Page 58 of The Cake Fairies

“How went the date?” a shaky voice boomed down the stairs, following Polly into the kitchen where she placed her luxury leftovers on the island. “Hope you both enjoyed it. And what about the grub? You must tell me about the cake.”

“Cake was great,” Polly shouted behind her. “Company a little on the quiet side.”

There was a short pause, then Annabelle was standing beside her, all ears, like some kind of desert mirage.

“Do you…do you mean that he didn’t show up?”

Polly marvelled at Annabelle’s ability to read between her very few lines immediately, and with such accuracy. Annabelle, meanwhile, fidgeted with the buttons on the red shirt dress she’d presumably just bungled herself into, eyes flitting this way and that, before resting on Polly’s forehead, so that Polly wondered if perhaps she was sporting a boil. Her cousin seemed to be offering the briefest and strangest outpouring of sympathy; a sentiment which wasn’t exactly shining from her eyes.

“Something like that,” Polly refused to elaborate on her date-that-wasn’t. “But who cares about pointlessly undeserving and thoroughly idiotic men, when I have a much better letter Z about my person?” She picked up the beautiful goodie bag and took to swinging it again. “Zabaglione tartlets.” She licked her lips playfully, as if to say that cake would always be her first love. And it would probably be forever true, since a cake couldn’t let a woman down in the cruel, twisted way that Alex had. “A few other letters in here too; namely Ps, Cs, and Ms.”

“I’m so sorry, sweetheart.” Annabelle moved closer to take the bag from Polly’s hand and rifle through it. “Mm, to the Ms, though,’ she winked. And if Polly wasn’t mistaken, a distinctive whiff of a rather expensive smelling perfume trailed after her. “He doesn’t deserve you,” Annabelle said, diving into the bounty and pulling out an elegant example of a clementine and white chocolate macaron. She popped it in her mouth in its entirety, closing her eyes until it had dissolved on her tongue.

“Good, huh?”

“Very good… but also very, very bad,” retorted Annabelle.

She took Polly by the slumped shoulders – evidently her body language couldn’t lie – gave her the strangest of cursory glances, then went in for a killer hug that almost squeezed the remaining life out of her. “Letter Z is probably waiting for you in Aberdeen or Birmingham or Cheshire.”

“Or a city called Don’t Ever Go There,” Polly sniffed. “Never ever, and I meanever,set me up on a date again.”

“On that score you have my word. I’m so sorry it went so pear-shaped. Men like Alex are…”

“Don’t say his name in this house… or… any of our future abodes. Not to mention our bakery when we finally get back to Middle Ham.”

Now Polly ran to her room, unable to escape her heartache at the thought of returning to the sixties without seeing him again. And then the tears came.