Cupcake Couture (45 page)

I entered the Metro station through the archway and looked around. It was empty except for a group of students dressed as Santas, elves, fairies and one who had inexplicably come as a giant panda. They bounded up the double staircase, chased
each other across the bridge spanning the train lines and bounced happily around on the opposite platform. The same Christmas CD from the flea market played from the speakers.

I approached the platform where I had first met Zachary and checked to see if I had company. Other than the blinking lights of the ticket machine and a Greggs the Baker’s bag blowing around on the floor, my breath was the only thing visible. I hummed
We Wish You A Geordie Christmas
to myself while I waited.

A train arrived on my platform, the doors slid open and people got off. Many stumbled drunkenly towards the exit. There was no sign of Zachary.

‘Stand clear o’ the doors, please,’ announced the automated Geordie message from inside the train before the doors closed and train pulled away.

I sang
Geordie Bells
and jogged on the spot.

A train arrived on the opposite platform. The students got on and waved at me from the brightly lit train as it pulled away. I waved back with my mitten-covered hand.

I was now alone in the station with just the ticket machine, the Greggs bag and the crackling Christmas CD for company. I sniffed and rubbed the end of my nose. I thought back to the countless cold mornings I had stood on this very platform and waited for the 8.15 to Monument to take me to my office at Blunts. I thought about Naomi, Margaret, Nigel, Ben, Kimberley and the rest of my staff and wondered whether they had missed me at all and if they had seen the article in the paper. I wondered whether I should have sent them a Christmas card. What was the etiquette when you were pushed from your job and forced to leave those people behind?

I thought back to that day. My birthday. I had been late because I had been buying Shirley’s limp cakes then there was the suicide on the line. I felt a pang of
remorse for begrudging that poor, desperate, lonely person the chance to make a mark on all our lives that morning by keeping us late. I felt sorrow for that person’s family and friends, if they had any, left behind to mourn them at Christmas. That day seemed like a lifetime away to me now but to those people it would very probably still feel like a fresh wound slowly forming into a scar. They would be working through Denise’s five stages of grief. I had felt the pain of those stages and all I had been mourning was a career cut short, not, as I now realised, an entire life.

The day of my redundancy had felt like the end of my world at the time, but perhaps the saying was true that everything happened for a reason or perhaps it was just that everything
happened
and then those of us who had the strength and the support and encouragement of others dealt with it and later applied our reasoning. All I knew was that if it had not happened that day, I would not now be the self-employed (less well-paid but starting to be paid a little) owner of my very own business,
Cupcake Couture
.

What was it Nigel had said when I had told them about my baking hobby?

‘
Because you’re…a bit…
’

Well I wasn’t
a bit
that way anymore. I wasn’t a corporate robot and I was thankful for that. Next year, I would not forget my own birthday and I would have a bloody brilliant cake, that was for sure.

I sang
Hark The Toon Army Sings
.

A train arrived and departed on the opposite platform. People got on and off. Some tramped over the bridge above my head. I peered across the train line but did not see Zachary. I looked at the clock. Six forty-five.

I rubbed my nose to try and keep warm, wishing I had a hot coffee cup warming my hands. I smiled when I thought back to Zachary finding me sobbing over
a spilt coffee. Then my smile faded when I realised he probably wasn’t coming. My eyes welled up and morose thoughts began to replace the positive ones in my head. I wondered what Mr Alexander was doing this Christmas, estranged from his son, his business and reputation in tatters, watching the clock and hopefully sticking a turkey and not his head in the Aga. I had done as he had advised me to do; I had grabbed my life with both hands and given it a good shake but I was also standing here frittering away that most precious asset; time. What was the point in wasting time on a man who was probably rubbing his head between two cannonball boobs at that very moment? It was Christmas Eve and I was alone on a freezing cold Metro platform waiting for a man, a business associate, who had had more than one chance to snog me and had never taken it. So he had been caught gazing adoringly at me in the photographs, but then everyone was half-cut that night, including myself. Why was I standing here desperately waiting for him to ‘fit me in’ while people around me celebrated together, walked soggy dogs together and dressed up as elves and giant pandas? They were in warm pubs sipping mulled wine in front of roaring fires while I was waiting, clutching a cake box and hoping I had not been forgotten about.

