Cupcake Couture (27 page)

‘No, there’s something more… more…’

‘More yellow,’ my father said with a nod.

I raised my eyes towards my fringe.

‘I prefer the word blond to yellow.’

‘Not your hair,’ my mother giggled.

‘Your aura of course,’ said my father.

‘Oh of course, silly me, my aura,’ I said sarcastically.

I popped a chunk of cheese into my mouth and chewed.

‘Pale yellow though not bright yellow,’ my mother said.

I had to ask.

‘Is that good or bad?’

‘Good,’ she smiled, ‘it signifies an emerging awareness, a hopefulness, new ideas and positivity. Am I right?’

I paused and chewed thoughtfully.

Was she right?

I could have told them about the crossroads I was at in my professional life, about Zachary and the cake making business idea. I could have asked for their opinion and support, taken inspiration from their creativity. Instead, I glanced at my hippie, artistic, non-conformist parents and I felt my stubbornness to become nothing like them re-emerge. I swallowed the cheese and shook my head.

‘No, nothing to report. Same old me, I’m afraid. It must be the cheese messing with my aura.’

My mother’s eyes lingered on my face long enough to make me blush and she gave a little nod as if to show she instinctively knew more about me than I gave her credit for. I lowered my eyes and concentrated on my mug of hot tea.

‘Jango, heat up that soup will you?’ she said, curling her legs up underneath her on the bench beside me and reaching for her menthol cigarettes.

‘Soup?’ I repeated. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve been making chicken soup for the soul now. What I wouldn’t have given for a pot of soup waiting for me when I got in from school after that bus journey in winter.’

‘It’s sweet potato and squash,’ said my father, stirring the pot with a wooden spoon carved into the shape of a giant squid, ‘strictly veggie in this household I’m afraid.’

‘Not strictly, Jango,’ my mother began, blowing the menthol smoke high into the air, ‘you have been known to…’

‘Don’t even go there,’ I said, raising my palm defensively.

My mother laughed.

‘Oh dear, our little girl is still sexually uptight.’

‘I am not!’

My face turned scarlet. In my opinion, there was never a time when sex talk with parents became truly comfortable. Especially not with mine who had embraced the Sixties free love phenomenon, had run with it for the following four decades and were still running into the fifth. Even at retirement age, they were insatiable. I wondered what agony aunt Denise would think of them. Their swinger antics would be enough to turn her hair white.

If it wasn’t already white.

‘Really?’ my mother said with a knowing smile. ‘Who’s the lucky man?’

My father carried three bowls of soup to the table and sat across from me smiling eagerly.

‘No-one,’ I said, flustered.

They leaned closer and peered at me as if watching a rare species at a zoo.

‘No-one,’ I said again, pulling the bowl of soup towards me and jabbing in the spoon, ‘in particular.’

My mother pointed her cigarette at me.

‘Ooh, she said “in particular”, Jango, that means there could be a few someones.’

‘No it doesn’t,’ I muttered.

‘Now that I approve of,’ my father nodded.

‘How can you say that? Most fathers would be horrified at the thought of their daughter sleeping around.’

‘I’m not most fathers.’

‘You can say that again,’ I mumbled.

‘And I’d say it’s better than not getting any at all,’ he shrugged.

I swallowed a mouthful of burning soup.

‘Yes,’ said my mother, yanking her legs into the lotus position, ‘no-one wants to be a dried up prune at the age of…’

She peered at the ceiling, the smoke from her cigarette swirling towards the stationary ceiling fan. I waited. She put the cigarette to her lips, inhaled and then exhaled.

‘I’m thirty-six,’ I said eventually.

My mother and father nodded as if they had known all along.

‘You did give birth just the once,’ I said sourly, ‘one might have thought it’s the sort of thing a woman would remember.’

‘God no,’ my mother laughed, waving her hand at me, ‘it’s the sort of thing a woman would rather forget. There’s nothing beautiful and serene about pushing a small human out of your fandango, believe me. Not that you’ll ever have to worry by the sound of it.’

I took great pleasure in scalding my own throat with the sweet potato soup while my parents exploded with laughter, spitting breadcrumbs over Arthur Scargill’s strawberry blond comb-over.

