Page 15 of The Cake Fairies
“You’re partially right,” Amber Magnolia raised her voice above the kettle’s whistle, water at boiling point already. “But actually, bakeries are thriving in the future – as is home-baking. Not to mention cookery programmes. Oh, my giddy Aunt, you two will think you’ve died and gone to heaven: Nigella, Mary Berry;The Great British Bake Off. I’m not so sure you’ll be as enamoured with Jamie and Gordon – and I wouldn’t really encourage Annabelle to tune into too many of the latter’s words. Heston you’ll be in awe of, but it’s no use bringing back any of hisAlice in Wonderlandideas either. Way too avant-garde for 1969, you’ll simply terrify people. Oops, I’m rather giving the game away. Let’s just get ourselves tanked up again and conclude the discussion, shall we?”
“From where I’m sitting this feels slightly one way,” said Polly, earning an exasperated frown from Amber Magnolia and subsiding, defeated. “Oh, okay. Yes. Let’s.”
Freshly filled teacups were pushed under their noses, biscuits scattered across a plate. The cousins almost fought over the ruby-jewelled specimens balanced on the top, each securing a generous pile of treats, and Amber Magnolia carried on. “There’s no clearer way to put it: things in the not-so-distant future are at crisis level. It’s like the mass introduction of gadgets has opened up a Pandora’s Box of ignorance, giving everyone unexpressed permission to cocoon themselves in their own worlds. Even the train spotters and the knitters and the lovers are at it. I’m generalising a little, for sure; therearemany kind and vigilant folk dotted about, but on the whole, people just aren’t as interested in each other anymore. Not like they were in the good old days. You could be walking the streets of London, Glastonbury, or even Middle Ham in 2019, somebody could be in a spot of bother, and passers-by wouldn’t be any the wiser,” said Amber Magnolia. Annabelle shuddered as an image of a groping Ray flashed into her mind. She bit angrily into her biscuit.
“People of all ages are simply too busy immersing themselves in the virtual reality nonsense of YouTube videos, Facetime, Snapchat, and Minecraft,” Amber Magnolia said sadly. “Don’t think I’m plucking these ideas out of thin air, either. Studies have shown a worrying reduction in empathy since the year 2000, and 2019s kids are predicted to give away as much as five years of their lives to watching mindless trash. Then there’s the airbrushing of freckles and wrinkles and pimples and grey hairs and cellulite.”
“Oh yes, these things have inbuilt cameras too.” She prodded the phone. “With every editing facility known to woman… and, to a lesser extent, tween, teen, and man. I’ll see to it that extra Brownie points are awarded if you can tackle that calamity and restore a little self-love while you’re at it. It all started with the likes ofVogueselling us impossible dreams, and it’ll all end in tears. There’s not a human being on earth who can permanently look perfect. Ageing is nature. You don’t see an oak tree contouring its trunk, dining on quinoa and kelp smoothies to combat its muffin top; requesting that picnickers only capture it on film at an angle; its left branches fifty-three centimetres in front of its right. Ageing is beautiful.”
If Annabelle had been lost, she was now stranded in the wilderness without so much as a compass, let alone a roadmap.
“It’s obvious, when you think about it. What’s the one thing that’s guaranteed to lure folk away from screen addiction in all its garish guises?”
Annabelle continued to munch her Jammie Dodger. It was really rather good. Manufactured, and full of additives, she suspected, but somehow it tasted a little more delectable under canvas.
“Oh my. To think you bake the oxytocin-producing belters, too!” said Amber Magnolia, exasperated at the cousins’ silence.
“Oxy what?” mumbled Annabelle.
Polly, who’d made shorter work of her stash of goodies – and after all those sickly brandy snaps, too – had a stab at the conundrum. “Cake?”
“Well, of course it’s cake. Could there be another possible answer?”
“But how are we—”
“Shh,” Amber Magnolia put her finger to her lips. “Don’t ruin the best bit.”
The women shifted in their seats; necks craned forward as if this were a Derby Day race to the finishing line of enlightenment.
“You’re going on an undercover mission – undercover with a tiny amount of leeway, you’ll read up on that little caveat in the manual.”
“Man—?”
“Silence! I despair for the poor schoolteachers of your past.”
Annabelle held her breath. Polly was statue still. Amber Magnolia finished off the dregs of her tea and set her cup upon her saucer with a satisfying tinkle. “There’s been something of a phenomenon in the past few years; in the future, that is.” Boy, this was getting more confusing by the second, thought Annabelle.
“A little movement has grown into a much larger one. It’s quite simple and it’s calledThe Book Fairies. They’re a generous, happy-go-lucky bunch of volunteers who drop paperback books tied with pretty green bows on park benches and London Underground Tubes, café tables, and bar tops. Sometimes they get rather inventive, hiding their token gifts to the bookworm public in hedges, on statues and behind tins of Heinz baked beans on supermarket shelves.”
“Wow. What a lovely idea,” said Polly.
“Isn’t it?” Amber Magnolia smiled that beaming smile that had first enticed them into the tent. “I’ve been watching them fondly from afar… always bearing the two of you in mind, ever since Grand Alphabetical Love Plans W, X and Y fell flat on their faces. I knew there was something in the book gesture, a transferable act that could be applied to any number of things. Books will only take change so far. As wonderful as the movement is for those who are fond of the written word, as fantastic as it is that Book Fairies have popped up in countries all over the world; the diehard screen addict will surely be lured by one thing, and one thing only: the heavenly smell of freshly baked goods.” She clapped her hands together.
“Polly and Annabelle Williams: I christen you the Cake Fairies. Here is your secret mission folder,” Amber Magnolia reached across to open the filing cabinet and proceeded to remove a pillar-box red file, which she pushed across the table so it landed with a plonk in Annabelle’s lap. She grinned at her widely as if she’d rid herself of one scorching hot burden.
“Inside you’ll find a comprehensive list of the drops I require you to make across the length and breadth of the British Isles. Some will seem easy, others impossible. Complete the challenge anyway. Everything will soon return to normal, in three-hundred and sixty-five days, when your mission is accomplished.”
“Now just a minute, Miss Magnolia.” Annabelle couldn’t believe what she was hearing. This was claptrap. Every last crumb of it. She tried to lift the folder from her denim-clad thighs to hurl it back across the table at the bossy vision seated before her. But it clung to her defiantly, as though it were magnetic. “I think this is all getting a little far-fetched. I was ready for you to tell us that we needed to expand our business… maybe even that we’d work our butts off to turn it into an emporium, with shops far and wide, dotting the map of England’s green and pleasant land. But we’re nofairies, as you just put—”
“Oh, it’s nothing to worry about; a piece of cake as it happens,” Amber Magnolia interrupted, and there it was again, that annoying and thoroughly giddy laugh, but this time she’d paired it with the most intense gaze; a look which gave way to a stream of golden light, whose beams danced in Annabelle’s direction and appeared to align themselves all around her form.
“So, this is it? The Grand whatever-you-called-it Plan to find love? Don’t make me laugh.” Polly snubbed the silliness of it all, even as Annabelle felt an indescribable force lift her body up and out of the chair, through the top of the tent, and far, far away.
“Has anything else worked for you?”were the very last words that wicked woman spoke as Annabelle felt herself tumbling and spinning at the speed of light, every inch of her cocooned in the dark, velvety, star-strewn sky.
