Page 89 of The Cake Fairies
“For all you know, I haven’t even kissed him yet.”
“Your cheeks are blossoming, and you always were a terrible liar,” came Annabelle’s retort. “I don’t want to inflate this one’s ego a millimetre higher,” she switched to finger jab in the general direction of Alex, refusing to meet his eyes, “but it’s unlikely he’d be blessed with those kind of looks and end up kissing like a washing machine. In other words, Polly: know which side your cake is buttercreamed.”
“Um, ladies. I am here.”
Annabelle’s crude analogy was just the cue for laughter they needed, until it spiralled to the obvious heights of tears, at which point neither Polly nor Annabelle could stop themselves.
“Ivy? Shall we?”
Alex gave their friend the let’s-give-them-some-space nod and they retreated to the living-room – with Ivy unable to resist a token comedy cat-who’s-got-the-cream dance of the eyes.
“Love binds us forever. Nothing is lost.” Annabelle stroked her cousin’s devastated face. “All’s we’re doing is going home, in our not so different ways. It’s just mine is there and yours… well yours has so clearly been here since day dot when we fell into The Toadstool and you swooned at the cake, and a certain Adonis. You’ve hardly stopped swooning since!”
Polly hugged Annabelle so tightly that she began to wonder if she’d have the energy to return to the café.
“Life is nothing without change. You’re right. If there’s one thing I’ve learned here, it’s that. My aunt and uncle need you – at least at arm’s length. And who knows who will wend their way into one of your bevvy of bakeries? Take what you’ve learned. You’re leading-edge now! But don’t forget to be a Cake Fairy. The world needs those seeds – well, crumbs – planted already. That way when you do wind up in 2020…”
“As an eighty-year-old. Donotremind me!”
“That way…”
“That way,” Annabelle said it back, for there was not a sentiment to add to their last moment together in the present tense.
“You’re damn right I’m going to extend the business though, now I’ve finally shaken off your dithering,” she cajoled, walking towards the door without looking back. “At least to give Guinevere’s Cakes and Bakes the friendly rivalry it deserves. That’s where I’ll needyourhelp, Ivy.” She strode purposefully toward her friend, blotting out the sounds of Polly’s sorrow from the kitchen behind her.
Alex shook her hand as their paths crossed for the very last time. A cheek kiss wouldn’t have been appropriate. He hummed a strange little tune whose notes would cling to Annabelle’s subconscious for years, until a pint-sized pop star called Kylie Minogue happened to release a song called ‘Locomotion’ in the July of 1987… and then another set of ellipses would join together: he’d always flipping well known.
No wonder he’d forgiven her so quickly, she’d realise. And she would also have to concede that he was more than just a pretty face.
Her forty-eight-year-old self would sit bolt upright on the swinging sunbed in her garden in the affluent suburbs of Taunton in the realisation of it all. Her teenage daughters, Pia and Ulrike, would turn the volume of the Australian singer’s notes higher, not before running towards the vast vegetable patch to scrabble at the hosepipe, their father berating them already for the way their sibling water rivalry had doused his beloved asparagus one week before his meticulously planned harvest.
All of which was completely overlooking the fact that Geoffrey Goffin and Carole King had already treated the world to their own version of the hit back in 1962, but living in Middle Ham with rare access to a wireless, Annabelle had never heard it.
Back in the relative present, she continued to summon every ounce of courage for the epic journey that lay ahead.
Homeward bound.
“Are you sure you’re sure, Ivy?”
