‘A toilet? You’re quite sure about that?’
I’m sitting in my red tartan pyjamas chatting to a bloke about a cake for his father’s retirement party. My curly brown hair is scrunched up into a messy ponytail and I’ve just noticed a blob of marmalade on my chest. It’s a good job we’re not speaking via video link.
‘It’s rather an unusual request. Are you sure that’s what he’d like?’
‘Positive. Dad was a plumber. He lived and breathed his job. In fact, I’m surprised he’s even retiring. No, honestly, a toilet-shaped cake will be perfect.’
I suppose the customer is always right, but I tentatively offer a suggestion.
‘Have you thought about a bath? It might be a bit of an easier shape to cut into.’
‘Oh, I never thought of that. A bath? Mmm, possibly. My dad seems to spend half his life talking about ballcocks and flushes so a toilet was the first thing that came to mind.’
‘It’s up to you, of course, but I just think a bath might be a nicer cake. I could do a little model of your dad sat in it surrounded by bubbles, holding up a can of beer or something.’
‘He doesn’t drink beer.’
‘Wine?’
‘No, he doesn’t really drink alcohol at all. And I don’t think he’s ever had a bubble bath in his life. He’s got eczema, you see.’
This is proving trickier than I thought.
‘OK, forget the beer. And the bubbles. In fact, why not just a nice rectangular cake decorated with a figure of your dad carrying a box of tools, and a white plumber’s van, that sort of thing?’
‘Brilliant. Let’s go with that then. Will it be alright if I collect it on Friday afternoon?’
It’s currently Wednesday morning.
‘This Friday?’
‘Err, yes.’
‘That’s a little short notice. I’d normally ask for at least a week’s notice for something like this, and I’ve got a lot on at the moment.’
There’s silence at the end of the phone.
‘Oh bugger. My mum’s going to kill me for this. She asked me to order this cake a month ago and I completely forgot about it. I’ll have to buy one from a shop.’
I breathe out slowly. It’s not the first time this has happened, but I would never turn a client away, as it could be professional suicide. I’ve stayed up half the night baking rather than let someone down.
‘Right, OK, I’ll do it. I hope jam sponge will be alright,’ I say quickly, dispelling any notion of a fruit cake.
‘Yeah, that’s fine. Nice one, you’ve saved my life.’
‘No problem. Could you just email me telling me exactly what you want? I.e. rectangular sponge cake with plumber figure for retirement party.’
‘Yeah, sure, if you like. Thanks again.’
There’s a good reason why I do this. In the early days, I would take phone orders without anything written down. I quickly learned that confirming an order by text or email eliminates the possibility of any sort of misunderstanding. Like the time I presented a customer with a cake of a goat (which made perfect sense, as it was a farmer’s retirement party and, you know, I figured maybe goats were his favourite animal). Turns out his wife had asked for a cake of a boat, as they were selling up and buying a bungalow by the sea where they hoped to enjoy some sailing.
Ending the call, I realise that was the first request for a toilet cake that I’ve ever had. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been asked to bake some right corkers. I’ve done female torsos in basques, vampires and coffins. You name it and I’ve probably baked it. Even a penis. I don’t like to imagine the afternoon tea party where someone was slicing a sharp knife into that particular part of the male anatomy.
I’m still smiling at the memory of the goat cake when Sam, my assistant, walks in to the kitchen.
‘Morning, Liv,’ she says, taking off her green felt beret and shaking loose her light red hair, which she likes to call strawberry blonde. Sam’s never without a hat. Berets, woollen beanies and trilbies adorn her head throughout the year and she suits every single style. These are usually matched with a stylish coat and a slash of red lipstick that give her a type of Hollywood glamour at the tender age of twenty-six. Today she’s wearing a mustard vintage dress, black tights and black suede court shoes. Her mum owns a vintage clothes shop in town, where a lot of her purchases come from.
‘Morning, Sam. I’ve just taken a call for a last-minute sponge cake – for Friday afternoon, would you believe?’ I brush toast crumbs and marmalade from my pyjama top.