‘I don’t know what the problem is with your generation,’ she carried on. ‘No sex, no kids, just money, money, money.

‘Money matters,’ I said sternly. ‘Not having money means you can’t do everything you want to do.’

My mother flicked her cigarette ash.

‘A lot of the wonderful things in life don’t cost money,’ she said. ‘A beautiful sunrise or sunset, a walk in the countryside among the flowers and pretty weeds and animals, a great conversation, a kiss.’

She smiled dreamily at my father.

‘Hear hear,’ he said with an equally dreamy smile. ‘We’ve never had much but we’ve had fun.’

‘Life isn’t all about having fun,’ I bristled.

‘Isn’t it?’ said my mother.

I took a deep breath.

‘No, it isn’t. There has to be a certain amount of work and responsibility and money. Money makes the world go round.’

My parents smiled at me as if I were the naïve one.

‘Forces make the world go around, Clover,’ said my father softly, ‘money is something we humans invented to create imbalance and hierarchy and misery.’

‘And happiness,’ I protested, although my words lacked conviction.

When I had had my great job and my prospects at the top of the ladder, I could have argued my point but now I faced an uncertain future, part of me wished I could share their optimism, however naïve, that everything would work out and I would be happy even without beautiful things and a valuable home. That a walk among the weeds would make me feel just as content and secure as perhaps landing a job that paid a hundred grand plus bonuses.

Who was I trying to kid?

My mother patted my arm in the way one would an anxious child.

‘Don’t worry, Clo’, we get your point and we understand you. You’ve always been that way.’

‘What do you mean “that way”?’

She glanced at my father.

‘Different,’ they said eventually.

I bit hard on a chunk of cheese.

Different in my own home, different to the rest of the kids at school; was there anywhere I was just normal?

‘I’m not different,’ I said firmly, ‘you are.’

It was meant to be a criticism but my mother and father smiled merrily and tucked into their bowls of steaming soup as if the conversation had ended very satisfactorily thank you very much. I felt my ears steam as much as my bowl, especially when my mother chuckled to herself and added – ‘Don’t let the important things in life pass you by, Clo’. Thank God for the impulsive pregnant teens or the British population would dwindle to nothing. You’d all be millionaires with no-one to leave it all to.’

I counted to ten but still my temper fizzed beneath the surface.

‘That’s ridiculous. There’s nothing great about growing up poor and there’s also nothing fabulous about teenage pregnancies.’

‘Gets it out of the way,’ my mother said with a shrug.

‘Gets it out of the way,’ I repeated slowly, ‘well that’s a lovely way of thinking about your child’s arrival on the planet.’

My mother sucked hard on her cigarette, a satisfied expression on her face.

‘You know I always thought your friend… who was she, Ronnie?’ my father said through a mouthful of bread.

‘Ruby,’ said my mother.

‘Roxy,’ I corrected them.

My father clicked his fingers.

‘Roxy, that’s it. I was just waiting for the day you announced she was a pregnant teen.’

‘I’m surprised you remember her,’ I said stonily, ‘you never did take much of an interest.’

‘How could I forget?’ my father smirked with an inappropriate eyebrow dance.

‘She was a pretty one,’ my mother nodded, ‘and a livewire.’

‘She had a difficult childhood,’ I said churlishly, ‘it tends to have repercussions.’

My parents nodded in agreement without the slightest hint of realisation that I was in part referring to them. I sighed. What was the point in trying to make them see how I felt? They would never change. They were Jango and Jemima Baker, mad, overtly sexual, hippie artists and they would be until the day they died. I had come here to try and face some issues, to make them see where they had gone wrong, to talk through my fears for the future with them and find clarity and direction but it was all pointless. They would struggle with direction even if they had their own personal GPS implanted in their heads and we were years beyond talking through our issues as a family. They had brought me up to deal with my life on my own as an independent woman. They didn’t want to be burdened with my woes. They lived their life and I lived mine. Who was I to tell them they should be any different?

I was their child
.

Although I sometimes wondered…

I tore another chunk of bread and spread it with a comfortingly thick layer of butter.

‘As a matter of fact Roxy is pregnant,’ I said, trying to guide the conversation along a more normal path.

