Читать книгу Lucie’s Vintage Cupcake Company - Daisy James - Страница 16

Chapter Eight

It was Easter Saturday and the day had dawned clear and bright for a change. Since she had landed on her sister’s doorstep a week ago the weather seemed to have joined her in the doldrums, offering only bruised skies and continual drizzle. But if the meteorological gods had deserted her, thank goodness her creative dexterity had not. She had just finished whipping up a batch of fat cupcakes and decorating them with a generous swirl of pink buttercream icing topped with edible glitter. The sweet buttery fragrance of warm cakes piled high on a triple-tiered china cake stand tickled her nostrils. It was the best aroma in the world and her spirits edged up a notch. Hope may have been an absent friend in her life in the last few weeks but she still believed in its restorative power.

‘One cappuccino,’ said Jess as she yanked a hoodie over five-year-old Jack’s unruly blond curls, identical to Lucie’s own, and sent him off to play on the trampoline in the back garden.

Lucie sipped the coffee her sister had set down on the marble island in front of her, relishing the taste of the frothy milk adorned with a generous sprinkle of powdered chocolate. She glanced around the engine room of what had previously been her mother’s home in a leafy street in Richmond before she emigrated to Spain, and which was now her sister’s.

The kitchen was the only arena in which Lucie had ever clashed with Jess, her sister’s preference being a culinary version of mayhem. To Lucie’s mind, tidiness meant safety, control. Every polished surface screamed of her crusade for domestic orderliness and her list-making addiction, but her methodical attention to detail was a necessity in her line of work. She couldn’t understand her sister’s penchant for scattering culinary clutter when orderliness would have made her busy life of testing recipes for celebrity chef, Ella Carter, so much easier. In fact, her sister’s job required skills more befitting a forensic scientist than a cook, so she would have thought it was even more important to run a tidy kitchen.

Maybe when she had her own home and family to care for she would appreciate the reasons behind her sister’s tendency to bring chaos to an empty room. However, she would make an exception to her kitchen tidiness rule for the side of the huge SMEG refrigerator which had morphed into a stainless-steel noticeboard and displayed a patchwork of juvenile artwork, postcards and scribbled shopping lists, as well as a planner crammed with appointments and reminders.

Yet her sister was undoubtedly on to something. The room exuded homeliness, which had rubbed off on Jess to produce a calm stoicism in the face of Lewis and Jack’s daily misdemeanours. Just being in her sister’s farmhouse-style kitchen, wrapped in the soothing aroma of caramel and melted chocolate, was a welcome refuge from the harshness of the world beyond its doors and had lessened Lucie’s trauma immeasurably. But, on the down side, she had to endure the constant repetition of her sister’s favourite lecture, a message which had been honed and polished as she strove to bring up her two sons single-handedly after she split from her husband, Dan, when Jack was only a few months old.

‘Look at these cakes. They’re like works of culinary art! I really think you might be on to something with your business idea, Lucie. Maybe you should start by offering them to the café on the High Street. What was your verdict on their cupcakes? “As heavy as old porridge” I think were your exact words?’

Lucie giggled. ‘Well, they did taste a little like the plastic they came wrapped in!’

‘Everything you bake is superb, always was even when we were kids. Everyone who tastes your creations says the same thing. If I might be so bold – they even beat Margot Bradshaw’s!’ Jess chuckled. ‘Just don’t tell Mum I said that.’

Their sisterly camaraderie spread a mellow warmth through Lucie’s veins and she enjoyed being in the cosy kitchen in the company of the person who cared for her the most. She missed her mum but, until she could afford the plane ticket to visit her in Spain, Jess did a fabulous job of surrogacy. It was the first time since Alex had rejected her proposal that she felt like herself again and she experienced a surge of confidence, quickly followed by a sharp dip when reality stuck its nose into her plans.

‘I can’t start up a business without any capital, Jess, even if it has been my dream since I was five years old. Do you remember when we used to drag the wallpaper table out to the front gate and sell our butterfly buns to passers-by?’

‘I do! And yours were always the first to go! Those were happy days, weren’t they?’

‘Remember the race to spend our hard-earned pennies on 99s and lollies from the ice-cream van that used to come along the street on Sunday afternoons? Every time I hear ‘Greensleeves’ I think of that little pink ice-cream van. I wonder where they have all disappeared to? I haven’t seen one for ages. Hey! I’ve just had an idea!’