‘What am I doing?’ I said out loud.

Chris Rea’s
Driving Home For Christmas
began to play as I heard a train approaching my platform. I could jump on this train and be at Roxy and Thierry’s gorgeous, swanky, warm apartment in half an hour, where I would drink champagne and eat foie gras and be a gooseberry along with Thierry’s
Maman
. I had friends and family who loved me. If there was ever a time, then Christmas was the time to celebrate with them.

I bit my lip and wondered what to do. Chris Rea started singing.

‘Driving home for Christmas…’ he sang.

I stomped my feet in agitation.

‘Oh I wish you would just hurry up and bloody well get there you stupid man!’ I shouted up at the crackling speaker. ‘And as for the driver next to you, well…’

‘He’s just the same,’ laughed a singsong voice behind me.

I whipped my head around. There stood Zachary with a bemused expression on his face and a lopsided smile. He shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his grey, wool coat and tilted his head, his eyes flashing.

‘Poor Mr Rea,’ he chuckled, ‘he’s just merrily driving along, singing his song and he’s getting heckled by a girl in wellie boots and a bobble hat who looks every bit the merry Carol singer only without the smile.’

I couldn’t help but smile. My toes wriggled on cue inside my boots and I lowered the cake box from my chest.

‘Oh, I, er… hi, Zachary, I brought you something,’ I said breathily.

‘And I you,’ he replied.

I watched his hand wiggle inside his pocket and I waited for a wrapped up box with a bow on it or at the very least a card.

He pulled out his hand and held out my mobile.

‘I’m sorry it took me so long to bring it back, I’ve been up to my eyes this week.’

Your lovely, peridot eyes
.

‘I did manage to pop around once but you didn’t answer and I didn’t want to break it by shoving it through the letterbox.’

When I was in the shower, I remembered. Had he kept it because he wanted to see me face to face?

‘I love party planning but it can get a bit much at Christmas you know. All the glamour and glitz. Would you believe, I dream about things being normal and natural and not quite so’ – he made quotes with his fingertips – ‘“glamorous”.’

‘I see,’ I nodded, ‘is that where I fit in then? Am I your normal, natural friend?’

He shoved his hand back into his pocket and shrugged one shoulder.

‘I guess so.’

I sighed inside. The ‘friend’ had been a test and he had not even flinched.

‘Unless,’ he continued, ‘you get so carried away with all those messages on your mobile there that you become a cupcake diva.’

I glanced at my phone and then back up at him. He ran his hand through his fringe.

‘Sorry, Chloe, it’s like the diary thing and reading your list, I couldn’t help myself. I recognised some of the numbers as belonging to my clients and it hasn’t stopped ringing. You’ve had more than one call from Cheryl Cole.’

I gasped and clutched the phone as if it might suddenly fly out of my hand and under a train, taking my aspirations with it.

‘Really?’

He laughed and nodded.

‘Yes, I think between you and I, you are going to be a very sought after cupcake couturist.’

‘Couturière, I think the word is, according to Thierry.’

‘Well he would know. Then you are going to be a very sought-after
couturière
.’

‘Thanks to you.’ I tilted my head, ‘and thank you for the lovely comments in the paper.’

He said nothing. I pressed on.

‘I’m very glad I met you here.’

There, I had said it.

He tilted his head.

‘As am I. It’s been interesting. I just gave you a nudge in the right direction and’ – he cleared his throat – ‘I’d like to continue helping if you wouldn’t mind. I know you have great business acumen but I could help with investment in packaging, marketing, ovens and premises as the business expands perhaps.’

I drummed my fingertips on the cake box.

‘A business arrangement?’

He nodded.

‘Is that why you wanted to see me? To meet me where we first met to show me how far I’ve come since that day and hope I’ll go into business with you?’

I held my breath again.

He nodded once more.

‘Yes.’

