Page 50 of The Cake Fairies
Once her part was done, Annabelle knew she had to at least make it look like she was calling Alex. “Oh dear. For some reason he’s not picking up his mobile,” she yelled, ear glued to the receiver of the penthouse landline, lest Polly or Ivy should catch her out. Despite everything she’d said to Polly when she’d hopped off the London Eye, she refused to play gooseberry for a moment longer. Last night’s snatched slumber had been absolute torture, with its incessant imagery of Polly and Alex entwined. “I’ll try the café. He’s given me that number too.”
She counted sixty seconds in her head as the dialling tone droned monotonously on, fingers hovering but – once again – not connecting with the numbers she should be punching into the phone; half an eye cast on the kitchen door.
“Oh, hi,” she said into thin air, marvelling at the diamante twinkle the chandelier had thrown upon her, framing her guilt under the brightest of spotlights. “I was wondering if Alex was there?” And wait ten seconds for authenticity purposes. “He’s not? Oh, right. I see. What a shame.” She nibbled at her thumbnail, dismayed that she was being so childish and deceitful, but not able to stop now. “Well, if he does come in to work later, would you mind asking him to visit Polly and Annabelle’s apartment, please? Something’s come up and we need his help.” Five second interval. “That would be most kind. Thank you so much. Yes. Bye.Byeee.Bye.” There. That should do it. She trudged back to the kitchen to deliver the unfortunate news.
“This doesn’t seem like Alex at all.” Her cousin’s voice was practically a wail. “I hope he’s okay?”
“Oh, Polly, don’t be such a wet blanket! You hardly know the guy. How can you tell the way he’d behave in any given situation?”
“I don’t know. I just feel like I can… I…” Polly patted down her apron to avert Annabelle’s inquisition. “He sort of opened up to me last night, as it happens.”
Ivy arched a brow, biting her lip mid-doweling chop.
“And he helped me through a spot of nerves. Well, that wheelisan enormous thing.”
“It’s hardly what you’d call fast, and it’s hardly as if you were a poor defenceless little hamster trying to find your way off it.” Annabelle said, willing herself not to insert the bitter sounding ‘hardly’ into any more replies. “Anyway, talk about changing your tune. Not so long ago you implied that you found him repulsive.”
“True, and okay, yes, the latter is true, too.” Polly blushed lamely. “But it was the tallest thing I’d ever been on. I sort of panicked at the beginning. Anyway, after all of that – and seeing me at my very worst – he said he’d like to take me out for afternoon tea. I guess a girl can change her mind about someone?” Everyone was silent until Polly added a pathetic, “Can’t they?”
“Squee!” exclaimed Ivy in delayed reaction delight.
Oh, do shut up.“That’s his idea of romance? Scones, cream, and strawberry jam? Well, I wouldn’t read too much into that,” Annabelle sniffed.
She knew she’d hate herself even more for saying what she was about to say, but she craved the male attention this bloody annoying era had so far failed to deliver her. And she craved it more than her cousin:
“Tell you what; why don’t I speed things up for you? You know, like we did at school; you’d ask someone out for me in the telephone box with a pre-written script, and I’d ask someone out for you. He’d like that. I mean the forward thinking of it, the woman getting in first with the proposal is what it’s all about nowadays.”
“She’s right.” Ivy grinned, nodding her head vigorously, and Annabelle half let her off for her earlier ‘squee-ing’.
“I’m not sure. I’d feel better if it came from him and I let him follow through with the idea in his own good time. After all, he suggested it.”
“Polly, Polly, POLLY:we don’t have time; we could be headed up country in a matter of days – and this is the twenty-first century, remember?” Annabelle threw in a heavy wink. “A woman can be just as proactive as a man.”
“True,” Polly pursed her lips in contemplation. “When you put it like that, I guess you’d better ask him for me. If you don’t mind?”
“It’ll be my absolute pleasure.” Annabelle grinned, thrilled that, on the theme of twenty-first century technology, she’d had the good sense to take over the mobile phone aspect of it herself. Yet not so very thrilled at her split personality’s thoroughly wicked behaviour.
