Page 12 of The Cake Fairies
Chapter Nine
POLLY
“S
o, sometimes a tough cookie of a project comes along, and that would be you ladies. When it happens, I get very excited, although I must admit it does mean I have my work cut out.” Amber Magnolia wove her fingers together, her hands drawn up to her chin, a thoughtful expression washing over her face.
Polly was still hugging her knees to her chest, but now her grip loosened, and she got up and curled herself into the remarkably comfortable armchair again.
“I’m going to cut straight to the chase,” Amber Magnolia continued. “Things haven’t worked out with Grand Alphabetical Love Plans A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N – they almost did with O… that was the day Polly’s brothers took you on your annual excursion to Weston-Super-Mare and the beach; found themselves some… well… somenot so finefillies, disappeared with them to their caravan, and you two just happened to share your fish and chip supper watching the sunset with those bikers from Birmingham.”
Ah, the Baldwin Brothers. Polly beamed at the memory of sandy-haired Clive. Annabelle chewed seductively on her lip in contemplation of Ian.
“But let’s not dwell on the ‘what ifs’ of a new and exciting life up country, had you kept your promise to pay them a visit, and not allowed your commitment to family duty to trump that.” Okay, that resonated with Polly, though she suspected it might well have needled Annabelle.
“Where were we? Ah yes: P, Q, R, S, T, U and that little vixen of a letter V. I got ahead of myself with the latter when the local newspaper ran a lonely hearts competition and Kitty Withers tried to shoehorn you into entering. The males outnumbered the females four-to-one. You could have cherry-picked yourselves a couple of handsome and decent beaus there. But what’s done is done.”
Polly remembered the day well – unfortunately. Kitty had slapped the newspaper down on the counter, announcing the cringeworthy competition at the decibel level of a megaphone, setting off a right kerfuffle with the housewives in the bakery queue; everyone debating the dangers of meeting up with a stranger, how unnatural it all was, when they themselves had managed to find their husbands in and around the village fields. ‘Well, these women are desperate!’ Kitty had cried. ‘Don’t shoot the messenger.’
If it hadn’t been for their sweet allegiance to the rest of the ladies of the WI, Polly would have pelted her with the tray of hot meat pies Annabelle had just sailed through from the kitchen, and banned her from the bakery for life while she was at it.
“W, X, Y… of course we’d be here all day if I relayed the finer details of every single opportunity you shunned. And so here we are, at Z.”
“Jeez,” said Annabelle. “This is quite a lot to take in. So, what you’re basically saying is we’ve been completely blinded to all our opportunities to meet the men of our dreams, assuming, like a pair of idiots, that they’d be handed to us on a plate.”
“Pretty much.” Amber Magnolia confirmed it.
“And what’s the relevance of Z in all this?” Polly tried, in vain, not to come across defensively.
“Last letter of the alphabet, last chance saloon for the Williams cousins,” Amber Magnolia’s face became as serious as her declaration.
“Let’s just get this straight… wh… what are you implying will happen, if we muck up ‘Z’?” Polly’s inserted speech marks were in the spirit of this unfathomable woman’s mockery of their barren love lives.
“Don’t go worrying about that. Z hasn’t failed…yet, Polly,” Amber Magnolia emphasised. “You girls have what it takes, and I’m putting my trust in you. It’ll be impossible to mess this one up, so long as you keep your eyes open, anyway. I can feel it in my bones.”
Polly’s face contorted at the way they were being spoken to like clueless children. As if they hadn’t already had their fair share of that from Kitty.
“Who the hell do you think you are, some kind of modern-day fairy-bleedin’-godmother?” Annabelle quipped.
The strange little lady lifted her eyelids, as if in recognition of her job description. Then she gave the briefest of smiles before snapping her eyes shut and changing the subject completely. Great. As if playing Snow White to a trio of dwarves (her brothers) wasn’t freaky enough, now Polly and Annabelle were smack bang in the middle of a very warped version of Cinderella.
“Tell me the images that spring to mind when you hear these numbers: twenty-nineteen?” Amber Magnolia traced the figures in the air with her fingertip, then folded her arms as she awaited their answer.
“Dunno,” said Annabelle, snapping now. “Surely you should be the one telling us, since you appear to have all the answers?”
“Okay then. I will.”
Polly didn’t care that her tea was cold, she needed the distraction and slurped at it greedily; she decided this Amber Magnolia woman was going to prattle on about a future world full of spaceships, tele-transportation, robots, and batshit-crazy scenarios. She didn’t particularly want to hear how they could have any reference to her and her beloved cousin.
“Twenty-nineteen: a brand-new century, a brand-new millennium.” Amber Magnolia threw her arms open dramatically as if she were about to break out into an operatic ditty. “A place that feels like a dot on the horizon; but it’s coming soon. If we live that long, it’ll throw you ladies into your eighties, and me not much farther ahead.”
“Depressing!” said Annabelle. “We might complain about the boring and banal in Middle Ham, but I don’t think either of us is ready for blue rinses and Zimmer frames just yet.”
Polly nodded her head in agreement, fear knotting her stomach tightly.
“Oh, twenty-nineteen’s quite a wonderful place. Opportunity abounds.” Amber Magnolia looked specifically at Annabelle as she spoke. “Choice is everywhere, abundance aplenty. And then there are the cakes! You’ll positively drool over them. Well, we’ll get to that part in a minute. But with the bountiful comes the curse,” warned Amber Magnolia.
So, the woman was a witch. Polly knew it.