I looked sadly down at the cake box and wondered whether or not to give it to him as my heart sank into my wellies. Zachary Doyle was a businessperson through and through, as I had once been. I supposed he had to be; Hurley was the technical one, Malachy added the glitz and Zachary was the solid, focused one, up to his eyes in business on Christmas Eve. I purposefully did not look into those eyes as I held the box out towards him. I felt awkward, I had read the situation wrong, but he knew I had brought him a gift so what else could I do?

‘I hope your girlfriend doesn’t mind me giving you this but it’s just a thank you for everything you’ve done for me.’

His smooth hands closed around the box.

‘My girlfriend? I don’t have a girlfriend.’

‘The girl at the party with the’ – I motioned in front of my chest – ‘and the’ – I mimed big hair – ‘and feeding you cake.’

He threw his head back and laughed.

‘Her? Oh God no, she’s awful. I’m just too polite to get away from her.’

‘But she was on the top table with you.’

‘That, Miss Baker,’ he said with a wry smile, ‘was your seat but you were outside glumly drinking champagne, or so a little bird told me.’

My mouth formed an ‘O’.

‘I was supposed to be sitting beside you?’

He nodded.

‘I didn’t look at the top table seating plan.’

‘So you effectively ditched me.’

Mortifying.

‘And the girl with the’ – he mimed big breasts – ‘and the’ – he mimed big hair – ‘happily filled that ditch.’ He paused. ‘Like a grave-digger.’

I sniggered.

‘She’s one of the Blunt family, you may know them?’

I gasped.

‘Terrible social climber and she’s on the lookout for a rich husband. I think her dad’s recruitment company is going down the pan, probably because she’s
spending all the family money on fake breasts and the like. She wouldn’t leave me alone but no, no, she’s far too “
glamorous
” for me. In a bad way.’

I grinned.

‘That’s better news than you can imagine,’ I said.

‘So, may I?’

Zachary held up the cake box. I nodded and he untied the ribbon while studying the hand-painted card, seemingly taking in every detail before opening the box. His eyes lit up when he saw what was inside.

It was a single, giant chocolate cupcake decorated with pink strawberry frosting whipped into a peak. Into the frosting, I had placed hand-made fondant shapes: a tiny Metro train, the Tynemouth Metro sign, a handbag with a broken strap, a pink tissue made of strawberry rice paper, tear droplets forming a string of fairy lights, a coffee cup spilling its contents, a twenty-pound note and one fresh strawberry sprinkled with edible glitter.

He lifted the cake carefully out of the box as if handling a new-born kitten and placed the box down on the ground. I felt suddenly silly and exposed. I had got so carried away designing and making the cake, I had not entirely worked through the process and thought about how it would feel to stand here in front of him at the station with Chris Rea warbling away while he stared at a sugary depiction of our ‘relationship’ thus far. (References to Carlos were noticeably absent. I thought that was for the best.)

I scuffed my feet and rubbed my hands together in as business-like a manner as I could muster.

‘It’s nothing really, it’s just a little something I threw together with the ingredients I had left over.’

He raised one eyebrow and I could tell he saw straight through my weak lie.

‘Really?’

‘Um, yes.’

‘And is it too good to eat or does it taste as good as it looks?’

‘Try it if you want.’

Zachary raised the cupcake to his lips, opened his mouth and closed it around the sponge. He took a bite, then closed his eyes and chewed slowly. I wondered whether I could run away before he opened his eyes again but there they were, open and staring at me, rooting me to the spot. He shook his head.

‘What’s wrong?’ I said.

‘There’s definitely something missing from this cake.’

This was really not working out how I had imagined.

Ever the perfectionist, I felt mortified for having exposed my feelings for him and angry. Angry with this bloody handsome man for making me feel this way and for having the gall to criticise a giant cupcake I had spent all my Christmas shopping time making for him. I crossed my arms over my chest.

‘I put all the necessary ingredients into that cake and I’ll have you know, Zachary Doyle that I am a sought-after cupcake
couturière
. I do not make mistakes, or very rarely, so if you’d like to tell me what you think is missing from that cake then I will happily tell you you’re wrong.’

I screwed up my face as Zachary took another bite and his tongue ran across his lips, moistening them until they shone.