‘Do you want me to do it?’
‘Would you? I wanted to get stuck in to icing that wedding cake tomorrow. And I’ve got to make a couple of birthday cakes, as well as some cupcakes for a local primary school for Friday.’
‘No problem. Maybe you had better go and get dressed first though?’ she laughs.
‘Just let me finish my rocket fuel first.’ I down the thick rich coffee that has just spluttered its way out of my ancient coffee machine. It was one of the first machines on the market and I’ll never change it until it physically falls apart.
Baked to Perfection is the online cake shop I run from my kitchen, housed in the extension that was added to my two-bedroomed home just over two years ago. It was my thirty-sixth birthday, and my parents surprised me with a savings policy that matured on that date. Dad had set up a twenty-year savings plan when I was sixteen, even investing some of it wisely. That’s Dad all over – and I’d never been so pleased to hear about his financial planning.
The monetary gift saw a kitchen extension with a huge oven and lots of shiny new bakeware ensconced in my home. I also have a tall larder cupboard, which I fill with boxed cakes ready to be despatched.
Everyone thought I was taking a massive risk going into the cake business; social media sites were flooded with them, prices were becoming more and more competitive. There was no money to be made. Friends thought I was crazy even considering packing in my primary-teaching job, and if I had a pound for every time someone said ‘Fancy giving up all those school holidays’, I’d be set up for life.
But even long school holidays couldn’t ease the stress I was under working in an underfunded school with kids who displayed challenging behaviours. And it seemed that most of them were in my class. Add to that never-ending pupil assessments, paperwork, meetings and lesson planning and I became physically frazzled. The time I sat up all evening planning a particularly enriching lesson about fair trade (at least I thought so; we were going to design and make our own chocolate bars and everything), and then the kids just sighed in boredom, I realised that perhaps I was in the wrong job. Friends had suggested it may have just been the wrong school. Admittedly, it was a school in a deprived area with little parental support, but even so, wouldn’t a gifted teacher have got through to the kids? I spent most of my evenings drinking wine and moaning to my friends that I didn’t sign up for this, that I was a teacher and not a bloody social worker.
Baking had always been my antidote to stress, and whether I was up to my elbows in flour, tempering chocolate or gently folding meringue, it all had a relaxing effect on me. I’d always been good at baking. My mother, whose cakes always fell flat, told me that I must have picked up some skills from Aunt Genevieve, who runs a small bakery in the glorious Côte d’Azur in France, where I spent many summers. Although English, her French name lured her to France, where she met and married my Uncle Enzo at the age of twenty-five and has lived there ever since.
Largely self-taught, although no doubt learning a lot from my aunt, I experimented with recipes and bought every single cookbook until I had perfected the sponge cake. The fruit cake took a while longer to master, but ultimately became the cake most people rave about. When I enrolled on a cake decorating course things really took off. A close friend asked me to make her wedding cake and soon the orders started flooding in. I took a leap of faith and quit my teaching job after a particularly stressful term and thankfully I’ve never looked back. I even had to take on an assistant in the form of Sam who was a catering student at the local college. It was tricky when I first started up and we had to tighten our belts a little, but thankfully we were never short of orders. And right from the off I made sure I saved a little each month.
I’ve always been good at squirreling money away and saved quite a bit when I was teaching. I’m not sure my son Jake has the same sensible approach to money. He’s away at university now and does a little casual work here and there, but he spends his wages as soon as he receives them. I brought Jake up alone, with the help of my parents, who live a short drive away here in Southport. It wasn’t always the easiest, being a young single mother, but I wouldn’t change a single day for anything. I managed to raise him without a man and I’m rather proud of how he’s turned out. He’s a kind, considerate son who doesn’t return from uni with a pile of dirty washing, but rather (on Mother’s Day at least) a large bunch of flowers and a kiss on the cheek. He’ll be home again soon for the summer holidays and I can’t wait to see him.
