Page 47 of The Cake Fairies
How dare this woman put them in so much peril? How dare she play these games? She wanted to go homenow. She’d had a taste of the new world and it was more than enough. It was one thing to send them off on this duplicitous voyage to get people off their phones and iPads, quite another to send them into a war zone.
Polly trudged to the sink; folder clutched tightly under her wing. She put her cup to soak in the water and meandered back to the island, reaching out for the video tape lying in wait.
“Well, there’s only one thing we can do to make our decision,” she said in a barely audible voice. “We need to watch this.”
***
“Churros!”
“Chu what?”
“Something tells me we need something really wild and unorthodox for this one, and I almost forgot… we have this.” Polly opened the drawer to the side of her bar stool, yanking out a piece of paper. “That Carmen woman must have given it us for a reason. She seemed pretty intuitive all things considered.”
“But we don’t even know what they are; let alone how to make them. I fail to see how anything except tear gas is going to detonate whatever lethal disturbances we might come across tonight. God, I can’t even believe she’s succeeded in brainwashing us. The least she can do is hint at what to bake, but no; once again she’s thoughtfully left us in it.”
“Then let’s look them up,” said Polly, conveniently overlooking the risk. “We have athoughtfullydetailed recipe right here. All we need is photographic evidence that these chu-wotsits really exist.”
On the other hand, there was no denying the fact that Amber Magnolia’s video had been compelling. But was it evidence? How could they be sure these weren’t just actors roped into her hex? Talking Too Loudly Dude did look exactly the same though. And the bloke who’d been getting first dibs of the Swedish summer cake and wolfing it down like there was no tomorrow, well, he was a dead ringer for the man they’d only yesterday seen in the flesh.
The cousins had flumped themselves onto the couch, pulled down the blinds as if they were at the flicks, and pressed play. Somehow, Amber Magnolia – or whoever she paid to do these things – had followed each of the characters from the carriage where their cake drop had taken place, and captured the highlights of their next twelve hours and the acts of benevolence that lay within. It really was no exaggeration to say that kindness had rippled to, and then again from, every human being they’d encountered that day.
Talking Too Loudly had been so touched by the gifting of their masterpiece that – after his passionate speech – he’d picked up his (landline) phone at home and got in touch with the brother he’d relegated to the filing cabinets of his mind for the past eighteen years, and spoken to him –quietly. His brother, in turn, a highly successful but Scrooge-like hedge fund manager, had rekindled the glow that had long been absent from his heart, and bounded into the drop-in centre for the homeless opposite his mammoth titanium skyscraper in New York city. He’d pulled out a chequebook and swiftly donated thirty thousand dollars to their cause!
Cake had the power to fuel philanthropy and cross the Atlantic?
But Annabelle realised, it wasn’t so much the cake doing the magic as the love infused in its creation – even amidst the culinary squabbles with a certain Scandinavian.
Closer to home, Cake Monster had apologised profusely to everyone on the Tube for his impulsive behaviour. Times – and food supplies – had been hard, growing up in a single parent family, he’d confessed to them all mere minutes into their journey. He might be a minor MP now, whom scarcely anyone had heard of, thank the Lord, else they’d be posting this on Twitter and the rest – but the cake had briefly cast him back to his seventies childhood in a council flat in Whitstable: he’d had to get food then while he could.
Too Loudly had moved in for a hug, leading to everybody abandoning their screens; nobody surprising themselves more than the bitter bitch of a fashion exec seated to Cake Monster’s right. She wasn’t one for carbs, but as it just so happened, she’d been left with the unglamorous task of disposing of excess napkins, plastic knives and forks, after a company meeting (after Shirley from accounts’ dry and uninspired retirement cake had done the rounds). CEO Marty’s PA would normally deal with these minion-esque tasks, but she was sunning herself in Barbados. He and Bitter Bitch were having an affair, but she had had chanced upon him squeezing a rival’s bottom before he’d instructedherto play bloody waitress in front of their colleagues; well, it had left her seething, that’s what.
