A Little Love (28 page)

‘I really couldn’t say, it’s a closely guarded secret. Besides, Meg handles that particular order. What colour does she favour, Meg?’

Meg didn’t flinch. ‘She particularly likes the pale pink and white ones, with sparkly glitter on top.’

‘Ah!’ Lady Miriam clutched at her chest. ‘The same colour scheme as
my
Bunny’s
cake!’ She gasped.

‘Yes.’ Guy nodded. ‘Just the same as yours. And can I ask, Lady Miriam, are you planning to cut the cake at the venue?’

She nodded. ‘Absolutely. We shall cut it and give slices with a glass of fizz for the toast. Why do you ask?’

Guy paused and looked upwards, as though envisaging the day itself. ‘I’m just picturing, wouldn’t it be lovely if every little girl got to take home a miniature version of the birthday cake?’ He laughed. ‘I don’t mean an exact replica.’ Miriam laughed too. ‘I’m thinking a mini-cupcake, like the ones favoured by you-know-who.’ Guy tapped the side of his nose. ‘But graced with a miniature pastel-pink bloom and a good shot of glitter, and presented in a tiny square box, with a pale pink ribbon, tied just so.’

Lady Miriam stared at the space into which Guy had been looking. ‘Yes! That’s perfect! Oh, I love it. How much will the cupcakes cost?’

‘How many do you need?’

‘Let’s say two hundred.’

Guy didn’t falter. ‘They retail at five pounds in store, but I am certain that for that size order, we can come to some arrangement. Maybe throw in the packaging for free?’

‘Wonderful! It will be exquisite, won’t it?’

Guy gave a small bow. ‘
Mais oui!
’

Lady Miriam turned to Meg. ‘I want them to be absolutely identical to the ones that a certain someone is rather partial to, which of course no one will hear from me.’ She mimed zipping her mouth closed and throwing away the key. ‘It’s perfect!’ she repeated as she clapped her hands and stood up. Turning to Guy as she left, she said, ‘Thank Pru for me, won’t you.’

‘But of course.’ Guy bowed politely as he escorted her up the stairs and out via the café.

She didn’t seem to notice the clutch of hairy men with lenses trained on the shopfront. Guy listened and watched as she pulled out her phone and before she had cleared the step and her foot had touched the pavement, she was speaking in hushed tones. ‘Hello? Maudy? It’s Mims. I have the most fabulous bit of insider gossip for you! Not a word to anyone, but firstly, you won’t believe who I saw today and secondly, guess who takes delivery of a batch of cupcakes every week and guess who knows what colours?’

It was agreed that Pru would stay out of sight, away from the shop, café and workroom, letting Milly, Guy and the team handle things until the storm had blown over. Pru didn’t like the idea of being idle upstairs, confined to the flat, but she had little choice. Milly tried to cheer her up by making their favourite supper – extra-strong cheddar cheese melted on to thick granary toast with thin slices of tomato gracing the top, accompanied by huge mugs of tea, all of which was balanced on their knees and the arms of their chairs. They had spent their entire childhood eating every meal, no matter how meagre, sitting up at the table with its thick beige table protector and patched cotton tablecloth over the top. The parlour had always been cold and in shadow, even at the height of summer, and its drabness had made the food less enjoyable. To eat like this, even after all these years, felt warm and comforting. It wasn’t quite enough to soothe Pru’s fears of what would happen to Plum’s, but Milly and Meg were also doing their best to be friendly towards each other and keep the conversation light.

‘I was looking at myself in my bra and pants today.’ Milly broke the silence.

‘That’s nice, Mills.’ Pru put her cheese on toast back on the plate. Her appetite, already meagre, had suddenly vanished.

‘No, it wasn’t nice actually. I remember Nan telling me that if you are very thin, you get a bit wrinkly. You can’t have it all, she’d say; you are either a grape or a raisin. Well, I always liked being a raisin, until now. I’m wondering if it’s too late to become a grape.’

‘What are you on about? You sure it’s just tea in that mug?’ Pru raised an eyebrow at Meg.

‘Yep, just tea.’ Milly took another sip. ‘I suppose I’ve realised I’m getting old. I’m sixty-five, so I expect a bit of wear and tear, obviously, but I’ve just been pootling along not thinking too much and today I caught sight of myself in the full-length mirror and I was quite shocked.’

‘What did you expect at your age, to be working as Rihanna’s body-double?’ Pru managed a laugh.

