Helena paused outside her door. She knew the last week or so had been stressful for Issy. Every day huge forms had arrived in the post: advertising brochures and government forms and official-looking documents in brown envelopes.
Helena had had a hard day herself. A child had come in with suspected meningitis, always a horrible experience. They’d saved her life, but she might still lose a foot. Helena made a mental note to check up on her on the ward the next morning. That was often the problem with A&E; you never found out the end of the story. And now here was Issy huffing and puffing about the place rather than just grabbing every day as it happened and getting stuck in. It could be a bit frustrating.
‘Hey,’ she said, knocking on the door. ‘How are you doing?’
Issy was ankle-deep in piles of paper.
‘Bugger it,’ she said. ‘I’ve discovered the fatal flaw. I haven’t worked in a shop before.’
‘You worked in your grampa’s bakery, didn’t you?’
‘I took twenty-one pence for French cakes. On Saturdays. So the customers could pinch my cheeks and say how bonny I was looking, which by the way if you’re not from the North means “fat”. Oh, why didn’t I train to become an accountant?’
She picked up another piece of a paper.
‘Or … or a building surveyor.’
‘I knew I should have stolen some valium,’ said Helena. Issy’s mouth twitched a little bit.
‘Oh, Helena. I can’t believe I’ve done this on a whim. I need help.’ She looked imploringly at her friend.
‘Well, don’t look at me, I’m just off a twelve-hour shift,’ said Helena. ‘And apart from stocking your first aid cupboard and teaching you the Heimlich manoeuvre again, I’m not sure what I can do for you.’
‘No,’ said Issy, sighing. ‘And my mate Zac said he’d design the menus for me, but that’s it.’
‘Well, that’s a start,’ said Helena comfortingly. ‘A first aid box, a menu and some yummy cakes. The rest is just cleaning up.’
‘I feel so alone,’ said Issy, who was missing Graeme more than she could admit. The shock of going from seeing him every day to never seeing him at all was one thing. To have a reconciliation, and then to have it all snatched away again … that was hard to process.
Helena sat down.
‘But you’re going to have to get staff, aren’t you? I mean, you’re going to have to pay people sooner or later. Maybe if you recruit someone now they could help you with all this stuff as well as the shop when it’s open. Do you know anyone?’
Issy thought suddenly of the bright, cheery woman she’d met on the redundancy course.
‘You know,’ she said, scrolling down her phone where she and Pearl had politely swapped numbers, never really expecting to use them, ‘there might just be something in this networking thing after all. I think she’s got catering experience.’
She started to push the number as Helena held up her hand.
‘Aren’t you forgetting something?’
Issy glanced nervously at the piles of forms.
‘Shouldn’t you wait for the bank to give you the go-ahead – and the overdraft facility?’
Suddenly, Issy felt she couldn’t wait until morning. She had been filling in forms and talking to government inspectors for three days; she needed to know. The bank was being horribly slow. She took out the card of Mr Austin Tyler and dialled the mobile number. OK, so it was after seven, but bankers worked late hours, didn’t they?
‘There’s this chap I thought you might like,’ she said to Helena. ‘He’s got a kid though. But no wedding ring.’
‘Oh lovely, married but pretending he isn’t,’ snorted Helena. ‘Just my type. I’ll be in my room, kissing my John Cusack pictures.’
Austin was bathing Darny, or rather he was attempting the equivalent of holding a squid down in the water while the squid thrashed all of its tentacles to get free. Austin was considering letting the squid go without washing his hair for the ninth night in a row when his phone rang. He retrieved it, granting Darny a temporary victory as he stood up in the bath and started parading up and down it like a soldier, kicking bubbles as he went.
‘Stop that,’ he hissed, which made Darny redouble his efforts.
‘Hello?’
Issy heard a strangulated yell from Darny as Austin attempted to make him sit down again.
‘Sorry, is this a bad time?’
‘Um, just in the bath.’
‘Oh, sorry …’
‘No, not me … Darny!’
‘Soldiers do not sit down to your authority!’ came clearly over the earpiece.
‘Ah. You’re bathing a soldier,’ said Issy kindly. She hadn’t thought the child would be so old; Austin seemed about her age. Which wasn’t, she reminded herself, that young any more. ‘Well, that is an important duty.’
‘Darny, sit down!’
‘You’re not my superior officer!’
‘Actually, I think you’ll find that I am … Sorry about this, but who is it?’
‘Oh, sorry,’ said Issy, embarrassed. ‘It’s Isabel Randall. From the Cupcake Café.’
She could hear Austin struggle to remember her. It was excruciating.
‘Oh yes,’ he said finally. ‘Uh. Yes. How can I help you?’
‘This is clearly a bad time, I’m so sorry,’ said Issy.
Normally Austin would have liked to point out sarcastically that yes, 7.30 on a school night was quite a bad time for all sorts of business enquiries, but there was something in Issy’s voice – she was, he could tell, genuinely sorry; she wasn’t just being polite but still trying to demand his attention. He groped around for his glasses, which were steamed up.
‘OK, soldier, at ease,’ he said to Darny, handing the boy a camouflage-coloured sponge and escaping out of the bathroom.
‘Right, what’s up?’ he said to Issy as cheerfully as he could manage, noticing as he stepped on to the landing that there seemed to be piles of toys and books stacked up all over the house. He wished someone would come and sort it out for him. He knew that it was his responsibility, but he was just so tired all the time. He never seemed to get round to it. And on the weekends, he and Darny liked to hang out downstairs and watch Formula 1. They both felt they’d earned it after a hard week.