Page 7 of The Cake Fairies
Chapter Six
ANNABELLE
“I
can’t do this anymore.”
Annabelle tugged at the rainbow-hued sweater tied around her waist, more than aware that she’d failed spectacularly to keep up her jolly Pollyanna façade in the past couple of days. She’d tried her best to don a mood as airy as meringue, but her efforts had sunk like a soggy-bottomed blackberry pie. She kicked at a pile of wayward leaves, throwing up splashes of marmalade and chocolate. Autumn had descended too quickly for her liking, and now she had her entire life pinned on tonight.
Her parents loathed the particular brand of scruffiness her jumper symbolised, almost as much as they loathed the idea of their precious daughter rubbing shoulders with the travellers who ran the fun fair. She’d had to wait until she’d got as far as the corner shop before she rebelled, removing the garment from her handbag where it had been scrunched into a ball, and securing it tightly around her middle. She was still completely baffled at their lack of remarks about the amount of thigh she was flashing in her tight, cut-off denim dungarees and white T-shirt ensemble. The juxtaposition of their working-class airs and graces rarely made a scrap of sense. And she knew they would be on tenterhooks until she returned, at her curfew time of eleven o’clock.
“What do you mean?” Polly stumbled backwards onto the last bench in the village in shock, shorter than Annabelle for all of five minutes in her current slouching position. “I thought the bakery made you as happy as it does me.” She ran her fingers through her thick red waves of hair, a move that could have been quite slick, were it not for its customary tangles. “I can’t possibly run it without you.”
Polly’s hue reflected the exact shade of gloom Annabelle imagined was radiating from her own face. More was the pity when Polly looked so trendy in her black and white gingham layered tunic and daring custard flares. Once again, their efforts to pull would probably be wasted on the fair, unless a busload of boys from Bath cared to manifest itself. Alas, Bath was much too far away and likely had its own even more exciting events to offer.
“That’s exactly it,” said Annabelle, extending her hand to heave Polly back up to her feet and onto those precarious-looking platform wedges hiding beneath the hems of her trousers. It would take them at least forty-five minutes to walk to the large field where Glastonbury’s yearly attraction was held, unless they lucked out with a lift. It could be as much as an hour and a half if Polly didn’t quicken her step in those completely unnecessary heels that had her towering above her cousin with Amazonian effect. Annabelle may have been Queen of high-maintenance hair, but Polly won hands down when it came to the feet. Quite why she couldn’t don a sturdier pair of suede ankle boots, Annabelle didn’t know. All of which was overlooking the fact that Annabelle’s own choice of footwear was also ninety-nine per cent likely to get soiled in a cowpaten route. “Don’t you see? We’re desperate. Utterly bloody trapped.”
“Oh. Yeah. That.”
Polly did see, and Annabelle was hoping (against hope) that her cousin’s exuberant attire meant tonight was the night she’d also see it was time for something new – and not just whatever brand new ride was ready and waiting to spin them senseless before spitting them out.
The trouble was that Polly saw only what she wanted to see, at any given moment. It was the only explanation for her loyalty to those devious brothers of hers. Blinkers on and keep baking. How Annabelle wished she could confess about the night Ray had recently cornered her outside the bakery. Polly, knuckles deep in the kneading of the next morning’s Chelsea buns, had been caught up in sweet oblivion. Then he’d ‘accidentally’ bumped into her cousin, taken quick advantage and pinned her against the wall, rubbed himself against her like an animal marking its territory, and unfurled his hands so they could roam across her buttocks.
She’d been mortified. Raymond Williams. Her first cousin! Fortunately, she’d been armed with a rolling pin and hadn’t thought twice about landing him a mighty thwack to the ribs.
“You dare open your mouth to our Polly and you’re toast!” He’d spat at her then, as if she were something unsavoury he’d peeled off the bottom of his boot.
She’d made to deliver a piercing scream, the kind that brought curtain-twitchers flocking to their windows. But a sense of duty to his younger sister had stopped her. Her jaw set hard as he’d walked backwards before breaking into a frantic sprint, shouting: “Why’d you lead me on? I’ve stored up all those moments and all the ways you looked at me like you wanted to hump me. You’re bloody asking for it, too, wearing that… thatbelt, you tease!”
Annabelle grimaced at the memory, balling her hands into fists beneath the shield of her pockets. How dare he insinuate she was nothing more than a cheap hooker in her miniskirt? These were the days of women’s lib, for crying out loud. The village walls felt like they were closing in on her all right.
Polly, meanwhile, dusted herself down, pasted her smile back on her face and put her best foot forward.
“I’ve been thinking,” Annabelle announced, the village blurring into the distance behind them, blotting her nightmare out with it as they walked along, facing the sparse oncoming traffic. “It’s a big idea,” Annabelle blurted. “But hell, we’re partners in business: one of us has to come up with a drastic proposition, so please hear me out.”
“You’re making me edgy,” Polly stopped in her tracks, slowing them down even further, swaying this way and that like a skittle, eyes wide with trepidation.
