Page 1 of The Wedding Cake
FREYA
Freya Ashcroft let out a weary sigh. What she would give to have another hour in bed! The phone hadn’t stopped ringing all morning, with orders and enquiries flying in from every dot on the globe. All she wanted to do was sink her bottom into a plush bucket chair at her favourite café in the orange tree square, soak up the weak winter sunshine, enjoy acafé sombraand dive into a plate of churros dunked in a pool of velvety chocolate sauce, as was her usual Friday morning ritual. But that was December for you, when you ran an award-winning business in Marbella and everybody wanted a piece of your cake. You had to put your game face on and quit moaning, you had to accept you’d be lucky to get even a sip of coffee some days.
Now in its tenth year of trading, Freya’s of Marbella not only rhymed (when you pronounced the town the Spanish way,Mar-bay-ya), it was also an institution for the local and international elite. The cakery – as Freya preferred to refer to it, since not a crumb of bread came out of its ovens – had won a glut of awards in the past decade and was the top tier foodie port of call for well-connected destination wedding planners and their equally well-heeled brides and grooms-to-be, priding itself on bespoke wedding cakes to die for. Figuratively speaking, of course.
Since opening the doors to her little shop in Marbella’s gorgeous and iconic orange tree square, FOM, as Freya called her business when she was in a rush (which was most of the time) hadn’t looked back, growing exponentially to take over two floors in two adjoining white-washed buildings that had been lovingly modernised with all the latest cakery gadgets. Nowadays, FOM consisted of a dozen hard-working part-timers and six members of full-time staff: Freya, who zipped from front of house to the mayhem of the kitchen to work her all-round magic; pastry chefs Jimena, Alejandro and Nicola; sugarcraft and cake decor expert Ricky (and his neon green spiral quiff and matching beard), and last but by no means least, Hannah, Freya’s assistant. How she had coped without Hannah for nine full years, Freya would never know. Their latest recruit was worth her weight in edible gold. Cool, calm and collected, Hannah helped Freya keep the plates (or icing turntables) spinning.
Freya retreated to her office with the antiquated and battered order book under her wing. It had perennial pride of place in a hidey-hole behind the downstairs shop’s till, where her biggest local wedding planner client, Mervyn Meehan, would still write in it to this day, adding his new requests the old school way with the pencil attached by string to the book’s cover. Ridiculous, this far into the new millennium, you bet. But it was the way seventy-something Merv, the man who’d brought Freya her first clients, liked to do business, and he was a legend on the Costa del Sol. She couldn’t afford to argue with him and the parade of couples he continued to bring her way. She tucked her springy, bob-length toffee-coloured curls behind her ear, shut the door to her office for a moment of solitude and perched on her desk to assess the entries Merv had added that very morning.
More often than not, brides and grooms, brides and brides, and grooms and grooms would arrange a taste test of Freya and her team’s masterpieces via Merv’s company, Weddings in Paradise. Nowadays, this rite of passage was par for the course in the upmarket wedding world – and Merv loved any excuse to stuff himself too, regularly joining his clients to get ‘ambushed by cake’ as they nibbled on moreish morsels. This would usually happen in the tiny courtyard at the back of Freya’s premises. She would run around like a headless chicken to festoon the patio and its quaint water feature with fairy lights and tea lanterns, the old town’s florist often lending her a gargantuan centrepiece to mark the occasion. But FOM’s exceptional reputation preceded it. Since it was notoriously difficult to reserve a cake from Freya’s emporium, such was the incessant demand from high-profile clients and the word of mouth in their inner circles, love birds would sometimes simply buy without trying.
Freya flicked through the pages until she reached August of the fast-approaching new year and nodded her head, satisfied that every wedding day in peak season was now full of sweet words.
Merv had added:
Wednesday August 3rd–1 x three-tier milk chocolate ganache wedding cake with fresh fruit topping (nisperos, if you can source them) to be delivered to Cortijo Paloma on the road to Ronda.