‘Now that is one lucky man,’ said my father, clicking his tongue.

I grimaced.

‘Unlucky for her though. That tight body of hers will spread in all directions and then there’s all the wrinkles that set in from the sleepless nights and the stress. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be, motherhood.’

‘How lovely, mother of mine,’ I said incredulously.

‘Yes, Jem, you’re being unfair,’ said my father in what I thought was a rare moment of fatherly emotion.

I smiled tightly at him.

‘Once you popped out this great lump,’ he continued, ‘your vagina twanged right back into shape as did the rest of you.’

‘Oh please,’ I balked.

My mother tittered and shimmied her breasts towards the table. I nodded at her bent up legs and growled – ‘Should you be sitting like that at your age? You’ll give yourself arthritis.’

My mother grabbed her right ankle with her right hand and pulled her leg straight up past her ear. I dropped my spoon into my lap.

‘Woo, go Jemima!’ my father hooted.

‘Bloody hell, put it down! Who do you think you are, Madonna?’

‘Actually,’ my mother winked, thankfully lowering her leg before she relaxed and broke wind, ‘I was going to talk to you about that.’

I pushed my plate away and steeled myself for what was about to come.

‘You’re not releasing a pop single are you?’

‘Good idea but no,’ she grinned.

‘A workout DVD?’

She pressed a skeletal finger to her nude lips.

‘I like it. Jango, that’s plan of action B.’

I cringed, which was something my parents had always had the innate capacity to make me do.

‘What’s plan A? And before you answer, do I really want to know?’

My mother sat up straight, clasped her hands and opened her mouth to speak but before she could, the bread maker alarm buzzed to announce the curried fruit loaf was ready. (I wouldn’t be rushing to taste it judging by the smell). Not a second later, the kitchen door flew open and a man in his twenties skidded across the lino. I shrieked and pressed myself against the back of the bench but when no one else flinched, I lowered my knife and stared at the man. He had shiny long hair, a skinny body and short legs. He wore no top, revealing a washboard stomach and hemispheric pectoral muscles, his skin a deep, leathery brown. He sang to himself while he switched off the bread maker, opened the lid and inhaled the aroma of freshly baked bread. He shoehorned out the loaf with a plastic spatula, turned it towards us and beamed a giant white radiator smile. My mother and father applauded, at which point he put down the loaf, bent forward and then performed a standing back flip. I gasped.

‘Clover, meet Julian,’ my mother hooted delightedly, ‘we’re going to adopt him!’

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Turn out onto wire rack

Julian, my new stepbrother apparently, had to scrape me off the floor with his plastic spatula as my head span and I slid off the bench and under the table. My father rushed to fetch a herbal fainting remedy from the greenhouse while my mother decided the best course of action would be to roll everyone a giant spliff to calm the proceedings.

‘Get your hands off me,’ I squealed at Julian whose naked torso gleamed in front of my teary eyes. ‘I don’t even know you. Stop touching me.’

Julian stepped back and raised his hands in a ‘don’t shoot’ pose.

‘You’re right, she’s a fierce woman,’ he said to my mother with a nod.

I clambered back up onto the bench and glared at him.

‘What do you mean by that? I’m not bloody Beyonce. And why aren’t you wearing more clothes?’

It was very distracting trying to have an argument with a young man who had a xylophone for a stomach.

‘I mean you are independent,’ Julian said, reaching for a T-shirt that was tucked into the back of his jeans in the manner of a chef’s tea-towel.

‘Which can not be said of you,’ I growled. ‘Who are you and what are you doing in my parents’ house and, more to the point, what the fuck is all this about an adoption?’

Julian, it emerged (after some admittedly intense questioning on my part) was from Sri Lanka. He had come to live with a ‘rich’ uncle in Newcastle after the Boxing Day
tsunami had all but wiped out his village in 2004. His father had died, along with three of his four siblings, leaving just Julian, his mother and a baby sister. Julian was sixteen at the time and had never been out of Sri Lanka but his mother had decided the best chance of a future for her son would be for him to live with the eldest of her own seven brothers who was a millionaire in England. She used her savings to buy Julian a one-way ticket to England and sent him off to greener pastures in search of his pot of gold.