6 oz plain flour
1 cup fresh milk
1 tsp vanilla essence
Icing
4 oz Breton soft butter, first churn
16 oz icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
2 oz milk
2 tsp essence of roses
Grease three small cake pans. Cream the butter until as smooth as a child’s cheek.
Add sugar very gradually. No dumping like you normally do, Isabel. This has to be fluffy; properly fluffy. Add a grain at a time through the whisk.
Add the eggs slowly. Beat well at all times.
Mix the sifted flours and add a little milk and vanilla; then some flour, then some milk and vanilla and so on. Do not rush. This is your birthday cake for you, and you are very special. You deserve a little time.
Bake for 20 minutes at 350°F/gas mark 4.
For the icing, add half the icing sugar to the butter. Add milk, vanilla and essence of roses. Beat thoroughly, adding sugar till the icing reaches the desired consistency.
Ice layers and top of cake.
Add candles. Not too many. Add friends. As many as you can.
Blow candles out while making a happy wish. Do not tell anyone a) your wish, b) your recipe. Some things, like you, are special, my darling.
Love, Gramps
Issy put the birthday card up in the window. The sun came through the shop so strongly on 21 June, Issy felt herself turn almost pink and wondered if you could get a suntan through glass. It was, undoubtedly, the only way she’d get a suntan this year.
‘It’s burst into summer without me noticing,’ she said.
‘Hmm,’ said Pearl. ‘I always notice. I hate weather where I can’t wear tights. My wobbly bits don’t know what they’re doing and start moving in different directions. I hope we get another freezing summer.’
‘Oh no you don’t!’ said Issy in dismay. ‘We want to be outside, all our clients sitting about for ages. It’s a shame we can’t get a licence.’
‘Drunks as well as sugar addicts,’ said Pearl. ‘Hmm. Anyway, it wouldn’t be right.’ She indicated a table by the window, currently occupied by four old men.
‘Oh yes!’ giggled Issy. It had been the oddest thing. One day two old men had trudged in the door, quite late in the day. They had looked, frankly, a bit like drunken tramps. They already had a local tramp, Berlioz, who came by most days for a couple of bits and bobs to eat and a cup of tea when it was quiet (Pearl also let him empty the RSPB charity tin by the till, but Issy didn’t know about that and Pearl had justified it to her pastor and they had decided to keep quiet about it), but these chaps were something new.
One came shuffling up.
‘Um, two coffees, please,’ he asked in a croaky, cigarette-ruined voice.
‘Of course,’ Issy had said. ‘Do you want anything with them?’
The man had dragged out a brand new ten-pound note and Austin’s card had fallen out too.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Oh, but we’re to tell you Austin sent us.’
Issy squinted for a minute, then remembered. They were the all-day drinkers from the pub Austin had taken her to.
‘Oh!’ she said in surprise. She had been avoiding Austin completely; she was still embarrassed about having thought he was interested in her rather than just her business, and things were going so much better there was no reason for the bank to complain. She did think of him sometimes though, wondering how Darny was doing. She hadn’t used the dinosaur moulds yet. And she wasn’t sure about her new customers.
But from that day on, they came in three times a week, gradually joined by more furtive-looking characters. One day, cleaning up around them, Pearl had realized they were holding an informal AA-type meeting. Issy, shaking her head, wondered how Austin had managed to persuade them to do that. And made a vow not to walk past that pub again. She suspected the landlord wouldn’t be terribly pleased. That made about five places she didn’t dare walk round. In fact, had she only known, people who now came to Stoke Newington to buy cupcakes often wandered up to the other shops and cafés on the high street too. And the landlord was delighted to get rid of all his old soaks; he had installed wifi, opened up the windows and was doing a roaring trade in hearty breakfasts and tea for a pound; punters were much happier sitting in a light, toast-scented room that wasn’t haunted by the wrecks of early morning drinkers. But Issy kept out of their way nonetheless.
‘Longest day, longest day of the year,’ one of the old men was singing. The others laughed heartily and told him to pipe down on the rude old rhyme.
‘Is that the date?’ said Issy suddenly, checking her watch. Once they’d got past the financial year-end deadline, she’d slightly lost track of the days; now, finally, the Cupcake Café seemed to be on a reasonably even keel and earning its keep. It looked like, mortgage money aside, there was a possibility that she could start drawing a salary from it. Which was kind of ironic, Issy thought, seeing as she’d been so all-focused on the shop that she hadn’t actually done any shopping for herself in months. And anything she wore was covered in an apron all day, so it scarcely mattered. She really ought to get her roots done though, she thought, catching sight of herself in the mirrored edges of the cake cabinet. Ten years ago, having slightly messed-up, different coloured hair was kind of sexy and cute and beach style. Now, she risked looking like an old crazy person. She scrumpled up her face in the distorted mirror. Where did that furrow between her brows come from? Did she always have it? That expression she caught sometimes, of a woman with too many things in her brain, always one step behind. She smoothed it out with her fingertips, but the faint lines it had left were still there; perturbed at them, she watched her face go into exactly the same expression as before. She sighed.
‘What’s up?’ said Pearl, who was cutting out templates for the cappuccino chocolate. She didn’t know why customers liked little flowers on top of their foam so much, but they did, and she was happy to oblige.
‘Hm. Nothing,’ said Issy. ‘It’s … it’s my birthday coming up, that’s all.’
‘Oh, a big one?’ said Pearl.
Issy looked at her. Did she mean thirty? Or forty?
‘How old do you think I am?’ she asked.
Pearl sighed. ‘I can’t answer that question. I can never tell how old people are. Sorry. I’d just get it wrong and insult you.’
‘Unless you aimed really low,’ said Issy.