‘Of course not, you daft cow, but I thought for a split second I had laddered tights on: my skin’s gone droopy, it’s horrible!’

Meg shuddered. ‘Ooh, don’t. I don’t want that to happen to me. It’s bad enough having stretch marks on my tummy now!’ She ran her hand over her bump.

‘Oh, Meg love, that’s not the worst of it.’ Milly shook her head and rolled her eyes. ‘I can’t tell you how many hours I spend staring into a magnifying mirror with a pair of tweezers. I am waging a war against facial hair and if I pluck one, the next day my enemy has planted two more that I swear weren’t there before! It’s like they regroup and plan their strategy.’

Meg unconsciously touched her hand to her top lip.

Milly laughed. ‘You can look horrified, Meg, but it will creep up on you too. One minute your biggest concern is whether you’ve enough cleavage showing and is there lipstick on your teeth? The next it’s have I tucked in my thermal vest and where have I left my teeth?’

‘You’re scaring her, Mills!’ Pru looked at Meg’s appalled expression. ‘Ignore her, darling.
I
don’t look like I’m wearing laddered tights.’

‘Well, let’s just hope I’m more like you then!’

The three women giggled their way through the evening’s TV, a rubbishy programme about deep-sea fishing. The blanket of misery had been lifted, and Pru went to bed feeling sunnier than she had done in weeks. The thing she had been dreading the most had happened and so, mixed in with the shock at having her past exposed and the concern at what people might think, there was also a sense of relief.

‘Oh, Alfie, I can’t believe he did that to me. I thought he loved me. I feel stupid; old and stupid. What will people think of me, what will our customers say? I wish I could explain to them the circumstances – not to make excuses, never that, but I’d like to ask them if they’d ever been desperate, ever made a mistake? I can’t believe he did it, Alfie, I can’t.’ Pru buried her face in her pillow and cried until, exhausted, sleep finally washed over her.

With Pru ensconced upstairs, Meg, Guy and Milly opened the shop and ran the bakery. It made a pleasant change for Milly to be so involved, taking the helm. Apart from Milly flicking the V at a rather persistent photographer, they simply ignored the dwindling throng of reporters. Thankfully, the new season of a reality show had just started, which meant that the general public had far more important things to worry about than how a London baker had spent seven years of her youth. Life went on. For Pru, however, it was difficult to relax into her enforced rest. Despite having no reason to rise early, she was up at the crack of dawn, pacing and thinking before most of the city had even stirred.

Downstairs, Milly pottered behind the counter, polishing the glass of the display cabinet and arranging the various plates into neat stacks in order of size. She took pride in keeping the workspace immaculate. A couple of regulars scanned the broadsheets while enjoying their breakfasts. One was sipping his coffee in between bites of his morning pastry, which today was filled with fat apricots and finished with toasted almonds and a generous dusting of icing sugar. Another was devouring her favourite eggs Benedict, served on plump homemade toasted muffins and speckled with freshly ground black pepper that clung to the glossy, butter-coated spinach. This was what Plum Patisserie’s customers cared about: good food served in a pleasant environment. On this bright morning, with the sun shining through the window and the coffee machine giving off its rich aroma, how the proprietor had raised the funds to start up seemed of little consequence.

Guy was instructing Meg in how to make a good basic white bread dough. They wore matching Plum Patisserie pinnies and Meg was bent over the workbench, rapt by his demonstration. Guy worked better when he had an audience.

The ingredients were lined up: strong white bread flour, softened butter, yeast, salt, olive oil and water. Guy held the jug of water up to Meg.

‘This, chérie, is very important. Dip your fingers in and feel the temperature. The water is not cold, nor hot, it is the same temperature as your fingers, like feeling nothing, okay?’

Meg nodded. ‘Like feeling nothing. Okay.’

Guy placed the large china mixing bowl on the counter top and tipped in the flour and the butter. ‘Watch, Meg. On one side we put the salt.’ He poured a little salt mountain on to the left-hand side of the pile. ‘And then on the other side we place the yeast.’ He tipped the yeast on the opposite side.

‘Why can’t you just tip it all in together?’

‘
Non
,
non
,
non!
’ Guy shook his head. ‘The salt will kill the yeast!’ This he almost shouted. ‘Keep it apart until we have mixed it.’

He took a large metal spoon and gently stirred the ingredients. ‘Now, we add the water that is the right temperature – and we know this, how?’

‘Because it feels like nothing, not too hot or too cold!’

