Christmas at the Cupcake Café

‘Thank you, Louis,’ said Issy. She glanced at her watch. ‘Oh Lord, I’m going to have to go.’

She searched for the words that involved taking off the jacket without insulting anyone. They would not come. Pearl, still completely straight-faced, hung her handbag off her outstretched arm. Doti and Maya clapped and waved her a cheery goodbye, and she struggled her way out of the door, heart pounding, arms wide.

Just outside, in the chill of the courtyard, she turned back. Everyone except Caroline was, as she’d suspected, bent double with laughter at her new outfit. But that wasn’t what she was looking at.

The little café was full to bursting with happy cheery people sharing their nut lattes and mince pies, showing each other their big bags of gifts, some with long rolls of red and green paper sticking out. Children were running around pointing at the Advent calendar, which Louis was guarding fiercely, doling out one window a day without fear or favour. The queue was almost out the door and steam was rising from the tea urn, and Issy felt, already, only a few metres away, a deep and abiding nostalgia for the place. She was on a journey now, heading somewhere else, far away, and she did not know if things would be the same when she returned.

Chapter Ten

Express Airlines Altitude Cookies

If you live up very high (or are flying) you have to bake differently, because things don’t rise the same way or taste the same. In fact, hardly anything tastes of anything in the air, which is why you like to drink tomato juice even though at ground level it’s a bit nasty. Here are some airline cookies you may want to bake in advance if you have to go on a plane. They make a lot, so you can hand them out on the plane and make a lot of new friends.

Altitude Cookies

125g salted butter

125g white sugar

125g brown sugar

1 large egg

1 tsp vanilla essence

350g sifted flour

75g hot chocolate powder

1 tsp salt

1 tsp baking powder

350g chocolate chips (whichever colour you like)

pinch cinnamon

Cream butter and sugar together, then add egg and vanilla essence.

In a separate bowl combine the dry ingredients. Fold in the wet mix, then mix the chocolate chips in (yes, you can eat some; you don’t have to pretend they fell on the surfaces or anything). Chill the whole mix in the fridge for at least an hour, then preheat oven to 180 degrees.

Cut out with a glass to about ½ cm thickness and place on baking tray covered in baking paper. Bake for around 10 minutes, or until brown (9 minutes if you prefer a softer cookie).

Attempt to avoid eating them till you get on the plane – warning, they are VERY rich for ground level!

Issy was dashing about the house in a panic. Helena had agreed with frankly surprising alacrity to take her to the airport, muttering something about getting out of the house, but time was running short. Issy had no idea what to take – cocktail dress? Ballgown? Five hats? – and Darny was point-blank refusing to pack anything apart from his usual hoodie and fifteen DS games. He scoffed at every hat she held up as if it were for a five-year-old and couldn’t seem to get his head around the fact that they were going to a different climate, which, since the only place he’d ever been to was Spain on a package trip, where it had rained every day, was possibly not that surprising but was infuriating Issy.

‘Why are we even going?’ he had grumbled. ‘Doesn’t Austin want to come back here? Why can’t he come and see us?’

Issy had tried to come up with a good explanation. She wasn’t doing very well.

‘Hello!’

Kelly-Lee was delighted to see the rumpled-looking Englishman again. Now that he wasn’t half asleep, she noticed how handsome he was, with a distracted look about him which implied his mind was on higher things. Austin was in fact wondering what exactly to say to Merv if Issy and Darny simply didn’t arrive. He knew on one level that it was his fault for making everything so tricky; on another level, there was a bit of him, more childish, that said it was unfair that he didn’t have anyone – truly anyone – around to say, wow, Austin, that’s just so amazing! Even his PA, Janet, who was normally his biggest cheerleader, had got very sniffy about the whole thing and was making pointed remarks about how wonderful it was for people who got to go and work in America and how there wasn’t much call these days for old washed-up PAs who got put out of work, and Austin had tried to laugh it off and explain that he wasn’t going, and she sniffed loudly and he remembered how many more things Janet seemed to know than he did and felt guilty.

So no, nobody was happy for him, not really. He did like to think that his mother would have been pleased. But would she? She hated bankers; both his parents had been totally unreconstructed old socialists. She had absolutely adored him going off to study marine biology, had loved the concept of him travelling the world and diving. And if she hadn’t only gone and been hit by a bloody nineteen-year-old driver – well, then he might have been doing just that. At least he was doing the travelling the world bit.

He had a few photos of his parents, but not many; developing pictures was expensive in those days, and they were mostly of him and Darny, which as far as Austin was concerned was pointless and completely unnecessary. Sometimes they were with his dad – tall and with the same mop of unruly red-brown hair as Austin – but there were very few of his mother. He guessed it was always her behind the camera. He tried to conjure up her image, but he still found it hard to believe how young she had been. It became worse the older he got. Sometimes he would imagine her in the kitchen cooking up something nice, but this was a complete fallacy; his mother hated to cook and would dole up sad-looking vegetable stews or lentil hotpots under sufferance. The fact that Issy actively enjoyed being in the kitchen was something he could never quite understand; his mother used to mutter a lot about Germaine Greer and slavery. He saw so much of her in Darny. He missed her such a lot.

‘You look like you’ve lost a dollar and found a nickel,’ said Kelly-Lee. Austin smiled weakly.

‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Sorry, lost in thought.’

‘Ooh, a thinker!’

‘Well, I don’t know about that,’ said Austin, as she made him a cup of burnt-tasting coffee large enough to sail the QE2 in.

‘So,’ she said in a conspiratorial tone of voice. ‘Did your girlfriend love the cupcakes?’

Austin frowned. ‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘Not exactly.’