But seeing a grown, and semi-important looking man, resort to crying, that had melted every ounce of causticity in her heart. She’d just wanted to shower him with teddy bears! And in that one moment in time, everything in the pack of cards that was her life had reshuffled; she’d texted her boss to tell him the entanglement was over, typing out her resignation while she was at it. From that blink of an eye onward she vouched she’d turn over a new leaf… and lighten up and eat a lot more cake. She helped herself to a second chunk, not before voluntarily playing waitress this time; slicing and divvying up (unsoiled parts) of the pretty layered super-sponge to fellow passengers, who’d greeted her eagerly.
“I guess we’ll never know how Marty reacted to all of this,” Annabelle cried.
“True. But if he’s married with kids, let’s hope it’s a wake-up call to count his blessings. No more having his cake and eating it, for that guy.”
The tape played on and the Cake Fairies’ eyes grew wider by the nanosecond:
The super-fast texting guy who looked like a beaver, who’d also been taking his wife for granted, stopped en route home to buy her flowers. Just because. This led his wife, who curiously resembled a fox, to bake cookies for her class of six-year-olds. All of which made thirty-one –those were the classroom sizes nowadays?– impish sprites extremely happy, and they in turn packed that delight into their empty lunchboxes, taking it home to their families along with slimy banana skins and sticky yoghurt pots, where its bloom could only grow.
The group of goth steam punk friends with the mutual Twitter obsession, who always took this train home together after work to their flat-share in Tooting Broadway, took the first steps in setting up the music charity for inner-city kids that had always been in their hearts.
The Facebook-obsessed librarian who longed to be an author, and wanted to stop hiding behind everyone else’s mainly brilliant, but sometimes mediocre words; well, she went home and put pen to paper for the first time in a decade. Little could she know her romcom would encounter an eleven-way auction from the major publishing houses – pah, Richard Osman – not to mention adaptation into a Hollywood movie with Leo DiCaprio playing male lead. All of which would secure her ample funds to make her second dream come true: a fleet of library vans, visiting underprivileged communities in the evenings so that kids could swap streets for stories.
The double-glazing sales rep on the verge of emotional collapse after twenty years of cold calling had booked a much-needed month at a yoga retreat in India, to reflect on the new direction she wanted to take. Her home counties’ village would have a zest like no other when she returned, to become one of the few people in the country to offer skipping lessons; her childhood playground passion which had never died.
The father and son who were still at loggerheads over the destiny of their joint Lego building enterprise; an obsession which had turned sour in recent weeks with Father wanting to construct a giant Taj Mahal, while Son was more in favour of Toronto’s CN Tower; they put their differences aside and compromised on Taiwan’s 101 tower. Just as well: the competition was looming and now they’d be crowned the winners in six weeks’ time. As for the number of kids they’d inspire in their own right to get off their tablets and telephones; that was unquantifiable.
The two elderly ladies who’d been on a whistle-stop tour of the capital, after spending last year’s Post Office bonds winnings on tickets to watch Riverdance (and dinner, bed and breakfast at The Savoy, they’d won good!), went home to take up ballet and ballroom dancing. The show, and its stars’ unfathomably fast legs, had inspired them to think about putting on their own dancing shoes after fifty years. The cake had given them the extra kick to sign up for lessons in their town hall.
And then there was the bonus footage, which had definitely scored them Amber Magnolia’s aforementioned Brownie points. The three girls in the original carriage had miraculously ceased their tireless tapping (they’d been airbrushing their plethora of social media profiles) and posted their presence to the worldau naturelinstead. Carmen’s cavorting – which had only happened because of the Cake Fairies grand entrée on the Tube – had woven its own inexplicable magic.
“But I thought all she wanted us to do was get noses away from screens,” said Annabelle, flummoxed at their impact on humankind already, almost completely taking back her earlier tempestuous words.
“I guess this is what happens when brain space is freed to get creative again, to listen to impulses; to do and to be in the moment.” Polly dabbed away at her teary eyes.
Annabelle couldn’t help but inwardly grin at the irony of that statement spilling from Polly’s lips.
