Truly Scrumptious

My daughter definitely had a talent for making cupcakes!

THE front door banged shut and I sighed. I had hoped that September, and a new class, would improve things, but it had obviously been another bad day at school.

“I’m in the kitchen, Mandy,” I called, and the next moment my elevenyear-old daughter appeared in the doorway.

“Had a good day, love?” I asked brightly.

“No.” Mandy threw down her school bag and slumped into a chair at the kitchen table. “I was rubbish in Maths, and I hate that new teacher, Mr Jones.”

“Oh, but you used to really enjoy Maths.”

“Yeah, well, some of the boys teased me about my new brace. Darren said it makes me talk like a baby.”

“Nonsense. Anyway, you won’t have it on for ever,” I reminded her as I set a glass of milk and some oatmeal biscuits in front of her. “You’ve always been so good about cleaning your teeth, and they’re lovely – not a filling in sight.”

I looked at the downcast little face and felt my heart immediately constrict with angry pain. Mandy had always been Daddy’s little girl, and when he’d walked out on us with a woman in his office whom I hadn’t even known existed, her world had collapsed around her.

Now she was punishing that world in the only way she knew.

From being a bright, eager child in the classroom (I remember one of the infants teachers saying Mandy was the sort of child who made her job worthwhile), now each school report was worse than the one before, and the test results at the end of the summer term were so bad that I’d shed tears over them.

Oh, Clyde, I thought suddenly, if only you could see her.

But he couldn’t, because she refused to have anything to do with him, and when he’d brought her home in a tantrum one Saturday, when apparently she’d not said a word to him all day, we’d agreed that she wouldn’t be forced.

Only last month she’d torn up the birthday card he’d sent her.

There were times when I hated my ex-husband, but I knew that this whole heart-rending business was really no-one’s fault.

Married too young, a baby too soon, and finally growing up into people we didn’t want to be married to . . .

If Mandy ever announces she’s getting married at eighteen, I’ll lock her in her room till she sees sense, I thought fiercely.

“I’d better get my horrible homework done.” She pushed back her chair. I nodded.

“Yes, best to get on with it. I’m doing vegetable lasagne for dinner.”

“Great.” But there was no enthusiasm in her voice.

“Oh, just one thing.” I picked up a leaflet from the dresser. “You know it’s the annual flower and vegetable show next weekend?”

“Yeah.” “Remember when you were five, you grew a giant marrow on Grandad’s allotment? You won a prize, didn’t you?”

“Uh huh.”

“Well, I picked this up in the library. As the show this year coincides with National Cupcake Week, there’s a new category: a cupcake competition for children under twelve. I thought you could –” “No!”

“But you love making cakes, and –”

“No, I won’t,” Mandy interrupted. “You made me go in for that painting competition in the summer holiday and Olivia said mine was the worst painting in the show.”

“Oh, did she?” My lips tightened.

“And Sophie Brown will be sure to win any cake competition. Her mum works at that posh deli in town, so guess who’ll be making them – not Sophie, for sure.”

“But those cupcakes you made for Granny’s birthday in June,” I persisted. “She said they were the nicest cakes she’d ever had.”

“I bet she gave them to Rufus after we’d gone. Dogs eat anything.”

“I’m sure that she didn’t do that, Mandy.”

“Well, I’m not going in for another competition, Mum.”

I held my breath as the judge moved slowly down the tables, picking up each of the dozen or so plates in turn, making notes, then finally cutting one of the cupcakes on each plate in half, looking at it closely and tasting.

She was going so slowly – would she ever reach Mandy’s plate?

I wanted to pick up the woman and carry her to the most beautiful of the cakes – perfectly iced in a spiral of buttercream, each decorated with a different flower made of rice paper and tinted with food colouring.

I thought back to the hours the previous evening that my daughter had laboured at the kitchen table.

Please let her win, I prayed silently.

The judge seemed to hesitate for quite a while over them, but in the end the gift token was awarded to Sophie Brown.

“Told you,” Mandy whispered, tight-faced. “She’s a cheat.” “Shush, love.”

I watched with a sinking heart as the blue and yellow cards were awarded to the two runners-up.

“That’s it, then,” Mandy muttered. “Let’s go, Mum.”

I put a restraining hand on her arm.

“The auction’s about to start. They’re selling the cakes to raise money for the new children’s play area. Let’s see who bids for yours.”

“No-one will want mine.” She stood with her shoulders hunched. “They’re rubbish.”

I didn’t dare tell her that her dad, who’d finally managed to persuade Mandy to enter the competition, had given me five pounds to bid for her cakes.

