Cupcake Couture (21 page)

She stamped her feet again and shivered.

‘Now can we stop talking about it and get to wherever we’re going? It’s Baltic out here like.’

Heidi shrugged and glanced up and down Front Street. The only lights other than the fading orange glow of the streetlights were in Shirley’s bakery.

‘We need a float for the stall,’ she said.

She started to trudge along the pavement towards the bakery, the fresh, untrodden snow creaking beneath her wellies. She struggled with the folded table under her arm.

‘What the fuck do we need a float for?’ asked Roxy, ‘it’s not a carnival.’

I laughed and slipped my arm through hers in what appeared to be a simple gesture of friendship, but which was actually because I was feeling suddenly protective of my usually strong friend. Not that I would admit that to Roxy for fear of her smacking me around the head with her holdall and telling me to get a grip.

‘A cash float so that we can give change to the first customers,’ I said as we walked. ‘But if Heidi thinks Shirley will hand over her precious coins out of the kindness of her heart, she’s got another thing coming.’

‘Did you hear that, Janice? Queeny and her two princess friends here want me to give them free money now? Do I look like a banker to you?

‘Like a what?’ Roxy snorted.

She plonked her Tupperware box on the counter and crossed her arms.

‘Howay man, Shirley, we’re not asking for free money, we just need change of two tens.’

Shirley narrowed her eyes at us and peered through her electric blue mascara.

‘How do I know they’re not counterfeit? I know where you come from, girl, even if you’re dolled up to the nines these days like one of them celebrities.’

Roxy bristled but didn’t take the bait.

‘It’s only two tens, man. If I was going to the bother of making fake notes I reckon I’d aim a bit higher than that.’

Janice poked her hairnet up above the trays of hot sausage rolls and shook her head.

‘Everyone wants something these days, Shirl’. Don’t want to buy our cakes though do they?’

Shirley crossed her arms over her ample chest in a display of defiance.

‘Exactly, Janice. I’ll give you girls change if you buy something. But for a tenner you have to spend a minimum of six pounds.’

‘Six pounds! But that defeats the object. We’ll hardly have any change left after that.’

Shirley looked at me with an ‘I don’t give a shit’ expression.

‘Aye and we don’t exactly need ten iced fingers when we’ve got all these cupcakes,’ said Roxy.

She nodded at the Tupperware container on the counter. At the word ‘cupcakes’ Shirley’s ears pricked up. Her mouth set in a grim line then slowly spread horizontally like a wire slicing through soft cheese. The electric blue mascara flashed a warning, her eyelashes hitting her drooping eyelids. Janice’s hairnet rose slowly
above the sausage rolls. She looked like a world war one soldier peering over the trenches.

‘Cupcakes,’ Shirley repeated slowly. ‘You brought cupcakes into my bakery?’

She spat the words as if we had brought an army of rats armed with cake slices. Roxy grinned and stepped forward to open the box.

‘Aye, our Chloe made them, they’re ace, look.’

Janice and Shirley edged closer and then leaned towards the box in slow motion. The lid peeled back, their eyes grew wide and Shirley’s hands flew up to her cheeks. Anyone entering the bakery at that moment would have thought a bomb had exploded in their faces. Janice gasped, Roxy laughed and Heidi gripped my arm.

‘Your first public reaction,’ she whispered.

‘It looks pretty horrendous,’ I hissed back.

‘Ladies, I give you Chloe Baker’s frosted cupcakes,’ Roxy announced proudly.

Frosted cupcakes
, Janice mouthed silently.

‘You didn’t make these,’ Shirley growled.

I nodded.

‘Aye she did,’ Heidi announced proudly, ‘isn’t she fabulous?’

Janice looked up at Shirley.

‘They are fabulous,’ she squeaked.

Shirley flashed her eyes at Janice who, I imagined, would later be made to stand up against the wall and shot with a splurge gun for her treachery. However, no matter how hard Shirley protested, I had seen the jealousy flash across her face. I wriggled my cold toes happily inside my boots. For over twenty years I had been waiting to get one over on sour-faced Shirley, who had managed to turn cake buying
in Tynemouth into a battle of wits. She had thoroughly enjoyed publicly ramming a nail into the coffin of my self-esteem three weeks previously. This was admittedly a small and rather petty victory, but it acted as a parachute in the recent freefall of my confidence. This was my moment.

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 about 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.