previous evening. As she stepped inside, her nostrils detected the familiar musty fragrance so reminiscent of childhood Sunday mornings when she and Jess would play games with the other children while their parents caught up on the village gossip after morning service.

They began unpacking their equipment and the boxes of cakes. It didn't take long and they quickly moved on to setting up the long table, chairs and dishes of decorations as well as laying out the piping bags filled with three different colours of buttercream icing – a baby pink, a peppermint green and a pale peach. Lucie had made a couple of additional bags of icing for Lewis and Jack – but these were of the vibrant Kermit green and pillar-box red variety.

She inserted the final chocolate cupcake in the pyramid cake frame she had designed to cater for the adults attending the party and made her way to the door. A high-pitched shriek met her ears. The little girls had arrived, resplendent in their party frocks, the ribbons in their hair caressed by shafts of April sunshine. Within minutes the village hall reverberated with cries of happiness and celebration.

‘Hey, Lucie, stop taking photographs and come and help!' called Jess, her hands in a pair of yellow Marigolds as she performed her habitual role of tidier-upper.

Lucie raised her phone a final time, took a quick snap, and stuck her phone back in her pocket, a smile playing on her lips. ‘Sorry, Jess. I wasn't going to tell you, but I think if I'm really going to make a go of this I need all the publicity I can get. These shots will look great on our website. And at the risk of
being called a hypocrite, I intend to reopen my Twitter and Facebook accounts and set up Instagram and Pinterest accounts, which will be perfect to showcase the cakes.'

There was a loud clatter as one of the young guests dropped her heavily adorned cupcake on the floor. Perhaps inevitably, it landed upside-down. The little girl's mouth formed a moue of mute horror and her lower lip trembled as her eyes sought her mother. But Lucie was onto it.

‘Hey, Maddy, don't worry about that. Here's one of my special princess cakes made with real strawberries. Why don't you decorate this one with these paper hearts and the sparkly red glitter?'

The girl took the proffered cake, checked with her mother that it was okay and resumed her creative foray.

Disaster averted.

But the reprieve was only temporary as one of the mothers broke away from the pack and sidled up to Lucie. The woman scrunched up her pert, ski-slope nose and scrutinised Lucie's face as though she were an oil painting in a gallery. Having satisfied herself as to her initial hunch, she raised a crimson-painted fingernail and pointed to Lucie's chest.

‘It's you, isn't it?' Her affected nasal drone rang through the room and her charm bracelet jangled from her wrist as she jabbed her finger in Lucie's direction.

‘Erm, yes,' Lucie assured her, unsure whether there was any other answer to such a ridiculous question.

‘You're that girl! Livid Lucie. I thought I recognised you when we came in. I'm really good with faces. Hey, Claire, it's the girl who had the meltdown on social media!'

Lucie's knees weakened and she felt like she'd just stepped off a fairground waltzer. She stared at the heavily made-up woman with the eyebrows that looked like two slugs had lost their way, as the heat in her cheeks flamed and her breath caught in her throat. Her ability to form a cogent response had been temporarily switched off.

‘So, this is what you're doing now? Children's birthday parties? I must say, these cake pops are just adorable!'

‘Erm, thanks,' she managed to croak, her eyes seeking out Jess to plead for her to come to her rescue.

‘Do you mind if I take a selfie with you? I mean, you're famous, right?'

Before Lucie could agree the woman held her phone aloft and a photo was winging its way into cyberspace.

‘Erm, Greta, why don't you…' began Lucie, her hand stretched towards Greta's elbow. But Greta was having none of it.

‘Now, can I have one of us standing next to that gorgeous bunting? Ooo, Karl is going to freak when I tell him I've met you! Oh, look, I've been retweeted already!'

Jess rode to Lucie's rescue and draped her arm over Greta's skinny shoulders to steer her away to the kitchen where the pyramid of chocolate cupcakes topped with chocolate ganache and crushed parma violets awaited a taste-test alongside the birthday girl's specially ordered cake – a Disney Princess-inspired cake crowned with five golden candles, awaiting its debut at the end of the session. It looked too good to pierce its perfection with a carving knife.

‘Can I invite you to unveil the pièce de résistance?' Jess suggested.

Greta held her iPhone aloft and dutifully shimmied into the frame next to the conical-shaped mountain of cupcakes dripping in the glossy ganache, delighted to be the centre of attention for a few moments. She selected one of the cakes from the bottom rung and held it alluringly to her mouth. Running the tip of her tongue along her lower lip, she extended her pinky finger and clicked.

Lucie cast a grateful glance at Jess who smiled back encouragingly. She returned to her task of helping a girl with auburn ringlets stick chocolate buttons and Smarties onto her spaceship creation. Lucie made a mental note to remember that not all girls appreciated pink.

‘Greta, will you put that phone away!' whispered Jess.

‘Hey, look, I've been retweeted twenty times already!'

‘Greta!'

‘Look, Jess, it's just a couple of pictures of this stunning chocolate tower and Gabriella's awesome birthday cake. It's what's called marketing, you know. And people would pay good money for the interest that's been generated by… well, by your sister's internet stardom.'

‘It's because of social media that Lucie had her meltdown in the first place. It's car-crash viewing and it's cruel!'

‘Awesome! I'm not usually one to say I told you so, but I told you so. Look!' Greta turned the screen towards Jess who squinted to read the messages that had been tweeted.

‘Oh for smell-o-twitter – those #chocolatecupcakes look wonderful!'

‘Send a sample my way please #LividLucie #TheTravellingCupcakeCompany'

‘Cappuccino and toffee cupcake for me please #sodthediet

‘Oh my God, no way! The Travelling Cupcake Company has been retweeted by Ed Cartolli!'

‘Greta!'

‘What's wrong with that? You don't have to meet him. It's just a tweet.'

‘Just don't tell Lucie, okay?'

Greta rolled her eyes and returned to the makeshift table where the girls seemed to be wearing most of the cupcake toppings. Thank goodness for the aprons.

‘Can we eat these now?' Gabriella asked Lucie, holding up a large cupcake overladen with chocolate buttons and sprinkles cascading down onto the table like sapphire rain.

‘Sure.'

‘I made this one for my Uncle Mundi. He's promised to come to my party, you know. He's always late. Mum says it's his Italian jeans that always make him late so I asked him to wear his school trousers for my birthday. Do you think he'll like the blue sprinkles?'