The bidding seemed to go on for ever, but at last it was her plate that was held up and the auctioneer roared out, “Lot twelve! What am I bid for this lovely array of cakes?” Silence.

“Who’ll give me one pound? One . . . two . . . three . . . four – five?”

I surreptitiously raised my hand from behind Mandy.

“Thank you, madam. Five pounds is now the high bid.”

Mandy gave a little gasp of excitement and my guilt increased as she scanned the room, eagerly searching for the bidder.

“Any advance on five pounds? The bidding is with the lady in the pink fleece.”

Mandy swung round to face me.

“Oh, Mum. It’s you.” Her eyes were brimming with tears.

“Ten pounds.”

The voice – a man’s – came from somewhere at the back of the room and Mandy and I stared at each other, open-mouthed.

“Thank you, sir. Any advance on ten pounds? No?”

I spread my hands in defeat.

“Going, going, gone. Sold to the gentleman in the green jacket.”

“Ten pounds!” Mandy gasped, then twisted round. “Who’s bought them?”

That’s what I was asking myself.

There was such a press around the table as the successful bidders collected their cakes that I couldn’t see, but then I spotted the dark-haired man I had seen examining the cakes before the auction began.

I’d suspected that perhaps he was Sophie Brown’s doting papa sussing out the opposition, so I’d shot him a stiletto glare between his shoulder blades.

“Mrs Wright?”

I looked round to see the green-jacketed man clutching the plate of Mandy’s cakes. “Yes.”

“And this is Mandy?” He smiled down at her. “I just wanted to say that I bought your cakes because they were far and away the best in the room.”

“Really?” She gave him a watery smile.

“Absolutely. That judge – well . . .” He lowered his voice. “She doesn’t know the difference between bling and real flair.” “Oh!”

“Yes, that winner was, in my opinion, quite vulgar, while your cakes had a delicacy and quite a professional look about them.”

He hesitated then glanced at me.

“They really were all her own work, were they?”

“Oh, definitely. Cross my heart,” I added with a faint smile.

“Mind you, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. So –” He picked up a cake and took a bite, and we both watched anxiously as he slowly savoured it.

“Mmm,” he said at last. “Just as I thought – absolutely melt-in-themouth.”

“Thank you.” We continued chatting, then out of the corner of my eye I saw Mandy grow inches taller on the spot.

“I’m Steve Handley.” He put out a hand and I shook it. “You might have seen me about the place. I’m opening a café here in Church Alley.”

“The place that’s been empty for a while? The one that was an art gallery, behind the wrought-iron gates, with that old mulberry tree hanging over the wall?”

Steve nodded. “That’s it. I’ve been running a café in the Cotswolds for a while with my mum and sister, but I wanted to branch out on my own.”

“I think it’s a great idea,” I said enthusiastically. “I know there’s Syd’s greasy spoon place on the bypass, but I always thought our village was big enough to support a proper café.

“We do get quite a few visitors, so I’m sure you’ll do well.”

“That’s if I’m a decent enough cook, of course.” He grinned. “Anyway, I’m planning on serving lunches and weekend dinners, but I hope to do teas as well.

“In fact, I’m thinking of launching the business with a gala tea party, and what I was wondering was . . .”

Well, who would have thought where that flyer for a cupcake competition would lead?

It led first to Steve coming home with us for a cup of tea, then when Mum and Dad called round to see how things had gone, I told Steve that Mum makes the best Victoria sponges south of Balmoral Castle, so she’s busy three times a week.

When Steve told Dad that he wanted to use local produce as much as possible, Dad arranged for him to take all his and the other allotment owners’ surplus stuff.

I work as a waitress most weekends, for even though Clyde is generous enough with child maintenance, a bit more is always welcome.

The café closes at five in the week, and increasingly often Steve comes round to us in the evening to unwind and to enjoy having someone else cook for him.

And talking of Clyde, for her dad’s birthday last week Mandy made him a box of cupcakes, iced in pink and silver, along with the batch that she was making for the café.

Yes, that’s right. Her cupcakes were a great

I watched with a sinking heart as the cards were awarded “I always thought our village was big enough to support a café”

success at the launch, so much so that she is now to be found in our kitchen every Monday and Thursday evening preparing a fresh batch for the Mulberry Café.

I was doubtful at first, afraid that her schoolwork would suffer even more, but I needn’t have worried, for somehow all the praise from him – and the customers, when he tells them who made the delicious little cakes they’re busy scoffing – has lifted my lovely daughter over that bump in the road of her short life, and now she’s doing better than ever at school.

Steve teases her, calling her the Cupcake Whizzkid, which makes her laugh.

It’s funny, isn’t it, how things sometimes can work out? n