“Why don’t we trial a move to town, and set ourselves up in Glastonbury? We could give that a go, and then maybe, who knows… in time we could break into a big city? Not London or anywhere crazily extreme like that.” Her words flew out in lightning speed and she giggled, nervously avoiding eye contact with Polly. “But maybe we could try our luck in Bath, Bristol… or Exeter, even? We might meet a couple of Mr Rights while we’re at it… never say never…” Her heart thumped out a concerto as she waited for the verdict, quite certain already of Polly’s answer.
“Oh, Annabelle.” Polly threw her a look full of pity. “In theory it all sounds ace. You know I’d be the first to sign up if I had some kind of crystal ball, a glimpse into the future that could tell us where we’d even get the money. But even besides that, Glastonbury already has a decent bakery.”
“We’ll go to the bank, get a loan,” said Annabelle quickly. “Everybody’s doing that nowadays in business. Besides, Guinevere’s Cakes and Bakes, with its rustic rolls and imperfect icing, isn’t a patch on our offerings, we’d easily lure all their cust—”
But Polly broke in. “Look, it’s no use getting these hare-brained ideas in your head – and I won’t let them into mine. Fate’s dealt us this hand,” she carried on, just like she always did when Annabelle got carried away with one of her light bulb moments. “Now we just have to find a way to deal with it.”
Annabelle’s last invisible hope blew away on the evening breeze. Dammit. She had hoped something would be different tonight; that Polly might even listen to her for once. That her cousin might, this time, have felt it too, this inexplicable pull toward something else – a life, not just an existence.
“I could always poison my brothers and sell the house when they drop dead,” Polly said, her attempt to lighten the mood pathetic at best.
If only.Annabelle couldn’t have chuckled at the notion if she tried. She resigned herself to the silent walk that lay ahead, cursing inwardly that she hadn’t thought along Polly’s spiking lines, smuggling a hipflask of spirits into her handbag; adding a tot to Polly’s shandy to cajole her into agreement when she was busily washing down her brandy snaps later. Just like she always did.
She supposed she couldn’t blame Polly. Though she always said she hadn’t been close to her parents, the void their absence left had understandably made her cling to what rocks of tradition she could find: the village, the farmhouse, the belligerent brothers, the annual ritual of golden syrupy and sticky brandy snap baskets – delicious as they were. And yet, Polly also protested, sometimes, that she’d had enough. Just as she had, moments before Annabelle had blurted out her plan. Well, enough of this blowing hot and cold. Something had to give, before Annabelle…Before she what, exactly?
She tsked loudly, as though that alone might send a signal ahead to the evening; an impalpable message delivered on the feathery tails of those little birds she’d seen earlier.Would they please kindly arrange some kind of divine and miraculous encounter?
She let her head droop down as dusk swept over them. These pipedreams were hopeless. From the corner of her eye she could see Polly offering her a wan smile. She wouldn’t take it.
On and on they walked in a lull that would have been deafening, were it not for the early evening chorus of the blackbirds. A heron darted for its supper at the edges of the River Brue, moving her thoughts to the gentle Kingfisher-blue waters which ran parallel to the road.
Then, after what felt like an eternity, she heard a car behind them, its purr another welcome distraction from the hike from hell. Even when it slowed down to the kind of curb-crawling speed which Annabelle normally discouraged, she didn’t prepare her usual queue of expletives to attack the male behind the wheel. She turned tentatively to her left and was relieved to spot Kitty’s bouffant head of hair. She was sitting in the shiny silver Morris Minor, even if it was that foul husband of hers chauffeuring it.
“Don’t give her the satisfaction of saying yes if she asks us if we’d like a lift,” Polly hissed, suddenly remembering she had a tongue. “She’ll only blow her trumpet about their holiday to Spain and have a go at us for the umpteenth time for being spinsters. Keep walking. That way we’ll work off the calories from all our future treats before we eat them.”
Polly counting calories? That was a first.Annabelle burst into speech. “One: I’ve never met anyone so obsessed with blessed brandy snaps as you, and two: never mind the calories: the wind’s picking up out here. I’ve got my hair to think about, even if I have used a whole can of hairspray to achieve tonight’s look.” She then rooted herself in place, determined to take advantage of Kitty’s offer, and threw a glance at Polly’s unruly waves. “I don’t want to look like I’ve been through the top end of the Beaufort scale before we’ve braved the big wheel,” she added. And then, the clincher. “Three: the fair’s already started; you can hear the music. If we carry on at this snail’s pace, we’ll miss out on all the fun – and the food.”
Polly shuddered at the thought of the Ferris and Annabelle was needled again. Her cousin was getting old before her time. Come hell or high wind she’d drag her onto it tonight – or maybe its slanting and colourful little sister that spun screaming teens a little lower.
She had to. It would be symbolic. If Annabelle could get Polly to do that, she could get her to do other things, and give herself hope for the future at the same time.
