Christmas at the Cupcake Café

1 tsp ground ginger pinch salt

14g chopped walnuts

145g golden raisins

145g chopped dates

In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugar together. Add the treacle, egg and sour cream; mix well. Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger and salt; gradually add to creamed mixture. Stir in walnuts, raisins and dates. Chill for 2 hours or until easy to handle.

On a floured surface, roll out dough finely. Cut with a 211/2 inch round cookie cutter. Place on greased baking sheets. Bake at 160°C/gas mark 3 for 12–15 minutes. Cool completely. Allow to be inhaled by hungry cross people.

Issy was at Darny’s school, and, currently, feeling a complete and utter fraud. Actually, it was awful. She was surrounded by people who all knew each other and were chatting furiously amidst peals of laughter, under fluorescent lighting, the smell of cheap mulled wine failing completely to cover up the undercurrent that was still after all these years so familiar to Issy: sweat, horrific aftershave rendered by the bucketload, trainers, illicit cigarettes and a harder-to-place hormonal fug that made everyone a little louder and more excitable.

She shouldn’t even be here; she had just been so horrified when Austin had remarked casually that he didn’t normally go to Darny’s end-of-term concerts any more because Darny hated him being there so much and played up and they both got embarrassed.

‘I thought watching kids in nativity plays was the good bit about having them,’ she’d said, outraged.

‘After the year with the politically motivated capitalist innkeeper being portrayed as the leader of UKIP, and the dope-smoking shepherd? No. We all kept out of it after that,’ Austin had said wearily. ‘Anyway, now he’s at secondary school they don’t do a nativity any more, they do some contemporary stuff.’

‘Shit,’ said Darny helpfully. ‘He means contemporary shit.’

‘And have you got a part?’

Darny had shrugged his shoulders, which Issy took to mean yes, I do, and Issy had insisted they were going and both the boys had slumped in a way that made them look less like brothers and more like identical twins.

‘You have to encourage young people,’ said Issy, who felt strongly about this after a year of watching increasingly dejected teenagers turn up looking for work with barely literate CVs. None of these kids had a job or any experience and she wished she could do more for them; but the CVs were all full of grandiose claims about empowerment and being an envelope-pushing people person and horrible sub-Apprentice claims that, when she looked at the slouching, embarrassed adolescent in front of her, didn’t seem to be helping anyone. Austin called her Jamie Oliver, but he agreed. Just not when it came to Darny.

‘It’ll make things worse,’ he said. ‘Darny doesn’t need an excuse to open his mouth.’

‘No, he needs to know when it’s appropriate,’ said Issy. ‘That’s why we need to be there for him.’

But then, of course, Austin had got called away to the land of women with pin-thin legs and spiky heels and amazing luxury and being cosseted all day long, and it was she who had to pull on as many layers of clothing as she could manage after a long day at the café and try to catch out Darny as he insisted that they’d been instructed to be all in black as Miss Fleur had convinced them that that would make it more dramatically powerful. Issy had sighed and finally agreed.

It had been bracingly cold outside, and they’d passed other families rushing towards the main school building on Carnforth Road. Words of merry excitement filled the air, and Issy couldn’t help but feel a momentary pang; everyone was excited about being with their families at Christmas time, and she hadn’t even heard from her bloody mother, while Austin was miles away and Darny was already, before they’d even got to the school gates, disappearing into a vast sea of adolescents, most of whom were impossible to tell apart. Issy supposed it was a true sign of growing older when you couldn’t really tell what young people looked like; individually they just looked young.

Oh, she missed her Gramps so much. He was good at young people. He liked them, encouraged them. He’d hired lots of apprentices in the bakery, some of them from awful backgrounds, and the vast majority had thrived and done well and gone on to other jobs and lives elsewhere, and for so long they’d received hundreds of Christmas cards every year from happy customers and family friends and … Issy didn’t even open email Christmas cards. She just couldn’t see the point these days.

Of course everyone else knew where to go, so she played with her phone to make it look like she was very busy and engaged, and followed the general stream towards the gym auditorium. Someone had obviously tried to make it look festive – there were paper streamers hanging from the ceilings – but it couldn’t disguise the fact that this was an inner-city school trying its best, not a posh luxury private school with theatrical societies and fully equipped sound-mixing desks.

Issy paid a pound for a plastic cup of scorching, slightly bitter mulled wine to give herself something to do, and reminded herself to stay out of the line of sight of any of Darny’s teachers; that was strictly Austin’s department. One of the reasons, she figured, that she and Darny stayed on reasonably friendly terms was that she hadn’t once interfered in his schooling or how he was getting on, even when her fingers itched to do so, and she knew it was the right thing. He had frequent letters home and detentions, and Austin would sigh and beg him to behave, and Darny would put forward very rational arguments as to why he shouldn’t have to, and it would go back and forth until everyone was exhausted and frayed and Issy would retire to the kitchen and whip up some Peacekeeper cookies and hope that one or other of them would grow out of it.

She didn’t know a soul at the school. She texted Austin quickly. He was just leaving another meeting and texted back, ‘I told you not to go’, which was of course not helpful and made Issy wonder what the emoticon was for mild frustration. She sipped her mulled wine – the second sip was slightly better than the first, on balance – and wondered who to text next. This was danger hour for Helena, who would be trying to settle Chadani into bed, a process that could take several hours. Then her other friends … but it had been so long, and they all (she tried not to count, but they mostly did) had children now, and had moved away, or were travelling all the time, or didn’t really know what to talk to her about once they’d got past cakes. She really needed someone to whom she could say, ‘Isn’t this just total hell?’