Читать книгу Home Truths - Susan Lewis, Susan Lewis - Страница 16

Just when Angie thought she didn’t have a single laugh left in her, that even if she did it’d never make it past all the stress and anxiety corked up in her soul, it erupted in a great choking guffaw. It wasn’t supposed to be funny, it really wasn’t. In fact, it was the biggest disaster to come out of Angie’s oven since the day Steve had set fire to his mother’s boots while trying to dry them.

Grace’s unicorn cake was … Well, it was different, that was for sure, unique even, and so explicitly something it wasn’t supposed to be that even she gave a snort of laughter when she realized why her mother and aunt were beside themselves.

Zac had been boasting to his mates for days that he was going to have the biggest, most amazing unicorn cake ever, and that was certainly true.

‘It’s definitely got the biggest, most amazing …’ Emma gestured to the horn as she gasped and dabbed her eyes with a party napkin. ‘I’ve never seen one like it. Were those cake balls part of the recipe, or did you … was it …?’

Falling against her mother as they all exploded again, Grace managed to say, ‘There were supposed to be three of them – there were three, I swear it, I just don’t know how it’s come out as two.’

‘Well, I’m sorry, my darling,’ Emma said, putting an arm around her niece. ‘It might be the best cake we’ve ever tasted, but no way can we serve it like that. It’s … It’s …’

‘Obscene, I know,’ Grace declared, and transporting it to the table she waited for her mother and aunt to pull themselves together, saying, ‘Stop. He’ll be in any minute.’

Angie glanced down the hall towards the front door. Since it was closed it wasn’t possible to see beyond it, but they could hear the shouts of Zac and his friends playing footie over on the green. They’d already stuffed themselves with jelly and egg sandwiches since coming in from school, and now they were working up an appetite for the cake while Grace iced it.

This wasn’t going well.

‘We’ve got to do something,’ Grace hissed, searching for ideas. ‘I know! Shall I drop it?’

Emma burst into more hilarity, while Angie, still choking with mirth, decided that before they did anything at all they needed a photograph.

In the end, after crushing the two cake balls into one spongy mess that they then coated in lashings of crimson buttermilk icing, and remoulding the horn into a suitably slimmer and less excited version of its former self, Grace added a pair of spidery eyes in a place that seemed to work and carried the unique creation to the bomb site of a dining table.

Angie could only look on as Zac and his cousins came tumbling back through the front door, with four equally muddy friends on their heels, kicking off their boots first and then descending on the ‘most awesome cake ever’.

‘That’s what I love about boys,’ Emma murmured in her ear, ‘so easy to please.’

This was certainly true of Zac. Most other boys his age had birthday parties at Pizza Express or a Game Wagon Video event or even a ride in a hot-air balloon, all so way beyond her means that she hadn’t even bothered Googling for ideas. One day, though, when she was back on her feet, he was going to have the best birthday party money could buy.

‘No, I’m not going to make one for you,’ Grace told Harry, Emma’s youngest, who was soon due to be seven himself. ‘No, not for you either,’ she said to several other boys who were waving grubby hands in the air, because their mouths were too full to shout. ‘This is a one-off, I mean, like real art, so make the most of it.’

‘Mum, did you see what Freddie gave me for my birthday?’ Zac shouted, ‘It’s only a Liverpool training shirt. Liverpool’s my favourite team,’ he informed his friend Freddie, as if Freddie had pulled off a mega mind-reading trick.

‘When Zac comes to our house,’ Jack piped up, ‘we watch football in our room so we don’t get on Mum’s nerves with all our shouting. We get on Mum’s nerves quite a lot, but she doesn’t mind really.’

‘I do, I do,’ Emma assured him, knocking back another mouthful of tepid lemonade.

‘It’s only you who gets on her nerves,’ Harry told his brother, and reached for more cake before the last bit went.