Melt the butter, cocoa and Coca-Cola in a saucepan over a low heat. Pour this mixture into the dry ingredients, stir well with a wooden spoon, and then add the buttermilk mixture, beating until the batter is well blended.
Pour into your prepared liners and bake for 15 minutes, or until risen and a skewer comes out clean. Set aside to cool.
To make the frosting, beat together the butter and icing sugar until no lumps are left – I use a freestanding mixer with the paddle attachment, but you could use an electric whisk instead. Stir the cola syrup and milk together in a jug, then pour into the butter and sugar mixture while beating slowly. Once incorporated, increase the speed to high and whisk until light and fluffy. Carefully stir in your popping candy to taste. It does lose its pop after a while, so the icing is best done just a few hours before eating.
Spoon your icing into a piping bag and pipe over your cooled cupcakes. Decorate with fizzy cola bottles or a slice of candied lemon, a stripy straw or candy cane and an extra sprinkling of popping candy.
Austin’s newly assigned PA, MacKenzie, was incredibly beautiful. She was tiny, with a gym-honed body that could only be arrived at by a lot of lettuce and early rising. Her face was tight, her nose probably not original, her hair extraordinarily bouncy and shiny. She had two degrees and a string of letters after her name, and Merv had called her a paragon of efficiency. She was also, Austin suspected, the most colossal pain in the arse. He already missed Janet terribly.
‘So I’ve just typed up your sked-u-al?’ she said, talking in a rat-a-tat voice with an upward inflection that sounded like everything was a question. It was not, Austin was learning, a question. It was an order. ‘And if you could, like, be on time for all your appointments so I don’t need to make so many calls to keep people waiting? And if you could, like, check out my colour-coded filing system so you always have the right files to take with you? And if you could, like, have your lunch order ready by ten thirty every day so I can get it right for you? And you need to look into contract apartment leases, like pronto? And we’ll start work on the green card, like, before you go back to close down your London office?’
Austin bowed his head and did some quick nodding, hoping she’d leave him alone. She stood in front of him, arms folded. For such a tiny person, she made an awful lot of noise.
‘And, you know, I realise you’ve just arrived,’ she said, ‘but I think it is, like, unprofessional to leave a child in my office? It’s not really acceptable to me? You know I have a bachelor’s from Vassar? And I’m not even sure that it’s, like, legal?’
Austin sighed. He knew this was true. He couldn’t keep dumping Darny around the place; it was driving both of them crazy. But he’d promised to stay a few more days and set everything up, then go home and work out a couple of weeks’ notice – although Ed, his old boss, was so proud that his boy had gone to the big team, he wasn’t really expected to do much more than go out for a few leaving pints. Ed had also confirmed what Austin had suspected: they wouldn’t be filling his post. They did need to fillet; even though Austin had done well in the job, it was going to go to keep good on the bank’s promise to shareholders. Which meant there hadn’t really been a way back after all.
He didn’t know what else to do with Darny. He wasn’t enrolled in the school yet, and it wasn’t like he could go to a nursery or a crèche, however much Austin wished he could.
‘You would be prosecuted for doing this to a rabbit,’ Darny had announced cheerfully as Austin had perched him on his sofa with a Spiderman comic and a packet of crisps the size of a pillow, which Darny crunched with a noise that drove Austin to distraction. ‘I wouldn’t mind seeing that old lady again. She was cool.’
‘Which old lady?’ said Austin, struggling to figure out who Darny was talking about. If she wasn’t wearing a black pointed hat and living in a gingerbread house, he was willing to give it a shot at this point.
‘Marian. No, Miriam. Something like that. Issy’s mum.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Austin, warily. He’d forgotten she was here. They’d met a few times; he thought on the surface she seemed pleasant, a little batty, mostly harmless. Underneath, from stories Issy had told him late at night, he thought what she had done was much, much worse. But she could babysit, couldn’t she? She owed Issy that much, at least.
Then he remembered, as he did afresh and anew dozens of times a day, the way things were with Issy, and wanted to howl with anguish.
He didn’t. He couldn’t. Darny shook out the gigantic packet of crisps so all the dust floated to the floor. Then he burped loudly.
‘I’ll call her,’ said Austin.
Issy was up to her eyes in marzipan when the phone rang. Nonetheless, she knew, in the way that sometimes you just do. Some phone rings sound different to others. And it was just when she was thinking of Austin.
Although, if she was being honest, she had been thinking about Austin every waking moment and every sleepless-night moment and her few and far between early-morning dreaming moments too. So.
She wiped her hands down her striped pink apron and picked up her phone. Number unknown.
It wasn’t unknown to her.
‘Austin?’
‘Issy?’
She swallowed hard. ‘I mi …’
Then she stopped herself. It had nearly all come tumbling out, all the heartache and the sadness and the terror she had that she was going to lose him. All her neediness and insecurities brought to the surface. But how would that help? What would it prove? That she could guilt him into giving up his amazing life? Did she think that would make them happy?
She tried again. ‘I’m making marzipan. Acres of it.’
Austin bit his lip. He could just see her, pink with the exertion. Sometimes, when she was concentrating, she even let the very end of her tongue slip out of her mouth, like a character from Peanuts. There she was, doing what she loved best; happy and immersed in her kitchen. He couldn’t take that away from her. He couldn’t.
‘I hate marzipan,’ he said.
Issy gulped. ‘Well, one, you are wrong. And two, you haven’t tried mine.’
‘But I don’t like the flavour and I don’t like the texture. I do think people should be allowed to have different tastes in food.’
‘Not when they’re wrong.’
‘But you don’t like beetroot.’