It’s Friday afternoon and I’ve called into my parents’ house for a brew after I’ve been shopping on Lord Street, a glorious tree-lined boulevard in town, with metal facades overhanging the shops.
Mum and Dad live in a pretty whitewashed mews house in a small courtyard behind one of the main shopping streets. It has a glossy, newly painted blue front door, which Dad has finally got around to doing now that he’s retired. Saying that, though, Mum has complained that it’s the only DIY he’s done since he finished work, despite years of promising her that he would ‘spruce the place up’ once he’d retired.
Which is exactly what you would expect from Eddie David Dunne. ‘Steady Eddie’. Hard-working, loyal and proud of the fact that he hadn’t taken a sick day in over twenty years. He drove the same car for twelve years, despite Mum’s pleas for a new one, as there was ‘nothing wrong with it’. He only ever drank beer at the weekends and bought new jumpers when the old ones had worn out.
Everything changed when he retired, though. Steady Eddie all but disappeared as Daring Dave took over. He came home from his retirement party at the printer’s, where he worked as General Manager, clutching a garden centre gift voucher and the remains of his retirement cake wrapped in foil. ‘That’s that then,’ he said. Mum had retired five years earlier from her job at Southport Theatre, where she worked in hospitality, organising big events. A rather glamourous blonde of sixty-six, she had confided in me that she was worried about Dad when he retired and wasn’t sure what he would do to fill his time. Mum’s always been a social butterfly and is a member of a gym, a choir and a book club. Dad has no friends and likes it that way. So when Dad arrived home one Friday afternoon with a shiny new campervan, Mum almost fainted.
‘Right then, Gloria. I think it’s about time we had some fun,’ he announced, flicking open a map of the British Isles in their neat lounge. ‘After we’ve toured Britain, we’ll go wherever you fancy. The world’s our oyster.’
And that’s exactly what they’ve been doing for the past six months. They’ve been from Land’s End to John O’Groats and everywhere in between, and they both look ten years younger. They’re home for a couple of weeks before they set off for Barcelona. I’m thrilled that they are enjoying new adventures.
‘Have you brought any cake to go with this tea?’ Dad asks now.
‘Sorry, Dad, I’ve just dashed here straight from the shops. I’ve been buying a new top. I’ll bring your favourite next time; Bakewell tart, is it?’ As if I don’t know it’s his ultimate weakness.
‘Ooh, you really shouldn’t, love,’ says Mum as she enters the lounge. ‘A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips.’ She’s managed to retain her trim figure with a love of dancing, walking and occasional treats.
‘Bugger that. A lifetime in the factory means I’ve earned as many treats as I like.’
Mum tuts but she has a smile on her face. ‘Anyway, you should be out on a nice date, not baking for us. Let’s have a look at this top, is it for something special?’
Mum would like nothing more than for me to meet a nice man and settle down. I pull the red top from my bag and Mum runs her hand over the soft chiffon fabric. ‘Oh, very nice. And I love that colour.’
‘It’s just a dinner with the girls. Really, Mum, who said I’m looking for the man of my dreams? Or even my nightmares? I’m happily single.’
Mum raises her eyebrows and gives me a look that says How can you possibly be happy being single? But the truth is, I am. I’m very busy with the cake business and I have a small bunch of friends who I meet up with regularly. And of course I have Jake. I don’t need any complications in my life right now. My last break-up was just over four years ago. I’d been dating Simon, a teacher at the school where I worked, for six months when he moved into my place. And that’s when I discovered we were completely incompatible and the only thing we had in common was work, which we talked about incessantly. After a year of quiet nights in with takeaways and bottles of wine, I ended things. I wanted more from life and felt we were going nowhere. Simon took the break-up far harder than I expected him to, as I never thought he considered me the love of his life. I certainly never considered him mine – that particular train left my station a long time ago.
‘I just think you need looking after once in a while,’ Mum says, coming over and giving me a kiss on the cheek. She smells of the Estée Lauder Youth Dew that she’s worn forever. ‘Especially with me and Dad off on our travels. Pity you can’t come with us some time.’