What was he like? Merv knew full well that nisperos, the tiny, sweet, orange fruit native to Spain, was only available April to June. And Merv was taking liberties with the journey, too. Freya had made it clear to him heaps of times that she preferred not to risk delivering to destinations on roads littered with potholes, hairpin bends, and vertical drops. A drive fit only for Alejandro (and not Ricky,definitely not Ricky!). Still, it was doable timewise since they only had one other simple creation going out the same day.
Saturday August 6th–1 x eight-tier showstopper wedding cake with (starting from the bottom and working up) layers of salted caramel, Victoria sandwich, red velvet, and lemon curd with passionfruit – plus a waterfall (of Niagara Falls proportions) of pink and white sugar roses cascading down the side. Delivery to Finca Preciosa, near Mijas.
Freya put her hands to her temples, willing the words to rearrange themselves. She closed her eyes hoping this wasn’t happening. But when she peeped once again at the entry in the book, there it stubbornly remained.
Hermehreaction wasn’t to the taste or the jaw–dropping finished look of the cake. Both would be sublime. It was the amount of work this number entailed. Freya would love to erase it from her repertoire altogether, having lost sleep over baking it numerous times. Yes, they’d be paid handsomely for constructing it. Seven thousand euros, plus TVA (VAT). But that little windfall came at a price to everyone’s mental health, particularly in the height of a Spanish summer, when temperatures could hit forty degrees –– and so could tempers. Freya would need to have a word with Merv to try to convince him to steer his clientele away from her skyscraper creations in July and August in future. But Merv was also getting a cut of the proverbial cake for his efforts and naturally he wouldn’t feel inclined. He had a high maintenance lifestyle to keep up, and an equally high maintenance wife, forty years his junior, to placate. Wife number six as far as Freya knew. Yes, Merv was quite the advertisement for his flourishing business, and quite the modern day Henry VIII, seemingly addicted to walking down the aisle himself. Nowadays, albeit with a diamante-topped cane.
And here was Freya, also almost forty years younger than Merv, but with barely a spare evening to go on a date, let alone build up to a marriage proposal. She had been on a grand total of two dates in two years.Two dates!When you were an above average-looking, young-ish female entrepreneur and you lived in Marbella, that was downright depressing.
At least they had been with two different guys. But now she stopped to think about it, Freya wasn’t sure if that made things sound better or worse? And don’t get her started on the subject of sex. Soon she’d wither and turn into a prune.
She’d spent ten years working her flip flops off. Money and accolades were all well and good, but she seemed to be creating everybody else’s happy ever after, while her own ebbed further out of sight as she worked, quite literally, all the hours under the sun – and completed another of her own laps around its glowing orb. Soon she’d be in her mid-thirties, which was far from ancient, yet equally a whole world away from the carefree girl she’d been when she’d set up the business in her early twenties.
But now wasn’t the moment to dissect her lack of a love or social life. She’d do that tonight. With Tiddles. As she frequently did. The poor tortoiseshell cat had heard it all before, and likely thought that if Freya spent less time complaining to her, and more time chowing down delicious (free) food of the fish and meat variety (hello!) with potential men instead of turning down their invitations – then she might have a better set of annual dating statistics in front of her. But Tiddles would purr along in agreement anyway, or pad at Freya’s pyjamas with her soft paws, as if encouraging her to spill her woes. And then Freya would curl up with her book, Netflix humming along in the background, and the pair of them would fall asleep on the couch. Every morning Freya would vow it was the last time she’d allow herself to conk out on a work night as she massaged the painful kink from her neck.
This was the sad side of the wedding industry. Tiddles was the most gorgeous and patient feline to ingloriously infodump on, as she questioned why her own affairs of the heart had gone so tragically wrong. But there was no dodging it. Freya was living in a perpetual Groundhog Day…
ALICE
“Promise you won’t be mad?” Alice Goldsmith fluttered her eyelashes at her fiancé, River, and swallowed down her nerves. “I’ve… kind of changed my mind.”
River’s face turned ashen and she quickly realised he thought she was about to strike a line through their wedding day. In a sense that was true. Just not in the way the love of her life was thinking.
