Helena had stared after him down the corridor. Hex was the coolest new restaurant in London, in the papers every day. It was meant to be nearly impossible to get a reservation. Although, of course, she couldn’t go. This kind of suppliant behaviour wasn’t her kind of thing at all. Definitely not.
‘You do look gorgeous,’ said Issy, focusing on her friend for the first time. ‘How do you do that thing with your eyes anyway? I’d just look like I’d had an accident in the bronzer factory.’
Helena gave a Mona Lisa smile and kept blending.
‘What are you doing anyway? Where are you going?’
‘Out,’ said Helena. ‘It’s a kind of place and it’s not your house and not your shop. Things happen there that people talk about called current affairs and social life.’
Normally she’d have told Issy straight away what she was up to. But she was torn – partly because she felt it needed a longer conversation, but also because she didn’t want to take the teasing she would get for going against all her dearly held principles to date a nervy, sweaty-palmed, underpaid first-year junior doctor. The junior doctors had been a standing joke between them for years. They arrived in two tranches, green as grass, in February and September, and ended up so grateful for Helena and her good advice, strong leadership and magnificent bosoms that at least one of them always trailed around after her for weeks with flowers and sorrowing looks. Helena never gave in. Ever.
‘When you’re back in the social world,’ said Helena, ‘then you can find out.’
Issy reddened.
‘Oh, don’t blush!’ said Helena, genuinely surprised she’d upset her friend. ‘I didn’t mean it! In fact, I was thinking recently of how much tougher you’ve been getting.’
‘Sod off!’
‘No, really, all this running-your-own-business stuff. You have a spring in your step, Ms Randall. You are no longer the girl I met who was too scared to go see the student med ser vice about a finger wart.’
Issy smiled at the memory. ‘I thought they’d make me take my knickers off.’
‘Even if they had, was it anything to be scared of?’
‘No.’
‘And now look at you! Entrepreneur! If you were a bit more annoying and a bit of a nobber, you could go on The Apprentice. If they had a cake-based task. If they only had cake-based tasks.’
Issy raised her eyebrows. ‘I will take that as a semi-compliment, which coming from you is pretty good. You’re right, I have got boring though. I just never think about anything else.’
‘What about that hot scruffy bloke from the bank with the horn-rimmed glasses?’
‘What about him?’
‘Nothing,’ said Helena. ‘It’s just good to know you’re not sitting around waiting for Graeme to come back.’
‘No,’ said Issy suddenly, ‘no. I’m not. Hey, I know – why don’t I come with you?’
Helena started putting on mascara. ‘Um, you can’t.’
‘Why not? Shake off my working day a bit.’
‘None of your beeswax.’
‘Lena, have you got a date?’
Helena calmly went on layering her mascara.
‘You have! Who is it? Tell me everything.’
‘I would have done,’ said Helena, ‘if you’d stopped going on about the Cupcake Café for one second. As it is, I’m late.’
And she kissed Issy firmly on the cheek and swept out of the room in a haze of Agent Provocateur perfume.
‘Is it a greenhorn?’ said Issy, running after her. ‘Tell me. Come on. There must be some reason you’re not telling me.’
‘Never you mind,’ said Helena.
‘It is! It’s a baby doctor!’
‘It’s none of your business.’
‘Nice of him to take you out in between accidentally killing pensioners.’
‘Ssh!’
‘I hope you’re going Dutch.’
‘Shut up!’
‘I hope you’ve got a book for when he falls asleep at the table.’
‘Bog off!’
‘I’ll wait up for you,’ hollered Issy to her disappearing back.
‘Like hell you will!’ came the reply, and sure enough, Issy’s eyelids were already half closed by the end of Location, Location, Location.
The next morning the croissant rush was just about finished, and Pearl was making up the new boxes they’d ordered. Candy-striped, with their name blazoned across the front, they fitted a dozen cakes perfectly and were then wrapped up in pretty pink ribbon before being handed to the customer. They were absolutely lovely, but it was taking a bit of time to get the hang of folding them up, and Pearl was practising to try to make herself a wizard at it.
The doorbell went and Pearl glanced up at the railway clock; just a few minutes’ peace before the 11am sugar rush kicked off. She wiped her brow. Boy, it was lovely to be busy, but it was full-on too. Issy was downstairs, trying to make the world’s first ginger beer cupcake. The scent of cinnamon, ginger and brown sugar filled the shop, and smelled absolutely intoxicating; people kept asking to try one and then, when told they weren’t ready, camping by the stairs. One or two were striking up conversations with each other, which was nice, Pearl thought, but really right at the minute she needed everything cleared out of the way, so she could get to the leftover coffee cups. The duck-egg and teal had been joined by a very pale yellow as they’d got busier, and she wanted to stack the dishwasher. A delivery of eggs had just arrived fresh from the farm, with feathers still on them, and she had to sign for that, pick the feathers off and put them away downstairs while still serving the ongoing queue, which she couldn’t because she had no cups, and ‘Issy!’ she yelled. There was a clatter from downstairs.
‘Ouch! Ooh, hot hot hot!’ shouted Issy. ‘I’m just going to run my finger under a tap!’
Pearl heaved a sigh and tried to look patient as two teenage girls kept changing their minds in an agony of cake-related indecision.
Suddenly the door banged open. It was raining outside, a steady spring downpour, but still the tree was tentatively, nervously budding, tiny, furled-up little shoots just showing on its branches. Pearl occasionally sneaked some coffee grounds out and spread them round its base; she’d heard they were good for trees, and she felt quite protective of this one. Into the shop crashed someone she recognized immediately, and her heart dropped. It was Caroline, health-food Nazi of Louis’s nursery, original bidder for the Cupcake Café.