I can’t think of anything worse than being scrunched up in a caravan with my parents, spending sleepless nights on a pull-down bed and showering in draughty communal shower blocks. But I give a regretful nod in any case.
‘Don’t you worry about me, I’m doing great, really I am. It’s time you both went off and had some fun together. Isn’t that what retirement’s all about?’
‘Well, it might be nice if you came next time we call on Aunt Gen. How long is it since you’ve been to France?’
I realise with a shock that it’s been five years since I last visited my aunt, and that was for my Uncle Enzo’s funeral. Despite the circumstances, each time I ventured out I found myself gazing at every man I walked past, seeking a resemblance to my first love, André, who I’d spent the summer with when I was eighteen. People can change a lot over the years, though, and he might not have even been living in the South of France at the time. After all, the last time I saw him he was leaving for New Zealand and planning to travel the world.
That was just one of many summers at Aunt Gen’s. As a child I would swim in the sparkling turquoise sea and run along the soft white sand at Antibes. I remember the first time I saw a giant orca at the water park and my dad told me it was the whale from the movie Free Willy. I never understood why he winked at my mother.
Having an aunt with a bakery was a lot of fun, especially as she would let me try out any new cake creations. I can recall the first time I sank my teeth into one of her light-as-a-feather meringues and savoured the soft chewy centre. My chin would dribble with the glossy red sauce from a juicy strawberry sitting on a bed of smooth crème pâtissière encased in melt-in-the-mouth pastry. I would perch on the end of a wooden stool in her kitchen and watch in wonder as she stretched and plaited puff pastry, dotted with chunks of chocolate for the pain au chocolat. She would wipe her brow and high cheekbones with the back of her hand as she placed the croissants into the hot oven. Her deep auburn hair was always swept up in an elegant chignon, her lips painted a soft peach shade. And I can so easily recall her smell: a mixture of soft vanilla and violets. I feel a stab of guilt that it’s been so long since I’ve seen her, but thoughts of cakes remind me that I have a delivery to make.
‘Right, I’d better be off now,’ I say, draining my tea.
‘Don’t forget my Bakewell tart next time,’ Dad says as I give them both a kiss on the cheek before heading off to the school where my friend Faye works. I’m glad I managed to get a top for tomorrow night. Sometimes it takes me hours to find something. Another thing ticked off my seemingly never-ending to-do list.
I cross the playground, passing a colourful wooden climbing frame, before ringing the bell at St Thomas Primary School: a grey stone Victorian building on the other side of town where I’m about to deliver some cupcakes. Within a few minutes, Faye appears at reception and buzzes me in.
‘Cakes for your soirée,’ I say, handing over an assortment of cupcakes with pastel-coloured icing.
Faye’s dressed in a black knee-length skirt and pink shirt, giving no clue to her inner rock chick, apart possibly from her short spiky aubergine hair, which frames her large blue eyes and pretty, heart-shaped face. The eagle tattoo on her back is never revealed in school. Faye and I have been friends since high school, and though we’ve got different tastes in a lot of things, some memories just bind you together forever.
‘Who’s leaving?’ I ask as I follow her to the staff room down a magnolia-painted corridor, dotted with children’s paintings of Van Gogh’s sunflowers.
‘Mike from Year Six. He’s got a job in a school a bit closer to his home in Wigan. He’s been commuting for over an hour every morning to get here, so I can’t blame him. He’s a great teacher though. The kids are going to miss him. We all will.’
I set the cakes on a dessert table alongside a selection of petit fours and a large rectangular cake iced with the message ‘Good Luck Mike’.
‘Who made the cake?’ I ask – you have to check out the local competition.
‘Costco’s finest. Apparently, they are his absolute favourite. You know I would have recommended you for a home-made one.’
‘Just checking,’ I say, smiling.
If I’m honest, I’m grateful I was only called upon to do a batch of cupcakes. I can whip them up in no time at all. I’ve been really busy with wedding cakes lately, as it’s summer and w. . .
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