‘
Exactement!
’

Guy ditched the spoon and, using his fingers, turned the mixture against the bowl, incorporating half of the water. He continued to add the water in small drizzles, working it in with his fingers, gathering the flour from the side of the bowl, until eventually he’d formed a fat blob of dough and the bowl was clean.

‘You’ve still got some water left. Shall I put the rest in?’

Guy shook his head and took the ball of dough from the bowl, placing it in Meg’s palms. ‘This is what you listen to: the dough. Let it speak to you, it will tell you whether it is too sticky or soggy or dry. It will tell you what it needs. It doesn’t matter how many ingredients you have – you listen to your mixture! Okay?’

Meg nodded but looked petrified, far from okay. She wasn’t sure what she could learn from listening to her dough.

Guy painted the work surface with olive oil and took the dough from Meg’s hands, placing it in the middle.

‘You work the mixture between your fingers, use the knuckles of this hand and with the other you pull the other half of the dough towards you,
comme ça
.’ He worked quickly, using both his hands in a hypnotic action. ‘We then lift the edges over and back to the middle, and turn the dough, before starting again. Do you see?’

Meg nodded, watching the muscles cording in his forearms, fascinated by his skill.

‘Find your rhythm, Meg, and once you have, the dough starts to become elastic. And that is when the dough comes to life. As you push it away, it will push back, challenging you. You must not let it win, ever!’ Again he shouted. ‘Master your dough and it will become your bread!’

Guy flicked his hand over his head like a dancer and held the pose. Meg felt the beginnings of a giggle, but respected him too much to give into it. Besides, he was a master of his craft and she wanted to learn all she could.

An hour later, Meg returned to the covered dough and it had doubled in size! She couldn’t believe how exciting that was. But nothing was as wonderful as the finished product that was pulled from the oven later – crisp, golden and shiny, with floury crosses cut into the top. Meg felt her mouth water as she waited for it to cool. The smell was intoxicating.

Guy held the loaf close to her ear and knocked on the bottom. ‘Can you hear? It sounds hollow.’

Meg nodded.

‘That means it’s cooked!’

Milly was called down and presented with slices of warm bread smeared with a hint of good salted butter. She smelled the bread and pushed at it with her finger before placing a chunk on her tongue. ‘Oh, Meg! This is really, really good.’

‘Guy did most of the work, I only helped a bit.’ Meg cracked a big smile as Milly reached for another slice.

Guy looked at his watch and grabbed his coat as he left. ‘
Merde!
I am late for my zumba!’

‘Sounds painful!’ Milly whispered.

Meg laughed.

‘Fancy a cuppa?’ Milly asked.

‘Yes please.’ Meg nibbled more of the loaf and could have quite easily folded slice after slice into her mouth until it was all gone. ‘I can’t believe I helped make this. I’ve never been good at anything and now I’m learning to bake! Thanks to Guy.’

‘He’s one in a million, more like family.’ Milly nodded.

‘Well, it’s the nicest little family I’ve ever been a part of.’ Meg felt the blush creep over her face. She didn’t want to assume she was part of the family; that wasn’t quite what she had meant.

‘Me too!’ Milly sipped her tea. ‘Do you not see your mum and dad?’

Meg shook her head and twirled the apron tie between her thumb and finger. ‘Nah, not really. But you don’t miss what you never had, that’s what they say, isn’t it?’

‘That’s what they say, but I don’t think it’s always true. At least not for me. I miss being a mum and I’ve missed being a wife; I’ve never had either, but I still ache for it sometimes. I wonder what it would be like to have a different sort of life, a more conventional life.’

Milly’s kindness and honesty chipped away at Meg’s stiff upper lip and she found she was crying. ‘Sorry, Milly.’ She sniffed and wiped her nose on her arm.

‘You cry, girl, if you want, that’s okay.’

‘I’m all right most of the time because I don’t think about it, but when I do, it takes me right back. Every night that I was in care I prayed that tomorrow would be the day that she came and got me. I’d get my flip-flops ready just in case she was coming to take me out, but it never happened. I used to invent stories as to why she couldn’t make it that particular day, like she’d missed the bus or she’d got the flu. I never gave up on her. I believed that one day she would come for me and she’d take me to the seaside, just like she promised.’ Meg used her sleeve to wipe her tears. ‘And a couple of years ago, she did turn up and it didn’t matter that I was nearly nineteen. When she pitched up, I was over the moon. It meant I hadn’t been lying to myself for all those years, I was proved right. It meant she did love me after all.’