“Not about us getting married!” Alice cried. “It’s just that the nearer we get to the month of saying ‘I do’, the more I know with absolute certainty thatI don’twant the celebrations happening so close to my parents. Not only in the same county but in the samecountry. Something tells me we’d enjoy the day a whole lot more if we didn’t have to keep looking over our shoulders, and if we sort of… escaped… abroad.” Alice whispered the last bit then held her breath, petrified to take in River’s reaction lest it should be a resolute ‘no’.
“I know nine months before a wedding isn’t the best time to turn everything on its head,” she wittered on. “And I know we have a lot going on right now in prep for our future careers, but technically wecanpull this off – and with minimal lost deposits for the things already booked. This must seem like a shock but I can’t ignore my gut instinct: to be out of sight and out of my folks’ minds. There’s too much temptation for them to put in an unwanted appearance if we carry on with our current plans, and that would be a flipping disaster.”
River’s face slowly regained its customary hue – what could be seen beneath his beard, anyway. Before resuming her spiel, Alice drank in every inch of his rugged good looks: denim-blue eyes, wavy brown shoulder-length hair that looked great up or down, toothpaste advert teeth, and incredibly kissable lips, in spite of the facial hair. He was pretty damn phwoar. She was pretty damn lucky.
“I’ve already looked into it,” she continued gingerly, hoping that the many hours she’d spent poring over possibilities wouldn’t be for nothing. “There’s this gorgeously rustic finca just inland from the Costa del Sol that would be perfect. Amazingly, it’s free on Saturday the sixth of August!” Alice put her hands together as if praying. She needed all the support she could get and, if any angelic beings wanted to further her cause, she was not going to stop them. “It’s got plenty of room for family and friends to stay. And the cute whitewashed village of Mijas is a stone’s throw away for anybody else who decides to fly out. It’s packed with B&Bs, sweet little hotels and apartments. It claims to have the world’s smallest chocolate factory too. Hayley will be especially gutted if we don’t do this.”
Alice stopped and waited. She twisted her ethereal honey-blonde curls into a bun as rustic as the finca, and fixed it into place with a stray pencil from the kitchen worktop. If she added anything else to her campaign, it would sound way over-rehearsed. River didn’t need to know that she’d actually gone ahead and paid the deposit on Finca Preciosa!
The tick of the kitchen clock marked several beats of painful silence. Alice couldn’t take it any longer. She joined River at the dining table and reached for the salad tongs to break the interlude, claiming a heap of leaves from the bowl, tossing them onto her plate and drizzling them in dressing before cutting herself a wedge of her homemade chickpea and tomato quiche. River could help himself.
“I…fincait’s a great idea,” River finally replied with a megawatt grin. Alice let out a lengthy breath and circumnavigated the table for a celebratory hug (and a passionate snog). “To be honest, I’d much prefer to get away for our special day, too,” said River once they’d come up for air. “I know we’re not quite as famous as we used to be now we’re back in Somerset for good.” River and Alice had formerly been in the C-list rock band, Avalonia, before quitting music and the jet set scene for a quieter life. “But both of us could also do without the local press or die-hard fans sniffing around.” Alice couldn’t help but giggle at River’s nostalgia. The pair of them were so rarely spotted nowadays, their fanbase largely to be found in South America. “And, if you’re up for it, since we still haven’t decided on the honeymoon part, we could have that in Spain too.”
Now River’s face lit up and Alice could tell he’d had one of his frequent brainwaves. Some of these were better than others. “Hey, we could drive over in ‘Twinkle’ and do a camper van road trip around Spainand Portugal. Obviously, we could book into a few boutique hotels along the way and make it a little more luxurious in between,” he finished with a wink.
This was one of the many things Alice adored about River, and it was one of the reasons she couldn’t wait to shuck off the Goldsmith part of her name and become a fully-fledged Jackson: they were almost always thinking the same thing, embellishing ideas from pipedreams to done deals within minutes.
